Thanks to my loyal readers and everyone who came by from Instapundit today. It looks like it will be my highest day for hits ever. Thanks for making this a great opening day!

The season is off to a terrific start. Stay tuned.

A real weakness here with Riveria and Karsay out. If this were a close game, the Yankees would be in trouble. I wonder if Torre is going to try going longer with the starters until the relievers are healthy again?

I was wondering earlier how soon this article would appear.

With Jeter likely out for a while, what should the Yankees lineup look like? My feeling is to move Williams from 4th to 2nd, then move everyone else one slot and stick the new SS ninth. I would be very disappointed in Torre if he puts the SS in the 2nd slot just to keep everyone else consistent.

By the way, Soriano has a double and homer tonight. When is Torre going to realize that his power belongs in the middle of the lineup?

Nice debut for Jose Contreras. After giving up a leadoff double, he strikes out the side. Maybe the game has to matter to him for him to be effective. :-)

Roger Clemens threw a strong game today. Six shutout innings, five K's, 1 BB. Clemens looked strong, and looks strong enough to get to 300 wins this year.

I called them pathetic, but the Orioles pounded out 15 hits today in 13 innings. They did, however, only draw 1 walk, so they are no Cubbies.

Day by Day is a new internet comic strip. This one had a baseball theme.

Alfonzo didn't get it done, but Santiago and Snow stormed the barricades. Back-to-back home runs leading off the ninth give the Giants a 4-2 lead.

I haven't seen that many pictures of Matsui up until now, but looking at him sitting on the bench, he looks like a cross between Moe and Shemp Howard. I think it's the haircut.

Bonds comes up with men on 2nd and 3rd and the game tied. Bonds gets his 2nd intentional walk of the game. We'll see if Alfonzo can make them pay.

Update: Alfonzo hits into a DP on the first pitch.

I didn't see it, but reader Jan from Wellesley tells me that happened:

Jeter was digging for third and Huckabay, the catcher had to come up the line and cover third. He got the ball as he came running in to the bag, and Jeter's left shoulder met his shin guard with full force, pushing the shoulder back. Jeter was in excruciating pain for some time as they tried to push it back in, and as they waited for a very long time for transportation out of SkyDome. It looks very bad -- Kaat and Murcer think he can be out for the whole season. They have this game on ESPN2 also, so I'm sure that ESPN will have more on it. Oh, and it was a clean, hustling play by Huckaby, and he looked quite upset when he saw the kind of pain Jeter was in. Sorry, I wasn't watching what Giambi did that led to Jeter racing toward third ...

Jeter out for the season would be a huge loss for the Yankees. Despite his defense, he's still a championship quality ballplayer.

Update: Jamie Wheeler adds some information:

I just thought I'd try to clear up what happened with Jeter's injury. He was on second and Giambi grounded out. Jeter broke for third, with the Jays being shifted for Giambi. Huckaby was paying attention and raced to third to cover. Jeter, Huckaby and Delgado's throw arrived at third at about the same time, and Huckaby slid to apply the tag, and his shin guard hit Jeter's shoulder.

They just updated it on Sportsnet, and it's a dislocated left shoulder, which was popped back into place at SkyDome. He is on his way to a local hospital.

Update: Daniel Shamah has one more fact to add.

Actually, he was on first when the play started. He took second on the
ground ball, and seeing that no one was covering third took a chance.
Huckaby was flying up the line to catch up and his left knee landed on
Jeter's left shoulder. He was writhing in pain for a good ten minutes.

YES and Cablevision have reached a last minute agreement. New Yorkers, once again, can see the Yankees on TV.

What a great game by Hideo Nomo. Seven K, 1 BB, only 103 pitches. A very efficient game, and a sweet victory vs. the Big Unit. A good day for the Japanese, as Matsui has an RBI for the Yankees as well.

The Devil Rays score five in the ninth as Crawford hits a three-run walk off HR. I can't wait to see the articles blasting the Red Sox for not having a legitimate closer. Embree gave up 3 hits, but Fox gave up the game winning HR. It could also be argued that Nomar should have turned a DP on a ground ball up the middle that he fielded on the bag, but the runner from first was coming in hard and Nomar couldn't get rid of the ball in time. A great way for Lou Piniella to start his career in Tampa Bay.

Tim Bray has an essay on sports and opening day.

Jordan hits a two-run homer off Johnson to give the Dodgers a 3-0 lead. Jordan has driven in all three runs.

According to this Royals recap,

A sellout crowd of 40,302 was at Kauffman Stadium, and the temperature was 73 at gametime. A stealth bomber flew over the stadium after the national anthem.

If a stelth bomber flys over, and no one sees it, was it really there?

This was the first opening day shutout in Royals history. This I find a bit surprising, since KC had a long history of good pitching.

Ray Durham starts off his SF career with a leadoff HR. The Padres pitch to Bonds, and get him out!

Much maligned on this site, Royce Clayton has a 3-run HR for the Brewers today. The lead is going back and forth in this game. Stay tuned.

Both Pedro and Nomo gave up hits in the fourth.

Indians and Orioles, tied at four, become the first teams into extra-innings this year.

Pedro and Nomo
Each have a no-no.
Through three-o.

Rey Ordonez has drawn a walk vs. Pedro Martinez. For that reason alone, Pedro does not deserve the Cy Young award this year. :-)

Kenny Lofton and Reggie Sanders have contributed five RBI today. Pittsburgh off to a 7-1 lead.

If Sox fans were worried about Todd Walker's defense, he's ended the first two innings with excellent defensive plays.

This is wrong, see Mea Culpa!
Jim Thome has homered in his first game for the Phillies, no doubt endearing himself to the fans early. In fact, the Phillies are doing a job on the Marlins with an early 7-0 lead.

Mea Culpa: I misread the box score. Thome's doubled, not homered. The score is now 8-0.

Randy Johnson has gone two innings today without a strikeout.

Sosa didn't homer, but Patterson hit two today. Cubs fans have had high hopes for Patterson, and today's game is going to bring those back up. A nice way to start the season.

The whole Cubs team was on today, drawing 12 walks and knocking out 15 hits. That gives the Cubs a .509 OBA for the season.

The Royals had a great spring, and they carried it over into opening day. Three pitchers combined for eight strikeouts and 2 walks to shutout the White Sox 3-0. One of the few teams having a good day at home today.

I'm watching the Red Sox at Devil Rays right now. Red Sox have scored first, mostly because of two poor fielding plays by the 2nd and 3rd baseman.

Alex Belth of Bronx Banter lands an interview with Negro League legend Buck O'Neil.

Tom Bridge has a new section to his Ramblings of a Technology Blog about baseball. Check it out and say hello.

There's a musical about the Curse of the Bambino. They also agree with me about the best pancake house.

The Expos without Vlad Guerrero and facing Greg Maddux managed to run up a big score. Tatis had a good day, and a rebound by Fernando would help the Expos tremendously. Even Armas contributed a hit. Speaking of hits, J. Bong of the Atlanta Braves gave up 3 in 1 inning pitched. He also qualifies for the most redundant name in baseball. :-)

Twins win in a very brisk 2:10. Both starters pitched well and threw strikes. Everyday Eddie Guardado is living up to his nickname so far.

Old buddies Glavine and Maddux are not having good first innings today.

A reader points out this article in the NY Times on the ad taken out by the Toronto Blue Jays asking their fans to boo Matsui. Godzilla's reaction is priceless:

Taped to the door of the Yankees' clubhouse was a team-sponsored newspaper ad that targeted Matsui. "Boo Matsui," it read, in English and Japanese, with a photo of a Yankee cap pelted by bird droppings. The ad offended Yankees Manager Joe Torre, but Matsui was restrained.
"I don't have anything special to say," he said through an interpreter. "I guess I'm happy that the fans are actually aware of my name."

Yes, any publicity is good publicity.

As for Toronto, I think this shows just how sad this once successful organization has become. They can't put out many positives to get the fans to attend games, so they have to go for the negatives. Ten years ago, they were a model organization. They built a park without a lot of direct public money. They built a championship team through smart trades, a good farm system, and good free agent signings. They sold out every game, because the put a fine product on the field. Now all they can do is blame the Yankees for being successful and ask their fans to boo a class act? Pathetic, and the club should be ashamed.

This post now has a picture of the sign.

Happy Opening Day to everyone outside Anaheim and Dallas! Two games to watch today are the Cubs at the Mets and the Dodgers at the Diamondbacks. In the early game, Sammy Sosa goes for his 500th HR. It might be a tough day for it. Shea is a tough hitters park. Glavine, when he's on, is very tough on righties. And it's going to be cold there. Also, the Wood-Glavine matchup is a nice contrast in styles.

Power pitching is the theme of the late game in Phoenix. I think both these teams have great staffs, and I expect BankOne Ballpark to be airconditioned with the whiffs from the batters.

Enjoy, and I hope whatever team you follow provides you with an exciting summer.

It's opening day, and Rickey Henderson is not on a roster. Lots of people don't like Rickey; he's arrogant, a showboat, and he refers to himself in the third person. But I like Henderson. Unlike a lot of players in his age group (Tim Raines, Paul Molitor, Darryl Strawberry) Rickey was able to avoid scandal in his career. And if you sat at a game and watched him play, you saw a person who was in the game 100%. He stretched before each pitch when he was in the outfield so he was ready to go after a ball. He worked the count as well as anyone at the plate. His compact stance allowed him to uncoil like a spring, generating uncommon power for a leadoff man. If Rickey had never stolen a base, he still would have been the greatest leadoff man ever.

I'm going to miss him. Time to make a reservation for Cooperstown.

A good opening game. The Texas offense was selective, the Ranger pitching threw strikes, and the defense was good. I think Glanville is going to help a lot in center. He made a nice running catch at the wall early in the game. Showalter is great at positioning fielders, and that should help also.

Angels didn't play badly. They were getting balls in the air instead of up the middle. Lackey lacked control, but the game was not a big negative for them.

Lots of action tomorrow, including Sosa going for 500 HR. Thanks for coming by tonight!

Urbina comes in with a 3 run lead and facing the bottom of the order. Saves don't get any easier than this.

The Rangers finally get a pitcher in with a fast ball. Cordero K's 2 in his 1 inning. I assume we'll see Urbina in the 9th.

Despite not striking out a lot of batters, the Rangers have been throwing strikes. They thrown 103 pitches through 8 innings, only 31 for balls.

Jon Miller is getting on the Pirates are going to get better band wagon. :-)

A-Rod is up again. A-Rod's next HR will be his 300th. I bet he'll be the youngest to 300.

Update: Jon Miller just said that Foxx is the youngest to 300 until now, meaning to me that A-Rod will be the youngest. I'm checking with SABR.

Update: Dave Vincent at SABR sends the following information. Foxx is the youngest at 27 years, 328 days. A-Rod tonight is 27 years, 246 days. Barring injury, he'll destroy the record.

Down three runs, your #9 hitter leads off with a double, why do you bunt? You need runs, you need men on base, why are you bunting?

Jon Miller thinks Eckstein was bunting for a hit, although the official scorer gives him a sacrifice.

Kennedy scores on a grounder. When you play for one run, that's often all you get.

With Alex Rodriguez's HR, everyone in the Texas lineup has reached base tonight.

A-Rod, who would now like to be known as "The Rod," just hit a long one into the left field stands. Looks like the disc is okay for now.

Last year, Lackey started to tire between the 45th and 60th pitch. He had 56 going into the fourth and got hit.

Michael Young records the first HR of the season. The bottom of the order putting three hits together for a 4-2 Texas lead.

Valdes has not struck out a batter yet. He's walked a batter and hit one here in the third, and now another ball in play goes through for a single and a 2-1 Angels lead. Non-strikeout pitchers are going to have a real tough time with the Angels this year.

From Daniel Shamah:

Erstad bunting?! Valdes gives up a single to the first hitter, Texas has awful pitching, and you give them a free out. I love Scoscia as much as the next guy, but bad call.

Correct, Daniel. Unless it's Pedro on the mound, I don't think bunting with the second batter is a good idea. Both teams did it tonight, although I think Everett was bunting for a hit. Maybe Gene Mauch's spirit is inhabiting the field tonight. :-)

Ismael is not fooling anyone. He's throwing strikes, but the Angels are meeting the ball and putting it in play for hits. It's 1-1.

Sticks to the company line and puts the ball in play up the middle. I love the little guy.

Not a great first inning for Lackey. He was a bit wild, walking 2 and striking out 1. He also threw 27 pitches, which may limit how long he can stay in the game. The Rangers showed a lot of selectivity at the plate, a good sign for the offense.

A Texas Ranger with a Texas Leaguer! Everett scores the first run on a broken bat single by Juan Gone.

I'm surprised to see Everett in the lineup tonight. I would think that he will not gel well with Showalter's strictness.

Lackey to Glanville, a ball. 2003 is here!

Mike Hampton will start the season on the DL. He injured himself on a treadmill. The good news is that he shouldn't be out long.

I was starting to think Valentine might not be too bad after his fight analysis (it's not a problem), but then he started talking about great defensive teams. While I don't disagree with his picks, his argument was that they had great first basemen! Please, Bobby, it's nice to have a great glove at first base, but if the shortstop and second basemen can't reach the ball, the first baseman isn't going to have a lot to do.

For the 14th year in a row, ESPN is about to do a piece about how to stop fighting in baseball.

I don't know what they are going to say, but it won't work. Unfortunately, it's always been part of the game, and always will be. These are competitive individuals, and sometimes people like that get mad and fight.

Oh, God. Bobby Valentine is on the Baseball Tonight set.

It looks like ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball game will not be seen in HDTV. I can't find anything on the net, or on the DirecTV schedule indicating that I will be able to see the game in high definition. I'm disappointed.

However, the Baseball Tonight Special is on in a few minutes. That should be fun.

ESPN has put all their expert predictions on one page. There are 25 experts, and here's the consensus:

• Yankees win AL East (21 votes)


• Phillies win NL East (17 votes)


• Twins (13 votes) or White Sox (12 votes) win AL Central.


• Four teams got votes in the NL Central, with the Astros getting 11, but the Cards got 7 and the Cubs 6.


• The Athletics are the most confident pick, with 22 votes to win the AL West.


• The DBacks are the NL West favorite with 19 votes.


• The Red Sox with 9 votes and the Angels with 7 are the favorites to win the AL Wild Card.


• No clear favorite for the NL wild card, but the Giants get 6 votes and the Braves 5.

The clear favorite to win the World Series is the A's, with 11 votes. No other team got more than 3.

Less than four hours to the first game. Enjoy!

A nice article by Dick Kaegel of the KC Star on the history of baseball in Latin America and how the Latin American influence has grown in the majors.

I just got back from Boston. One of my favorite signs in the city is on Storrow Drive heading west from the Science Museum. There is an S-curve in the road that's labeled "Reverse Curve." I always thought it sounded like a trick pitch. :-) However, when I passed the sign this weekend, someone had painted over the V with an S, and include the word "the", so now it reads, "Reverse the Curse."

Update: Edward Cossette of Bambino's Curse sent this link to a photograph of the sign.

Where can I get a job like this?

Welcome Erik Siegrist to the blogging community. His new blog will focus on the Marlins. Drop by and say hello.

This has been the most predictable division over the last five seasons. Each year has seen the same finish; Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles and Devil Rays. I think that will change this year.

• Orioles: Yuck. Here's the career OBA and Slugging Percentage for the project Orioles lineup on CBS Sportsline:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Slot	OBA	Slugging
  1	.320	.365
  2	.329	.376
  3	.331	.416
  4	.350	.453
  5	.307	.481
  6	.308	.472
  7	.343	.449
  8	.282	.358
  9	.294	.386

  
  This is just pathetic. B.J. Surhoff is batting third! The Orioles have financial resources, yet they have not been able to lure good free agents nor build up the farm system.

  One pitcher to watch is B.J. Ryan. He's a lefty who reminds me of Ted Lilly a couple of years ago. He has good strikeout numbers, but gives up too many walks and HR. If he can get those under control, I think he would be an effective closer. If nothing else, the Orioles have cornered the market on B.J.'s. :-)
  



• Red Sox: The Red Sox number nine hitter is projected to be Jason Varitek. He has a career .335 OBA and a .427 career slugging percentage. That's better than most of the players on the Orioles. Number 8 will be Trot Nixon, who's at .359 and .476 for his career. This is a good offense. A very, very good offense. 1998 Yankees good. The Red Sox were third in the league in runs scored last year, and they have improved their weakest two spots, 1st and 2nd base. I would not be surprised if Boston scores over 900 runs this year. If that happens, the pitching staff would need about a 4.04 ERA for a .600 winning percentage. (You can do the math, but it falls out from the Pythagorean Method.) So the pitchers can have their ERA go up over a quarter of a run from last year, and still win nearly 100 games.

  Pedro can easily be 20 games over .500 with this team. If so, the rest of the staff only needs to be 18 games over to reach 100 wins. And the rest of the starters and bullpen look good enough to do that.

  As for closer by committee, if the Sox offense is as good as I think it is, there aren't going to be many close games. That puts a lot less pressure on the relief staff. The Sox and the Yankees were much closer than last year's standings indicate. Bad luck caused the gap. Boston has improved, and I expect that gap between the teams to disappear entirely.
  



• New York Yankees: The Yankees, once again, are the Yankees. They are an offensive powerhouse. Matsui fills the hole left by the retirement of Paul O'Neill. Nick Johnson, the Yankees #9 hitter, despite hand problems, had a good spring. Williams should move to the top of the lineup and Soriano to cleanup, but they are just going to score a lot of runs.

  And they will need them. The Yankees staff was 2nd in the AL last year in strikeouts. With the Yankees poor defense, it's important for the staff to do that again. As shown in last year's ALDS, the way to beat the Yankees is to put the ball in play up the middle. Soriano and Jeter have limited range, and Williams often turns balls into an adventure. This is the Yankees achilles heel. If you try to out power them, the Yankees pitchers will strike you out. But if you just meet the ball and put it in play, you'll nip at them and score runs. The Yankees did nothing to address their defensive failings, and that is likely to cost them.
  



• Tamp Bay Devil Rays: Two of the most disappointing hitters of the last five years are Travis Lee and Ben Grieve. Each came to the majors with great expectations, and neither has come close to living up to those. Both however, have had good springs. Maybe Lou Piniella is the task master they need. If this improvement continues, coupled with the Rays bringing along some young players, their offense will be better than Baltimore's.

  The pitching, on the other hand, is a complete unknown, and probably not very good. If the offensive improvement is there, however, I expect the DRays to have their best season ever, and maybe even finish out of the celler.
  



