It looks like the Cubs and Carlos Zambrano are close to a long term deal:

The parameters of the deal have been discussed, with both sides agreeing to five years. How far apart they are on the total package is unknown, though the Cubs' offer is expected to be under Barry Zito's $18 million-per-season range.

At this rate, the Cubs are going to challenge the Yankees for highest payroll. :-)

The players may not know it, but big brother is watching:

Major league teams are monitoring players during the period between when they are notified they must take a drug test and when they provide a urine sample, according to The New York Times.

The procedure was instituted in July 2005 and covers a period that can last up to several hours, the newspaper reported on its Web site Saturday night.

"Players may not be aware they're under observation, but we're watching," baseball executive vice president Rob Manfred was quoted as saying. "It doesn't mean we tell them we're watching."

Three general managers are monitors, 18 assistant GMs, four vice presidents, four directors of baseball operations. The title of the other monitor wasn't disclosed.

This was in response from criticism by Gary Wadler, who has yet to land the contract to test MLB samples.

Update: Dr. Wadler writes:

For the record, I would like to clarify that I am not employed by any entity that does drug testing, nor do I do personally do any drug testing. Therefore I am not sure what was meant by the following: "This was in response from criticism by Gary Wadler, who has yet to land the contract to test MLB samples." that appeared in Baseball Mussings.

So noted. It was meant as a snarky comment on Wadler's organization wanting to control all drug testing for all sports. I'm sorry if I conveyed the wrong impression.

Balls, Sticks and Stuff posts video of Matsuzaka pitching to the Phillies.

The AL Central became a little more muddled on Friday when we found out that surgery sidelined Kenny Rogers for half a season. Originally, the Tigers came out on top of my prediction for the division, but I need to rethink that.

The Indians are the trendy pick to win the division in 2007. Looking at the team, I'm not sure why. Cleveland pulled off an amazing feat in 2006, out scoring the opposition by almost 90 runs but posting a losing record. It was in fact, the second year in a row they underperformed their projected wins based on their runs scored and runs allowed. Some blamed the bullpen, and Shapiro rebuilt that over the winter. A big part of the blame can be placed on the infield defense, however. Cleveland was the most porous AL team in 2006 in allowing batters to reach on ground balls. Shapiro tried to plug those holes as well, as he starts a different first, second and third baseman than he did last April.

But will it be enough? The Indians pitching staff is constructed to put a lot of ground balls into play. There's uncertainty to that kind of staff, as bad hops or bad fielding can really hurt. A staff of strikeout artists might be the better way to go. And going with younger, unproven hitters doesn't mean the offense will be as good as the 2006 squad. After getting burned in 2006, I'm not jumping on the bandwagon. If the Tribe continues to under-perform, watch for Eric Wedge to get fired.

Before the Rogers injury, I liked the Tigers to succeed where they failed in 2006 and take the division. They boasted the best rotation in the Central, but fall short without the gambler. Still, despite Chad Durbin, it's not bad. Unlike most teams, there's no clear ace on the staff, but every one of the starters gives about the same level of good performance. I expected Kenny Rogers to decline but thought improvements by Bondermand and Verlander would help make up some of the gap. This injury took them from being slightly better than Chicago to a couple of steps behind. We'll see if any of the Tigers prospects get a chance to pitch in case of a Durbin failure.

On offense, the Tigers return the same solid lineup, with the addition of hard hitting Gary Sheffield. That should provide the boost to increase their run total from the previous season and keep them in contention in the AL Central. The caveats, however, are the older players like Ivan Rodriguez and Magglio Ordonez. Magglio was healthy for the first time in a while in 2006 and there's no guarantee he'll repeat that.

The defending division champs, the Minnesota Twins, boast three of the best players in the division in Mauer, Santana and Morneau. It's a great way to assemble a team, putting three superstars on the field and surrounding them with good players. Unfortunately for the Twins, the rotation lost two pitchers as Brad Radke retired and Francisco Liriano is out after undergoing Tommy John surgery. That leaves little certainty behind Santana. They'll depend youngster Boof Bonser to fill one of those roles. But despite a strong farm system, the back of the rotation gets filled by three poor quality veterans in Ortiz, Silva and Ponson. That might cost the team the division.

The White Sox come out as the number two team in the Central based on my quick and dirty calculations. However, a number of arrows point down on the team. The biggest ones come on offense. They added Darin Erstad because of the extremely poor offense of Brian Anderson, but that just made an aging team older. They'll field six 30+ hitters, and that means there's a higher likelihood to decline than to get better. The pitching is solid top to bottom and Chicago is likely to say, "Danks you," to the Rangers for their new fifth starter. A rebound by Buerhle after a down 2006 puts this rotation heads shoulders above the rest of the division. Still, if Dye and Thome fall off from their great seasons, there might not be enough runs to win.

And bringing up the rear once again is the Kansas City Royals. They hired a new number one starter, but Gil Meche would be no better than the third starter on any other team in the division. And the rotation gets much worse after that. On the offensive side, Mark Teahen and Alex Gordon promise to be the start of something better for the Kansas City. If they can surround them with decent players over the next few years, the Royals can contend again.

So here's my projected order of finish.

1. White Sox
2. Tigers
3. Twins
4. Indians
5. Royals

This is a change from my radio programs. The Tigers losing Rogers and the Twins going with Ponson, Ortiz and Silva knock both of those teams down in my estimation. The emergence of Danks means Chicago owns the best rotation in the Central. And while I expect the offense to decline on the south side, there still are good hitters on that team. This is another division that's shaping up for a very close race for the title.

Does this mean Comcast threw in the towel on Extra Innings negotiations?

Due to a decision by Major League Baseball, Comcast, as well as many other cable operators will not be able to distribute the 2007 MLB Extra Innings out-of-market package.

If you are a current Comcast customer and subscribed to Comcast 2006 MLB Extra Innings, you should receive correspondence from Comcast no later than April 11, 2007 with an offer to help make up for the loss of MLB Extra Innings, with an opportunity to subscribe to MLB.TV. With MLB.TV you can use your computer to view all the same games you would see on TV with MLB Extra Innings.

Thanks to Brian Hammond for the link. According to this article (the most balanced I've seen), the negotiations are continuing.

"We are trying to get everybody in," said Tim Brosnan, executive vice president of business for Major League Baseball. "That is our goal."

I still think there should be a trade-off to get Padres and Phillies games on the dish. Then no one is exclusive.

The Tigers sealed a deal that keeps Carlos Guillen a cat through 2011.

Guillen is making $5 million this season, the last of a $14 million, three-year deal. He gets $12 million in 2008, $10 million in 2009 and $13 million in each of the final two seasons.

"I'd like to finish my career in Detroit," Guillen said. "I am very happy here. Three years ago we lost 119 games, and now we have a good team with a great future."

Guillens' career track is very interesting. He showed no power before arriving in Detroit, but his OBA started spiking in his last year with the Mariners, and it's been high ever since. He's now parlayed that improved play into a very nice piece of change. Given his age and likely decline, and given what others of similar talents are getting, this is a very good deal for the Tigers.

Tigers fans, was there a particular coach that worked with Guillen to improve his power? Was there ever a reason given for Carlos' surge?

Joe Christensen touts Twins pitching prospect Jeff Manship.

The Twins stole Manship in the 14th round of last year's draft and convinced him to sign out of Notre Dame. Some scouts think he'll be an even better pitcher than former Notre Dame pitcher (and wide receiver) Jeff Samardzija, whom the Cubs signed for something like a quarter-billion dollars. Manship's stock wasn't as high because he was injured in college, but he threw some eye-opening curve balls and hard fastballs. The Twins plan to start him at Class A Beloit, but my amateur scouting eyes tell me this guy is going to skyrocket through the system, Matt Garza-style.

We'll see if this ship sails.

It's been sixty years since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, and baseball kicks off the celebration with the first Civil Rights Game. The one place Bud Selig deserves unlimited praise is in his efforts to make the game more diverse. Once again, however, among American blacks, those efforts aren't paying off:

Major League Baseball began an effort to emphasize its place in the history of America's struggle for racial equality just one day after a study said only 8.4 percent of its players last season were black, the lowest level in at least two decades.

However, I thought this had been a steady decline since the height of black participation in the late 1960s. But that's not the case:

As recently as 1995, 19 percent of big leaguers were black, according to Richard Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida 's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. Nine percent were black in both 2004 and 2005, and the current figure is the lowest since at least the mid-1980s, he said.

So is this just cyclical? What was MLB doing in the late 1980s and early 1990s to attract black Americans? Also, the report gives an overall good grade to MLB:

But Lapchick also acknowledged that the declining numbers of African-American players in the game remains a major concern. The study showed that 8.4 percent of players on 2006 rosters were African-American, and that's the smallest percentage since the report cards first were compiled in the mid-1980s.

"That has been a concern of Major League Baseball and leaders in the African-American community as the numbers have consistently gone down," Lapchick said. "On the other hand, with 40.5 percent players of color, MLB is close to its all-time high of 42 percent" set in 1997.

And that's a point worth making. People who care about the color of a player's skin don't care about where the player came from. Racists don't look at David Ortiz and say, "He's not black." So today let's celebrate the 40% of players on the field whose jobs Jackie Robinson made possible.

Another blood clot rears its ugly head:

Tigers left-handed starter Kenny Rogers is expected to miss the first half of the season after he underwent surgery on his pitching shoulder today to remove a blood clot and repair arteries.

Rogers underwent the surgery in Dallas. The surgery was performed by the same doctor who did a similar operation on Rogers six years ago, club president and general manger Dave Dombrowski said.

In making the announcement on Rogers' surgery and prognosis, Dombrowski said that Rogers would be able to begin throwing in six to eight weeks. "We anticipate he will be out three months," Dombrowski said.

Best wishes for a quick recovery. Originally it sounded like Kenny would just miss one start, but now the Tigers definitely need a replacement. For now, Chad Durbin takes over, who is frankly not very good. I expect we'll see Detroit's pitching depth fill in eventually.

Does it seem that there are lots of blood clots in pitchers lately? I don't remember this happening before Oil Can Boyd, but it could just be it was harder to detect back then and they were missed.

On Baseball and the Reds is doing nice work with The Hardball Times defensive numbers, coming up with a way to convert THT's zone ratings to a +/- system. The Probabilistic Model of Range lends a hand. What's nice about this is that it looks like something that can be calculated during the season.

Correction: Fixed the link.

Home Run Derby takes a close look at offense at Wrigley in April.

Studes donated $100 to the Baseball Musings Pledge Drive and receives the following dedication:

I think that The Hardball Times is the greatest. Yay, Hardball Times!!!!!!!!!! Signed, David Pinto (at the request of donor Dave Studeman)

The NL East in 2007 looks like it will come down to a battle between a great offensive team and two top notch pitching staffs. The Mets are defending champs and posted the best record in the NL in 2006, only to fall to the Cardinals in the NLCS. They return a lineup solid to great from top to bottom, and even added veteran Moises Alou to boost the offense more. I love the diversity of this batting unit. They have young stars in Wright and Reyes, and great veterans like Delgado and Beltran. The Mets are a perfect mix of power hitters, selective hitters, high average hitters, speed and defense. Offensively, the unit towers over the rest of the NL East.

The pitching, however, leaves much to be desired. With Pedro Martinez out for at least most of the year, and the Mets not really counting on him until 2008, the rotation comes down to two old veterans, two pitchers with questionable careers, and a youngster. Glavine and Hernandez are okay at best, but the bet is that they keep declining. The Mets hoped Rick Peterson could improve Oliver Perez and Chan-Ho Park. Perez pitched well this spring, controlling his walks and making the rotation. Park's ERA was high, but so were his strikeouts. Home runs killed him as he moved to the bullpen to make room for Mike Pelfry in the rotation. By the end of the year, you might be hearing, "Pelfry, Maine and pray for rain" (or a healthy Pedro). But with the Mets offense, the rotation doesn't need to be great to win games. Okay works just fine.

The Phillies and the Marlins, on the other hand, send two fine starting staffs to the mound. The Marlins are loaded with young guns, and veteran Dontrelle Willis is looking to bounce back after an off year. What's great about the fire sale that took place at the end of the 2005 season is that even with Josh Johnson hurt for the beginning of the season, the Marlins can use their depth for a replacement.