• Toronto Blue Jays: The Toronto bullpen is stocked with pitchers who can get a strikeout when needed; Escobar, Creek and Politte. I expect the Blue Jays to use the pen extensively, as it's their biggest strength.

  The offense isn't bad. They have two excellent players in Stewart and Delgado. But it's not a great offense either. The Blue Jays are like Goldilocks favorite porridge, not too hot or cold. And once again, in third place.
  

So, for the moment of truth. I think the Red Sox are going to win the division. They have improved more than the Yankees have, and they were very close to them last year. The Yankees have not addressed their most glaring weakness on defense, and their pitchers are old. I would not be surprised to see lots of injuries in NY this year, and it's already started with Rivera and Karsay. It's the Red Sox year in the east. Toronto will once again finish third, but I giving the nod to the Devil Rays for fourth over the hapless offense of the Orioles.

Jan from Wellesley sends these two competeing view points of the use of stats in baseball. First, the anti-stat position, by Steven Krasner of the Providence Journal.

Baseball is a game of numbers. Always has been. Always will be.

The numbers that have generated the most interest over the sport's storied history are home runs, batting averages, RBI, stolen bases, won-lost records and earned-run averages.

But over time, other numbers have been seeping into the game. Like how a player hits at night, against left-handed pitchers, on natural turf, when the temperature is above 63 degrees, in the month of May, from the seventh inning on, with a runner at first base who is timed at 5.3 seconds from home to first, on the road.

Managers these days have reams and reams of computer printouts to prepare them for the game's direction.

Indeed, the Boston Red Sox have taken this all a step further in hiring stats guru Bill James to provide analysis when it comes to player moves, not to mention in-game decisions. The odds are you will hear the terms "OBP" and "OPS" ad nauseum this year, based on some of the organization's numbers-driven philosophies.

And Major League Baseball honchos want to speed up the game? The reliance on stats can only add to the time it takes to play nine innings. I can envision baseball adding a few 30-second timeouts for the manager so he can pore over the printouts before deciding what move he wants to make when he needs a base hit in balmy 75-degree weather on a Thursday night on artifical turf.

Can all these numbers be helpful? Sure. But as the sole means for evaulating players, or even the primary purpose?

Not in my book.

Before we go any further, there are two uses of statistics in baseball. One is to evaluate players, and is mostly used by GMs, managers and agents. The other use is entertainment, and is mostly used by PR men, broadcasters and newspaper writers. Mr. Krasner, a writer, is mostly exposed to the entertainment side of the stats, which he gets in game notes from the PR person whenever he sees a game. The game notes don't try to do analysis, they are providing writers and broadcasters with tidbits they can use to fill their columns. But this is where all the dumb stats come from, like hitting in July under a full moon.

For instance, radar guns are all the rage these days. Let's take Pedro Martinez for example. He can light up the gun at 96 mph. When he throws a fastball at a mere 94 mph, there's a palpable gasp in the crowd. Pedro's losing it. Is his shoulder about to fall off?

Really, what is the difference between 96 and 94? Not much from a hitter's point of view. Now, if Pedro's velocity suddenly should drop from 96 to 86, which is a big difference, would you need a radar gun to tell you? No, those doubles in the gap will give you all the raw data you need.

Not much difference? A two mile an hour difference in speed is 1/100th of a second reaching the plate. But a ten mile an hour difference is still only 1/20th of a second. That's about the frame rate of a motion picture, meaning it's not something your eyes can easily pick up. Now it's amazing to me that anyone can hit a fast ball period, given the lack of reaction time, period. But if you make it easier for anyone with that kind of skill to hit the ball, it should be noted. And it is a sign of fatigue.

Anyway, he goes on for a while, but finally gets to his point.

Yes, numbers can point out trends and tendencies, which can be important. But the eyes of a veteran baseball man are even more important on a daily, game-by-game, inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch basis.

See, it doesn't matter how someone performs, it's how they look. And it's better to look good than feel good. And you look marvelous....

In the same paper, Art Martone, the Sports Editor, takes the pro-stat side:

His name was Joe Schultz, and he managed the Seattle Pilots in their sole season of existence.

Normally a one-time-only skipper like Schultz, fired more than 30 years ago after a 64-98 season, would be lost in the maze of history. But Schultz was immortalized -- sort of -- because Jim Bouton happened to be playing for the Pilots the year he wrote his ground-breaking book, Ball Four. It was in the pages of that book that Schultz articulated the anti-analytical sentiment that still flows deeply in the veins of the baseball establishment:

"I don't need no statistics. I see what's going on with my own eyes."

He may not have meant to, but with those 14 words Schultz conceived the Anti-Stathead Manifesto. As more and more statistics became available in the years to come, and more and more "analysts" began weighing in on topics historically left to "baseball men," traditionalists felt themselves under siege. And more and more, they responded -- angrily, in many cases -- by falling in line behind good 'ol Joe Schultz. Numbers? I don't need no stinkin' numbers.

They're looking at it all wrong.

Statistics are information. Nothing more, nothing less. When evaluating talent, an organization should look at every piece of the puzzle. Statistics -- the right statistics -- are one of those pieces. Fact is, baseball may be the only industry in the world that has at its disposal such a detailed and complete record of how an employee actually performs. To ignore it is just as foolish as ignoring a scout's evaluation of how a player runs or throws or hits.

Some statistics are more meaningful than others. Just because it's possible to determine how left-handed-hitting middle infielders perform against curly-haired right-handers during midweek day games in months that end in the letter 'y' doesn't make it important. The Schultz-ites, however, tend to cherry-pick the numbers they're comfortable with -- home runs, runs batted in, batting average -- and wave away all the rest as stat geek nonsense.

"The interesting thing is that (those) people . . . use statistics themselves," says ESPN.com's Jim Baker, who once worked as a research assistant for current Red Sox executive (and father of the modern analytical community) Bill James. "They reference things like home runs, RBI, batting average, and the number of games a pitcher wins. Those are stats, just like (the more sophisticated statistics). They just don't tell as complete a story."

And that's what it comes down to. People who are uncomfortable with math will never be comfortable with OBA or Slugging Pct., let alone Runs Created or Win Shares. I'm going to do a stat primer at some point. For example, the anti-stat people are comfortable with batting average, but have you ever tried to figure out what batting average represents? That will be the subject of another post.

I get the feeling that the anti-stat crowd is waiting for the Red Sox to fail so they can pounce on Theo Epstein. I think they are going to wait a long time.

Within a minute of each other, I received these two different views of the Skip Caray situation at TBS. The first is from Michael Blake of View from the 700 Level:

The news of Skip Carey and Pete Van Wieren had passed under my radar until I read your blurb about it this morning. To say it makes my blood boil is an understatement.

The decision by TBS to move Skip Carey and Pete Van Wieren to Turner South broadcasts and not on TBS is absolutely ridiculous! And TBS's decision to promote their games as "MLB on TBS" and not "Braves on TBS" is just as dumb.

I had the pleasure of growing up in South Florida in the 80s, long before the Marlins came to town. For a baseball fan like myself, my only viewing option -- other than the Saturday Game of the Week -- was the lowly Braves on TBS. So I watched them. Night after night, day after day, I watched the pathetic teams that the Braves sent out to the field in the eighties. I enjoyed watching Dale Murphy, Oddibe McDowell, Ken Oberkfell, Chris Chambliss, Rafael Ramirez, Glenn Hubbard, etc. day in and day out. But more importantly, I enjoyed listening to the pictures that guys like Carey and Van Wieren painted for me. They were the ones who really got me into baseball...

For a number of years, it was the presence of the Braves on the schedule that carried a young TBS station. As the Braves grew in the early 90s, so did the station. One has always been synonymous with the other -- the Braves are part of what TBS is, and Skip Carey and Pete Van Wieren are part of the Braves.

Even after I moved to the Philadelphia area, I have enjoyed listening to Braves broadcasts in order to hear these two gentlemen, as well as their partners, Don Sutton and Joe Simpson. The foursome offered a good listening experience, baseball insight, and overall general entertainment. Knowing that by watching only TBS this season I will be missing half of this broadcasting team, I find myself less likely to watch a TBS broadcast on a regular basis.

I know that not everyone agrees with me on this count. Some people do not enjoy listening to the Braves foursome. But we each have our own tastes. Personally, a baseball highlight for me has always been Sid Bream sliding (almost in slow motion) across the plate, and Skip Carey -- echoing his father, almost -- yelling "Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!". These guys are a part of my own baseball history.

I caught a TBS baseball promo the other day, and I was struck how it was promoting Major League Baseball on TBS, not the Braves...at that point I turned to my wife and asked her what they thought they were hiding by taking the focus away from the team that they broadcast. I guess now we know. They are trying to develop a more national flavor to their broadcasts, and thus in their broadcasters; yet, every game on that station will still have the Braves. Granted, they have a national following, but these games will not create the same sort of national appeal as would a schedule with different teams every time.

I just don't understand the decision. Braves baseball has worked on TBS for 20 years. Carey and Van Wieren have made it work. By trying to give the broadcast more of a national feel, TBS is losing so much of what has made the Braves broadcasts work for so long. It's a poor decision, and I think they will suffer because of it.

The opposing view is from Ben Jacobs:

I don't understand why so many people think it's a bad idea to take Caray and Van Wieren off the national broadcasts for TBS. They're a fine team for Braves fans to watch, but the great thing about TBS - at least for me and a lot of people I know - is watching our favorite teams on TV when they play the Braves. The problem with this is that Caray and Van Wieren take all of the fun out of that because they are so completely biased toward the Braves (and nobody can possibly argue that they are not unless you've never watched a TBS broadcast). I might be more inclined to watch Atlanta play other teams (besides my Red Sox) now that I don't have to listen to Caray and Van Wieren extolling the greatness of everything Braves...

I tend to agree with Mike in this argument. Having worked at ESPN and watched a lot of satellite broadcasts over the years, I think the Braves have one of the best broadcasting groups in the business. And if you really want to hear home team bias, listen to Ken Harrelson do a White Sox game sometime. :-) And I think it's going to be really hard for Sutton and Simpson not to be biased. Remember, even though it says MLB on TBS, Sutton and Simpson are going to be with the Braves every day. It's not like Jon Miller and Joe Morgan visiting different teams every week.

And besides, what about the Braves fans? I assume many people watch TBS because they couldn't see any other baseball, and became Braves fans along the way. The Braves will be the only team without regular home announcers. That, I feel, is an injustice to the home team fans.

In the end, there wasn't anything really wrong with the Braves broadcast. Again, I think this will be a short lived experiment.

The YES-Cablevision deal has fallen apart.

Negotiations have broken down between the YES Network and Cablevision to carry Yankee games to 3 million metropolitan homes this season, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday.

The collapse of the talks jeopardized the telecasts of Yankee games, less than a month after the two sides had vowed to work out their differences on behalf of the fans. The season begins Monday.

"Unfortunately, at the moment, Cablevision and the YES Network are unable to agree on the details of the previously announced agreement to have Yankees games carried on the Cablevision cable systems," Bloomberg said in a statement.

The mayor had helped orchestrate what was billed earlier this month as an interim agreement between the two companies, whose pricing dispute had meant that no Yankee games were carried on Cablevision last season.

Two mediators, Richard Aurelio and Gerry Levin, asked that they be removed from the negotiations, the mayor said. It was not immediately clear why the talks ended just before the Yankees open their season.

Makes you wonder if the French were involved. :-) Oh well, baseball is a lot of fun on radio.

If you are in the vicinity of Amherst, Massachusetts, stop by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center for an exhibit of panoramic views of Baseball Stadiums from 1982 (scroll down) by Jim Dow. It's an interesting exhibit. Many if not most of the stadiums from that era are gone. Plus, you get to see them as you never would on television. Worth the trip if you are nearby.

Dan McLaughlin of the Baseball Crank pens this article on BaseballPrimer.com about the defense of the Yankees during the Stengel era. A great piece of work, read the whole thing.

Hal Bodley is happy to see this spring training end:

The lights are about to go out on another spring training and not a moment too soon.

When Jim Thome sat on a bench in the Philadelphia Phillies' camp in mid-February and discussed his new team it seemed like a delightful beginning to spring.

Thome is refreshing, a throwback. As he discussed his career with Cleveland, his childhood and his passion to whip up a Cajun chicken dish for the family, the thought occurred to me that this would be a spring writing about baseball on the field.

I was wrong.

Within hours, off-the-field issues were dominating the sports pages.

Of course, Hal might want to read some other newspapers. :-) I've seen plenty of positive stories this spring and was happy to share them with you. And no stories about a strike! Sixty one hours to baseball...

It's an interesting division. Three clearly good teams. And some really great individual players. It will be worth staying up late to catch the west coast games in the east again.

• Arizona Diamondbacks: Every year I look at the Arizona offense and say to myself, "Self, this offense isn't that good," and every year I'm wrong. I'm going to have to give Brenly some credit here. He's gets a lot out of this team. That said, I think the only really good offensive players on this team are Spivey, Gonzalez and sometimes Finley.

  But of course, with Johnson and Schilling, how many runs do they need to score? Kim looks like he'll be another good starter, so this team will win a lot of games again.
  



• Colorado Rockies: The Colorado Rockies are likely to start seven position players who were not with the team last spring. They bascially kept the two best, Helton and Walker, and replaced everyone else. I think they did a decent job, too. This may end up being a team that can actually score on the road.

  A big problem, however, remains the pitching. The Rockies don't have a staff that can strike out batters. And having the ball put in play against you in Coors is deadly. I wonder if the right way to build a staff here is to get arms that can throw 95 m.p.h or better, and just try to blow pitches by batters all day. Because of this, I think the Rockies will battle for 4th place.
  



• Los Angeles Dodgers: At lot of addition by subtraction here as they changed the right-side of the infield. They are solid 1 to 5 in the lineup, and Kevin Brown is back to anchor the rotation. I don't agree with Dreifort as a starter, however. He's never shown the stamina to go more than 5 innings. I think he's a great two inning setup man, because he can really let loose and not worry about getting worn out. Still, a good team, better than last year, and they should compete for the division title.
  


• San Diego Padres: Two words, Nevin and Hoffman. Actually, I'm not one who thinks closers are all that important. You need to have a lead late for them to be useful. Nevin is a big loss. How big a loss depends on which Rondell White shows up. (By the way, if your team is being crippled by injuries, isn't Rondell White the last player you should add?) On the plus side, they do have an (a?) Xavier. I see them with the Rockies at the bottom of the division.
  


• San Francisco Giants: I am not an Alou fan. People told me for a long time what a good manager he was, and I was willing to accept that. But he kept losing with the Expos, and with some good young players. They were always close to competing, close to a wild card, but never there. After a while, after looking at what was stressed in his players (BA over on base, e.g.), I started to lose faith. And now that he's inserting Jose Cruz into the 2nd spot in the lineup, I'm sure I'm right.

  Alou is a leader, and his players love him (as far as I can tell), which is very important. But I think his overall view of what's important in offense is from a different era, and I'm afraid that's going to hurt the Giants.

  This is still a very good team. In a lot of ways, I like the batting order this year much better than last year (seeing Santiago lower is good; he's not a fifth hitter). Good starters, good bullpen. They'll contend. I have some doubts as to whether they'll win.
  

So the way I see it right now, the Dodgers win the division, with Arizona second and the Giants third. I'll give 4th place to the Padres and fifith to the Rockies, although it could easily go either way. The team that finishes 2nd in this division will likely win the wild card as well.

Jim Terry writes:

Please, Please help raise the protest of the demotion of Skip Caray and Pete Van Wieren from TBS broadcasts. The Braves' Nation Mourns.
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/sports/braves/0303/26tv.html

and especially
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/sports/columns/tucker/index.html

Glad to help, Jim, and thanks for pointing out those articles. I saw that this happened a couple of days ago, but I didn't have a chance to see what happened, and then I lost track of the item.

It seems that TBS wants the Braves games to be more of a national broadcast, rather than a Braves broadcast, and Caray is too closely associated with the Braves.

Excuse me while I roll on the floor laughing.

I'm back. That has to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard. People watch the Braves on TBS because:

1. The Braves are winners, and it's fun to watch a winner.


2. The Braves broadcasts are extremely well produced.


3. The announcers are really good. All of them. They know that they are calling a baseball game, not a hockey game. You stay low key, and save the excitement for the truly exciting moments.

This strikes me as new management sticking their nose in where it doesn't belong. AOL has had poor synergy with its acquired units, and now I see why. They have no clue how to run mass media.

One hopeful sign from the second article:

Pearl said there was a "major concern" that the decision -- made by him, Turner Sports president David Levy and Turner Entertainment Group president Mark Lazarus -- would be perceived as a demotion of, or dissatisfaction with, Caray and Van Wieren. "It was neither of those," he said. "We've tried in this combination to satiate the appetite of Braves fans in the South [via radio and Turner South], yet put together a team in Don and Joe that would help us hopefully live up to the title of 'MLB on TBS'."

Pearl also noted that the change isn't necessarily permanent. That depends on how it works.

I'd go as far as saying I think the change is ephemeral.

Update: Shawn Bernard takes exception with my characterization of AOL running Time-Warner:

You said, "AOL has had poor synergy with its acquired units, and now I see why." In fact, AOL really has nothing to do with the management of the "other units," which consists of all of Time-Warner. Time-Warner now runs the company known as AOL-Time Warner and all the people at the head of AOL-TW are now Time-Warner people. AOL is now more of an "acquired unit" than the reverse. We all try and work together, but, of course, it's not always as easy as it should be. On good thing is that AOL does do a good job of promoting all of Time-Warner's assets, though.

It really bugs me when people assume that AOL is the "main" portion of AOL-TW. AOL is pretty much the only portion of AOL-TW that didn't meet it's forecasts last year - all of Time-Warner did exceptionally well, and they
really have no say so of the direction of the company, AND they DEFINATELY have no say so on the direction of the sport teams (which I'm hoping AOL-TW doesn't end up selling off).

Just thought that I'd point that out. ;)

Shawn, employee of Turner Entertainment

Point taken, Shawn. So a bunch of computer nerds aren't making the mistake. Savy media people are making the mistake. Is that really better?

This came out of nowhere. Shane Reynolds has been released by the Houston Astros. He had given up 9 HR in 23 innings. The rest of the team had given up 17. My guess is that someone will pick him up for the minimum and try him in the rotation.

Don Baylor has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow, according to this AP article on ESPN.com. It looks like he will undergo chemotherapy and stem cell replacement. This type of cancer is very tough, so let's hope for the best for the former MVP.