The Phillies staff is more on the veteran side, with former Mariners Freddy Garcia and Jamie Moyer filling out the back of the rotation. But Young Cole Hamels figures to improve on his partial season in 2006, which along with a peaceful Brett Myers gives the Phillies a great 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation.

Both these teams also boast great offensive infields. The Phillies generate tons of runs from the right side with Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. The Marlins get the production from the left side with Miguel Cabrera and Hanely Ramirez. In a way, I like the Marlins a bit more here, since Cabrera and Ramirez are still young enough to be improving, while Utley and Howard reached their peaks. The Phillies own the edge in the outfield, however. That, in my mind, makes the difference between the two, putting Philadelphia a hair in front of Florida.

My gut says the Braves are in for another season of disappointment. The offense is good, on par with the Phillies and Marlins. But the Braves revamped the right side of their infield with unproven players as Johnson and Thorman take over for Giles and LaRoche. And there's always the spectre of a Chipper Jones injuries. Already twice during spring training he's suffered minor injuries similar to ones that kept him out of action in 2006.

When I first looked at this division for my radio show, the once great Braves rotation appeared to be in shambles. But, they've pitched extremely well in spring training, making me much more cautious in my prediction. Smoltz, Hudson and Cormier all showed great control this spring. James posted a fine ERA despite walking a batter every other inning. On the other hand, Smoltz is still a talented ace, but he's growing old and there's no guarantees of a good season anymore. Tim Hudson left his best years in Oakland. Mike Hampton tried to come back, but an injury delayed his return. Right now, I'm taking the spring number with a huge grain of salt, but it's possible the Shuerholz magic in assembling a pitching staff is back.

And bringing up the rear in the division in a bid to win the first pick in the 2008 draft are the Washington Nationals. They start the season with their best hitter, Nick Johnson, still recovering from a broken femur he suffered at the end of 2006. Ryan Zimmerman is the only star on team. The pitching staff is an absolute mess, with John Patterson the only hope of a good starter, that rests on the very big if of him staying healthy. There's not much there on either side of the ball.

The Nats did make a good trade last season, sending relievers to Cincinnati for Kearns and Lopez. Austin Kearns was a promising prospect a few years ago before injuries derailed his career. He showed signs of coming back in 2006, and a healthy year from him might make up for the loss of Johnson. But that's balanced with Cristian Guzman at short, one of the great offensive black holes in the game. Unfortunately, Washington needs fewer Guzmans and more Kearns on this roster. Given the relative strength of the other teams in the divisions, the Nationals will be lucky to win 60 games.

So here's my projected order of finish:

1. New York Mets
2. Philadelphia Phillies
3. Florida Marlins
4. Atlanta Braves
5. Washington Nationals

It's at least a three way race for the division, and if Atlanta's spring pitching number hold up, the top four teams will all be in the hunt.

Matthew Swarner writes:

This year, I'm starting a fun analysis that your readers could be a great help on. I'm compiling the division rankings from team previews--ex. your AL West preview: LAA 1st, SEA 2nd, OAK 3rd, TEX 4th. I'm keen on looking at how individual teams do, which divisions' ranking are most variable, if rankings are affected by who writes it (fanblog vs paid baseball writer), and of course, who gets it most right at the end!

I've been searching for division predictions over the past month and while I've found quite a few, your readership has a much wider net. They surely even have some of their own! Would you consider posting a "call for division rankings" on baseballmusings.com? Readers could send in team rankings that they've read or predicted themselves. Any ranking is legitimate--whether it's from website, newspaper, podcast, magazine--but I would need the source.

Matt doesn't have a web site of his own, so I'll publish the results here. If you'd like to take part, send your own predictions to Matt at mjswarner@gmail.com.

My Baseball Bias writes about Torre naming Carl Pavano his opening day starter.

The way I see it, Pavano has a few things going for him...adrenaline and the Devil Rays. The D-Rays are a very impatient hitting ball club. When you combine that with Pavano's fastball, which will no doubt have a little extra zip on it because he's starting at Yankee Stadium on opening day, I think this start sets-up very favorably for him.

I wonder what Mike Mussina thinks about this? Mussina's negative comments about Carl earlier this spring might have given Pavano the push he needed. However, this seems to be more luck of the draw than anything else. Pavano pitched poorly this spring, striking out five while walking eight in 18 1/3 innings. He kept the ball in the park, however. If there's that many balls in play against the Yankees defense, Pavano's going to need to induce a lot of double plays.

It's also an all or nothing performance for Carl. If he pitches well, the newspaper get to go with the redemption story, and all's right with the world. If he stinks, we'll hear how Pavano has no guts, heart and determination, and that will follow him for the rest of the season.

MetsBlog.com polls writers and bloggers to get a sense of some 2007 numbers for the Mets. The most important one is that everyone polled (including me) thinks the Mets will win more than 88 games this year.

Gordon Edes talks with Masanori Murakami, Don Nomura and others about the continuing growth of Japanese players in Major League Baseball. It sounds to me like there is going to be changes coming in the next few years to the Asian game:

But no one ever envisioned the posting system resulting in a bid as exorbitant as the Red Sox' $51.1 million offer for the right to talk to Matsuzaka. When the numbers get that high, only the team with the winning bid walks away happy. Consider: other major league teams resent how high the bids climb; the player is annoyed that money that is his is instead collected by his former club; and the other Japanese teams are jealous of their adversary's windfall.

That's what's happening in Japan, said Nomura, who was in Tokyo for the opening of the 2007 Nippon Professional Baseball season. Lucchino, now the Red Sox president and CEO, joked that he may yet again prove catalyst to change; Nomura, who as an agent has his own interests to protect, believes change must occur.

Kuwata believes there are at least a couple of players on each Japanese team that could play in the big leagues. Colborn suggests the number is higher. Nomura believes there are 25 to 40 players in Japan who could play in the majors. There will be significant resistance by Japanese teams to the exodus, he said, but added there are ways to redress the declining TV audience in Japan. "My suggestion is for a new league, including Taiwan, Korea, and China," Nomura said. "The countries are three hours apart on any flight.

"They have to find a way to survive. This would lead to a real World Series."

And the Asian leagues need to start integrating with the North American leagues. A set of rules on drafting, trading and free agency will spread the talent more evenly over the two areas, allowing both to thrive and making the game more popular world wide.

Via FishStripes, Fish or Cut Bait uses his advertising database to present a series on the demographics of Marlins fans. The series starts here with part 1.

The Baseball Musings Pledge Drive is coming to an end. Why not join all your friends who supported the site this month and make a donation? Any amount is welcome. Thanks to everyone who donated so far, and I'll have a wrap up Sunday morning.

Curtis Granderson joins the ranks of blogging ballplayers and The Big Lead gets the interview.

The AL West, the smallest division in baseball provides the best probability for any particular team to win. This season, the division is shaping up for a very different finish than last year.

The Oakland Athletics won the AL West in 2006, but enter 2007 with the loss of two big guns, Frank Thomas and Barry Zito. The replacements are Rich Harden and Mike Piazza. The pitching move is pretty typical of the A's management. They let older pitchers go before they fall apart, and move a young stud into the rotation. Unfortunately, filling the fifth slot proved difficult. None of the four pitchers who tried to grab the job preformed well. That's going to cost the A's some wins.

The change from Thomas to Piazza downgrades the offense. Even more worrisome is the injury to Mark Kotsay that forces Shannon Stewart into the lineup. Right now, Jason Kendall looks like the best offensive player on the team. There are some places where the A's might improve, however. Dan Johnson corrected a vision problem, which might bring him back to his 2005 level of play. Healthy seasons from Chavez and Crosby would also make up for some of the lost offense. Right now, on paper, the Oakland Athletics look like a third place team. But Billy Beane does an excellent job year in and year out of correcting weaknesses in the team mid stream. He going to need to do a very good job of it this season.

The second place Angels spent big bucks on Gary Matthews Jr. to improve the top of the order and the outfield defense. They paid a lot of money for a player in his 30s with only one great season under his belt. It strikes me that this move is likely to disappoint. Still, they have Vlad Guerrero, recovered from a bad knee in 2006. Even with a bum leg he was a force to be reckoned with. A healthy Vlad makes the offense better and is an MVP candidate.

I also like the way the Angels are weaving young players into the lineup. Kendrick and Kotchman look likely to get plenty of playing time this season, and Weaver and Saunders get to spend a whole year in the rotation.
Weaver starts the season on the DL, but the injury is minor and he'll likely miss just one turn. With Colon returning sometime in May, the Angels clearly own the best pitching in the division. They're solid top to bottom, with good strikeout rates and low walks allowed. And they finish the game with the division's best closer, Francisco Rodriguez. The pitching and a decent offense makes them a good pick for the division lead.

My only worry is that Figgins, Anderson and Cabrera are a year older and likely to decline, while Juan Rivera remains injured, to be replaced by the light hitting Shea Hillenbrand. With the strength of the staff, the offense doesn't have to be great, but low run scoring might prevent the Angels from running away with the race.

My surprise in the AL West goes to the Seattle Mariners. Although fans are disappointed with the production of Sexson and Beltre, and some are upset that the team is bringing in older players like Guillen and Vidro, the offense is consistently good. Based on 2006 numbers, even without making adjustment for improved health, the Mariners look like they own the best set of position players in the division. Healthy years from Guillen and Vidro make the offense much better. I'm very positive about that half of the team.

The pitching staff leaves something to be desired, but they do have a real wild card in Felix Hernandez. He looked great in his rookie year, but 2006 saw him take a big step backwards. He came to camp in the best shape of his life, prepared to carry this team. If he can pull off the types of seasons a young Gooden or Clemens pitched in the mid 1980s, the rest of the staff doesn't need to do all that well for the Mariners to post a winning record, even a division win.

Finally, the team that is likely to bring up the rear in the division is the Texas Rangers. We're used to Texas producing a lot of runs, but the offense is full of holes. Hank Blalock, once an all-star, tries to turn his career around. Without his bat, Young and Teixeira do all the heavy lifting. Other question marks on the offense are Brad Wilkerson, recovering from an injury and a difficult season and the untested Nelson Cruz. It's not a bad offense, but it's not what we're used to from the Rangers, and there's not a lot of potential for improvement.

That would be fine if the pitching were in good shape, but for a long time this winter depth charts only listed three starters on the squad. And while Brandon McCarty may turn out to be a star, there's no depth to the lineup. Jamey Wright, awful for the Giants in 2006, was named the fifth starter. The offense will need to hit on all cylinders when Wright takes the hill.

The only bright light on the staff is if Eric Gagne returns to his dominant form. That way, with Otsuka setting up, the Rangers could shorten the game to seven innings. With a starting staff unlikely to go long in the game, those last two innings become crucial. A great Rangers offense might carry this staff in that case, but this particular set of run scorers aren't likely to get the job done.

So I see the division ending with the Angels in first, the Mariners in second, the Athletics in third and the Rangers in the basement. Of course, some more mid-season magic from Billy Beane could easily change that arrangement.

Correction: I was working off old notes and forgot to update the Rangers rotation. Jamey Wright won the fifth starter's job. However, substituting Wright for Chen and Giants for Orioles gives the exact same result.

The Minnesota Twins decided to take three catchers north. That used to be pretty common, when teams carried nine pitchers and catchers would often be pulled for pinch hitters. This probably has more to do with Mauer's stress reaction.

The MLBPA will file a grievence on behalf of Todd Walker. I wish one of these stories on the subject would explain why the union thinks this was wrongful termination.

This is very good news for the Arizona Diamondbacks:

Johnson, making his second start of spring training in his return from back surgery, struck out five San Diego batters in three shutout innings on Thursday night at Chase Field, the same ballpark (albeit with a different name) in which he did the bulk of his work in winning four Cy Young Awards with the Diamondbacks.

Johnson's schedule puts him back in the majors on April 19th. A healthy Johnson means that Arizona's rotation has the potential to be the best in the division. On another note, good and bad news for Micah Owings. Two of his competitors for the fifth spot in the rotation were sent to the minors, but he pitched poorly in relief.

Tyler Kepner points out that the Yankees are likely to go with the younger, cheaper player at the three positions up for grabs. Of course, when two of those younger players are 29, I'm not sure how much of an organizational shift that is. Still, at least the Yankees are moving in the right direction:

The additions of Henn, Nieves and Phelps represent a subtle organizational shift. Villone, Pratt and Phillips all fit the classic Torre profile because of their experience. But General Manager Brian Cashman wants to make the team younger and cheaper, and Torre is on board with that.

Update: Katie Gold takes up this theme at Sports Business Radio and Vince Gennaro talks about the cost savings of developing talent at The Hardball Times. One place where I'll disagree with Katie:

It's a "build-or-buy" world, and franchises are learning that it's no longer profitable nor sustainable to "buy" wins. Teams must "build" championships by devoting increased resources to player evaluation, talent development and player retention. It may be a slow, unpleasant and sometimes dull process, but you've to play through pain in order to achieve success. And if the Yankees can do it, anyone can.

Actually, it's quite possible to buy success. Ask the 1997 Florida Marlins. This kind of success tends to be short term, it can also prime the fan base, bringing in more revenue and making it easier to build that minor league talent. And let's face it, the buy strategy worked pretty well for New York, especially because they started with home grown talent and bought players to support that.

Earlier today I mentioned the Astros were my pick to win the NL Central. Since that elicited a number of responses, I thought it was time to start previewing the divisions in detail. So let's start with the NL Central.

The NL Central produced both an exciting regular season finish and the World Champion Cardinals in 2006. The Cardinals defense of their title starts with their superstar, Albert Pujols. The first baseman is the best hitter of his generation, still young enough that he's just reaching his peak. An injury kept him from challenging Bonds single season home run record in 2006, so we'll see if he can get off to a similar hot start this year.

The days of this being a dominating offense are over, however. While Pujols is at his peak, partners in offense Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds are fading. Age and injury brought the pair back down to earth. It used to be that the Cardinals could depend on these three generating a high number of runs, so the Cardinals could afford to fill in around them with okay players. That's not good enough anymore. The Cardinals need some skilled players around Albert, and yet they continue to sign older veterans to shore up the team. The way they go about building the team around Pujols is actually similar to what the Giants do with Bonds. That leaves St. Louis' offense susceptible to injury. Last year I thought the team would come back to the pack. They're going to need a great season by Pujols to keep them one step ahead of the tightening NL Central.

Even the pitching staff is questionable right now. Carpenter remains a true ace, but behind him are two young, unproven pitchers in Wainwright and Reyes. Both have potential, but both need to prove they're major league starters. The Cardinals, however, never fail to experiment. This season, Bradon Looper becomes a starter after exclusively relieving during his long major league career. I could find no record of a reliever making a successful move to the starting rotation this late in his career. If his spring numbers are any indication, Looper won't strike out many batters, leading to a ton of hits. That's a very bad combination for any pitcher. This won't be an easy season for St. Louis fans. The team should compete, but the odds of winning the division are not in their favor.

The team with the best chance of taking the division in my opinion is the Houston Astros. They feature the best starting pitcher in the division in Roy Oswalt, and the second best offensive player in Lance Berkman. And like the Cardinals of prior years, the heart of the Houston order is dominant. Berkman is healthy, surgeons fixed Morgan Ensberg's shoulder and Carlos Lee consistently outputs 25 win shares a season. I suspect these three will do for the Astros what Pujols, Rolen and Edmonds used to produce for the Cardinals. Although Astros fans may rightly be concerned about the long term aspects of Lee's contract, I suspect he'll be very good this season.

There are problems with the offense, however, and a big one is long-time Astro Craig Biggio. The future Hall of Famer continues to play as he attempts to reach 3000 hits. But his offense is on the decline, and a team that really wanted to win might replace him with a better player at second base. But there's something to be said for loyalty, and the Houston fans get to see Biggio go for his milestone hit and try one more time for a World Championship. However, the rest of the offense is okay, and if you have three great hitters, a bunch of good ones should be enough to generate runs.

Backing up Oswalt in the rotation is Jason Jennings, who pitched well in Colorado and should do fine in a better environment in Houston. But the back of the rotation, especially the 4-5 starters are weak. I suspect this will eventually drive Houston to re-sign Roger Clemens for another stretch drive.

Still, the offense should overcome the pitching problems, and while Houston isn't going to run away with the division, they have the best combination of players in the NL Central.

The Cincinnati Reds held the NL Central in the palm of their hands at various times in 2006. All they needed was a winning streak at the top. Instead, taking first place usually led to a slump. A swoon by their star hitter, Adam Dunn, and a poor trade for relief help doomed them to finish back in a fairly easy division. At this point, the Reds can't do much about the trade, but Adam Dunn took his slump seriously. The slugger spent the winter training to be more like Ichiro. At first, that sounds like a bad thing, but he's not working to go from a slugger to a singles hitter. Dunn, strikeout artist extraordinaire wants to make more contact. That's a great idea. With his strength and batting eye, more balls in play means more hits (and homers) for Dunn, and more runs for the Reds.

Apart from Dunn, however, there's not much else offensively to cheer about on the Reds in 2007. But they clearly own the best starting rotation in the division. It's a bit of a topsey-turvey world in Cincinnati this season, as the pitching is strong and the offense is weak. Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo represent the best 1-2 punch in the division. And waiting in the wings is top prospect Homer Bailey. If Milton or Lohse fail, look for Bailey to move up to the majors and improve the staff.

With good pitching and a weak offense, expect a number of close games and David Weathers to figure prominently in the Reds success.

The Milwaukee Brewers were the trendy pick to break the .500 barrier in 2006. They failed in that endeavor, but they're a young team still on the rise. In a poll on the finish of the NL Central, almost every blogger questioned put the Brewers first or second, making them the "wisdom of crowds" favorite to win the division. My number don't show the Brewers that strong, but the improvement arrows point up. Rickey Weeks and Prince Fielder are young and play 2007 with a year of MLB experience under their belt. Moving Hall to center puts a better arrangement of talent on the field. The addition of Estrada at catcher is a good offensive upgrade at the position. The Brewers should score more runs this season.

But the biggest boost should come from a healthy Ben Sheets in the rotation. Sheets returning to his 2004 form gives the Brewers a solid 1-4 in the rotation. Of course, there's the possibility of too much optimism here. Weeks and Fielder posted good but not great OBAs in 2006. Hall may not adjust well in center. And Sheets, with his series of injuries may have seen his best days. The Brewers are like the Tigers of 2006; if everything breaks right, they can win the division, but I don't seem them as clear cut favorites.

The team that made the biggest off-season move was the Chicago Cubs, signing Alfonso Soriano to an $18 million a year contract and moving him to a tougher defensive position in centerfield. If Soriano can post numbers anywhere near his 2006 level, it will be a huge boost to the Cubs win total. Combine that with a healthy Derrek Lee and a locked up Aramis Ramirez, and Chicago pitchers shouldn't lack for run support.

However, some things don't change. Cesar Izturis provides no offense at shortstop, and his backup, Ronny Cedeno isn't any better. And what happens if 2006 turns out to be a fluke for Soriano? They'll need Matt Murton to continue to improve. Still my guess is that Lee and Soriano together for a full year, with more improvement from a young Murton results in more offense in Chicago.

Pitching presents a big question mark, however. Zambrano is a terrific number one starter, but there's not much behind him. Lilly is more of a third starter, but on this team he's number two. If you want to put a positive spin on Jason Marquis' 2006 ERA, you can say he was left in to save the bullpen in a few games while getting hammered. Of course, getting hammered in a few games isn't exactly what one wants from a starting pitcher. Mark Prior doesn't appear on his way to his old form, so this is a very iffy rotation. The Cubs improved their offense without improving their pitching staff. I just don't see the Cubs winning with this team, unless the division turns out to be as bad as 2006.

The Pirates bring up the rear in the division. Of course, it's simple for Pirates fans in 2007. Root for Bay and Sanchez and hope everyone else gets lucky. What's worse, however, is that the Pirates farm system has nothing to show for years of major league ineptitude. The farm system should be crawling with fine young talent, but the Pittsburgh AA and AAA affiliates are crawling with players in their mid 20s. That's not the age that produces stars. The Athletics and Twins showed how to build a team with a low payroll. The Devil Rays and Royals can point to talent in their systems. There's no excuse for the Pirates to be this bad. Things won't change until Pittsburgh hires a GM who knows how to build a team from scratch.

So I see the division finishing Astros, Cardinals, Brewers, Reds, Cubs and Pirates. But it's going to be really close, where any of the first five teams offers legitimate reasons to finish first. I wouldn't assign a probability of winning the division higher that 20% to any team in the NL Central. That the first five teams, throw their names a hat, pull them out at random and you'll get just as good a prediction of the order of finish. I'm looking forward to a tight pennant race in 2007.

Correction: I meant Ronny Cedeno, not Neifi Perez.

Most Valuable Network announces minor league baseball coverage at MVN MiLB.

The Baseball Guru is a new website with tons of links to lots of baseball sites plus original information. Stop by and check out their lists.

Now that the Nationals set their roster and named Cristian Guzman their starting shortstop, Harper Gordek makes a pledge to hold off on criticism for a while. It's a pretty complicated pledge, and includes this:

If I read an article that I feel misrepresnts Cristian Guzman's current or past performance, and he is currently meeting the above requirements, I promise to attempt to respond to said misrepresentations without resorting to phrases that are less than factual. These phrases include, but are not limited to, "worst player ever", "punishment from God", and "doesn't deserve to be even a boil on the ass of Honus Wagner's festering corpse"

Personally, I'm waiting for Guzman to play so poorly that Harper gets to use that last phrase.

Kenny Rogers starts the season on the disabled list with a tired arm. That's one of the dangers carrying old pitchers on your team, you never know when they are going to break down. The Tigers take two days off in April, so it's not that easy to go with just four starters. However, they do get the second day of the season off, so they don't need a fifth until April 11th, when Rogers should be back. It's good the Tigers built up plenty of pitching depth.

A Cubs fan and a Cardinals fan debate the 2007 season over at Three Man Lift. I like the Cubs fan take on the Cardinals health:

So, let me make sure I'm reading this correctly. You are hoping the third baseman, a key starting pitcher, an entire outfield and the closer are all going to stay healthy?? I hope to one day make sweet pupply love to Jessica Alba and I think my chances are better.

I'm picking the Astros to win the division.

Evan Grant details the decisions made to set the Texas pitching staff. There's a handy chart at the bottom of the article that goes over all the pitchers with their highlights or lowlights from spring training.

It looks like Texas is one of many teams that will use starter number 5 sparingly in April:

Wright: Though he will be the team's fifth starter, he will pitch only three times in April while the Rangers keep the other members of the rotation on a regular routine. Wright has agreed to extend his minor league deal, which was supposed to end Wednesday, through the first week of April to allow him to pitch twice more before his April 10 start against Tampa Bay. He will pitch Friday's exhibition in Frisco and on April 5 for the Roughriders.

This is a good compromise between a four-name rotation and using a fifth starter every game. I don't know why teams don't do this all season and squeeze a couple of more starts out of each of the top four starters.

Carlos Silva takes the fifth spot in the Twins rotation over Matt Garza:

Garza, the team's first-round draft pick in 2005, appeared upset upon arriving in a golf cart at the minor league complex with his equipment. He declined to comment.

"We've been thinking about it over and over again, trying to decide what's best for this young man and our ballclub," manager Ron Gardenhire said. "He needs to be able to locate his pitches a little bit more.

"You have to be able to locate all of your pitches, besides your fastball. You can survive in spring training into six or seven innings with your fastball. You can't do that in the big leagues. He'll mature out there after a couple of weeks."

I suspect a bad outing or two by Sliva is all that's needed to return Garza to the majors.

Japan's best players already head to the United States when they become free agents, and now there is a fear that the best high school players head to the west before they play a game for their home country:

He wants to convince a top Japanese player coming out of high school to go directly to the United States rather than to the Japanese team that drafts him.

"I've been trying for 10 or 12 years," Nomura says. "But it's such a strong cultural thing. I've gone to college and high school coaches, I've gone to the parents, I've gone to the kids. So far, no go."

The next opportunity could be Sho Nakata. The powerful high school senior from Osaka is an accomplished pitcher but is the stuff of legend in Japan for long home runs, including one last year that went 520 feet, according to local media.

Three years ago, Nakata played in a tournament in suburban Chicago and told the Northwest Herald he would like to return to the United States and pitch for the Yankees.