By coincidence, I will be participating in a charity bike ride on May 18, 2003 to raise money for the Center of Hope, a non-profit organization that helps people deal with cancer. If you would like to sponsor me in any amount, use the PayPal button on the right to make a donation, and indicate that it is for the Center for Hope. I will match any donation made. Thanks in advance.

Reader Robert Saunders now has a blog, Procrastination Nation. It's not about baseball, although he promises me you will see some posts on the subject from time to time. I was the 7th visitor to the site, which I'll take as a bit of good luck. Drop by and say hello.

David Thomas of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram finds a message for the baseball season in the greatest hits of Donnie and Marie.

Not as bad as the NL Central, but they only have 5 teams. But also, I think four of the five teams have a clue.

• Chicago White Sox: As Frank Thomas goes, so go the Sox. He's had a very good spring, and if that translates into a Frank Thomas season, the Sox will have the best offense in the division 1 to 6. Since no team has a great 1-9 offense, that should have them scoring the most runs.

  I worry about the starting pitching a bit. Colon's season was very good, despite a big decline in his strikeouts. He joins a rotation with few K's, and the White Sox have a traditionally bad defense.

  I don't think Koch adds or substracts anything from the bullpen. So the big ifs are Thomas coming back and Colon repeating. If that happens, they will compete for the division title.
  



• Cleveland Indians: These are not your older brother's Indians, although they may be your father's Indians. :-) I've heard nothing but good about Eric Wedge, but the lineup they are projecting on CBS Sportsline does not impress me. Why does he think Bradley can lead off? If Burks does not hold up, the Indians will have little power. Maybe Wedge is waiting for his former charges from Buffalo to make their way to the majors.

  As for the pitching staff, Jason Bere is the 2nd starter, and he hasn't had a good year since 1994. I see them finishing 4th.
  



• Detroit Tigers: As I was reading a preview of the Tigers, it struck me that the coaching staff could easily beat this team. (Trammell, Gibson, Parrish, etc.) Who are these guys?
  Rob Neyer has a good column on going with such a young pitching staff.
  Dombroski has always struck me as an intelligent GM. I haven't seen the brilliance yet with this team. But if I read him correctly, he will be using these losing seasons to draft well. It may take a few years, but I bet better teams are not that far away. But for this year, last place.
  


• Kansas City Royals: The offense 1-5 isn't bad. Four consistent players and the great Mike Sweeney. The Royals are going to score some runs. But like the Tigers, they have a young, no-name pitching staff. I actually think they will finish ahead of the Indians, but they won't do it with a great record.
  


• Minnesota Twins: It's pretty much the same team as last year. Rogers replaces the injured Eric Milton in the rotation, and I suspect he'll do fine given his past performance in the park. A great defense helps the pitching keep the hits down. They strike me as having the deepest team in the division, and their good minor league system likely has talent in reserve. I like them to win, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they fell off five games.
  

So I see it as the Twins vs. the White Sox. A good year from Frank Thomas and it's a close race. Otherwise, the Twins win easily.

J Lentner makes an important point about the All-Star game:

The problem with most of these arguments is that they do not address how to bring back competition to the All Star game. People key in on other ways to decide home field for the World Series when that is not what the idea is trying to address. Certainly, it would be terrible for Mike Scoscia (Torre will not manage this year’s game but for some reason, people keep bringing up the Yankees) to abuse a rival’s all-star pitcher to gain an edge for the rest of the season. But back when players and managers cared about winning the All-Star game, this was not an issue.

Maybe this idea is not the best solution. But it at least addresses the problem. Somewhere in the past, people stopped caring about who wins the game and we all suffered for it. I believe that this goes further back than the Gaston/Mussina incident in Baltimore. At some point fans and managers decided that more than two innings for a pitcher was too many in an All-Star game. Why? There is no reason why Pedro or Zito can’t throw 45-60 pitches during the break.

I wish people criticizing the home field idea would come up with a better solution themselves. The All-Star game needs help. There is more drama in the homerun derby now, and that’s a shame.

One thing that might make the game more competitive is to pay the players for a win. The All-Star game proceeds used to go to the player pension fund, but that's not true any more.

Most importantly for the players, the All-Star Game has long financed their pension plan. When the plan was formed in 1947, the owners’ contributions were funded by the net proceeds of the All-Star Game, together with TV and radio revenue from the World Series. In 1954 MLB guaranteed that the pension plan would receive 60% of All-Star Game revenues, a figure which rose to 95% in 1963.

When the TV money grew too large, MLB severed the link between All-Star money and the pension fund. But the pension agreement still requires the owners to pay 1/7th of their annual contribution shortly after the game, and allows them to skip this payment if there’s no All-Star Game. Under the circumstances, it’s no coincidence that even the 1981 and 1994 labor disputes did not force cancellation of the All-Star Game.

So why not pay each person on the winning team $100,000, and nothing to the loser? If you give a competitive athlete something tangible to play for, my guess is that he will give his best. Give the manager a share, also. So for about $3,000,000 you can probably have a pretty competitive and even heated game.

Sean McAdam offers a different view of the NL Central on ESPN.com. He sees it as a tight four team race for the division. I think the thightness of of the race will be at the bottom.

Mike Carminati at Mike's Baseball Rants and John Perricone at Only Baseball Matters have been having trouble updating their links to this site. Mike has figured out the problem, if anyone else is suffering at the hands of blogger:

I fixed the problem and wanted to pass it on to you for anyone else who has the same issue. First, you have to turn off archiving and post. Then you have to re-generate all of your archives. After I did that, it finally cleared up my disappearing archive issue and it published the changes that I made to my template.

By the way, I can never hear enough exploding Pinto jokes. :-)

Ron Rapoport of the Chicago Sun-Times notes the down-side of an All-Star game that confers home-field advantage for the World Series:

How could a revamped All-Star Game lead to problems? Say Joe Torre is managing the American League team and the Yankees have a series coming up with the Red Sox immediately afterward.

He leaves Pedro Martinez, who is scheduled to start against the Yankees in two days, in the game for three innings during which the National League betters tee off on him and he throws dozens of pitches. He sends Derek Lowe, who also will pitch in the upcoming series against his team, out for two tough innings. He leaves Ramiro Mendoza, who has excelled as Boston's new closer, in for the final three innings as the game goes into extra innings. Red Sox fans go ballistic. Selig orders an investigation. The All-Star Game once again becomes his own personal albatross.

Torre is too much of a gentleman ever to do such a thing, of course (although I have been thinking about Billy Martin in this context), but do we really want the All-Star Game to be viewed through this sort of prism?

He also compares Selig unfavorably to Paul Tagliabue.

This is my least favorite division. It's like the AL West of the 1980's, one or two good teams and a bunch of others that don't have a clue.

• Chicago Cubs: CBS Sportsline projects Grudzielanek leading off and Gonzalez batting 2nd. My question: who is Sosa supposed to drive in? Grudz had a .301 OBA last year and Sanchez was .306. That trade with the Dodgers will prove costly for the Cubs both in money and in talent. Karros looks like a very expensive part-time player. Pitching looks fine, should be near the top of the league in K's. Look for the Cubs to lose a lot of low scoring games. I think the Cubs will be lucky to finish third.
  


• Cincinnati Reds: The offense will be very good if Larkin and Boone bring their OBA's back to normal after off years, and Griffey's power can similarly rebound. Larkin worries me the most, since his falloff is likely age related. But this offense could be great 1-6.

  The starting pitching is mediocre, and they don't strike out a lot of batters. The defense up the middle is either old (Larkin), out of position (Boone) or never that good (Griffey). That could be a disaster. Expect to see the bullpen early and often.
  With luck the Reds will compete in the division. I think third place is a safe bet for them.
  



• Houston Astros: Biggio. like Larkin, needs to rebound from an off year to be effective at the top of the order. But I don't understand the project of Lugo at the top. Blum has a much better OBA. With the big guns in the middle of the order, why not get as many people on base in front of Bagwell, Berkman and Kent?
  The Astros are excellent 1-2 in both the starting rotation and the bullpen, but depth may be a problem. This team has a a lot of great players, but a lack of depth may keep them from the top spot in the division.
  


• Milwaukee Brewers: I was going to bash the Brewers for picking up Royce Clayton. But you know, the offense isn't bad 1-5. However, they are horrible 6-8. Still concentrating the best players together should generate some runs. Of course, they have no starters. None at all. And when I say none, I mean one, Ben Sheets, who isn't going to win the Cy Young award anytime soon. They are going to be the opposite of the Cubs, losing a lot of high scoring games.
  


• Pittsburgh Pirates: The Pirates did a good job of filling in some holes with veterans. Like the Cubs, they have one great players (Giles) but not much offense around him. They'll hit better than last year. Neither the pen nor starters are great. The team will win more games, but not a lot more.
  


• St. Louis Cardinals: They are the class of the division. However, Drew looks like he won't be a regular the first part of the season after knee surgery. CBS SportsLine projects Renteria to bat third, which I just don't understand. Pujols or Rolen would each be a better choice. Renteria just doesn't have the power to bat third. I'm assuming that the projected lineup is wrong (Renteria batted 2nd today), but this injury could give the Astros an opeing to win the division.
  

A lot of mediocrity here. Cardinals with pitching, defense and a good offense should win easily. Astros will make a run, with how well they do depending on the rebounds of Biggio and Hildalgo. Cincy takes third based on offense and bullpen, and the Cubs, Pirates and Brewers may generate some excitement but not too many wins. A coin toss for 4th, 5th and 6th.

Edward Cossette has an interesting insight on the coverage of the war:

Reading the ongoing media accounts of the war in Iraq where one day it's euphoria "the war is already won," to the next day doom and gloom "quagmire" talk, it's as if the war is being covered by the Red Sox beat writers. You know, one day a particular player is God's gift, the next day they are running him out of town.

Luckily the skills I've acquired over the years as a Red Sox fan, ie. the ability to completely ignore the media hype as necessary, is coming in very handy as I wade through the coverage from Iraq.

Things are never quite as good or as bad as they seem.

Oh, and Nomar is back.

Two things of interest in Peter Gammons' "Trends to Keep an Eye On" column. The first is the rise of OBA:

In doing a story on which is the most important statistic this spring, more than 80 percent of the managers and general managers responded, "on-base percentage."

"You can't score runs unless you get people on base," says Padres GM Kevin Towers.

"It is the statistic off which everything else follows," says Barry Bonds. "It is unquestionably the single most important statistic in the game. It's everything."

Ten years ago, you'd have heard RBI or home runs or the like. Now the Billy Beane/Oakland Athletics influence has changed the way people view players.

I would argue that it's Bill James' influence, but what's really important is that after over 20 years since Bill introduced the abstracts, the concept is taking hold.

Second, closer by committee:

"I hear Boston's being operated by that stat guy," says one Marlins coach, meaning Bill James, who has long opposed the single closer theory.

No, James isn't "running" the Red Sox. Red Sox manager Grady Little talked about this last season, and GM Theo Epstein has long questioned the sagacity of spending $7 million to $10 million on one closer.

"It's a huge gamble," says Giants pitching coach Dave Righetti, himself once a great closer. "If Robb Nen goes down, we're in huge trouble."

"If it doesn't work in Boston," says Beane, "it isn't because the theory was wrong, it's because they had the wrong people."

In talking with people in baseball during spring training, it's been about 70-30 against going with the single closer.

I'm about 50-50 on this one. I think a lot of it will have to do with the makeup of the staff. Also, there will be a tendancy (I believe) for managers to go to the same people in the same situation. So while there won't be a named closer on the Red Sox, my guess is that there will be a de facto closer.

Then again, why not teach your starters to be efficient and throw less than 100 pitches per game, so you don't need too many relievers? :-)

Just as I thought the Angels were safe, Troy Glaus appears to have a wrist injury. He's the power on the team, and wrist injuries seem to hamper swings long after they appear to heal.

Sorry I missed this, but if you haven't seen it, read Alex Belth's interview with Marvin Miller on a fascinating subject, Curt Flood.

• Anaheim Angels: The Angels stood pat over the winter, never a good sign. Almost any team has weaknesses that need to be addressed. One of the reasons the Braves have stayed so good so long is that they address the little weaknesses every year, moving one or two players, so they always have a good team.

  In this case, however, I don't think standing pat was such a bad idea. This hunch is based on two players; Troy Glaus and Darren Erstad. Each had an off year last year, and the Angels were still one of the top teams in terms of run differential. The Angels hit very well with men on base last year, and that may continue if the team continues to do an excellent job of putting the ball in play to take advantage of defensive holes. Pitching wise, K-Rod and Percival could be the Rivera-Wetteland of 2003.
  



• Oakland Athletics: If you like pitching, this is your team. With Ted Lilly having a good spring, the A's have the best rotation 1 to 4 in the league, if not the majors. And with all their players having good to great OBA's they'll score more than enough runs to win. Billy Beane continues to move players around to show the rest of baseball how to win on a budget. They may be boring again, but I'd rather have a boring winner than an exciting loser.
  


• Seattle Mariners: I was going to say something bad about Mike Cameron, but when I took a close look at his stats, they really weren't much different than his career. In other words, Mike's 2002 is pretty much what you should expect from him. Randy Winn give the Mariners their best everyday leftfielder in a long time, and 1 to 5 the lineup is very good, although it's starting to age. A rebound by Jeff Cirillo would be key to the Mariners sucess this year.
  


• Texas Rangers: They are going to score and give up a lot of runs. Actually, there's going to be a huge falloff in offense at catcher. Palmeiro may finally get old. Oh well, they are going to get blown out a lot.

  The only time Hart impressed me with his pitching decisions is when he picked up Hershiser and Martinez as the final pieces that led to the AL pennant in 1995. Otherwise, he seems to be a one-dimensional GM; all offense, no defense. That's going to make it another ugly year in Texas.
  

I expect the division to be a toss-up between the A's and the Angels. The Mariners will be in the hunt, but they are going to need a little luck, and Martinez and Moyer in good health to win the division. Texas remains an example of how not to build a winning team.

Update: Fixed a typo.

Scott Miller of CBS.sportsline.com has an excellent article on how Bill James' ideas are spreading thoughout baseball, especially on the Red Sox:

Maybe the game has changed very little in 100 years, but the way we view it is changing every day. Survey today's baseball landscape and it is abundantly clear James' fingerprints appear in front offices throughout the game in the way clubs now analyze players, identify trends and view specific situations.

In Oakland, general manager Billy Beane inherited an office filled with volumes of James' books when he took over from Sandy Alderson in the 1997.

In Atlanta, Braves' president Stan Kasten once inquired as to what James could do in the NBA world with the Hawks.

In Colorado, Dan O'Dowd blew away the Rockies' management when he interviewed for their GM job after the 1999 season, offering detailed evidence on-base percentage was one of the keys to winning in Coors Field (so far, that hasn't gone too well).

In Chicago, White Sox GM Kenny Williams created a systems and analysis department when he replaced Ron Schueler after the 2000 season.

In Toronto, GM J.P. Ricciardi -- a Beane acolyte who came to Canada from Oakland -- is spreading the gospel of OPS (statistical evaluations of players taking into account on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) while rebuilding the Blue Jays.

Throughout the industry, a growing number of baseball executives have been turning to the pages of Bill James both for new ideas and for backup of their own ideas.

So if the office shelves are lined with Bill James' books, why not actually bring in the man himself?

"I'm actually surprised it took someone that long to hire a Bill James," Beane said during a conversation in his office at Oakland's spring complex in Phoenix. "Obviously, I've read a lot of his stuff and respect him. Someone with his ideas either has or will ultimately revolutionize how teams are put together."

Eventually, you won't be hired as a GM unless you know your Bill James inside-out. :-)

To paraphrase Chico Escuela, baseball's been very very good to Randy Johnson.

Johnson didn't pitch in the majors until he was 25. Can you imagine if his career came together then, rather than when he was 29? Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the STATS database, but I'm guessing Johnson will be the greatest old pitcher ever. Just compare his last 5 years to Ryan at the same age:

Age 34-38	Johnson, 1998-2002	Ryan, 1981-1985
Record	100-38	63-49
ERA	2.63	3.03
K	1746	974
K/9	12.3	8.7

Ryan pitched another 8 years from this point in his career. Maybe the DBacks should have signed him for even longer.

I find this article about Pete Rose not attending opening day very interesting:

‘‘Pete would love to return home and to be involved in baseball again, but now does not seem to be the right time,’’ Greene said. Rose, who is on baseball’s ineligible list, has been in quiet discussions with Commissioner Bud Selig regarding his reinstatement.

Sounds to me like Rose thinks he is going to be re-instated, and is making nice to make sure it happens.

I just love this little blurb from Fredricksburg.com:

The two factions, competing with each other and a Portland, Ore., group, have spelled out their plans for financing the move and building stadiums. The Virginia and Washington groups have tried to counter concerns about stealing fans from the Baltimore Orioles, an alleged baseball team. They've no doubt sung the blues, too, over the Washington area's abandonment--twice--by previous franchises, and how tantalizingly close it has come in the past to winning expansion clubs.
(Emphasis mine)

Obviously, the unnamed author wants baseball in the Washington area.

On the one-year anniversary of the debut of Baseball Musings, this blog has moved to its new home, www.baseballmusings.com. I hope you like the new design and the new features you'll find here.

I want to thank all my readers for making this first year so rewarding. The over 116,000 visits turned out to be far beyond what I imagined for these writings. I hope over the next year you'll continue to be entertained and challenged.

One week to baseball!

Update: We're having a little problem getting the cursor to point at the right line on the side bar. Right now, use the thumb as the hot spot instead of the point finger.

Update: We changed the side bar so that you can see the links and click on them properly. Hope to fix that problem soon.

The MLBPA has announced that they will make a decision before opening day on whether to have the all-star game determine home field advantage for the World Series. Fox is lobbying the players for the change, since they think it will increase ratings.

I think it's a bad idea. If you want to give someone a home field advantage based on merit, make it on the regular season record. I don't think league loyalty is so great that players would want to win to help an opponent have an advantage in the post-season.

Alan Robinson of the AP compares the consistently good play of Brian Giles to the consistently poor play of the Pirates.

Brian Giles' consistency is almost scary.

His home run totals since joining the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1999 are 39, 35, 37, 38. He has 37 doubles each of the last three seasons. His batting average was .315 in 1999 and 2000, .309 in 2001, .298 last season.

"My numbers have been fairly consistent over the last four years," Giles said.

No kidding.

What troubles Giles is the Pirates have been just as predictable - predictably bad, with 83 losses in 1999, followed by 93, 100 and 89 the last three seasons.