"If it happens, it happens," Ito says, dismissing the impact of a player like Nakata spurning pro baseball in his homeland. "But the majority of club owners would answer differently."

Just as he believes the money involved in landing Matsuzaka is not likely to be repeated often, Ito also says one high school player going to the United States would not signal a mass exodus, for practical reasons.

"They're like teenagers anywhere else," he says. "Girls see Nakata here, they go crazy. He can play in the top leagues in Japan when he's 20. He'll be famous.

"If he goes to the U.S., he'll be in places like Midland, Texas. The food will be a big problem. He won't have friends, especially girls. It's not the physical and technical talent that will hold him back."

As the article points out, the money is much better in the US. One of these teenagers will eventually realize he'll make a lot more money playing his entire career in North America than waiting a number of years before his team posts him.

My Baseball Bias notes that if you want to get the Extra Innings Superfan Package from DirecTV, you need to own the carrier's latest equipment. Extra Innings, however, will work with any of their receivers.

Project A13 wants to convince you to cheer for A-Rod.

Hat tip, WasWatching.

Yanksfan vs. Soxfan notes that Steve Swindal and the Steinbrenner family are parting ways.

George Steinbrenner's daughter filed divorce papers this week against husband Steve Swindal, a move that appears to end his chance to take over as head of the New York Yankees.

Jennifer Swindal filed the papers Tuesday in Hillsborough County Circuit Court's family law department, Yankees spokesman Howard Rubenstein said Wednesday. Rubenstein said the papers cited "irreconcilable differences."

"Steve and Jenny Swindal announced today that they are amicably ending their marriage of 23 years," Rubenstein said in a statement. "Although their marriage is dissolving, they remain friends and maintain a strong mutual respect. They are devoted to their two children and will make them their shared focus."

Reached by telephone, Swindal said he didn't want to comment beyond the statement or address his role with the team.

This doesn't really mean that Swindal can't continue to run the team. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez divorced and worked together at Desilu for years. And a successful Yankees team is good for both Steinbrenner's daughter and grand children. If Swindal is the best person to run the team, then he'll make money for the Steinbrenner family, which is the point of leaving the team to the family. And since his own children are involved, that gives him an incentive to run the team well.

Update 3/29/2007: This article seems to indicate that Swindal won't be staying on in any capacity. That's too bad. I like the way he's worked with Cashman and Torre. It would be a shame to lose that.

If you missed tonight's show, you can hear the recorded version here. It's also available on demand at TPSRadio. Tonight the AL East and NL West races are analyzed.

The Baseball Musings Radio Show is coming up in a little while at 8 PM EDT. You can leave questions during the show in the TPSRadio Chat Room at Stickam. I really recommend you stop by the chat room. Lots of people make for a lively discussion and helps me with the show. We'll be talking about the AL East and the NL West tonight. Click on the screen below to join the chat.

Update: I've removed the Stickam player. I didn't realize it would keep playing once my show was over. Also, if you see it in the future, clicking on the speaker icon in the top left corner should mute it, I think.

Dave Stewart, the former pitcher who reached fame with the Oakland Athletics blogs at Sports Action Daily. His latest post is on players to watch for 2007. There's not a lot of in depth analysis, but I do agree with this bit on Barry Bonds:

Last year was a "take a season off" kinda year for Barry. However, he's been flying under the radar so far this season, which means there's less pressure and fewer distractions for him. A more focused Bonds will equal more productivity... and being so close to breaking the HR record won't hurt either. I expect Barry to have an unbelievable season.

Barry appears to be healthy. I wouldn't be surprised if he hit 40 home runs this season.

A batted ball by Reed Johnson hit CC Sabathia on the left arm today, causing swelling. It's not clear if he'll be able to start opening day:

Last year, Sabathia strained an oblique muscle in his Opening Day start against the White Sox. In 2005, he began the season on the disabled list when he strained the same muscle while warming up for his first spring training start.

"I almost got out of here," he joked. "But the Winter Haven curse got me again."

The 2007 Media Information Directory arrived in the mail today. This is a handy guide to everyone involved in Major League baseball from the commissioner to the local beat writer. What caught my attention this year is the cover. In the past, the cover used a drawing of a generic baseball player. This year, pictures of the NL and AL pennant winners, MVPs and Cy Young winners grace the front. I wonder if this is due to the new harmony between management and the union?

The Baseball Musings radio show will be on TPSRadio tonight at 8 PM EDT. Check out TPSRadio's other sports programming as well.

You can stop by the chat room at TPSRadio during the broadcast and leave a comment. We're now using Stickam for the chat, so there are no logins required. Also, feel free to leave a question in the comments to this post and I'll be happy to answer it on the air.

Tonight I'll preview the AL East and NL West.

Nomar Garciaparra became the father of twin girls on Tuesday:

Former soccer star Mia Hamm, wife of Dodgers first baseman Nomar Garciaparra, delivered twin girls late Tuesday.

"Both are healthy and over five pounds," Dodgers spokesman Josh Rawitch said, adding the births took place in the Los Angeles area

.

They should name them Josephine and Johanna. :-)

A Venezuelan court sentenced Ugeth Urbina to 14 years in jail:

Urbina, a former pitcher with the Montreal Expos, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies, was also found guilty of illegal deprivation of liberty and violating a prohibition against taking justice into his own hands during a dispute over a gun on Oct. 16, 2005, according to a statement from the Attorney General's Office.

Urbina maintains his innocence.

Jamie Mottram donated $50 to the Baseball Musings pledge drive and gets to dedicate a post.

David Pinto is a blogfather to us all, and Baseball Musings is an inspiration for AOL's latest endeavor: MLB FanHouse. It's a group blog updated hourly with top-notch contributors from all over the web (The Dugout, We Are the Postmen, Surviving Grady, Foul Balls, Metstradamus, Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?, Larry Brown Sports and Detroit Bad Boys). Please stop by and check it out as the new season begins, and if you'd help spread the word we'll be forever grateful.

And Pinto rules! Throw mo' money in the hat! The man's been at it for five years, he's done enough!

The most recent post at MLB Fanhouse involves a thesis by Stanford graduate and Mariners prospect Chris Minaker on the use of steroids at the school. While the FanHouse post covers the steroid aspect, these student athletes are encouraged to take many supplements:

Teammates exerted the strongest external pressure by far, he said, followed by coaches. A coach, he writes, "can attempt to use his power to pressure his players into using supplements that he thinks will improve their performance, even if this is against the will of the player." Minaker found that the pressure athletes felt to use supplements, both from within and from external forces, was so great that they'd take products they had no proof even worked.

Protein and creatine were high on the list of popular supplements taken by the athletes Minaker surveyed.

"Overall, about 42 percent of the athletes surveyed had used a creatine supplement in hopes of enhancing their performance," he writes.

Some athletes consume massive amounts of protein shakes, he adds, even though research shows "a mixed diet" can provide the sufficient amount needed.

"In this study, it seems that every athlete is or has been on something," Minaker writes. "The supplement culture has become completely intertwined with the culture of collegiate sports, just as it had before with professional sports. There has been a trickle-down effect from professional sports right on down to the ranks of all athletic levels."

And remember, this is at a school known for its academics where you would think the athletes might be people who think for themselves. (Students there call Harvard the Stanford of the east, but really Stanford is the Yale of the west.) Think what it might be like at real sports factories.

It would be great to get Minaker together with Mike Mussina to see if this has changed at the school over time, of if this pressuring to use supplements went on in the early 90's as well.

Poor starts by other contenders for the Diamondbacks fifth rotation slot put Micah Owings in contention for the role.

In the most intriguing possible scenario, the dark-horse candidate, rookie Micah Owings, could swoop in and claim the job with a strong outing Thursday.

That's a game to keep your eye on tomorrow. The Yankees wanted Owings in the Johnson trade, but the Diamondbacks would not part with the young pitcher.

John Beamer notes that Jeff Francoeur's spring batting average and OBA indicate he still hasn't learned to take a pitch.

Ahtletic Supporters looks at what the A's might do if Dan Johnson's hip flexor turns out to be serious. Johnson is one of the players I see making Oakland better this year as an eye problem limited his usefulness in 2006. Losing him to a hip injury would be a tough break at this point.

Freddy Sanchez's knee will force him to miss opening day, but not much more:

Because Sanchez was out so long, he probably can't get enough spring training at-bats to be ready to start Monday against the Astros ' Roy Oswalt in Houston . Sanchez hopes to be ready for the Pirates' April 5-7 series in Cincinnati or, if not then, the April 9 home opener against St. Louis .

If Sanchez is placed on the 15-day disabled list Sunday, the Pirates can backdate the move by nine days as long as he doesn't play in a major league exhibition game. That means he could be activated less than a week into the season.

"Maybe I miss one series," Sanchez said. "If I push it now and get healthy by the (start of the) season, I'm probably going to need some at-bats. It probably wouldn't be good to be healthy and then the day before get thrown into the fire against Oswalt."

Sanchez remains one of the few bright spots on the Pittsburgh roster. He and Bay provide most of the offense, so the sooner he returns, the better.

The Red Sox are going to start Jon Lester at Greenville, SC. And they picked 12 pitchers for the opening day roster.

The Red Sox open the season Monday in Kansas City with Curt Schilling starting. The rest of the rotation is Josh Beckett, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield and Julian Tavarez. The bullpen consists of closer Jonathan Papelbon, Brad Donnelly, Joel Pineiro, J.C. Romero, Hideki Okajima, Snyder and Lopez.

That's six pitchers with the first initial J.

Redus and Weep honors Eric Milton in verse. Milton would be proud!

Lookout Landing weighs the pros and cons of keeping Brandon Morrow on the Mariners in the bullpen vs. sending him to the minors and calling him up later. There is one situation LL doesn't bring up, however. Since the long term goal puts Morrow in the starting rotation, why not send him down to start games, then bring him up as a starter when one of the duds the Mariners hired for the rotation flames out in June. Then, the worry about messing up his development in the bullpen goes away. And Morrow should add a lot more wins that way.

Balls, Sticks and Stuff notes the Phillies may end up with a much easier schedule than the Mets:

For instance, the Phillies play the Blue Jays, Royals, Tigers, White Sox and Indians, each for three games, during interleague play. The Mets on the other hand, will face the Yankees (two three-game series), Twins, Tigers, and Athletics. The 2006 winning percentage for the Phillies' 2007 interleague opponents is .509, while the Mets opponents are .590.

Of course, the Indians and Blue Jays could turn out to be better teams than last year, and who knows what happens if a team has to face Gil Meche twice! I also wouldn't be surprised if the A's and Tigers fell off a bit from last year. So it may turn out that the schedule is a lot closer than it looks.

Chop-n-Change notes that Scott Thorman went through an adjustment period each time the Braves promoted him in the minors, so Thorman's struggles in the majors last year might be a good sign for 2007.

The projections for Thorman's 2007 numbers vary greatly from one to the next. His Minor League Equivalent for last season was a very respectable .270/.324/.466 with 14 HRs in 309 ABs. Stretch that out to around 500 and you are talking about 23 HRs. This is around where I see Thorman performing this year. Bill James is probably the most optomisitc about Thorman's ability. In the 2007 Bill James Handbook, he has him listed at .287/.334/.494 with 8 HRs in only 178 ABs. Again, if you stretch those numbers out to a conservative guess of 500 ABs, we come up with around 23 HRs. I would be very happy to have that kind of production out of Thorman considering that would be just about average for NL firstbasemen (.290/.372/.507).

On the side bar of this story about the importance of baseball milestones, the ESPN writers pick the date they think Barry Bonds will pass Hank Aaron. I gave Pedro Gomez a date of 5/1/2008 (he said not in '07) and ignored Caple's pick of "Won't do it." It looks to me like the consensus date is 8/30/2007. Of the people who predict a record this season, the consensus date is 8/1/2007. Remember to set your DVRs!

You can read the submitted testimony of the principal witnesses before the Senate panel here. The two that stand out for me are EchoStar's Carl Vogel who says he'll match the DirecTV deal if EchoStar also gets a stake in the Baseball Channel. Even more interesting is Stephen F. Ross, law professor, who attacks the whole idea of horizontal markets for baseball broadcasts. That is, teams get exclusivity in a particular region. Ross wants to see that eliminated, so then systems can compete for particular packages of games. I'm all for that.