Giles does see a silver lining, however.

But when he looks around the Pirates' clubhouse, he sees veteran players with winning resumes and not-old pitchers who have won games in the majors, rather than those who merely hope to do so. He sees a bullpen that might be one of the NL's best, a bench that many contenders wouldn't mind having.

He also likes what he doesn't see: prospects rushed to the majors prematurely, visibly nervous by their new surroundings and doomed to fail in them.

"Every season here has been a rebuilding process," Giles said. "Nothing against the younger players in our organization, but it's awfully hard to perform at this level and have success at the same time you're having to learn the game."

And it looks like Jason Kendall agrees with my assessment of the team. :-)

"People are still going to say the people we brought in are on the downside of their career, but this team has been starving for those kind of players," Giles said. "It's a different atmosphere and, for the first time, you go in feeling like you have a chance of winning. That's something we haven't had for the last three or four years."

It's not just the veterans, either. Giles sees improvement in the Pirates' young talent, products of a farm system in which every Pittsburgh minor league team enjoyed a winning season last year.

"We're much better than last year - that team probably wasn't half as good as this team, and we were only 7 1/2 or 8 games out at the All-Star break," he said. "If we can keep guys healthy and everybody goes out and has their normal years ..."

Giles didn't finish the thought, so teammate Jason Kendall did it for him.

"It's going to be a fun year," Kendall said.

Going into the final week of spring training, I'm going to try to take a look at each division to see who's strong and who's not. I don't like making predictions, so this is going to be more how I feel about each team.

• Braves: I didn't think the Braves had a great offense last year, and it doesn't look like they've done much to improve it this year. Despite his great rookie year, Furcal has proven to be a poor leadoff man. The Braves will get a lot out of the Jones and Sheffield again, but Castilla is a black hole at third. So it's going to come down to the pitching again.

  Hampton is the question mark. Right now, I'm not very confident. So far this spring he has walked 8 and struck out 4 in 14 innings. The bullpen may have to work a lot more than last year. They were good at holding leads, but the Braves may not be able to generate enough offense for comebacks. My feeling is that this is the weakest Braves team since 1990. I see them finishing well in this weak division, but I don't think they are a lock for the playoffs.

• Marlins: I think the Marlins offense is okay. They have two decent table setters in Castillo and Pierre, and the 3-5 hitters, while not murders row, should be able to drive them in. The rotation and bullpen both lack great power pitchers, Burnett looks like he is going to start the season on the DL. The Marlins are going to score some runs, and if the pitching works out, I think they can challenge in this division. In this division, they are the one team that I think can surprise people.
• Expos: Dick Cramer, the founder STATS, Inc. and I were having a conversation about the AL East back in the mid-eighties. The division was very competitive back then, and Dick pointed out that most of the teams had two superstars. The teams that won were the ones that filled in around them well. The Expos have two superstars in Guerrero and Vazquez. But they really have very little supporting them. I'd love to see this team do very well, but I just don't see it happening this year. And I'm afraid, this will be their last year in Montreal. But I find it hard to believe they will do better than last in the division.
• Mets: The Mets are a hard call again. The good players on the team are old. The lineup 2-5 is as good as any in the division, if everything works out. I think Cedeno is a gamble at leadoff; he's had great years getting on base, and poor ones also. I really think the Mets would get more out of Alomar-Floyd 1-2. Mo Vaughn is a key, and he's having a good spring. Sanchez is an awful offensive player, and yet he's an improvement over Ordonez. The play of two rookies, Wigginton and Reyes may make or break the Mets season offensively. The rotation, despite the addition of Glavine, is not deep. Again, the two best pitchers, Leiter and Glavine, are old. The Mets strike me as half a team. I think they'll fight the Marlins for third place.
• Phillies: The Phillies have improved. Thome vs. Travis Lee is no contest. Millwood gives them a top #1 starter. But while improved, I don't think this is a great team. An excellent 3-4-5 is going to be hampered by two poor table setters. (If you put this 3-4-5 with the Marlins 1-2, you'd have an incredible offense.) However, I think their bottom of the order has the fewest holes in the division. They should lead the division in runs scored.

  And that should be enough. The pitching is good enough for the offense. The bullpen looks a little long in the tooth, and I don't know how much I trust Mesa as a closer. But this is a good team, as good as the Braves. They will be the favorite to win the division, but I don't think they are going to run away with it.

Greg Vaughn was released by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Vaughn made a lot of money after having two great seasons late in his career. His demise should act as a warning to other clubs who would sign an inconsistent performer to a big contract late in his career.

Nick Johnson continues to suffer from hand injuries. This could lead to more playing time for Bubba Trammell.

James from Outside the Beltway has this post about Braves prospect Jung Keun Bong and the political situation in Korea.

I don't pay much attention to spring training numbers. There's just too many factors to make the really meaningful. But the Royals have the best record in the cactus league, and this article gives you the latest information on how their pitching staff is shaping up.

That's how Terry Jones describes the association of the Expos and the Edmonton Trappers. So far, it's worked out pretty well.

Hideo Nomo will be the opening day pitcher for the Dodgers vs. the Arizona Diamondbacks and Randy Johnson. I don't expect too many balls to be put in play in that game. They are very proud of Nomo in Japan.

Nomo has won the honorable place for the second time after being awarded the Detroit Tigers' season-starting pitcher in 2000.

Edward Cossette at Bambino's Curse has taken my Saddam/Carey comparison to the next level.

The Houston Astros will honor the crew of Columbia on opening day. If you are new to this site, I was at the launch of Columbia as a guest of Dave Brown. My thoughts on him are here.

How many times are we going to hear a baseball announcer describe a pitcher "in shock and awe" after he gets pounded in a game?

ChannelCincinnati.com has a very optimistic outlook for the Reds power game this year:

Don't look now, but the Cincinnati Reds could be among the power-hitting elite in 2003. Through Wednesday, the team had 33 homers in 24 spring training games, tied with the New York Mets for highest among NL squads this preseason.

Ken Griffey Jr. has Reds fans hopeful that he'll show the prowess he showed in the 1990s as a Seattle Mariner. His six home runs this spring have kept him among the Grapefruit League's top producers. And his three-homer effort in a game against Pittsburgh early this month showed he might be ready to reclaim his spot among baseball's most prolific sluggers.

Adam Dunn, preparing for his second full season after displaying great potential in a late season callup in 2001, reportedly is trying to simplify his swing after slumping for much of the second half of last year. Regardless of where he bats in the lineup, he could threaten to hit 40 homers this year.

Brandon Larson and Austin Kearns each have battled injuries this spring, but if they're healthy, each could hit 30 home runs.

The Reds were 4th in NL home runs last year, 31 behind the leader. The Reds centerfielders hit 25 HR last year. So if Griffey can get back into the 50's, he'll make up the difference all by himself. But to project Dunn to 40 and Kearn and Larson to 30 is probably a bit of wishful thinking. We shall see.

Dusty Baker is facing some injury problems:

With medical issues hanging ominously over Alfonseca, Alou, O'Leary, Kerry Wood and Mark Grudzielanek--just 11 days before the season begins--plus questions about how Hee Seop Choi, Bobby Hill and Mark Bellhorn will produce in the infield in their first opportunities as full-time starters, the Cubs are burdened by uncertainty.

The Grudzielanek injury may actually be a positive. I'm one of those who thinks Mark's best days are behind him.

Ted Turner can't afford to buy the Braves.

Turner bought the Braves for about $10 million in 1976. He sold the team and the rest of his cable empire to Time Warner in 1996 for $7.5 billion, becoming the company's largest shareholder in the process. The Braves are now worth about $424 million, according to an estimate by Forbes magazine.

Turner has lost $7 billion to $8 billion from his net worth as AOL Time Warner's stock has plunged. After pledging $1 billion to the United Nations, he recently said he would extend the duration of payments to more than 10 years.

Not that I feel sorry for him, but it's too bad for the Braves. I'm afraid that AOL won't be able to maintain the team at the level to which they are accustomed.

The Toronto Blue Jays may open the season against the Yankees in Japan next year. However, MLB may send Seattle instead to make up for not having Ichiro return this year.

Norm Charlton has been released by the Mariners, but has been offered a job by the team.

Looks like Doug Glanville has beaten out Carl Everett for the starting CF job in Texas. I can only hope that this leads to Carl leaving baseball in the near future.

Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tells us how he really feels about the Rangers pitching:

Welcome to the worst ever. Even for the Rangers, the worst ever.

The end of the major-league pitching world starts right here, right now.

You think last season was bad, pitching-wise? The season before? And for the franchise's 31 years of existence, how often was the pitching ever good?

Regardless, there has never been an arms alarm to compare to this current spring-training shelling.

For those desiring three decades of statistical data to back up such a gloomy opinion, you have come to the wrong column. I don't do research. If you can't believe your eyes, why trust in numbers? The eyes have it, including the eyes of new manager Buck Showalter, and even Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan.

Almost daily, the often-bemused facial expression of Showalter explains everything. Showalter has the hardest job in baseball this spring. First, he has to watch this pitching he inherited. Second, he has to fake diplomacy in his postgame comments to the media.

Buck is actually good at it. Funny, too.

"Buck, how bad is your pitching?"

"What do you want me to say?" he replied Wednesday. Then answering his own question, added, "No, I'm not going to say it."

Ryan, the Rangers' mound god of another era, is in camp this week, serving as a special pitching instructor. But Nolan is lucky. He leaves today, returning home to Round Rock.

"Nolan, have you ever seen anything this bad?"

"Have you tried my beef yet?" he answered, or something like that.

Maybe they can score ten runs a game. :-)

This report in the Boston Globe says that top politicians from the cities looking to snare the Expos are staying home:

The top government officials from the areas trying to lure the Montreal Expos won't attend presentations this week to baseball's committee evaluating the team's future.

Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams and DC Council chairman Linda Cropp canceled plans to travel to Phoenix, as did Vera Katz, the mayor of Portland, Ore.

They all cited concerns about the possibility of war with Iraq.

''I'm not going to this because should we enter hostilities, I don't want to be out of the state,'' Warner said.

They are still sending representatives, but just not the big guns.

Well, just a little. I just saw Saddam's speech. He looked like Harry Carey with a mustache glued on. :-)

According to Tyler Kepner of the NY Times, Mark Phillips was the key to this deal.

The Yankees also received Mark Phillips, a 21-year-old left-hander they considered the Padres' best pitching prospect.
The Yankees, who owed White $5 million this season in the last year of his contract, must pay Trammell $7.25 million for the next two years. But they save money this season and add a strong arm to a farm system short on premium prospects.
"The key component in this deal, for us, is Mark Phillips," General Manager Brian Cashman said. "That's not to put any extra pressure on him, but adding an extra power arm to our system was important."
When the Padres took Phillips with the ninth overall pick in the 2000 draft, they gave him a $2.275 million signing bonus. That is roughly the difference between the guaranteed money owed White and Trammell, and Cashman said the Yankees valued Phillips at least that much.

Lots of good stuff at Elephants in Oakland. Just click and start reading.

Twins reliever Johan Santana has gotten over the Kenny Rogers signing.

Time apparently was all Twins pitcher Johan Santana needed to heal his wounded ego.

Five days after saying he felt "screwed" by the team's decision to sign veteran Kenny Rogers to join the starting rotation, Santana settled back into his role as a set-up reliever by striking out five Boston batters over two innings during a 7-6 victory over the Red Sox on Tuesday at Hammond Stadium.

Santana, 24, still aspires to be a starter but said until then he'll maximize his opportunities.

"I'm just looking for a chance to make the team, and right now I'm a part of the team. So somehow I've got to help the team," he said. "You just have to keep going, and keep my head up, and keep doing the same things I did last year."

He then broke into a wicked guitar solo of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E flat. :-)

The Yankees and Padres made a deal today, swapping outfielders Rondell White and Bubba Trammell. I think the main thing here is that the Yankees are saving $2.5 million this year. Otherwise, the two players are pretty indistinguishable. White's probably a better player, but not much, and Trammell is probably more consistent.

The Yankees also picked up minor league left-handed pitcher, Mark Phillips. Now I always like to see the Yankees getting lefties. Phillips was 10-8 with a 4.19 ERA last year for the Lake Elsinore Storm. He looks like he might be hard to hit. He struck out 156 batters in 148.1 IP, and allowed a .225 BA. Bill James has pointed out a number of times that high K totals are a good sign of future success. He did give up a lot of walks (94), but maybe that's something the Yankees minor league staff can work on. If Phillips can contribute in a couple of years, the Yankees might look back on this as a very good deal.

Lots of detail in this Washington Post article about moving the Expos. I especially love this exchange, which tells you how far apart the sides are:

Deputy Mayor Eric Price held up a chart of MLB's last 11 stadium mega-deals, and suggested to the committee that the proper mix had settled at about two-thirds public funding to one-third private -- a deal that would cost the District more than $250 million but also would cost MLB more than $100 million.

The reply came with a smile from the committee chairman, Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, but it was not taken as a joke.

"Two-thirds/one-third is fine," Reinsdorf said, according to two people present. "But three thirds/no thirds is more of what we had in mind."

Cecilia Tan visits Tinker Field in Orlando in her latest spring trip entry.

Two young Kansas City Royals relievers are trying to perfect a second pitch:

The word went out early this spring to Ryan Bukvich and Jeremy Hill that a fastball, even one zooming in at 95 mph or more, is just not enough.

The Royals ordered the two young relievers to develop another pitch and then emphasized the point by limiting the number of fastballs each could throw when they were brought into games.

"They need to understand that they're not going to pitch in the big leagues with only one pitch," Royals manager Tony Pena said. "Even if you are a one-inning guy, you need to have something else.

"We're addressing that now. That's something they need to learn right now."

Initially, the message went down hard.

Bukvich, 24, and Hill, 25, both understood the benefit of possessing an off-speed pitch to complement their fastball. But the competition this spring for bullpen roles is fierce.

"The first thing I had in my mind," Bukvich acknowledged, "is I'm trying to make the team. I want to throw my best stuff. That's my fastball."

Is spring training the time to be working on a second pitch? What have these pitchers been throwing in the minors? And if you have a great fast ball, why can't you throw it for an inning to get the side out. There's something wrong with the way the Royals are developing their pitchers.

John Lowe of the Detroit Free Press writes about the good spring prospect Jeremy Bonderman is having:

Jeremy Bonderman gave up legitimate runs Monday for the first time this spring -- three in five innings to a Toronto team that played its top hitters. But manager Alan Trammell said Bonderman "didn't do anything to set himself back" in his surprising bid to make the Tigers' wide-open rotation.

From the first through fifth spots, Toronto used its regular-season batting order: Shannon Stewart at leadoff, followed by Eric Hinske, Vernon Wells, Carlos Delgado and Josh Phelps. Those five went a combined 3-for-12 off Bonderman with three strikeouts.

At one point, Phelps asked catcher Brandon Inge, "Is that guy going to be your No. 1 starter?"

Inge replied: "He's working toward it."

Later, Inge said, "He has everything it takes to pitch in the big leagues."

Trammell said Bonderman is "making it hard" for the Tigers to send him back to the minors. His next start will come Saturday against Cleveland.

Trammell thinks Bonderman has to work on his change-up before he's ready, but with the rest of the potential starters not doing well, Bonderman might be moving up.

The opening games in Japan have been cancelled.

"Given the uncertainty that now exists throughout the world, we believe the safest course of action for the players involved and the many staff personnel who must work the games is to reschedule the opening series,'' commissioner Bud Selig said. "It would be unfair and terribly unsettling for them to be half a world away -- away from their families at this critical juncture.''

This is too bad, but understandable. Maybe if the war is over by Saturday, they can make a quick run to Toyko and play anyway. :-)

While on the subject, I know I have readers in the military. I want to wish each of them and their compatriots good luck and a safe return home. I know you'll make us proud.

Here's an update on Tug McGraw's condition. I'd say they are cautiously optimistic.

A response to this post, which was a response to this post.

Shawn Bernard and Jim Caple believe that the Schott & Hoffman (S&H) are likely to use the money not spent on Tejada, to re-sign Chavez. A’s fans know better – we’ve been down this road before:

"I thought," Giambi said, "the whole reason they let me go was to use that money to sign all their younger players. What gives?

Link

The problem with looking at this issue solely from the sabermetric value perspective is that it is more about forcing a new taxpayer funded stadium than anything else. When was the last time anyone saw Bud Selig beam so brightly as when he so happily announced that the A’s statement proves what he’s been saying all along?

The days of 8 – 10 year contracts are over, more so for latin American shortstops of uncertain vintage. The out years of the contracts aren’t insurable and that simply exposes a team to too much financial risk. $15M/year? For a SS that has had one tremendous season, but for the rest of his career was the best of the rest? I rather doubt it in these days of fiscal restraint. I think those numbers are wildly optimistic. I’m not suggesting the A’s bid for him in the free agent market, but Tejada has offered the storied, but rarely seen, hometown discount. Why not offer Tejada, say, 4 years @ $36M? The worst he could say is no. Why not? Because if he accepted such an offer, the premise that the A’s need a new stadium to retain their players is weakened.

S&H have turned $33M in operating profit (per Forbes) since they bought the team for $85M in 1995. They were reportedly offered $170M by a DC buyer last year. Add it all up, and they have a tidy $118M gain in 8 years – to add to the hundreds of millions of net worth they brought to the table. Sorry, L’il Stevie’s cries of “poor me” are falling on deaf ears.

Some of my readers are probably interested in this.

One of my off-season jobs at STATS used to be to come with the manager ratings for EA's Earl Weaver Baseball. Those programs eventually became the source for stats in the manager's section of the now defunct Major League Handbook. What I loved about that section was that those really were stats you couldn't get anywhere else.

Steve Keane has a new blog about the Mets, The Eddie Kranepool Society. I love that name. Check out his site.

For those of you too young to remember, Ed Kranepool was Mr. Met. He played in every season of the Mets first 18 years. He wasn't a very good hitter; his best year, 1971, he hit 14 HR and had 58 RBI. But everyone liked Ed Kranepool. He was willing to play the outfield or pinch hit or back up someone at first base. He saw the Mets go from laughing stocks to powerhouse to laughing stocks again. And everyone loved him. It's nice of Steve to honor him.

The Toronto Blue Jays have locked up two of their young players for the next five years. Eric Hinske and and Vernon Wells both signed 5 year, $15 million contracts.