Jim Leyland named Ivan Rodriguez the Tigers leadoff man vs. lefties.

"I'll hit anywhere I am in the lineup. It doesn't matter," said Rodriguez, a career .304 hitter. "I don't care where I hit, as long as I'm in the lineup every day."

I always wonder why players complain about where they hit in the batting order. It seems to me the approach should be the same wherever one bats, get on base. This actually looks like a good move, as over the last seven seasons I-Rod posted a .390 OBA vs. left handers. And, because he won't be leading off every day, there will be less wear and tear on his body, especially in home games.

James Loney offers his opinion on being sent to the minors:

For the second day in a row, the normally agreeable Loney, who leads the team with a .455 spring batting average, made his feelings clear.

'I came here to work hard to help the team win and I can't do that in Las Vegas,' he said.

Yes! I want this man on my team. He wants to win, not do his best or whatever's good for the team. That's the ego of champions.

Emil Brown fights back against criticism of his defense:

Emil Brown glanced at the lineup card Sunday morning in the Royals' clubhouse, turned and observed to anyone within listening distance:

"I guess my defense is good enough for me to be in right field today."

The words came out as a challenge and borderline belligerent. The message was unmistakable. Brown has had it with those who label him "an adventure," or worse, in the outfield, on the bases or anywhere else.

His irritation centers on the media, first and foremost, but not exclusively. His fed-up list includes anyone trashing his skills, be they players or officials with other clubs -- or within the Royals' organization.

"I hear it all of the time," Brown said. "He's an adventure out there. Why? Because I'm actually trying to make plays happen?

"It isn't an adventure for (Twins outfielder) Torii Hunter when he dives for a ball and misses it. Then, it's, 'Oh, he just missed it.' He gets the benefit of the doubt because he's a Gold Glover. But it's an adventure when I do it."

Emil makes a good point. If you look at his defensive charts for 2006, Brown isn't a star defender, but he's basically making the plays. It doesn't matter how smooth you look catching the ball, as long as you make the catch.

Duaner Sanchez suffered a broken shoulder and isn't expected to be healthy before April.

Minaya said he thought it was a combination of Sanchez's surgically repaired right shoulder being not completely healed and a mound session from Thursday that caused Sanchez to stop throwing after just 11 pitches.

"I think it was a combination of him throwing that day and the past history," Minaya said.

The surgery for Sanchez's type of injury involves securing the fracture with a screw in the shoulder.

If Sanchez has surgery, he will be able to resume his rehab six-to-eight weeks after.

Suspect attitude, car accident, freak injury. Does Duaner date Alyssa Milano?

Baseball Musings reader and fellow former Connecticutian Katie Gold just started blogging for Sports Bu$ine$$ Radio. Her first post is about hockey, but stop by and say hi anyway!

Without a need for the infielder, the Padres will release Todd walker today, saving themselves nearly $3 million. However:

But the issue may not end there. The Padres' representative with the players' union, Chris Young, has said the union could file a grievance on Walker's behalf and would have a good case.

I'm not sure I understand the grievance. Is it that arbitration with a free agent implies a binding contract? If someone with more knowledge of these contracts could fill in the details, I'd appreciate it. On the important dates page, there's this entry under March 28:

Last date to request U.R. waivers by 2:00 p.m. ET, if you will hand, telephone, or fax notice to player, without incurring full season salary. (Owe 45 days termination pay). {Art. IX (B)}

Does anyone have a link to the current CBA? I haven't been able to find one.

The Senate holds hearings on the DirecTV deal today, but it looks like there's not much they can do about it:

Sixty million consumers would lose access to baseball's television package of out-of-market games if the sport is allowed to strike an exclusive deal with DirecTV, according to Sen. John Kerry.

A day ahead of a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing, the Massachusetts Democrat said the deal probably was legal but might not be good for fans.

"When you've got 75 million people who currently have the option of doing something and you reduce it to 15 million, you've got to ask are the terms of this deal fair and does it work for the fan and for the sport itself?" he said during a conference call Monday.

Kerry, of course, is exaggerating the numbers. There are more EI subscribers in the 15 million DirecTV customers than in the 60 million customers of other services. My feeling here is that the negotiations will go down to the last minute, and it all comes down to how many subscribers cable is willing to lose to DirecTV.

The Diamondbacks and Marlins swapped pitchers, with Jorge Julio traveling to Florida and Yusmeiro Petit heading to the desert.

The Diamondbacks wanted any team that acquired Julio to pay his entire $3.6 million salary, but they made an exception for the low-revenue Marlins in order to get a better prospect.

The Cardinals, Pirates and Devil Rays also had been interested in Julio, who was perhaps the most attractive reliever available on the trade market.

Julio is an interesting pitcher. His major league strikeout numbers are very good, and his walks are okay. But his home runs are high. Dolphin Stadium should be a good park for a pitcher like that.

Petit owns tantalizingly good minor league strikeout numbers. However, his rate goes down as he rises through the system. Is that real, or did he just rise too quickly? I'm guessing Arizona thinks the latter.

The Dodgers and Brewers swap players, LA picking up an outfielder and Milwaukee grabbing a reliever:

The Los Angeles Dodgers, shy on right-handed hitting outfielders, acquired Brady Clark and cash from the Milwaukee Brewers on Monday for reliever Elmer Dessens.

Clark owns a decent OBA for his career but no power. Since becoming a reliever in 2004, Dessens allowed a mere .307 OBA coming out of the pen. Both bring some value in their limited roles.

Daisuke Matsuzaka no-hit the Reds for five innings today. I fast forwarded the game on Tivo, but Rick Sutcliffe seemed to think that Dice-K didn't have good command today. It seemed the movement on his pitches was enough to fool the Reds even without pefect location.

Update: He walked five and struck out six. You could call that effectively wild.

I'll be attending the Baseball Prospectus event at the Yale Barnes and Noble tonight in New Haven. If you're attending, be sure to say hello.

Rays Index looks at the battle for the 5th slot in the Devil Rays rotation. Edwin Jackson might have the edge because he's out of options:

Jackson and Howell two have very similar spring numbers. Howell has given up 13 hits, 5 walks and 1 hit batter with 9 strikeouts in 15 innings (1.80 ERA). In 14.2 innings, Jackson has allowed 10 hits, 8 walks and struck out 13 (1.84 ERA). With Jackson out of minor league options Howell probably would have needed to be markedly better than Jackson this spring to win the final spot. Maddon will probably make his decision official on Thursday. Whoever starts on Thursday will be on schedule to pitch the 5th game of the season.

With that many walks, I'm surprised their ERAs are so low, but it's a small sample size. I would go with Howell, simply because his minor league numbers show him to be the better pitcher. Then again, being the fifth starter on the Devil Rays makes you close to Mr. Irrelevant.

Matt Cerrone just sent me a link to this press release, naming Baseball Musings the second best baseball blog. I'm deeply honored. Athletics Nation ranked first, with Matt's MetsBlog.com coming in third. And readers, you're a big part of this blog's ranking:

The top 10 blogs have extremely active communities averaging over a dozen comments per post and combining for over 6300 comments over the last week.

As I've said before, I love the comments here. Thanks to all of you who make this job so much fun.

And if you want to do more to support this type of community, Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive in March.

Royals Authority expands on the idea that the Royals did not help themselves trading for Tony Pena, Jr.

The whole idea that Dayton Moore actually traded for a player who isn't any better than Berroa (or Blanco for that matter) makes me ill. The whole time I've been campaigning for the replacement of Berroa, it was with the idea that the Royals would actually try to upgrade the position. This isn't an upgrade. The Royals are a one armed man, treading water. They're going in circles.

What does Moore see in this guy? The official line from the Royals is, "His bat is starting to come around." Puh-leez. And then there's the line, "He's ready to be an everyday shortstop at the major league level." Oh, really? Glove, maybe. Bat, no way.

This move stinks. We've basically exchanged one hacktastic middle infielder for another.

This, my friends, is called polishing a turd.

Daniel Drezner explores why Dan Shaughnessy is jealous of Curt Schilling blogging:

If blogs can beat newspapers to the punch in reporting inside information, what is their comparative advantage? Three possibilities: 1) better analysis; 2) better writing; and 3) better controversy.

I've read enough of Shaughnessy's baseball analysis to know that's not his strength (Rob Bradford demonstrates more baseball knowledge in a single story than Shaughnessy does in an entire season). He's an OK writer, but there are plenty of Red Sox beat writers and bloggers who are better (note to Globe sports editor: give Amalie Benjamin her own full-time Sox blog). No, Shaughnessy's specialty is using his acid pen to ignite public feuds with Shaughnessy.

Dan Shaughnessy shows no respect for Schilling or the people who submit questions to him. As a reporter, Shaughnessy should be happy for the availability of more information. Instead, he shows why he's a cut rate Murray Chass.

Billfer wonders if Chris Shelton will make the Tigers opening day roster, and how the Tigers might get playing time for all their first basemen.

Paul Sullivan discusses the problems the Cubs face moving from Arizona to Chicago, and the chilling effects on hitting.

So while Cubs hitters have looked relatively sharp this spring, the turn of the calendar from March to April can lead to a sudden change of direction.

Ramirez wasn't the only Cubs hitter who struggled last April, when the Cubs ranked 11th in the National League with a .256 average. Jacque Jones and Juan Pierre also started slowly. Though all three finished with decent numbers, the Cubs fell 8- games out of first by May 13.

While Sullivan is most concerned about the weather, there is also the elevation effect. Phoenix is 1100 feet above sea level, Chicago, 580 feet. The higher you go, the better the ball travels.

Pat Andriola at Shea Faithful interviews Bill James. I though this answer was interesting:

Pat Andriola: The St. Louis Cardinals had an 82-Pythagorean-win season last year, but went on to win the World Series. Are there any changes to the system that could make it less of a chance affair, and would you want to make those changes if you could?

Bill James: I'm not a great fan of the Wild Card. But it is tremendously important, for the health of the sport, that the best team doesn't always win. That's the real problem with the NBA. . .the best team is going to win in the long run, and everybody knows it. The season becomes a long, crushing battle in which, ultimately, you have no chance to escape justice. . .as opposed to college basketball, which is vastly more exciting, simply because you never know who will win, and therefore have to do everything you can do to maximize your chance. In the NBA you don't really HAVE a chance to win, if you're not one of the two or three best teams, and everybody knows this on some level. . .therefore, why play hard, why dive for the ball on the floor, why fight for the rebound, why sacrifice your body to score a point, when you ultimately can't win. No sport can survive if the best team always wins.

This is the macro version of why I like baseball better than other sports. Sticking with the NBA, if the game is on the line with three seconds to go, Michael Jordan gets the ball; the best player on your team takes the last shot. The twelfth man on the team never even sees action in that situation. But in baseball, you never know who is going to be up in that spot. You hope it's David Ortiz, but sometimes you get Luis Sojo, and sometimes Sojo comes through. In baseball, you never know who the hero is going to be.

Tony La Russa tinkered with the idea of a four-man rotation:

La Russa also released the order of the Cardinals starting rotation. As expected, Chris Carpenter will be the Opening Night starter, and Kip Wells and Braden Looper will follow against the Mets. After Carpenter opens the series at Houston on April 6, Adam Wainwright and Anthony Reyes will take the mound.

The success of the Cardinals starters this spring has been a bonus for La Russa, who said he had considered downsizing the number of players in the team's rotation to four.

"Because of how well these guys have gone about everything we'll be pitching five guys," La Russa said.

Given that Looper isn't striking out anyone this spring, there's a good chance he gets hammered as a starter. I wonder if La Russa will go with a four-man rotation if that happens?

Travis Lee, it appears, is done with baseball:

First baseman Travis Lee asked for and was granted his unconditional release by the Washington Nationals , who made three other roster moves before Sunday's exhibition game against the Atlanta Braves .

Lee told general manager Jim Bowden he doesn't want to play anymore, the Nationals said. Lee had been competing with Dmitri Young for the starting job at first base while Nick Johnson recovers from a broken leg.