It's good to see the Cleveland model continue to catch on. The Blue Jays no longer have to worry about arbitration with these players. Their yearly salaries are not that high, so they could always be traded for their talent, rather than because of their salaries. And they will be locked up for the most productive years of their careers. It's a good move, and one many more teams should be doing.

Shawn Bernard sends this letter in response to the previous post.

I can see where Bleacher Dave is coming from, but I don't think a team should keep, and overpay, a player just to show the fans you care. You have to keep the RIGHT players. Is Tejada worth the $10-$15M/yr that he's going to command? I enjoyed Rob Neyer's article on the subject: http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/neyer_rob/1525111.html.

I think that a big part of not keeping Tejada, while some of it may be money, is also about them not thinking he's worth it. Plain and simple. Even with his "great" season last year (in which he was the MVP), his OPS was only .862, not really an All-Star number. Yeah, he plays shortstop, but still, is he really worth it? Of course A's management (and owner) can't come out and say, "We're not going to sign him because we don't think he's worth it." Talk about a PR nightmare! Plus there *IS* the whole age issue which is hanging over Tejeda's head. I think Caple has it closer to right with his article: http://espn.go.com/mlb/columns/caple_jim/1524983.html.

Great debate going on about Tejada. Fans want to keep their stars. The Sabremetricians look for cost effective solutions. Tejada just wants to stay in Oakland. How this turns out comes down to two things, in my opinion:

1. What will the market be for Tejada? Off the top of my head, there aren't that many rich teams that need a shortstop (unless Baltimore wants him). Maybe he won't command $15 million in this market, and the A's actually can resign him.


2. How will Beane replace him? Beane has proven a great judge of talent, and if he has a number of shortstop prospects in the system, it's possible that Oakland fans won't even notice that Tejada is gone.

I believe that as long as Beane is GM, this will be a very good team. Will the fans come out, however, if they think ownership does not have the fan's best interests at heart?

I got a letter from one Bleacher Dave today. He's not happy with Steve Schott:

Steve Schott is shamelessly schlepping for Bud Selig when he claims that Miguel Tejada is unaffordable. He's merely unwilling to make the investment in his payroll, and do the hard, uncertain work of growing his customer base – work that comes with financial risk – to reap the rewards of that investment. Mr. Schott is letting his chance for WS glory as a championship team owner slip away to advance Bud's misguided agenda. I generally believe in individual self-interest instead of conspiracies, but Schott toed the party line religiously. Too religiously. He mischaracterized the A’s unwillingness to pay Tejada as an inability to pay, and in doing so he used all of Bud's pet phrases from last year’s labor negotiations: "small market", "new stadium", and the "system", thereby alleviating the A's from any responsibility for their current purported lack of sufficient revenues and absolving them of their duty to manage their business in such a manner as to grow their revenues if they deem them to be insufficient. Schott's lips are moving, but it's Bud's voice I hear.

Schott's going to bleed this once in a generation assemblage of baseball talent off, one by one, maligning the city of Oakland, and alienating his fan base in the process. By the time he's done, there won't be much of a market for baseball in Oakland. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. By casting away recognizable, marketable properties (players) he is hurting the A's potential local media contracts, damaging the A's image with potential corporate sponsors, and making it difficult to be a fan. How many casual fans and corporate dollars is MVP Miguel Tejada or a guy with Jason Giambi's Q rating and image worth a season? People all over the country ridicule A's fans for being pathetic masochists associated with a team that repeatedly lets it best players walk away. Would you pay millions to associate your product with that image?

Worst of all, the damage he's doing is lasting. Even if the team is sold, by claiming penury based on geography he is trading on the misperceptions that are held about Oakland. Those misperceptions that claim that Oakland is a poor city, has lousy attendance, and plays in a "ruined" stadium. By the way, according to the Bureau of Labor, the median annual salary of Oakland residents is higher than the national average. But yet, the perception is that Oakland is a poor city. The misperceptions that Schott is breeding and strengthening won't just go away with a change in ownership, but will cost any owner time and money to countervail. He's hurting the value of his franchise - that's why he has no intention to sell the OAKLAND A's. The franchise would be far more valuable elsewhere. He's in league with Bud to move this team.

This team is drawing less now than it did 15 years ago. I don't think it's a coincidence that the ownership group that came from a background in consumer goods - the Haas family and the Levi brand - was able to draw more fans. They were marketers. They understood the value of a brand and how to market to consumers.

I don't believe for a moment that the PR "gaffes" that Schott makes are gaffes at all - they're intentional. You don't make hundreds of millions of dollars without knowing how to win friends and influence people. The faster that Schott can run this franchise in the ground, the faster the thorny "anomaly" in Bud's side goes away. Besides, from a strictly financial standpoint, it is more profitable for Schott to own a moribund, perpetually non-competitive team. He will be able to turn a profit without any risk by relying on revenue sharing funds, national media income, and local revenues. If the team is lousy, he won't be under pressure to retain players and increase payroll. He'll be able to follow the KC path, reduce payroll to the $30M range, and make money hand over fist, all the while moaning how he can't compete in this "small market."

This is about gamesmanship - pure and simple. Schott wants a new stadium, and he's spiting this region, and A's fans everywhere, for not buying him one. If the taxpayers don’t buy him a stadium, he’ll put us through the annual agony of watching home-grown stars depart for greener pastures. What a financial windfall for him if he gets a taxpayer funded stadium. He's gotta be dyin’, looking around the country at all the other teams getting shiny brand new stadiums for free, and calculating what that does for those franchises' sale value. And poor l'il Stevie is being left out. He bought the team in a sweetheart deal, and if he can get a stadium - wow, the value goes up geometrically. His capital gain would increase from the tens of millions to a hundred million +. If the franchise was worth $170M to a DC buyer without a stadium, do you doubt it would be worth less than 200M+ with a lease to play in a new stadium?

New stadiums are the current drug of choice for baseball franchises - the quick fix, the magic bullet. Whatever ails a franchise, new taxpayer funded digs are the cure. If a new stadium guarantees tremendous new revenue streams, why aren’t teams willing to finance them themselves? Ask the Brewers, Pirates, or Indians – their new stadiums haven’t been a windfall for the teams, but will remain a boondoggle for the taxpayers for many years. The Indians filled Jacobs Field for a time, but no longer. And the debt service goes on.

Steve Schott is no bumbling PR disaster happening before our eyes, he's an avaricious shark despoiling the fabric of our national pastime. The sports industry is unique, in that the score is kept on the field as well as on the P and L statement. A higher commitment to making money over winning championships threatens to undermine the entire premise of sport. If the game is about profitability, why not go watch the cash registers ring at Wal-Mart? I'm ashamed I support his team, because I help to further enrich a man who invests proportionally less of his income in his team than I do - a man who has wealth beyond my wildest imaginings. I'll be the sucker in the bleachers with a bag over his face.

NEW OWNERS NOW!

Bleacher Dave
"A Fan of the Game"

Sometimes you do have to bite the bullet to keep a star around just to show the fans you care about them. That's what KC did with Sweeney. All those other good players who left were good but not great, and if you had a decent organization you could replace them. But players like Sweeney and Tejada and Giambi are the types of stars franchises need to attract fans. Schott needs to realize that, or they'll wind up with the best team that no one comes to see.

Baseball is considering playing some games in Europe next year, to continue to expand the popularity of the game world wide.

Baseball goes with beer and brats -- and next year, maybe with pasta or brie.

The commissioner's office has started discussing a plan to move regular-season games to Europe in July 2004.

Italy, France, the Netherlands and England are among the candidates, according to Paul Archey, a senior vice president of Major League Baseball International.

Sorry, not France. At this point, Spain deserves a game a lot more than France does. I also believe that baseball is somewhat popular in Italy.

Italy is probably the front-runner because they have one of the strongest fan bases and they have facilities," Archey said.

Ballparks are available in Florence and Palermo, and a soccer stadium in Rome could be converted to baseball, according to Archey. In France, he said a new ballpark is under construction outside Paris, but it might not be ready in time.

A cricket or soccer ground could be converted in England, but the possibility of rainouts is a negative factor. The Netherlands hosts a big baseball tournament each summer in Haarlem.

I think they would have to have the Yankees play in Haarlem. :-)

"Baseball is becoming an international sport. Anything they do to help the game grow is good," Arizona's Steve Finley said. "Part of major league baseball's job is to grow the game, to get baseball more popular around the world. Look at the Japan (All-Star) tour and what that's done for the relationship between the two leagues. Players are crossing over leagues now."

Finley is right. And any growth in salaries is going to have to come from growth in revenue. If you can get Europeans interested enough in baseball that they pay for internet radio and television broadcasts, baseball would be tapping a rich source of income. And everyone benefits. Logistically, it may be a difficult move. But I like the idea very much.

You can find my blog here, Baseball Musings.

Having watched the Pirates for an inning today, I'm more convinced that this post is correct. The Pirates had Craig Wilson in left, Adam Hyzdu in center and J.J. Davis in right. The Red Sox were connecting off Kris Benson, but not that hard. All three outfielders made bad plays that allowed runners to reach base and runners to advance bases. If the Pirates pitchers are going to give up a lot of balls in play, the Pirates are going to need good fielders to run those balls down. Lofton makes them a much better defensive team.

Tim Sullivan of the SD Union-Tribune writes about his interview with Bud Selig. Bud seems down-right giddy:

Bud Selig believes he has stopped the bleeding. The cure, he claims, is coming.

The commissioner of baseball, a worried man whose worried song has more verses than "Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer," is now at peace and anticipates prosperity. He views last summer's labor deal as a "watershed" event in the history of a sport purportedly drowning in debt.

He envisions an era in which even the San Diego Padres can compete for the pennant. He can, it turns out, see past the end of his nose.

"My life and the life of the game is much different since Aug. 30," Selig said yesterday, referring to the collective bargaining agreement that has recast baseball's financial model. "When we see each other in the course of the next couple years, you'll see it will get better and better and better. I believe that our new system has dealt directly with all of the problems and will give everybody, to use one of my favorite phrases, hope and faith."

I guess this news hasn't reached Oakland yet.

"When I took over (in 1992), we shared $20 million as an industry over and above national revenue – nothing," Selig said. "This year, it will be $258 million. Next year it will be over $300 million.

"The luxury tax threshold – there's only one team over it right now. That, in itself is working (toward parity). Our debt service rule gives the commissioner great authority in terms of how much debt a club can have and how a club is operated. All of those things will take the San Diegos of the world and make them more competitive each year. There isn't a doubt in my mind."

I always get the impression reading Selig's words that I'm listening to Stalin announce a new five-year plan. :-) Central planning can solve everything! Free markets be damned!

"This is a great opportunity right now for this game to move forward," he said. "We are not encumbered by all the travails, all the tensions, all the misunderstandings, all the accusations, all the things that have gone on . . . Not only did we avoid a work stoppage – which would have done incalculable damage to the game – but we dealt with our problems for the first time in our history.

"One of the things baseball did for years on economics – and on a lot of things – was they were never able to confront issues. So the issues kept on getting worse and worse and worse. Some of these things have been painful to confront, but that's why you have a commissioner. That's what you've got to do. You've got to confront the issues. You can't make believe they don't exist."

Baseball's central issue for two decades has been the struggle of small-market teams to remain viable while competing with clubs that can spend them into submission.

"In the '60s and '70s and even the early '80s, it didn't matter if you were in San Diego or New York," Selig said. "But it mattered in the '90s and it mattered a lot in the late '90s. And it mattered a lot in 2000 and 2001."

They didn't confront issues? Free movement for players wasn't an issue? You see, baseball had addressed the big/small market problem in the mid-60's when they instituted the draft. But in doing that, they took away any right for players to pick the team for which they wanted to play. For 100 years, the clubs had screwed the players. And amazingly, during this time that baseball hasn't confronted issues, the sport has grown trememdously.

Selig has his revenue sharing. He'll do very well with that, putting a lousy team on the field in Milwaukee and pocketing the change. It's time for him to step down and let someone who cares more about baseball than his own pocketbook run things.

Chris Bootcheck has allowed 1 ER in 8 IP this spring, and with injuries to a couple of Angels starters, he may be in the rotation come opening day.

The NY Post has a story on ESPN's new technology today. I'm planning on blogging during the first game, so I'll let you know how the picture looks.

Ray Ratto of the SF Chronicle praises Steve Schott for his candor. Sort of:

You have to give credit to Steve Schott, because if nothing else, he has shown yet again how utterly guileless he is. He doesn't like to spend money, and he really doesn't mind you knowing it.

It wasn't always that way, of course, if you remember the vision of him holding the charred remains of the Great Giambi Charade of Ought-One. He plainly did not want to make the same mistake with Miguel Tejada.

So Schott announced Saturday that he would not insult his Most Valuable Player by making him a representative contract offer, leaving him instead to find an owner who isn't allergic to talent.

He will be criticized in many corners for this, because an owner is supposed to want to put out the best product possible. This, though, has always been a secondary concern for Li'l Stevie, and we owe him a debt of grudging gratitude for being so open about it.

More importantly, Ray wonders how the fans will react:

Ultimately, though, the winners will be the fans themselves. Not because their team is giving up Tejada without a fight -- you can't make a yearly habit of giving up your best player and survive -- but because they said so before any of you committed yourselves fully to the idea that he might come back.

So Steve Schott lost relatively little by spilling the three-bean salad on Tejada. His public image wasn't warm, let alone fuzzy, and, for a change, he isn't lying to the ticket holders the way he did with Giambi. In time, they will realize this, probably on their way to something other than an A's game.

It's a weird version of Customer Relations 101, true, and Schott may find eventually that he would have been better off lying through his teeth. Some hallucination junkies, after all, still think he wanted Giambi to come back.

But for now, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. We knew he wasn't going to sign Miguel Tejada, and now he's confirmed it. You owe him a debt of gratitude . . . although not necessarily that season ticket check. I mean, the truth can only take you so far, right?

Ray has it right here. Why not put the onus on the fans? Why not say we can't sign Tejada unless we draw 4 million? It's an almost impossilbe figure for Oakland, but if it worked, the A's would be able to solidify their hold on the AL west for a long time. And without building a new stadium.

Oakland fans won't be too happy with this article. Steve Schott told Miguel Tejada today that the A's will not sign him to a multi-year contract, which likely means Tejada will be headed for free agency at the end of the year. Tejada, however, still talks like he wants to stay:

"I really want to stay here, but I know it will be hard for them to keep me here," Tejada said. "That's business. I'm going to keep playing hard. They might change their mind. ... If they want, we can work something out."

I thought the new CBA was supposed to fix this?

I wonder how much money it would take for Tejada to stay? He's likely worth $15 to $20 million a year, but Griffey took way below market value to go to Cincinnati. If the A's were able to offer Tejada $10 million a year for 10 years, would he turn it down? He might not, but I bet the union would make him do it.

Right now, the A's are not talking about trading Miguel. They think they can win the World Series, and they will go for it with the SS. It will be very interesting in August, however, if for some reason the A's are out of the chase. Then we might see Tejada go.

Day seven takes Cecilia Tan to the Ted Williams museum.

Gordon Eddes has a very positive story about the Red Sox offense. My favorite line:

But in yesterday's 8-5 win over Cincinnati at City of Palms Park, slightly more than two weeks before the start of the regular season, the Red Sox gave the most compelling evidence yet that Theo Epstein's vision of a big red hitting machine is grounded in more than just numbers on the screen of his laptop.

I think Theo is doing a good job of using sabremetrics to put this team together. A lot of Red Sox fans are in for a pleasent surprise.

Here's an interesting story about Orioles prospect Darnell McDonald, and how he used tattoos to help him recover from the sudden death of his mother.

Al Bethke of Al's Ramblings thinks the disagrees with me on the Lofton signing. Al thinks Pirates are weaker with this deal. His main point is that the duo of Stairs and Craig Wilson would provide more offense than Lofton. I don't doubt this. However, I don't think that's the point of the deal.

The Pirates' starting pitchers struck out the fewest batters of any NL team in 2002, and were just a smidgen from being last in the NL in K per 9 (5.14, vs. 5.13 for the Rockies). In other words, the Pirates have a lot of balls put into play against them. The Pirates were looking at going into the season with two really slow players in right, and defenders out of position in left and center. With the Pirates pitching staff, you would have seen balls falling in all over the outfield. I believe (even with the caveats against Lofton that Al points out) that this will be a much better defensive outfield.

Secondly, as I stated in the previous post, you now have three good offensive players at the top of the lineup. Lots of bits are stored over how to construct a lineup, but I have no doubt that the most important thing is to bunch your best hitters together. The Pirate offense is lousy, but at least they don't have a hole in front of Giles anymore.

Also, I have recently discovered the depth charts on CBS.Sportsline.com. Here's the one for the Pirates. I find the projected lineup a little screwy. I guess they think Ramirez will hit like he did in 2001 and not as he did in 2002.

Jon Weisman delivers his thoughts on the Dodgers in his Dodger Thoughts blog. Check out his current entry on the players likely to make the team.

The Pirates have signed Kenny Lofton. It's amazing how this changes the makeup of the team:

The deal means Brian Giles moves back to left field -- he has been playing center field this spring -- and Sanders shifts to right field. Matt Stairs and Craig Wilson, who were to platoon in right field, now will get fewer starts.

Jason Kendall, who has been batting leadoff, slides into the No. 2 spot, with shortstop Jack Wilson dropping from second to eighth in the order.

So Giles and Sanders go back to their more natural positions. Kendall, who has a great OBA, is better in the 2nd spot, so he has time to recover in the first inning from squatting at catcher. What's more, Giles has two fine table setters, so I would suspect that his RBI's are going up this year. And given Wilson's extremely poor OBA, 8th is where he belongs. Things are looking up for the Pirates.

Alex Rodriguez has a herniated disc in his neck.

"From everything we've been told about the injury, we sit here today very confident that Alex will be back any day,'' general manager John Hart said Friday. "There's no reason to think he won't. We just want to hold Alex back, get him 100 percent over the next day or two and ease him back in. There's plenty of time.

I hope the Rangers have a good insurance policy.

Elmer Dessens is having a great spring, and it looks like he'll be the number 3 starter for the Diamondbacks.

Here's a story about the intense competition for the fifth starter spot on the Colorado Rockies.

Fifth stater on the Rockies has to be like being a private in the Iraqi army. No matter how well you do your job, you know you're getting bombed. :-)

This story is unconfirmed at the moment, but reports are that Tug McGraw has a brain tumor. I remember Tug as the soul of the 1973 Mets, with his "Ya Gotta Believe" battle cry. My best wishes go out to Tug and his family.

Edward Cossette had lots of problems getting the MLB video feed of the Red Sox-Yankees game last night.