I'm surprised anyone wanted Lee to play anymore. He never lived up to his promise as a hitter. He didn't get on base, he didn't hit for power, all he could do was pick up throws at first base. And yet he parlayed that into a nine year career and made about $11 million dollars. Lee always struck me as someone who possessed talent for the game but not a passion for the game. When Leo Durocher said nice guys finish last, he was talking about Travis.

A few days ago I introduced the idea of a probabilistic model of Ground into Double Plays (GDP). The probabilistic model of range just measures the ability to turn a ball into an out. For infielders, however, they're often asked to turn a ground ball into more than one out. The idea is to take a very specific situation; ground ball hit, man on first, less than two out and build a model that measures both plays made and GDP turned. With that model, we can ask which fielders perform well in that situation.

In building this model, I left parks out of the parameters. Basically, I thought the sample size would be too small if I left the parks in. This probably hurts the three teams that play of artifical turf.

Let's start by looking at the ability of shortstops to start a double play. The following table looks at three indexes for each fielder. The Plays Made (PM) index measures Plays Made / Predicted Plays Made. This measures the fielder's ability to turn a ball into an out. The GDP index does the same for ground double plays. Does the fielder start the expected number of double plays? And finally, an outs index that looks at the total number of outs accured to the fielder on these balls in play. It could be a fielder is making up for a lack of range by being really good at starting GDPs, or vice versa. Remember, this says nothing about the pivot man or the receiver at first base. In this context, we're only looking at the fielder who starts the play.

Probabilistic Model of GDPs, Ground Balls, Man on First, Less than Two Out, Shortstops Starting GDP (2006 Data Used to Build Model)

Player	Ground Balls In Play	Actual Plays Made	Predicted Plays Made	PM Index	Actual GDP	Predicted GDP	GDP Index	Actual Outs	Predicted Outs	Outs Index
Craig Counsell	183	40	32.14	124.44	32	21.23	150.72	72	53.38	134.89
Khalil Greene	219	53	45.27	117.08	31	28.68	108.07	84	73.95	113.59
Stephen Drew	121	26	23.68	109.82	17	14.29	118.92	43	37.97	113.25
Clint Barmes	283	56	53.75	104.18	42	33.03	127.16	98	86.78	112.92
Juan Uribe	274	58	50.75	114.29	34	31.85	106.75	92	82.60	111.38
Hanley Ramirez	352	71	67.58	105.05	49	43.18	113.48	120	110.76	108.34
Miguel Tejada	342	76	72.84	104.33	52	45.35	114.66	128	118.20	108.30
David Eckstein	298	61	56.74	107.50	38	34.92	108.81	99	91.67	108.00
Jack Wilson	290	64	62.47	102.45	46	39.39	116.77	110	101.86	107.99
Rafael Furcal	396	92	85.54	107.55	58	55.24	104.99	150	140.78	106.55
Bill Hall	228	55	50.83	108.21	33	32.90	100.30	88	83.73	105.10
Bobby Crosby	237	44	42.12	104.47	29	27.37	105.94	73	69.49	105.05
Alex Gonzalez	244	50	51.18	97.69	38	33.41	113.74	88	84.59	104.03
Jimmy Rollins	333	70	69.50	100.72	48	44.05	108.97	118	113.54	103.92
Carlos Guillen	303	65	64.24	101.18	45	41.63	108.10	110	105.87	103.90
Adam Everett	309	66	63.51	103.91	41	40.15	102.11	107	103.67	103.22
Ronny Cedeno	240	49	46.28	105.87	28	29.54	94.79	77	75.82	101.55
Michael Young	410	88	86.89	101.28	54	55.41	97.46	142	142.30	99.79
Jason A Bartlett	214	50	47.40	105.49	28	31.86	87.90	78	79.25	98.42
Jose Reyes	304	67	66.70	100.45	40	43.66	91.62	107	110.36	96.96
Omar Vizquel	297	64	65.48	97.73	42	44.00	95.45	106	109.49	96.82
John McDonald	170	25	26.52	94.26	18	17.91	100.50	43	44.43	96.77
Orlando Cabrera	319	58	60.40	96.03	38	39.02	97.38	96	99.42	96.56
Felipe Lopez	319	67	64.47	103.93	34	40.58	83.78	101	105.05	96.15
Angel Berroa	337	69	72.29	95.44	46	47.91	96.02	115	120.20	95.67
Jhonny Peralta	357	82	84.45	97.10	50	55.63	89.88	132	140.08	94.23
Alex Cora	127	30	32.94	91.07	21	22.16	94.76	51	55.10	92.56
Marco Scutaro	146	34	37.58	90.47	24	25.22	95.15	58	62.81	92.35
Edgar Renteria	347	63	67.67	93.10	39	43.19	90.30	102	110.86	92.01
Yuniesky Betancourt	350	60	66.40	90.36	43	46.02	93.44	103	112.42	91.62
Julio Lugo	182	32	35.29	90.68	21	23.66	88.74	53	58.95	89.90
Ben T Zobrist	131	25	28.09	89.00	17	18.93	89.82	42	47.02	89.33
Juan Castro	146	23	25.18	91.33	13	15.27	85.11	36	40.46	88.98
Derek Jeter	336	63	70.96	88.79	40	45.81	87.32	103	116.77	88.21
Royce Clayton	234	43	47.02	91.44	20	29.67	67.40	63	76.70	82.14
Aaron W Hill	108	16	20.33	78.70	7	12.82	54.62	23	33.14	69.39

Notice how few chances fielders get to turn GDPs. On the best teams, they get a little over two chances a game. Secondly, Arizona does a good job of picking out shortstops, as Counsell and Drew are near the top of the list. And if you don't like Derek Jeter, here's another area where you can pick on him.

The other thing that strikes me about the list is that shortstops who are good at making plays are also the ones good at starting double plays. Ronny Cedeno is unusual in that he's good at getting an out, but didn't do well starting DPs. Could it be that Todd Walker was just a poor pivot man? I hope further research using these models will help answer that question.

Carlos Silva pitched poorly again, putting his job with the Twins in jeopardy:

With Perkins out of the equation, that leaves Silva, Johan Santana, Ramon Ortiz, Sidney Ponson, Matt Garza and Boof Bonser competing for the five starting spots.

Gardenhire made it clear Silva needs to improve in his final spring outing next week to keep a starting job.

"All we can do is just keep putting him back out there again," Gardenhire said. "And if it doesn't get better, then we make an adjustment."

Silva was slotted to take the number two spot in the rotation, but that's likely to go to Bonser now. It's pretty sad when you can't beat out Ponson or Ortiz for a spot in the rotation.

Former Reds catcher Ed Baily died from cancer on Friday:

Al Neil, Bailey's brother-in-law, told The Knoxville News Sentinel that Bailey died at Parkwest Medical Center after being diagnosed with throat cancer about six months ago.

The five-time All-Star catcher from Strawberry Plains started his professional career with the Reds in 1953. Bailey hit 28 home runs in 1956 for Cincinnati, including three in one game.

Bailey posted impressive OBAs for a catcher. However, he wasn't a wiz on the bases, going 2 for 14 in one three year stretch trying to steal.

My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Joe Strauss notes the Cardinals lack of hitting this spring. Part of it is the weather:

La Russa has been grading on a curve because of the wind blowing into Roger Dean Stadium.

"If the wind blows like this during the regular season, the National League leader will have a dozen home runs," La Russa said.

But there's more to it as well:

Kennedy is representative of a trend this spring. He is one of five projected opening day starters who have missed games because of injury. Shortstop David Eckstein, center fielder Jim Edmonds, right fielder Juan Encarnacion and most recently catcher Yadier Molina are the others. Edmonds is scheduled to play his first game Sunday. Encarnacion may not play in Florida before opening the season on the disabled list with lingering weakness in his left wrist.

A strained muscle in his side kept Kennedy out of the spring lineup until March 10. Since then, he has hit .172 in 29 at-bats.

For years the Cardinals wrote three superb offensive players into the middle of their lineup, so they were able to fill in the gaps with older players. But now, 2/3 of that heart of the order isn't quite as fearsome, so the older players filling St. Louis hired might not be enough. Young offensive talent produced by the St. Louis system since Pujols' premier is close to zero. That lack of production may catch up with the Cardinals this season.

Barry Zito is eating an areospace diet:

What fuels Barry Zito?

Is it his desire to excel? Or the pressure of living up to a $126 million contract, the richest ever given to a pitcher?

Well, literally, what fuels Zito is a chocolate cherry muffin, one baked by an aerospace physiologist, to be precise.

Zito leaves nothing to chance in his preparation, and that includes his diet. In November, he started on a nutrition program formulated by Precision Food Works, a Manhattan Beach company founded by former NASA consultant Chris Talley.

Every other day this spring, Zito arrives at Scottsdale Stadium to find a large cardboard box at his locker. It says "refrigerate upon opening" in large block letters under the next-day air label.

Inside are frozen, vacuum-sealed containers of everything from blackberry custard to spinach flour pasta to mandarin Danish toast. Every ingredient of every preservative-free dish is weighed to the gram. The meals contain a balance of vitamins, nutrients, fat, protein and carbohydrates customized to Zito's specific body chemistry.

And then there are those muffins.

"So good," Zito said. "It's one of my favorite things."

I wonder if this guy bakes the muffins? Maybe Talley becomes successful enough that anyone can buy his food, not just rich athletes.

Chien-Ming Wang heads to the disabled list:

Yankees right-hander Chien-Ming Wang, a 19-game winner last season, will start the season on the disabled list with a right hamstring pull.

Wang, who had been under consideration to start opening day April 2 against Tampa Bay, is expected to be sidelined at least a month.

That's a bit of a blow to the Yankees, but all those off-season trades means the Yankees have pitchers available:

"We have depth. We have choices," Cashman said. "It's a short-term issue that you're dealing with. Somebody else will get an opportunity."

Also, looking at the Yankees schedule, they could get away with just one start from the fifth spot in the rotation during the first 17 games.

The Rockies set their infield yesterday, sending Clint Barmes to AAA and installing Troy Tulowitzki as the starter. Barmes never posted great minor league numbers and was even less impressive as a major leaguer, ending whatever shot he had at a career with an accidental fall. Tulowitzki is only 22, and his minor league OBA and slugging percentage are good for a shortstop. This looks like a major upgrade for the Rockies.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the first post at Baseball Musings. I want to thank all the readers who come by the site on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, and all those who find the site once and enjoy what they read. You make maintaining this site worthwhile. I'm sure the next five seasons will be as much fun.

As Baseball Musings starts its sixth season covering major league baseball, I hope you'll consider a donation to the pledge drive. Any amount is welcome. If every one who visited the site in March donated a dollar, Baseball Musings could operate for a year. If you use the Day by Day Database, if you find the research here interesting, why not drop $5 in the tip jar? Join the people who already donated!

PROTRADE uses a metric similar to PMR to find the lucky hitters from 2006:

PROTRADE has mapped out every inch of the diamond, charting every batted ball in the majors over the past five years, calculating the probability that given their distance, direction and hardness, they become hits or outs. You may hear a manager encourage a slumping player by saying that he is "making great contact" or "hitting the ball hard" but that the balls just aren't finding a way through the defense for hits because they are getting "unlucky."

Marlins fans should be worried about their middle infielders.

Here's the video I promised yesterday:

Dayton Moore took Tony Pena, Jr. off the hands of his old employer. The Royals lost faith in Angel Berroa. However, I don't see where Pena is going to be an improvement. His career minor league OBA is .285. I'm surprised someone that offensively bad hung around in the minors for six seasons.

"Another good young player," Bell said after Kansas City's game against Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., was rained out. "We're going to get him in camp. He's going to play, and then we'll manage the position as we go. We don't have a whole lot of time, but we've got a lot of really good reports on him and we'll see what happens."

He better have a great glove, because describing him as good just doesn't jibe with reality. I can't help but think the Royals would be better off keeping the prospect and living with Berroa at short until they can find someone who is actually good to play the position.

Chone Figgins injured his hand:

X-rays taken Friday by hand specialist Dr. Steve Shin at the Kerlan-Jobe Clinic revealed Figgins has fractures of the index and middle fingers on his right hand. He was injured in the fifth inning of Wednesday's game against Arizona in Tempe, Ariz., when a grounder hit by Conor Jackson bounced off his hand. Figgins was charged with an error on the play and came out of the game after the inning.

He's likely out until May. Izturis gets the nod to take over the position.