You know, maybe it is all me. Maybe it's user error or whatever, but my point still remains the same. When you say "free trial" it should be every bit as easy to access as the tiny box of trial size Tide that comes in the mailbox. No world play. No jumping through hopes. No passwords. No credit card numbers. Just free soap.

(I think he meant word play.) I've had the same thing happen to me. Real Networks makes it real hard to find the truly free version of their player. When they first started up, this was not the case. Unfortunately, if you want the MLB broadcasts, you're not given a choice as to media player. Anyway, this is supposed to be the free download page. They still try to sell you the premium one, but if you look in the lower right corner, you see the link to download the free player.

On the other hand, Jose from Spain is very excited about MLB TV:

I think the point of Internet baseball broadcasts is not to let people see the games at work, not that many people work at 7pm anyway. The point is being able to buy an out-of-town game for a small price if you are a relocated fan, without having to shell out the 150 bucks or something for the Extra Innings package. Or if you don't have a satellite dish.

But, more to the point, Internet broadcasts are just daily bread to fans like me, remember, I am in Spain with no broadcasts at all. I am already an avid listener of the audio feeds at mlb.com (I just signed up for the 2003 season), but if they have video broadcasts and my bandwidth allows it, man, that will be something! Being able to see games live again? Are you kidding?

Jose is right. I forgotten about foreign viewers in this post.

The Tampa Tribune is writing a weblog on Rocco Baldelli's progress through spring training. At this point, it looks like he's going to make the team. Check out this post about cap day.

Another Devil Ray I wanted to keep my eye on this spring was Travis Lee. The DRays signed him for his defense, Travis is having a very good offensive spring. Through yesterday, he's 11 for 28, .393 with five doubles and 1 HR. I had hoped this would be a wakeup call for him, and so far, he has responded.

Bob Uecker has been elected to the broadcaster's wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. These paragraph struck me:

Despite his reputation as funnyman, enhanced by a top role in the TV show "Mr. Belvedere'' and about 100 appearance on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show,'' Uecker is much different on the radio.

His broadcasts rarely include the standup humor that has made his a favorite on the banquet circuit, and he's known for being self-effacing.

"When I sit down to work, I'm doing a straight broadcast. Fans don't want to hear some guy telling jokes and getting in the way of a game,'' he said.

I remember a few years ago before Dick Ebersol had ruined NBC sports, Costas and Uecker were doing the baseball playoffs together. Costas kept trying to get Uecker to do his schtick by feeding him lines, but Uecker just stuck to the game. Now I know why.

Congratulations to Mr. Uecker! I'm sure Milwaukee and fans of all his show business endeavors are pround of him today.

The coroner's report is out, and it does link Ephedra to Steve Bechler's death.

The latest entry from Cecilia Tan's road trip is now up. Gainsville, Florida is today's stop.

I was wondering how to handle the Kirby Puckett story, but Aaron Gleeman has done it very well.

I was just looking at Snopes.com and found this interesting essay on the naming of the Baby Ruth candy bar. I remember when Reggie Jackson made his famous quote about having candy bars named after him, people pointed out that the Baby Ruth was not named after Babe Ruth. From a Kevin Baker column:

It all started with a remark that Reggie Jackson made while he was still an Oakland Athletic. ''If I played in New York,'' he said, ''they'd name a candy bar for me.'' Reggie had mistaken the origins of the Baby Ruth bar, which had been named for the offspring of President Grover Cleveland and his winsome young wife, Frances. No matter; the good folks at Standard Brands Confectionary were listening, and by the home opener of Reggie's second season with the Yankees they were ready to pass out some 72,000 free Reggie! bars.

That was the official line of the Curtiss Candy company, as it turns out, because they didn't want to get sued by Babe Ruth! Snopes blows this arguement out of the water.

Another claim made by the Curtiss Candy Company is much harder to dismiss as mere bad record-keeping, though. Part of the official statement about the "Baby Ruth" name offered by Curtiss has been that Ruth Cleveland "visited the Curtiss Candy Company plant years ago when the company was getting started and this largely influenced the company's founder to name the candy bar 'Baby Ruth'". Ruth Cleveland died at age twelve in 1904; no amount of bad record-keeping can place her in the factory of a company that wouldn't exist until more than a decade after her death.

Much as I loathe Reggie Jackson as a person, he deserves to have his quote recognized as correct.

I'm now listed on MassLive.com, under "Cool WMass Weblogs." You may also want to check out "On the Lam", a sports blog by Peter Lamoureux, a reporter for the local sports talk radio station, AM 640 in Springfield, MA.

Reader Daniel Shamah informs me that YES and Cablevision have reached an agreement. It appears that market forces had a lot to do with it:

The battle was a high-stakes dispute estimated to cost YES $80 million to $100 million in revenue for each year the network remained off Cablevision, according to sports economist Andrew Zimbalist, a professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

Meanwhile, Cablevision had begun to see customers drop their service, some for DirecTV, the satellite network that carries YES. Cablevision estimates 30,000 customers dropped their service because they no longer carried the Yankees; the YES network estimated that figure was at least 90,000.

I recently made the switch from cable to satellite. My main motivation was that I purchased a new TV that had high-definition capabilities, and wanted to exploit them. The provider that had my local cable monopoly was not going to provide that in the near future. Plus, although there was a large capital investment in equipment and wiring, satellite is cheaper on a monthly basis, and seems to be more willing to upgrade features. Since almost all of my local stations have gone to digital signals, or will soon, I'm seeing much higher quality pictures than I ever saw on cable, broadcast and satellite. And if you are a sports nut, DirecTV at least has NHL, MLB, NBA, NFL and ESPN college packages (football and basketball) as well as Mega March Madness. I think once people see what high definition digital looks like, they'll start demanding it everywhere, and cable will be dead.

Daniel Shamah also offers his opinion on a team (the Expos) moving to northern New Jersey:

I wanted to voice my opinion about the sometimes talked about prospect of moving a team to Northern Jersey to combat the dominance of the Yankees and Mets in the region. This is a terrible idea. If a team were to move to Northern Jersey, the logical home would be in the Meadowlands, which is already one of the worst sports complexes in the country. The fact is, it's impossible to get there. There's no public transportation, it's not really near anything, and every highway out there is a traffic death trap (not to mention they're all toll roads). The Devils and Nets are already experiencing this inherent problem: despite the fact that both teams are competitive in their respective leagues, neither gets the same attendance as their New York counterparts. And that's with the Devils being among the best teams in the NHL since 1995 and the Rangers being among the worst (they're about to miss the playoffs for the seventh straight season). Now both teams are trying to get out of their contracts with the Meadowlands and move down to Newark which is far more accessable by train and mass transit. Football works in the Meadowlands for two reasons: 1) it's only 8 home games a year; and 2) there is a more of a driving culture surrounding football than any other sport. Baseball, which has twice as many home games as hockey and basketball would be expected to face the same issues, if not worse, than the Devils and Nets face today. And this all disregards the problem of disentrenching existing Yankee and Mets fans to actually go and support another team. The Expos may or may not need a new home. I can tell you one thing though: New York is the wrong place to put it.

I agree with Dan that the Meadowlands isn't the place to put a baseball stadium. However, I think Brooklyn would be a great place to put a team. I know the Yankees and Mets would never allow it, but old time Dodger fans (and the people they raised) would love it. And my gut feeling is that NY has more than enough fans to support three teams again.

Guillermo Mota hit Mike Piazza last night, setting off a brawl:

Piazza and Mota had a shoving match last year in spring training after he hit the star catcher with a pitch.

This time, Mota's first pitch to Piazza in the sixth inning was inside, and his second hit him in the back of the left shoulder.

Piazza immediately charged the mound, with his right fist cocked for a punch, and Mota threw his glove at him and began backpedaling away

Mike seems to be a favorite target of pitchers (okay, Roger Clemens). I wonder if he's doing something that makes pitchers want to go after him more? Anyone have any insights into this? Does Piazza taunt pitchers after he gets hits against them? There are more dangerous hitters than Piazza who don't get thrown at like this. Plus, this is the national league where Mota has to worry about getting plunked himself.

A rare positive commentary about bringing the Expos to Portland, Oregon.

The Twins have reached an agreement with Kenny Rogers. He'll be filling the spot left vacant by Eric Milton's injury.

Rogers has had good luck pitching in the HHH Metrodome. He's 5-3 with a .308 ERA. More importantly, he doesn't give up much power, allowing a only 2 HR in 76 innings for a .314 slugging average allowed. He's not the greatest pitcher out there, but he's a good fill in for one season, and may do very well in that park.

Keeping with the theme of watching baseball, MLB has announced that they will video webcast about 1000 games this year. You'll be able to buy games on a seasonal, monthly or pay-per-view basis.

The problem I see is that they are blacking out the home teams. I don't understand this at all. The whole idea is to get people to watch games where they wouldn't normally be able to watch them, like at work. Most fans, in that situation, want to see their team, not some out of town game. Sure some people will try it out, but since I can get all the radio feeds for much less money, I'll stick to that, and watch the games on by satellite package.

ESPN HD is going to premier this March 30th with the Opening Day Special telecast of the game between the Angels and the Rangers. The hockey and football games I've seen on HDTV have looked really good, so I can't wait to see what a baseball broadcast will look like.

Of course, they haven't solidified a deal with a satellite provider, so if you have DirecTV or Dish Network, give a call or drop an e-mail and tell them you want your ESPN HD! (Maybe we can get Dire Straits to write a song about it. :-))

I'm glad someone is taking this seriously.

Cecilia Tan travels through Georgia.

The Cubs will win the World Series. I know because it's guaranteed. :-) Seriously, I think this is worth a bid.
Update: Thanks to Darren Viola for the link.

After reading this story about the Chicago White Sox, I'm more convinced that steriod use is not as rampant as some people think, or at least not as accepted as many would believe. The Sox players were going to refuse the test, which would be taken as a positive, to force steroid testing through 2005. Obviously these players want to see steriods out of the game. Although they were convinced to finally take the test, I think they have proven their opposition to these substances, and that makes me feel better about the state of the game.

Update: I hadn't seen this letter from Peder Defor before I wrote the above piece. If I had I would have used it instead:

As someone who fears that steroids are rampant in baseball, it warmed my heart to see that there are players who fear the same thing. I'm stunned that there isn't more concern from the player's side. They either don't recognize the risks involved or think the money makes it acceptable. I fervently hope that we don't look back thirty years from now at the spikes in the home run records and shake our heads while thinking about steroids. Makes me proud to be a White Sox fan. It's not often that I get to say that.

I think we should all be pround of them, Peder.

I think Jose Mesa really needs to talk to a professional:

Jose Mesa says he wants to kill Cleveland Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel. Those are serious words, and they're his words.

The Phillies closer said it again and again in front of his locker on Sunday, and he didn't appear to be kidding one bit.

Asked if he wanted his words in print, Mesa said, "Of course.''

Mesa says he's not worried about getting suspended by Major League Baseball. Or perhaps even getting arrested.

"Nope,'' he said. "I wanna kill him.''

Mesa, of course, doesn't really want to kill Vizquel. But he does want to fight him. He wants to use his fists to take out his rage and pain.

"Jose doesn't mean what he says,'' manager Larry Bowa said before yesterday's 5-3 loss to the Houston Astros. "He just had his pride hurt and he's a very proud man. When Jose says something about Omar, it's just out of anger.''

Yeah, sure Larry.

Mesa and Vizquel had a falling out during spring training a few years ago, their friendship soured and now they're enemies.

Last year, their feud got ugly. Vizquel ripped Mesa in his autobiography, saying he choked in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series.

Aware of the book, Mesa hit Vizquel in the back with a fastball during a game in Cleveland last June. He was subsequently fined $500.

Vizquel says he didn't charge the mound because he feared getting a butt-whipping. "Yeah, that's one of the reasons,'' he said, laughing.

Today, the Indians visit Clearwater. Mesa is due to pitch and Vizquel is scheduled to make the trip.

Mesa badly wants to face Vizquel again. He wants to drill him again. And this time, Mesa, a 6-3, 225-pounder, wants Vizquel, a 5-9, 165-pounder, to be a man and charge the mound.

"If he comes [today] and I face him, I'll hit him," Mesa told the Courier Times. "I won't try to hit him in the head, but I'll hit him. And if he charges me, I'll kill him.''

I found this link through Blog Beat, who thought this was a funny story. I see nothing funny about it. (You may have to go to latest posts, since this story does not appear to be in the archieve yet.)

I think this Sporting News commentary sums up the fiasco nicely.

On the ESPN baseball page they have this headline:

Vladimir, Marlins pitcher trade missed punches in brawl

Don't you have to land punches to have a brawl? That's what I love about most baseball fights. Lots of flailing around, but very little damage.

Albert Pujols and the Cardinals agreed to a $900,0000 contract today. That's the best someone in Pujols' position (service wise) has ever done. However, I think it's a mistake on the Cardinals part. Pujols is clearly a superior player. They should sign him to a long term contract now (6+ years), save themselves the arbitration costs, and basically get him at today's going rate for a long time. He'll be happy, and the Cardinals will be happier in the long run.

Xavier Nady appears to have the inside track to replace Phil Nevin for the SD Padres. Too bad Oakland and SD aren't facing each other this year. I'd love to see how Mulder solves the X-File. :-)

Dan O'Neill of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pens this profile of Edgar Renteria.

Every year, Renteria's classification as a player seems to elevate. He is in his eighth major-league season, and yet he is only 27, a year younger than Derek Jeter and two years younger than Nomar Garciaparra. Last season, Renteria put up superlative numbers: .305 batting average, 11 home runs, career-high 36 doubles, career-high 83 runs batted in. His 82 RBIs as a shortstop (he had one as a pinch-hitter) equaled an 81-year-old franchise record for RBIs by a shortstop.

He won the National League Silver Slugger Award and won his first Gold Glove. He even received votes in the NL Most Valuable Player balloting.

The statistical values are plain to see, but the talents his coaches and teammates most appreciate are more sensory. The Cardinals have several "stars" in their lineup, but if they were a hockey team Renteria might be wearing the "C." In fact, La Russa regularly calls Renteria "Captain," out of respect and affection.

"It's kind of a recognition of his place on the team," La Russa explained. "Edgar is just a really unique combination of a player and a person. He absolutely buys the winning thing and isn't afraid to try it."

I don't know if I agree with the statement about Renteria elevating every year. Seems his career has been a little up and down to me, but I did not know he was a leader on the team.

Another column, this time from Dave Kindred against bringing Rose back into baseball. I posted a link to Jim Reeves column here.

It's funny that when Pete didn't seem like he had a chance of getting back into baseball's good graces, most of the articles about Pete seemed positive. Now, the anti-Roses are coming out of the woodwork. I'll keep my eye out to see how many emerge.

According to this story in the NY Times, the Yankees are going to fine David Wells $100,000. I'm not sure I agree with this. If the fine is being levied because Wells made false statements in the book, the Yankees should come out and dispute them. If the fine is for saying nasty things about his teammates, let his teammates settle it with Wells. The fine only creates more buzz about the book, and more people are going to want to read it.

I think the credibility of Wells' book has been called into question enough. The fine makes me think the Yankees are trying to cover things up.

Magnolias and mountains mark day four of Cecilia Tam's trip south.

Once in a while you come across a baseball article that explains something quite nicely. Robert Dvorchak pens such an article about how hitters work during spring training. Where to start?

"What hitters do is work on things down here," said Stairs, a left-handed hitter signed to put more jolt in the Pirates' offense. "I had three things I wanted to do this spring. I wanted to lose weight, and I did that. I wanted to get myself in great shape, and I've done that. Now I'm working on hitting the ball with authority to left field. PNC Park is a great park to go the other way."

Another thing that the good hitters work on? Seeing as many pitches as they can.

"I'm a patient hitter," Stairs said. "I see an average of three to five pitches per at-bat. The more pitches you see, the better chance you have of getting hits."

Reggie Sanders, another acquisition who appeared in his first game as a Pirates player this week, also is a firm believer in looking over pitches. For him, an optimum at-bat in an exhibition game is to work the count and then make solid contact.

"It enables you to recognize what the guy is throwing. Hitting a baseball is all about timing," said Sanders, who connected for a home run in his first game and has shown early examples of his power.

This seems to be a philosophy that Gerald Perry is encouraging:

Perry also is a big stickler on recognition of the strike zone. Nothing drives him crazier than seeing a hitter swing at something off the plate, even in batting practice.

On the first day of live batting practice, a veteran hitter moaned that Kris Benson had broken his bat.

"He didn't break your bat. You did," Perry said in a calm, but firm, admonition. "Why'd you swing at that pitch? It wasn't a strike."

One hitter this philosophy should help is Randall Simon:

Even Randall Simon has been laying off pitches. Simon didn't come across the water to walk, as he is fond of saying; he came from his native Curacao to swing. But Simon, a notorious first-ball hitter, has been working counts and looking at more pitches. Just don't get used to seeing Simon keep the bat on the shoulder.

"I'll hit those pitches during the regular season. Right now, I'm concentrating on keeping my shoulder in, recognizing the different pitches, hitting the ball the other way," Simon said.

Simon is a great contact hitter. If Perry can teach him to wait for the right pitch to make contact, Randall's acquistion will be a good one for the Pirates. The Pirates look like they have a poor offense. I'm eager to see if Perry can improve the hitters by getting them to be more selective this year.

I didn't realize the Marlins were changing their colors this year:

Then there's the Marlins, who are shifting away from their traditional teal to what is considered a more marketable silver-and-black color scheme. There's no truth, however, to the rumor that they plan to put an eye patch on the Marlin mascot and add crossed fishing rods to the logo.

"Teal just isn't a very popular color," said Kristy Garcia, who manages souvenir sales at Jupiter's Roger Dean Stadium, spring training home for Florida and the St. Louis Cardinals. "Black-and-silver is a good seller."

Who they think they are, the Oakland Raiders? Hate them if you must, but at least the Yankees don't change their uniform every other year so that fans will go out and buy new merchandise.

P.S. In searching on google for a picture of a Yankees uniform, the image that came up #1 was Rusty Torres, a former member of the 1979 Pinto Hatchbacks strat-o-matic team. Not the person I think of when I think of a Yankees uniform.

I'm sitting here working on the computer with the NESN broadcast of the Red Sox game on in the background. I'm listening more than watching. I keep hearing Jerry Remy make these extremely intelligent points. He's talking about a possible trade of Shea Hillenbrand, and getting the trade off of offense/defense just right, even bringing power pitchers (Pedro) and contact pitchers (Wakefield) into the conversation. He talked about using Burkett vs. youthful teams, since young players have more trouble with the changeup. Meanwhile, Sean McDonough gets more inane every season. If the Red Sox paired Remy with someone equally intelligent, they'd have the best broadcast duo in the nation.