My daughter's high school orchestra played for the Massachusetts Music Educators' Association All-State Conference this afternoon, and I journeyed east to enjoy the show. I'll have video highlights on YouTube soon. I stopped in Cambridge earlier to join professor of international politics and Red Sox fanDaniel Drezner for lunch. Among other things, we talked about how Matsuzaka and the WBC help international relations and Papelbon moving back to the closer role.

The Longmeadow High School orchestra played Verdi and Shubert wonderfully. It's nice to hear them in a room with good acoustics, since their high school auditorium is less than adequate.

I'm on the road today working from my phone so I can't link, but go to jsonline.com and read the Rickey Weeks story. It's a good example of a misconception about leadoff hitters. It's good for them to be aggressive on a 2-0 court. There job is to get on base. If they take pitches, all the better, but that's not the main part of the job.

Update: I'm home, and here's the link.

Futon Report explains why ninja training might not be the best thing for a pitcher.

Mark Prior seemed to pitch okay yesterday for someone who might start the season on the DL. Both Bleed Cubbie Blue and 6-4-2 attended the game and came away with similar impressions, that Prior was finding himself as the game progressed.

Is Mark Prior "back"? Heavens, no. It's one game, four innings, in spring training, though against a good team that was starting what is probably going to be its Opening Day lineup (although how the Padres can hit Josh Bard cleanup on an everyday basis is beyond me). Prior's stuff was better. His command was better. Is he ready for a major league mound? No, he's not. Is he ready for another spring training start? I would suspect so; next Tuesday against the Royals would make sense to me.

But it seems to me there's little evidence he's hurt, and so once again, the disabled list should not be an option.

Mike Rants about the poor construct of the Phillies 25 man roster.

They cut utility infielder Danny Sandoval, who committed six errors in thirteen games, and two pitchers who were supposed to be part of the bullpen mix, Brian Sanchez and Justin Germano (who was claimed on waivers by the Padres) among others. Minor cuts surely. However, they demonstrate how deeply, how fundamentally fouled up this team is.

Sandoval, a no-hit/(apparently) no-field middle infielder, was the only man on the roster who could competently back up Jimmie Rollins at shortstop. The only other player with major-league experience at short is Abraham O'Nunez, who played just three games there last year.

On average backup shortstops play around fifty games each year (actually, 52.14 to the starter's 128.38 on average for 2000-06). Nunez, who came up as a shortstop with the Pirates in 1997, has not played that many games at short since 1999.

Besides Nunez is supposed to split time at third with cemented gloved Wes Helms. Imagine Charlie Manuel, a manager who has yet to master the intricacies of the double-switch or a modern bullpen, trying to rotate Nunez around the infield late in ballgames.

So no biggy, the Phils are just foregoing utility infielders. Maybe in and of itself, that wouldn't be that big a deal. But this team is skimping in so many areas like right field, third base, and the bullpen.

Mike thinks the team wins just 75 games this season, rather than compete for the division title. The counter argument to that is, what if the starters stay healthy all year? This strikes me as a team that is not going to be very dependent on their bench.

The Twins caught a Joe Mauer injury before it turned into something serious:

Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer has an injury in his left leg, and will sit out for a few days for treatment.

The Twins describe his injury as a stress reaction -- a precursor to a stress fracture. An MRI found nothing more
serious.

Joe Christensen broaches the position move argument based on this. If Mauer stays a catcher, history says the position shortens his offensive dominance. Yet the Twins receive more value for their dollar with Mauer behind the plate, especially given his defense. Maybe if they don't reach an agreement with Morneau, Mauer can move to first when Justin leaves for a free-agent payoff.

Bud Selig left the door open to stay on as commissioner on Thursday:

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig hedged slightly on his retirement plans on Thursday, saying he intends to leave in 2009 but that he's learned "never to say never."

That's pretty much what happened last time. Selig was going to retire, but the owners convinced him to stay. I don't think it will take very much convincing.

The Angels set their rotation for the start of the season, but Jered Weaver will sit out at least the first go-round:

Weaver will work in some breaking pitches for the first time in a 50-pitch simulated game on Thursday after delivering 45 pitches, all fastballs and changeups, in a camp outing on Monday. He could be ready for a Minor League game this weekend.

"Looking at [Weaver's] time frame," Scioscia said, "he'll certainly miss his first start but can be folded in shortly after on the 15th or 16th [of April]. Bart's program will be a little behind [Weaver's]."

Neither pitcher has experienced any setbacks thus far, the manager said, but caution is the order of the day for both.

At the moment it doesn't sound too serious.

Bronx Banter writer Alex Belth sits down with Red Sox blogger Curt Schilling to discuss the pitcher's writing on the internet.

Schilling: I'll tell you what I've realized in the last 48 hours. I did a blog a couple of days ago and basically explained my contract situation. Yesterday, there was an article written by John Tomase in The Boston Herald. The article is, John introduces my blog, quotes my blog and then finishes the article. I just did an interview without having to deal with the media. I wasn't edited, I wasn't clipped. It was what I said, how I said it. If I've got to take s*** and if I'm going to wear labels, I'm going to wear them because of things that I've said and done.

The Braves just locked up to a six year deal worth just under $5 million per year. Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus calls it a steal (subscription required).

That was my first and only reaction to the announcement that the Braves had signed catcher Brian McCann to a six-year deal worth $26.8 million. The deal keeps the team out of arbitration with McCann and ties him to the Braves through at least his seventh season in the big leagues, while buying out up to two years of free agency.

McCann is already a star, a left-handed-hitting catcher who is the complete package at the plate: average, power and discipline. He's two years ahead of where Mike Piazza--the most recent comparable--was; at 22, Piazza was a year away from a cup of coffee with the Dodgers.

Of course, McCann is a catcher and the chance of him wearing down before he becomes a free agent is pretty good. So the deal makes Brian a rich man now, and the Braves earn some long term cost control. As regular readers know, I love deals like this. If you have a star, sign him young. You'll save money in the long run as salaries rise, and you avoid the cost of arbitration.

My Baseball Bias rounds up the stories on Jonathan Papelbon moving back to the bullpen. I'm a bit surprised since during the winter all Papelbon talked about was wanting to start. I'm even more surprised that the fifth starter is going to be Julien Tavarez. While there's no doubt Jon is the best option for closer, I'd rather see the Red Sox fill the fifth spot in the rotation with someone younger. They don't have enough off days at the start of the season to go with a four man rotation.

Sometimes we forget just how good professional baseball players perform, even the injured ones:

Martinez is an intelligent man and can be pretty crafty with his words. But he wasn't telling any tales out of school. He went out on a side field late Monday afternoon and backed it up. His program for the day called for 25 throws at 45 feet, 50 at 60 feet, and 25 at 75 feet, the last distance an increase in length from what he had been doing the previous week. Remarkably, at the two shorter distances, he threw to his personal trainer, Chris Correnti (who was formerly with the Sox as an assistant trainer), with his eyes closed. Why pretend to be blindfolded? The point was to help Martinez be consistent with his release point and feel free with his motion. It was impressive to watch him hit Correnti's glove almost every time.

Obi-Wan would be proud. I couldn't do that with my eyes wide open.

Justin Morneau and the Twins broke off long term contract talks:

Morneau left a four-year deal worth between $30 and $33 million on the table, the Star-Tribune reported, citing sources familiar with the negotiations. The deal would have included an option for a fifth year, the newspaper said.

It's the right move by the Twins in my opinion. After all, that number is based on four really good months of hitting. I'd want a little more assurance that those four months represent the true value of this player before I go for a really large amount of money or a very long term. If Morneau does well in 2007, he'll get an even bigger offer next year. If he doesn't, however, the Twins avoid making a big mistake.

The police busted Tony La Russa for drunk stopping:

Police arrested St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa on a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol, a misdemeanor, after he was found sleeping at a green light in his running Ford SUV about midnight at Frederick Small Boulevard and Military Trail.

Police on Thursday said they grew suspicious because the running SUV was stopped at a light that went through two cycles of green. A driver behind it had to go around, police said.

Rough day at the ballpark? The Cardinals pitching staff owns the best ERA in spring training, so it's not like there's a lot of pressure on Tony right now. Maybe he's just part of the long history of hard drinking, successful managers.

I wonder if he'll serve as his own attorney?

Update: There's a great map of the incident scene at Deadspin.

Jack Cobra sends this post that is down on Mark Prior. Jack's article reflects the feelings of a lot of Prior fans right now, including me. Sometimes, however, negativity (or optimism) overshoots the mark. The reports on Prior are really bad right now, but there's no official word that he's actually hurt. It may just take more time than expected for him to get back in shape.

This made me wonder if the market for Prior collapsed. Interestingly, it hasn't. After reaching a low point on March 17th, the price for Prior at PROTRADE bounced back a little, meaning traders saw that low as a buying opportunity. Not everyone is totally down on the pitcher.

Note too, that while the early Matsuaka mania ran its course, he's still rated as the second best MLB pitcher in terms of PROTRADE fantasy points in the majors.

Two new books came in the mail in the last couple of days. The Cheater's Guide to Baseball looks like a lot of fun. Just skimming through the book I came across the illustrations of how doctored pitches move. Given the ugliness of the substances on the balls, I'm glad I never caught Gaylord Perry. The author, Derek Zumsteg, can be read on a daily basis at U.S.S. Mariner.

Also recently arrived is the Ducksnorts 2007 Baseball Annual. It features analysis and commentary on the current San Diego Padres, as well as some historical information and lessons the organization can learn from other successful "small market" teams around MLB. You can read more about the Padres at Ducksnorts, the blog.

I'll be reviewing both in the next couple of weeks.

Finally today I bought Burning Annie. I've heard about this movie for a few years but never got the chance to see it in a theater. I'm a huge fan of Annie Hall. My roommate Jim Storer and I used to go see the movie whenever it played at the old Harvard Square Theater (for $2, you saw classic double features). One night we went and the movie was sold out, so we walked around reciting lines to entertain ourselves. I still say, "the universe is expanding," when I find someone worrying about something frivolous. I'll post a review of Burning Annie just for fun after I see the film.

Around the Majors points out Justin Verlander's up and down spring, and there's some good comments on how Justin's increased innings pitched in 2006 might mean he's in for a rough time in 2007. But in the Detroit Free Press article that starts the discussion, something even more interesting appears:

Neifi Perez did his stubborn best to save Justin Verlander from defeat Tuesday.

Batting with two out in the ninth, Perez fouled a parade of two-strike pitches, then singled, keeping a rally going that ultimately put the potential tying run at second.

The threat ended there, and Verlander and the Tigers lost to Pittsburgh, 3-1. Earlier in the game, Perez had drawn his ninth walk of the exhibition season -- one more than he drew all of last year in the regular season.

Based on those walks and that ninth-inning at-bat Tuesday, the Tigers could see a different, more effective Perez this season.

Old habits are tough to break, but the Tigers coaches are trying:

In his 10 seasons, Perez has never drawn a lot of walks. Lloyd McClendon, the Tigers' hitting coach, has been talking to Perez in spring training about laying off pitches out of the strike zone.

"The credit goes to Neifi," McClendon said. "He's very patient at the plate. He has a good idea what he's trying to accomplish.

"One thing I've tried to stress to him about hitting in spring training is to be a bit more patient, see pitches, get your rhythm. Get yourself ready for the season."

Of course, the fact that Perez isn't being handed a job any more might provide him with some motivation to improve his offense.

Daisuke Matsuzaka baffled the Pirates yesterday. This is telling:

But that seemed like nitpicking on a day in which scouts sitting behind home plate said Matsuzaka touched 94 miles per hour with his fastball and Kelly, among other Pirates, sat in front of a laptop in the clubhouse, trying to determine what pitches they'd just seen from Matsuzaka.

I've heard second hand stories that the reason the Red Sox paid a high price for Matsuzaka is that their experts watched video of Dice-K and couldn't figure out what pitches he was throwing. It's that element of deception that earned Matsuzaka the big money.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the bullpen:

Ending weeks of speculation, Jon Lieber was told on Wednesday that he's going to the bullpen because the Philadelphia Phillies have six starters. "I'm disappointed," Lieber said Wednesday. "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't. I think I can still start."