Rafael Soriano is impressing the Mariners this spring and will be given a shot at making the rotation.

When spring training started, Soriano was considered an extreme long shot to make the rotation over Gil Meche, Jamey Wright and Cloude. But his dominant showing in relief efforts, two greatly improved pitches and a new attitude have changed all that.

Pitching coach Bryan Price said yesterday Soriano would get a start, bumping Cloude from at least one rotation turn. The spring started with Price setting out a schedule for Soriano that included no starts.

Now he's been written in as one of two starters a week from today, when Seattle plays split-squad games against Oakland and San Francisco. Soriano will pitch once or twice in relief before then, but that's no longer his only role.

What has changed?

"He's been very, very diligent about doing what Bryan wants him to do," manager Bob Melvin said. "I wasn't here last year, but my understanding was that he was less susceptible to instruction. But he's been great this year."

Soriano, sent down after 10 games with Seattle last year, spent the rest of the season trying to get his arm healthy and gain mastery over two pitches that had bedeviled him in the past, the changeup and the slider. He improved in winter ball in the Dominican Republic, and carried that into spring.

Soriano gave up 8 HR in 47.1 IP last year in the majors. Hanging changeups and sliders will do that to you.

It seems that Jim Thome's teammates really love the guy:

You've heard of rolling out the red carpet? This was similar, only with baseball socks.

Phillies players, some of whom were not even supposed to make the trip to this central Florida town, rolled up their pants and featured the high-socks look that Thome has made his signature over 12 years in the majors.

Thome got word that his new mates were planning the little homage as he dined with agent Pat Rooney in Clearwater on Friday night. Thome also learned that some players - Pat Burrell for one - who were not initially on the traveling list had insisted on making the trip so they could be part of the fashion statement/tribute.

"Jimmy had tears in his eyes when he heard that," said Rooney as he watched the Phillies and Indians play at Chain of Lakes Park.

"It really meant a lot," Thome said after the game.

I think this Jim Reeves column sums up my feelings nicely.

The NY Daily News, the New York Times and the NY Post all have features on Mets future shortstopJose Reyes. Reyes is not likely to make the team for opening day, but I'm sure when the Mets see how poor Rey Sanchez is they'll call him up quickly. Reyes is 19, and whenever someone that young makes the majors, you have to pay attention. The Mets are thinking of using him as a leadoff man. We'll see. Last year he drew 46 walks in 563 AB last year, and he wasn't a .300 hitter. (.331 OBA in A, .353 OBA in AA). His OBA is at the low range of what I'd want out of a leadoff man. I'm sure the Mets are thinking he can make up for it by putting himself in scoring position with triples and stolen bases. He was 58 for 82 last year, 70%. That's better than break even, but not much. The Mets ranked 11th in the majors last year in leadoff OBA (.340), so I really don't see Reyes bringing a big improvement to that slot.

On the other hand, having a shortstop that can actually contribute even a tiny bit offensively will make this a much better team. From 1996 to 2002, Rey Ordonez had the lowest runs created per game of any qualifying player in the major leagues, 2.75. Rey Sanchez is third worst at 3.45! Reyes is going to make many fewer outs than Ordonez, and even if in those times on base he only reaches first, the Mets are going to score a lot more runs. He's bond to add a bit of excitement to the Mets lineup, and I suspect he'll be in the everyday lineup very soon.

Shoeless, Mize and Cobb in today's entry.

Looks like the Cincinnati Reds are happy they didn't trade for Phil Nevin. He has a dislocated shoulder that may require reconstructive surgery that will keep him out for the rest of the season. The final decision has not been made yet, but it's not looking good for Padres fans.

It looks like Eric Milton will miss most of the 2003 season.

Mike Hansen has been writing reviews of the Blue Jays games. I'm glad someone else has problems pronouncing Dunedin. :-)

It only has a little to do with Baseball (Koufax is mentioned), but read Aaron Gleeman's Friday post for a good laugh. Aaron, you're not alone. :-)

Al Bethke has some positive thoughts on the Brewers prospects. (Note: if that link takes you to a March 1 post, try here.) One of the only advantages about being in the cellar for a long time is that you get a great position in the draft every year. If you have people in the front office who know what they are doing, you can turn 5 or 6 years of failure into success fairly quickly. The Mets of the early '80s and A's of the late '80s are good examples of this. Maybe a turnaround for the Brewers in the cards.

Paul Newberry of the AP has this profile of Robert Fick. Seems he's made some changes in his life, and they appear to be all for the good.

Fick found himself staying at the bars later and later. One more drink, that will make everything better. To dull the hangover and get up for games, he became increasingly dependent on ephedra-laced pills, despite the health warnings.

"When you're going through the season, you don't think about things like that," Fick said. "You're just doing whatever it takes to get to the ballpark. But that stuff makes it a long season. When you're taking that stuff, you can't eat. You do lose weight, but you lose a lot of strength. It's more bad than good."

Maybe it was the pills that helped expose Fick's feisty side. Twice, he's been suspended for fighting during games. He vows it won't happen again.

Good luck to him. I'm glad he saw the self-destructive behavior in himself and is doing something to correct it.

I saw that the Cleveland reached an agreement with Coco Crisp. It's not that important, but it does give me an excuse to link to this post.

Phil Dennison sends a link to this post. I think Coco has a whole new career ahead of him. :-)

Cecilia Tan continues her trip south with a visit to Durham, NC.

Rafael Palmeiro thinks he can play another four or five years. At 490 career HR, over 600 for his career is not out of the question. Palmeiro's is one of those careers that sneak up on you. After all, his first three full seasons (1988-1990) he hit only 30 HR. For someone to be 26 years old with 47 career HR and have the career he's had is pretty amazing (Ruth had 162 through age 26).

One bit I found interesting:

He still dreams of playing in a World Series, but Palmeiro also realizes the importance of being an example to younger players like Ryne Sandberg, Andre Dawson and Ripken were to him.

"It's my responsibility to make sure the young guys are coming up in the right frame of mind," Palmeiro said. "I've learned a lot in this game, been through a lot and had some great tutors.

I bet Ryne hopes Palmeiro's students give the Ranger a little of his own medicine. :-)

The Players Association has issued a warning about Ephedra to its members. Looks like the owners and players are going to end up on the same page on this issue.

Isn't this better than trade stories?

This issue has brought the Washington Post and the Washington Times into agreement! And they are both negative.

At least in Japan. Of course, the sport doesn't have much competition there:

Baseball remained in the top spot slot for the ninth straight year, with 57 percent of those polled saying they were interested in watching baseball.

The nationwide survey was conducted Feb. 22-23. Of the 3,000 people surveyed, 1,862, or 62.1 percent, responded.

According to the survey, the favorite popular professional baseball team was the Yomiuri Giants, up 5 percentage points from last year to 38 percent. The second favorite team was the Hanshin Tigers (12 percent), followed by the Chunichi Dragons (5 percent) and the Daiei Hawks (4 percent).

The second most popular spectator sport was marathon with 37 percent, followed by ekiden road relays with 35 percent. High school baseball championships came next with 34 percent, then professional sumo and professional soccer, both cited by 28 percent of respondents.

I think if the Canadians pushed it, curling could easily make the top 5 in Japan. :-) (Note: I actually do like watching curling.)

An excellent article on the relationship between spring training and regular season records on ESPN.com. It's written by Michael Wolverton of the Baseball Prospectus, and basically, doing well or not in spring training is basically random.

Cecilia Tan, who writes about the Yankees at Why I Like Baseball is blogging about her road trip to Florida. It's more than just a trip to spring training, it's an exploration of Babe Ruth for a novel she wants to write. Check out day one of the trip here.

Byung-Hyun Kim continues to make progress as a starter:

Byung-Hyun Kim's bid to make Arizona's starting rotation got a big boost Thursday when he allowed one hit in four scoreless innings against an Anaheim Angels split squad.

The former Diamondbacks closer struck out two and walked one in Arizona's 8-3 loss.

Most significantly, the 24-year-old sidearming right-hander threw just 42 pitches, 30 for strikes. Manager Bob Brenly has said Kim must cut down his pitch count to become a starter. He was known to throw 30 or more pitches in an inning as a closer.

"BK was fantastic today,'' Brenly said. "He's always been a very quick learner and very coachable. We told him what he needed to improve on from his last start, and today was a tremendous step in the right direction. ... That's what we envision him doing for us all season.''

See this post for my observations on Kim becoming a starter.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a positive article about home town product Aaron Harang. He's competing for a starting job in the A's rotation:

"Somebody asked me yesterday which of the new guys in camp looked most impressive to me," said the A's Zen-master pitching coach, Rick Peterson. "I told him it was Aaron Harang – and he isn't new."

It was a new-look Harang, however, who reported to Papago Park for his run at a starting spot in Oakland's killer rotation. The latest to come out of the San Diego pipeline to the Athletics, Harang spent his offseason working out at home with a trainer and shedding 20 pounds that Peterson said were keeping the right-hander from becoming a great pitcher.

Actually, Harang did some fairly impressive things last year as a rookie, including 10 strikeouts and a shutout in his major league debut. The Patrick Henry and San Diego State product is 6-foot-7, which helped disguise the fact he was playing at 280 pounds.

"Aaron has always had the strong mental and emotional approach," Peterson said. "The problem was his physical conditioning. With that extra weight, he couldn't get in position to drive the ball down low in the strike zone and keep it there."

Looks like the A's keep developing these good, young pitchers. This team is quickly turning into the Braves of the aughties.

I've changed the program a little. I attempted to take out all HTML tags. I also made the names of the archive files hyperlinks, so you can click on them to see if the words describe what they are really about. The latest is here.

The Orioles management has been given permission to take on Ken Griffey's contract, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Orioles owner Peter Angelos has given his baseball people permission to take on the $79 million Griffey has remaining over the final six years of his contract, multiple major-league sources confirmed yesterday.

Less than four weeks from Opening Day, the Orioles remain determined to add a major run producer to their lineup, and Griffey has quietly hovered near the top of their target list, along with Kansas City Royals center fielder Carlos Beltran.

The Reds were poised to trade Griffey to the San Diego Padres for Phil Nevin this past winter, until Nevin vetoed the deal. The Orioles believe Cincinnati would still like to unload Griffey's salary, although Reds general manager Jim Bowden has resisted their recent overtures.

"We've had no discussions about trading Ken Griffey Jr.," Bowden said yesterday, when reached through a club spokesman. "We plan on starting Opening Day at Great America Park with Ken Griffey in center field for the Reds."

When the Reds first signed Griffey, I thought it was a great deal for him, not only because they were getting to pay him below market value, but that fact also allowed them to trade Griffey more easily. If Ken had gotten the 12 to 15 million dollars he would have drawn as a free agent (and I'm being conservative), he'd have a lot less value as trade bait right now.

The problem is, of course, that the Orioles don't have a lot to trade (which is why they have all that money to potentially pay Ken). If you look at the money/management intersections, the poster children would be:

	Rich	Poor
Good Management	Yankees	Athletics
Bad Mangement	Orioles	Royals

I think trading for Griffey would bring people out to the ballpark, but the Orioles have such huge problems that he's not going to be the difference between winning and not winning. The O's need to build up a stable of good young players, then add a veteran hitter like Jr. when they're ready to win. Now's not the time.

It turns out Paul Lo Duca was playing through a very serious injury during the 2nd half of last year. Even though Lo Duca won't admit that this injury brought down his performance, it has to give Dodger fans hope for a terrific season from the catcher.

Baseball once again has implented rules to try to speed up the game. Don't they try this every year? Alderson is very diplomatic about it:

"We are not trying to shorten the game," said Sandy Alderson, MLB's executive vice president of baseball operations. "We want to take the dead time and the likely by-product will be somewhat shorter games."

I do like this approach. It's actually real easy to make games shorter, just cut the commerical time between inning back to 90 second from 120. Of course, that would cost money, but it would make games 15 minutes shorter without changing anything else. We know that's not going to happen. What this approach does is take out the boring and useless parts of the game. Get in the batters box and hit. Get the ball and pitch. Maybe this will also lead to less inane chatter by announcers as well. :-) The rules are:

• Innings to start on time. (Two minutes, five seconds between innings, with umpiring signaling batters at 1:40)


• Batters to stay in the box. (If not, pitchers can throw and each pitch will be a strike)


• Pitchers to deliver in 12 seconds with bases empty.


• Managers to have relievers called into the game before they reach foul line.

Will it work? I doubt it. There has been a time limit on pitchers for years. Rule 8.04 states:

When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 20 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call "Ball." The intent of this rule is to avoid unnecessary delays. The umpire shall insist that the catcher return the ball promptly to the pitcher, and that the pitcher take his position on the rubber promptly. Obvious delay by the pitcher should instantly be penalized by the umpire.

This rule has never been enforced vigorously. In fact, I believe it's generally ignored. So what makes anyone think that umps are going to enforce these rules now? Or that players aren't going to try to get around them? I hope all parties can agree to these. A fast paced game is much more involving and interesting to watch.

For my day job, I work in a lab that does research into information retrieval. I'm by no means an expert in the field, but my programming skills fit me into the job well. An associate of mine, Steve Cronen-Townsend, has developed a way of measuring the clarity of a query; that is, how well does this query do at pulling up unique documents. The idea being, if you know you typed in a bad query, you can change it before you waste time searching.

What Steve does is compare two language models using the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. And one of the nice things you can do with this is pick out the contribution of each word. Estentially, words that are used more frequently in your test model than in your background model score higher. I thought I might be able to adapt this idea to see what my blog has been about.

My archives are kept on a weekly basis. So for each week, I built a probabilistic model of the words used that week. I also built a model for all the archives combined. I then compared each model for a week to the model for the combined archives and picked the 20 top words for each week. Note that a word in this context is white space separated token, forced to lower case and stripped of any punctuation. So isn't shows up as isnt and html tags show up without the <>. I did nothing to try to strip out html tags, or stem words. The results are here. I think they are pretty good. You can tell when I'm on vacation, because the html tags dominate. Also, during the playoffs, when my posts were very short, html tags also dominate.

I've written the code in python, so it's easy to modify, if anyone wants it. I'd probably like to make it more user friendly first, however.

Update: I've made the code a little better.

This article by Dave Campbell of the AP compares Tom Kelly and Ron Gandenhire's handling of young players. It starts out well enough:

When Tom Kelly managed the Minnesota Twins, he didn't exactly see youth as an asset.

Aggressive mistakes at the plate weren't looked upon fondly, and it wasn't uncommon to see a twentysomething hitter scared straight to the point where he'd try to go to the opposite field at all costs - just to please the bosses - even if that meant ignoring his strengths.

Torii Hunter was a mess when he was sent to the minors in 2000 because, as he puts it, he was listening to too many people tell him what to do.

David Ortiz, as true a power hitter as the Twins have had in the past decade, flirted with .300 in 2000 before finishing at .282. But he was hitting soft singles to left field, not what the team really needed from the guy they called "Big O."

Ron Gardenhire has been a success, so far, following in Kelly's footsteps. He's continued to preach the throw-strikes-and-play-good-defense philosophy that's long been a hallmark of Twins baseball, but Gardy has also carved a much healthier relationship with his team by better understanding the psyche of the young players in the clubhouse.

Give Kelly credit for fostering the growth of the core of this team, forcing on them a fundamentally sound foundation for their careers and beginning to loosen the harness in 2001. But the Twins wouldn't have made it to the AL championship series last October with Kelly still in the dugout. They needed someone else to take over, inject a few fresh ideas and recognize the dangers of meddling too much with some of these players' approaches at the plate.

I'll buy most of that. Sometimes you need a manager to be hard on a player, and sometimes you know when to back off. However, the following has made me lose some respect for Gardenhire:

"I think when you start telling young kids, 'Let's go be more patient at the plate,' you're going to screw 'em. Young kids, let 'em swing," Gardenhire said. "Go find it. They're going to learn how to take pitches, they're going to learn how to take the count deeper. But it's only going to come with time and at-bats.

"When they get in a game I tell them be aggressive, get yourself a good pitch and take a whack at it and let's have some fun. That's what we're trying to do.

"It's great to have a .480 on-base percentage, but how many times does that guy go up there and not swing with men on base? Jacque Jones, he may not have a great on-base percentage, but he's hacking, he's gettin' his swings. I like that.

"You talk to other teams, other pitchers, they hate throwing to us, because if it's around the plate they know we're going to swing at it."

Kelly certainly never would've come out and said, "Young kids, let 'em swing."

Gardenhire's view here is almost the exact opposite of the Athletics franchise, where from the start of their minor league careers hitters are taught to be selective at the plate. By the way, I intentionally used selective instead of patient. I used to use patient to describe hitters, but talking with other people at ESPN over the years convinced me that this is wrong. A friend of mine once asked Roberto Alomar about his success as a hitter. He said that he got one good pitch during an AB, and he had to wait for that pitch. That's what being selective is; not necessarily going deep in counts, but not swinging at bad pitches that expand the strike zone. This forces the pitcher to throw you something you can hit. If it comes on the first pitch, fine. Nail it. But the great hitters wait for that pitch, no matter where it comes in the count. Ruth, Williams, Mantle, Bonds, Mays and Aaron all had this in common. If the pitch is there, clobber it. If it's not, take the walk. Gardenhire needs to recognize the difference between patience and selectivity, and teach the latter.

The Brewers are having a grounds keeping problem:

The risk of construction crews not finishing Miller Park roof repairs on schedule is prompting the Milwaukee Brewers to look at extraordinary ways to grow grass.

Because Brewers officials expect at least part of the roof to be closed most of March, grounds-keepers are planning to haul greenhouse grow lights into the park to give the turf an alternative form of sunlight.

At the same time, the club is exploring methods to inject warm air into the soil to spur the development of healthy turf.

Maybe they can find something to inject into their players to increase their offense. :-) It seems to me that after they are through with the stadium, the grounds crew will have the right experience for growing other kinds of grasses indoors. :-)

Nice to see Roger Craig teaching split-finger pitches again. The Tigers can use all the help they can get.

The Cleveland Indians are having a lively competition at first base:

In the competition for the starting job at first base on the Indians' opening day roster, Travis Hafner and Ben Broussard have both come out swinging.

Literally.

Yesterday, in a 4-2 Tribe loss to Cincinnati, Broussard hit a home run.

The day before Hafner hit a home run.

The day before that, Broussard hit a homer.

Etc., etc., etc.

Through their first six games, the Indians have hit nine home runs. Hafner and Broussard have combined to hit four of the nine. Both players have hit two each.

''I guess we're both pushing each other,'' said Broussard.

I like this jibe at Jeter just for it's creativity:

Whatever ridiculous propaganda sports fans and talking heads drum up in regard to the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry -- Derek Jeter is Garry Templeton on a good team! -- yesterday's match-up between New York and Boston was just another spring training game for players and coaches. The Yankees showcased three pitchers vying for a spot in the crowded field of potential starters, while the Red Sox played several guys who might fill (alone or collectively) the team's hole at first base. The players may have been working out the kinks of a long winter, but the fans in this heated rivalry were in mid-season form.

Unfortunately, it's not based on any form of the truth. Let's look at the stats:

Averages	Jeter Career	Templeton Career	Through Age 28
Batting Average	.317	.271	.288
On-base Average	.389	.304	.315
Slugging Average	.463	.369	.390

Templeton wishes he were Derek Jeter with the bat.

The Cub Reporter has a post with details of his trip to Arizona, including pictures!

Here's the first ban on Ephedra. More to come I'm sure.

Bob Montgomery sent me this link to a poetic preview piece on the Royals. A perfect skewering of Pena. And look at the projections at the end of the poem. Not much hope there.

USA Today has a story on bargain players, players who have no option but to sign for what the team is willing to give them:

Teams have until March 11 to renew 2003 contracts of one- and two-year players. Because these players have no leverage, teams, from World Series champion Anaheim to the 89-loss Pirates, can offer take-it-or-leave contracts to productive players. Some teams offer long-term contracts; others don't.

Not everyone is happy. Angels pitcher Jarrod Washburn charged his team with treating young players "unfairly" by offering salaries with no room for negotiations. General manager Bill Stoneman said he was following the rules the union negotiated with the owners in the labor agreement.

One of the things that made the Indians such a good team in the 1990's was offering their young players long term contracts. It saved them arbitration costs, and kept long term salary growth low. These teams that force contracts on players are going to have it come back to haunt them when these players are ready for free agency. Look no further than Barry Bonds. The Pirates took him to arbitration three years in a row, and Bonds lost each one. The second he could become a free agent, he left. Wouldn't the Pirates have been better off if they had given him a long-term contract in 1990? He might have been a Pirate for life.

Pedro Feliz had a visa problem. You know what that means. He's two years older than he claimed to be:

In his first session with reporters since visa problems stemming from his new age delayed his arrival from the Dominican Republic, Giants infielder Pedro Feliz said Monday that he is fit and ready to play.

He also confirmed that he fibbed about his age. He is 27, not 25.

Feliz declined to say he made himself younger to enhance his chances of reaching the big leagues, though that would seem to be the logical reason. He also said the idea was suggested by someone else -- he wouldn't say who -- but accepted responsibility.

``I can't blame nobody,'' Feliz said.

Feliz's teammates were ready for his arrival. Sunday, they planted helium balloons at his locker and planned to give him a birthday cake.

I wonder if big league teams are really fooled by this? Maybe they should impose a fine if players lie about their age. It's such a huge factor in evaluating a player's future. If I were a GM who had been lied to, I'd be really upset.

Michele from A Small Victory has a great Yankees story tonight.

The Devil Rays have three 21-year-old outfield prospects. If they should play together this year, they would be the youngest outfield in the modern era:

Youngest outfields, 1901-2002

Total age by the 3 players with most games played.

Age used is seasonal age.


Team                 Year  Age

Texas Rangers        1986   65

Boston Red Sox       1910   66

California Angels    1966   66

Montreal Expos       1977   67

Texas Rangers        1987   68

The 1986 Rangers had Oddibe McDowell (23), Ruben Sierra (20) and Pete Incaviglia (22). Maybe if the DRays found out about this record, they'll move them along faster. :-)

That's the question Ken Rosenthal asks about Byung-Hyun Kim. Kim was promised he would be a starter in Arizona, and this year he's being worked into the rotation. Matt Mantei will be taking over as closer. It seems starting is important culturally to Kim:

Kim's desire to be a starter preceded his difficulties in the 2001 World Series. He was an ace starter in high school, in college and for the Korean national team. His disdain for relieving, Garagiola says, stems in part from the difference in the way relievers are perceived in his native land.

"BK explained that to me one time: In Korea, if you can't make it as a starting pitcher, you go out to the bullpen," Garagiola says. "There is a certain stigma attached to relief pitchers. I explained to him that's not true over here, that relief pitchers are big stars, make lots of money. But he feels the way he feels."

Rosenthal, clearly a STATS guy, offers up a good analysis of what might happen to Kim as a starter:

The question now is whether Kim can adjust to starting. He doesn't like when hitters make contact, and he averaged 16.1 pitches per inning last season, which translates to a 145-pitch pace as a starter. His high pitch counts are not necessarily a physical concern -- Kim is slight at 5-11, 177 pounds, but he is blessed with a rubber arm. But if he repeatedly threw 120 pitches over five innings, he would irk his defense and tax his bullpen.

In general, if you have someone who can be a good starter or a good closer, I'd rather have him as a starter. The move worked well for Derek Lowe, who also wanted to be a starter. We'll see if Kim can make the transition as smoothly and successfully.

Mugs Scherer is writing Mugs' Thoughts on Baseball. Check out his excellent post on why he likes David Eckstein.

Here's an article on Bud Selig addressing the KC Royals. Afterward, he answered questions. The most important one:

On how long Selig will serve as commissioner: "I'm going to do it for another three years and 10 or 11 months. I've been at this a long time now. I took over as acting commissioner in September of '92 -- told my wife (it'd be) two to four months and don't think she doesn't remind me of that often. But I've promised everybody I'll do it through 2006, and I will."

Bud, your wife wants you back home. I think for the sake of marital bliss, you should heed her wishes. :-)

Since there are now nine presidential candidates amongst the Democrats, I'd thought it would be fun to put them in a baseball lineup. Here's the batting order:

1. Howard Dean, SS.. The first to declare his candidacy, Dean will bat leadoff, like former "Governor" Jerry Browne.


2. Joseph Lieberman, RF. Used to the number two slot from the 2000 election and having attended Yale University. His strong religious beliefs and support for the war against Iraq make him the most Republican of the Democrats, hence his placement in right field.


3. John Kerry, CF. Peter Gammons once described Kerry to me as the dirtiest hockey player he ever faced. That and the fact that he's the only candidate to have killed a man make Kerry the Ty Cobb of the lineup.


4. Bob Graham, 1B. Two time MVP (most valuable politician) in Florida, Graham is the power hitter of the lineup. Strong on defense but against the war, he's extremely popular in electoral rich Florida. He's looking to clean-up in the primaries.


5. Dick Gephardt, C. Former House Minority leader should be good behind the plate, since he spent the last 8 years trying to block Republican proposals. He'll also serve as the union player rep.


6. Al Sharpton, LF. Out in left field seems the appropriate place for Al. One worry about playing Sharpton is that he will be constantly thrown out of games for accusing the umpires of racisim whenever they call a strike against him.


7. Dennis Kucinich, 3B. This FDR Democrat plays as far left in the infield as he can. Will need a strong throwing arm to reach people with ideas from the 1930's.


8. Carol Moseley-Braun, 2B. Unlike those Republican capitalist Yankees, the Democrats can't afford to populate their team with high-priced all-stars. They were able to pick up Moseley-Braun off the scrap heap, and hope the light hitting one-term senator can resurect her career.


9. John Edwards, P. The rookie Senator from the south had great success pitching to juries. He had a high winning percentage, striking out insurance companies and never issuing a free pass to negligent coporations. His dreamy good looks and smooth southern style are bound to make him popluar among political groupies.

With opening day less than a year away spring training for these candidates is in full gear. Of course the lineup they will be facing is similar to one adopted by a certain wascally wabbit.

(Read this with increasing speed)

• Catcher, George Bush.


• Left Field, George Bush.


• Right Field, George Bush.


• Pitching, George Bush.


• Third Base, George Bush.


• Center Field, George Bush.


• First Base, George Bush.


• Shortstop, George Bush.


• Second Base, George Bush.

Can't you just hear W. say, "Watch me paste this pathetic palooka with a powerful paralzying perfect pachydermous percussion pitch?"

Update: Fixed a typo, adopted was adapted.
Update: Fixed another typo, hear was heard.
Update Feb.19, 2009: The cartoon I originally linked to was taken down a long time ago. I found it today on YouTube.

USA Today explores why hitting a baseball is so difficult.

Some good news from the Dodgers yesterday as Kevin Brown and Darren Dreifort threw well yesterday.

The Dodgers renewed Eric Gagne's contract for $550,000. I hope they are saving up for next year. :-)

The Marlins are trying to learn from their mistakes last year in attracting fans. They hope to establish the team as a brand.

''We had total brand breakdown,'' David Samson, the Marlins' president and Loria's stepson, concedes. ``We had to totally start over.''

And so they have. For it isn't just well-heeled arts patrons who demand the best. So do baseball fans.

This year, there are new uniforms, new logos, new ad campaigns and a new attitude, according to Samson. There's even a new slogan: ``Get back in the game.''

''We're going to do what it takes,'' Loria says. ``We're committed to reconnect with South Florida and let them love baseball again.''

As I said in my previous post, Loria didn't do a great job in Montreal. I really feel you have to win to attract fans, and I just don't see any evidence that Loria's people know how to put together a winner.

Charles Johnson hired a nutritionist this off-season, and he's leaner and looks meaner:

The Rockies are thrilled to have Johnson.

``He has had so much energy this spring. He could really jump-start this thing for us,'' said manager Clint Hurdle, who knows Johnson's reputation for handling young pitchers. ``They don't give away those Gold Gloves, and this guy has four of them. It's really important to have a guy like him when you have a young pitching staff. They look at him, and there's immediate respect. When you have that kind of confidence behind the plate, it makes a difference.''

Johnson looks different. He has had a personal trainer in the offseason for nine years, but this year he added a nutritionist. He looks leaner, and the goatee gives him a fiercer look.

``I kind of like this mean look,'' he said with a smile.

CJ also blasts the Marlins mangement for crying about money but signing Pudge Rodriguez:

His biggest surprise since being traded was the night he heard the Marlins signed catcher Ivan Rodriguez.

``I was watching the news on TV with my wife, and they said, `The Marlins have reeled in a big one.' We just laughed and said, `Oh, boy, I wonder who the big one is,' '' the former Marlins catcher said. ``When we heard it was Pudge, we couldn't believe it. I mean, here they are crying over money, and then they go out and spend $10 million on Pudge. What are they going to do? You know they won't re-sign him next year. You know he's going to be there one year and then he's gone.

``I thought they were happy with their catchers with Mike Redmond and Ramon Castro. They kept saying they were in good shape with the catchers. Then they sign Pudge. I mean, I realize why they signed him. They signed him because they could get him, and he's a great catcher. That makes sense. But it's just weird that they cry so much over money and then do something like that on top of how things went with me.

``They got rid of the cleanup hitter Cliff Floyd, the opening-day pitcher Ryan Dempster, the closer Antonio Alfonseca and a guy who is a No. 2 or No. 3 pitcher Matt Clement. I don't know if it was all about spending money, but it looks that way. You sit back and say, `What kind of team would they have if they had spent money and kept all those players?' ''

Those people didn't do a great job with the Expos, either. Maybe this is baseball's official "Destroy a Franchise" group.

In his weekly column, Old Hickory discusses how the Giants have changed as a team, and how Barry Bonds seems more relaxed since Kent is gone. It also seems that Bonds has chosen an unusual source to improve his swing - David Eckstein:

Bonds describes his hitting style as "catching" a pitch.

"I say, 'go ahead and throw as hard as you can,' " says Bonds. "The catcher is going to catch it, and I'm going to catch the ball with my bat and let the pitcher supply the power."

Bonds is, however, working on a slight change. "I picked something up from David Eckstein in Japan," says Bonds. "I really like his approach to his swing, and I asked him how he does it."

"It's all in the first three inches starting the swing, keeping my hands in," says Eckstein. "It was amazing. I looked over one day when we were in Japan and there's Barry with my brother talking about the fundamentals of what I do. I couldn't believe it."

That's why Bonds is such a great hitter. Always looking for an advantage.

Now, I really don't agree with the idea of Cruz batting 2nd. I think the team would be much better with Alfonzo 2nd and Cruz 6th. But it is a good team, and they clearly want to win the WS this year.

Here's a video clip of Bochy talking about how the Padres are going to approach the season (DSL or Modem). One thing I liked from this is using hitting coach Dave Magadan to make the players more selective at the plate. Magadan was a singles/doubles hitter with a great OBA. He had some injuries, but mostly he didn't have a position. He didn't really have enough power to be a first baseman or DH, and he didn't field well enough to play at the left of the defensive spectrum. But his approach to hitting is excellent, and it will be interesting to see how he performs as a hitting coach.

He's still wild. He threw 16 pitches, only 5 for strikes. More interestingly, the Marlins didn't swing until the last pitch of the inning. They were testing him, which I think a lot of teams will do this spring. In trying to reconstruct the inning from the boxscore, it looks like Alex Gonzalez walked, PH Mordecai K'd, Castillo walked and Pierrre finally swung at a pitch and hit into a double play.

If teams are going to keep their bats on their shoulders against him, Ankiel has to start putting the first pitch over the plate. Batters are trying to shrink his strike zone, and even if it means giving up hits, Rick has to take the zone back.

It appears that David Wells' book has no credibility. My guess is that Boomer didn't even read it before it was published. I wonder how this is going to effect sales? Why read a tell-all book if there's no plausibility of the truth?

Halley Suitt comments on how a blog is like a start-up. I have to agree. Of course, it's much easier than a start-up, because the captial costs are fairly low, and if you fail, no one really gets hurt financially. This post is especially timely for me since I've been trying some new things lately, like a PayPal button (got my first donation recently), blogads and multimedia. It's been fun, and best of all, my readship has been growing. Thanks to all my readers. I'm glad you're enjoying this as much as I am.

We're three weeks away from action here, but Taiwan opened their professional season yesterday. In a battle between the two largest mammals, the Elephants beat the Whales 3-2.

Gary Ashman reponds to this post about spring training in Phoenix:

As the comment on BM notes, ST in Phx is a joy. Ive been going for 15 years now. I've always hung around the Tempe area --- A's, Giants, Angels, Cubs and used to be Mariners, but they're putting together a nice little West Phx complex now. With the opening of the Surprise facility you have the Royals, Rangers, Mariners, and Padres all close together. With the four teams sharing two parks, there's a game in each park virtually every day and an occasional night game that let's you see two ina day if you want.

I still prefer the East Phx, because the Tempe/ASU are makes for better night life options, but traffic is pretty good for a big city no matter where you go in Phx. And, you get less rain than you have to deal with in Fla.

Teresa Lindeman of the Post-Gazette pens an article on the new direction the Pirates are taking with their advertising. Seems like they are moving in the right direction:

The final spot ready to air is the first Pirate commercial in recent memory to specifically target kids under 12. Here the actual game is background while the star is the Parrot mascot. He's shown in his dressing room putting on his game face -- toweling off, napping, watching a little TV and suiting up before heading out.

That came in response to research that showed between 25 and 35 percent of the seats filled on Sunday held children under 12 years old. "That's a big number," said Gregovits. "Obviously, that's the next generation of fans."

Baseball in Pittsburgh has been a bit of a joke since Barry Bonds left. Littlefield appears to be doing some little things well to move the team in the right direction. Getting the fans, especially the young ones more interested can only help.

Here's my first try at video web logging. I believe you need quick time. Not much, but now I know how to do it. I hope to do video entries from time to time.

Kip Wells, that is. Manager Lloyd McClendon likes what he sees this year:

Pirates manager Lloyd McClendon thinks the difference between the Kip Wells of 2002 and the Kip Wells of 2003 is in his poise.

"He has more maturity and there's no anxiety on his face," McClendon said Friday after watching Wells pitch two scoreless innings in the Pirates' 3-2 victory over the Cleveland Indians. "Last year, he was a young pitcher who wasn't sure whether he belonged. This year, he's a young pitcher who knows he can pitch in the big leagues."

Of course, the really interesting news is buried deep in the article:

"I tend to get a little bit erratic. I need to stay away from counts where I'm a pitch away from walking the batter. I need to be 0-2 or 1-2 instead of 2-2 and 3-2."

High pitch counts won't be tolerated this year. That message was hammered home to the pitchers and catchers during the first day of workouts. Consider it a lesson learned by the 25-year-old right-hander yesterday.

"If you walk a guy an inning, you're only going to be out there for six innings," Wells said. "You may put six zeroes up on the board, but if you walk six guys you're not going to get the chance for a shutout."

It seems obvious that you should try to keep pitch counts low, but I guess it's not. Pirate walks were high last year, but not extreme. It's good to see they are going after a problem that is solvable.

According to the NY Times, Mo Vaughn has lost weight, changed his batting stance and is working on defense! Sounds like he's trying to be a baseball player instead of a celebrity

I wasn't aware of this:

Residents of Florida's Space Coast were miffed when the Marlins swapped sites with Montreal. But Melbourne and the Expos make a good match, pairing a spurned town with a team long accustomed to being unwanted.

While major league baseball seeks an owner for the Expos, their status in Montreal is year-to-year. This season they'll play 22 "home" games 3,000 kilometres away in Puerto Rico. And now they must adjust to a new spring training address that may be temporary, depending on what happens to the franchise.

The Expos were forced from Jupiter when their owner, Jeffrey Loria, bought the Florida franchise a year ago and insisted that Montreal's spring complex be part of the deal. That sent the Expos up Interstate 95 to Melbourne.

Especially miffed is scrabble champion Javier Vazquez:

"I think MLB didn't handle it the right way," Vazquez says. "That complex was ours. I don't think it's called the 'Jeffrey Loria Complex.' But we didn't have an owner, so what choice did we have? Nobody was fighting for us. I guess that's why we came here."

There's a dramatic difference in the two complexes, which is why everyone at the Marlins camp is smiling these days.

The practice fields at Melbourne are windier, chillier and more sprawling. By comparison, the five-year-old Jupiter site seems cozy.

Many of the Marlins found accommodations within walking distance of Roger Dean Stadium. Also nearby are a 16-screen movie theatre, golf course, art galleries and cafes.

Someone must have a spare couple of thousand lieing around that they can use to buy the Expos! :-)