He might still get a chance. Newly acquired right-hander Freddy Garcia left Wednesday night's game against the Toronto Blue Jays after the first inning because of stiffness in his right biceps.

We'll know more about Garcia's condition later today.

If you missed tonight's show, you can hear the recorded version here. It's also available on demand at TPSRadio. Tonight the NL Central race is analyzed.

The Baseball Musings Radio Show is coming up in a little while at 8 PM EDT. You can leave questions during the show in the TPSRadio Chat Room at Stickam. I really recommend you stop by the chat room. Lots of people make for a lively discussion and helps me with the show. We'll be talking about the NL Central tonight.

MLB rejected the deal offered by iN Demand made earlier today:

Not so fast, said Bob DuPuy, baseball's chief operating officer.

"The communication sent to our office today by iN Demand is not responsive to that offer," he said. "In spite of their public comments, the response falls short of nearly all of the material conditions (among them requirements for carriage of The Baseball Channel and their share of the rights fees for Extra Innings) set forth in the Major League Baseball offer made to them on March 9."

DuPuy said the March 31 deadline to match remains.

So they're still playing chicken. The cable company blinked first, which gives MLB the leg up. My guess is we'll need to stay up until midnight on March 31st to find out if these games are going to be on cable.

Update: I also wonder how much of a difference this is going to make? If I can stream MLB broadcasts from my computer, I can buy the cheaper MLB package and get about the same results.

Home Run Derby looks at how the renovations at US Cellular Field boosted home run rates there.

It looks like Cable TV is meeting the demands of MLB:

IN Demand said Wednesday it will offer to match the terms of DirecTV's $700 million, seven-year deal with Major League Baseball on behalf its owners, who are affiliates of the companies that own Time Warner, Comcast and Cox cable systems.

As part of the offer, iN Demand also said it would carry The Baseball Channel when it launches in 2009 to at least the same number of subscribers who will get the channel on DirecTV.

"As the current home for 'Extra Innings' for more than 200,000 cable subscribers, we have extended ourselves to do our best to be able to continue to provide this package to baseball fans and our customers," iN Demand president Robert Jacobson said. "This offer meets all the conditions set forth by MLB last week. "

I'm not sure the Baseball Channel provision is exactly what MLB wanted. We'll see if it's a deal breaker. But this is good news for cable subscribers to EI.

Update: I'm really wondering what made iN Demand change its mind. Was it the flurry of calls from customers who want the package? Was it a number of customers actually switching to DirecTV? If this deal works, I have to say MLB did a great job of negotiating. They found someone who was willing to pay a high price for the broadcast rights, and now have another willing to pay what the market will bear. I would guess the Baseball Channel should be a relatively small barrier, especially if the deal keeps Congress out of their hair.

Adam Dunn is using Ichiro as a role model.

"This is how I'm going to beat that overshift they put on me during the season," said Dunn.

He ripped a ball through shortstop.

"Nice," said coach Billy Hatcher, another intent observer.

"And this is how I'm going to be Ichiro," said Dunn, promptly lining a ball up the middle."

"Nice," Hatcher said again.

Dunn is hitting .429 with three homers, a double and 11 singles this spring, including a home run Monday off Detroit left-hander Kenny Rogers during Cincinnati's 6-2 defeat.

"I'm going to be Ichiro (Seattle superstar Ichiro Suzuki)," said Dunn. "I'm going to have 216 hits, 177 of them singles, six homers and steal 77 bags."

An exaggeration, of course, but general manager Wayne Krivsky loves Dunn's spring forward approach.

"I love seeing those singles and the ball going to all fields," he said. "He's positive about it, too. I hope he stays positive because sometimes he is his own toughest critic."

Redleg Nation doesn't like the idea.

I don't know whether to laugh hysterically at this article, or to weep. Adam Dunn says he wants to start hitting just like Ichiro, and Reds management acts like that is exactly what they want.

Redleg Nation is being a bit too pessimistic here. Dunn faded badly at the end of 2006. Who's to say he didn't get into bad habits? If he's trying to do a better job of meeting the ball, that's great. Given his good eye for the strike zone and his strength, doing a better job of making contact would lead to very good results. As long as he's not trying to hit pitches in the dirt, I don't have a big problem with this approach. It seems more like a training exercise than a totally different philosophy.

The Baseball Musings radio show will be on TPSRadio tonight at 8 PM EDT. Check out TPSRadio's other sports programming as well.

You can stop by the chat room at TPSRadio during the broadcast and leave a comment. We're now using Stickam for the chat, so there are no logins required. Also, feel free to leave a question in the comments to this post and I'll be happy to answer it on the air.

This post the other day talked about NESN's ban on using video on-line. It now seems the NFL is in trouble over this very issue. It's an important post, as it tells you how to fight DMCA requests to remove video.

Correction: Fixed first link.

According to this AP article, Mark Prior may start the season on the DL, along with Kerry Wood:

The 26-year-old Prior was 1-6 with a 7.21 ERA last year when his season was cut short by a strained right shoulder. He is 0-1 with an 18.90 ERA in two spring training appearances, allowing seven runs and eight hits in 3 1-3 innings with five strikeouts and no walks.

'How many innings has he pitched?' manager Lou Piniella asked Monday. 'You need 25 or so innings. In fairness to the person, is he going to be ready?'

Now, I understand Wood going on the DL, since he injured his triceps, but is Prior injured? I talked about this last season with Kansas City when they tried to put Greinke and Hernandez on the DL. Hernandez was just out of shape. Greinke was ill, but that was not conveyed to the public until later. Teams should not be allowed to put a player on the DL unless they are actually injured. Send him to the minors.

Ryan Langerhans tapped his foot to a better spring:

Jones and 2006 All-Star catcher Brian McCann each have used a foot-tapping timing device as a key for hitting success with the Atlanta Braves. Jones suggested Langerhans, who hit .241 last season, might try the same move as he competes for the starting job in left field this spring.

The chat with Jones convinced Langerhans, who says he received the same advice from McCann late last season.

"I was talking with McCann about it because I wasn't staying back on the ball," Langerhans said. "Then I talked to Chipper about it when we were hunting, even though we try not to talk about baseball when we're out there."

Langerhans, 27, practiced the tap step through the winter so he'd be ready to put the timing mechanism to use in spring training.

Ryan is hitting .378 hits spring and slugging .595. However, he has struck out 15 times in 37 at bats. That rate would set a record for strikeouts in just 500 at bats.

Rich Harden threw well for Oakland yesterday:

Still, Harden struck out seven, walked two, allowed five hits and one run in five innings during the Athletics' 5-3 win over the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday. When his fastball wasn't working, Harden went to his offspeed stuff with no problem, getting outs with change-ups and sliders.

Meanwhile, Randy Johnson starts the season on the DL for the Diamondbacks:

Johnson threw 54 pitches Monday in his second batting practice session, showing the regular-season bite on his slider that causes right-handed hitters to swing at balls that would hit their back foot. But D-Backs general manager Josh Byrnes confirmed that Johnson will still open the season on the disabled list, a fate that appeared unavoidable from the start of camp.

"We've got him for two years, and he's pretty valuable for us. We don't want to rush things," Byrnes said.

Something that's been on my mind is using ideas from the Proabilistic Model of Range on a very specific issue, double plays. The idea is to look at a particular set of balls in play, ground balls with a man on first and less than two outs, and see what fielders do well. What might make this very interesting, however, is that we can not only look at who starts the double play, but who is the pivot man, and who finishes the job. I'm imagining we can look at shortstop/second baseman combinations and see if the probabilities go up or down with a change in personnel, or with who is fielding vs. who is pivoting.

As always, your thoughts are welcome. Here's a couple of tables to start us off. The first shows how often each of the infield positions starts a double play.

Probability of a Fielding Position Starting a GDP, Groundballs Only, Man on First, Less Than Two Out, 2006

Position	GDP	Total	Pct
1	274	11076	0.025
2	4	11076	0.00036
3	234	11076	0.021
4	1099	11076	0.099
5	802	11076	0.072
6	1484	11076	0.134

Pretty much what you'd expect, although I'm impressed that third basemen start as many as they do. This next chart divides the infield into eighteen pie slices, five degrees wide. Zero represents the third base line, 17 the first base line. The probability given is the probability of a ball being turned into a double play on that vector.

Probability of a GDP on a Ball Hit on the Vector, Groundballs Only, Man on First, Less Than Two Out, 2006

Vector	GDP	Total	Probability
0	17	177	0.096
1	112	334	0.335
2	369	869	0.425
3	243	987	0.246
4	213	803	0.265
5	370	711	0.520
6	533	842	0.633
7	335	626	0.535
8	119	452	0.263
9	264	643	0.411
10	212	464	0.457
11	394	660	0.597
12	331	647	0.512
13	129	636	0.203
14	52	765	0.068
15	109	761	0.143
16	85	414	0.205
17	10	102	0.098

You can see from this that second baseman cheat more toward the bag than shortstops. Vector 8 represents the five degrees to the shortstop side of the bag. Vector 9 represents the five degrees to the second base side of the bag. As you can see, a lot more GDP's are started on the second base side. That makes sense, of course, as there are more right-handed hitters, and against a righty, a shortstop can't cheat as much. And while the lines are great places to hit the ball to avoid a double play, the absolute best place is the hole between second and first. I guess there is something to the idea of hitting behind the runner!

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive in March. If research like this interests you, I hope you'll consider a donation.

Tango Tiger is looking for your help in predicting OPS and ERA. He's putting the wisdom of crowds to work!

Another way to do this would be to post a prediction, and see how many people think the player is over or under the prediction. If it's 50-50, you have a good prediction. If 90% think the prediction is too low, you need to raise it. And you keep doing that until you get 50-50. That becomes the prediction.

Protrade does this with buying and selling, although there you're buying and selling classic fantasy value. (Victorino is really a hot commodity right now.)

Ben Kabak thinks about the post-Steinbrenner Yankees:

But for the fans, as George fades away and the Yanks are left in new hands, we the fans are going to wonder. George Steinbrenner and his wallet provided us with comfort. His spending was our security blanket, and that security blanket is gone. As this era ends and a new one begins, I hope we see smart baseball moves and smart spending. I do after all want that elusive 27th World Championship just as much as the Boss has yearned for it since we were a few outs away in 2001. I want it now.

Joe Posnanski notes that his springs haven't changed much since his childhood:

I find it both goofy and oddly touching that the Kansas City Royals train in a city called "Surprise." It's a bit like Bill Clinton being from a place called Hope. Every year, I come here, get stuck in the quagmire that is suburban Phoenix traffic, eat at various chain restaurants with names like Carrabas, and every year I feel that pointless, self-destructive but undeniable feeling that the Royals really COULD surprise, you know, if twenty or two hundred things happened to go right.

This is a baseball feeling that goes way back. The Cleveland Indians of my childhood were almost equally hopeless, and yet come March I would always put together a rather lengthy list of "Things that have to go right for the Indians to win the World Series." The list usually involved Rick Waits putting things together and Charlie Spikes finding his power stroke. Now, with the Royals, the list involves Gil Meche putting things together and Emil Brown finding his power stroke.

It's amazing how little my life has advanced in 30 years.

He also lists the ten worst seasons by a player since he arrived in KC in 1996 to see how many Royals make the cut.

Via U.S.S. Mariner, Seth Kolloen sees the downside of Felix Hernandez's weight loss.

FELIX HERNANDEZ LOST a bunch of weight in the offseason, and everyone seems pretty psyched about it. Shin splints bothered him last season, and optimists expect that a slimmer Hernandez will be a better Hernandez.

I'm not psyched. I'm terrified. Hernandez's drastic weight loss may help his legs, but I'm losing sleep about what it might do to his arm. Ever hear of Edwin Nunez? You would have -- in fact, you might be deciding whether to draft him for your fantasy team -- if weight loss hadn't derailed his career.

He lists a few pitchers who lost weight for the Mariners and ended their careers.

Dan Larson writes:

Buster Olney linked this weekend to a Hal McCoy article in the Dayton Daily News that discusses minor leaguer Jerry Gil being able to throw a ball four hundred feet, even over most centerfield fences from behind home plate. This brings to my mind a question about velocity. Since I have no understanding of physics beyond the most basic principles, I'd like to know if there are other factors involved in the distance of a throw than the speed (like, for instance, force ??). Like, for instance, if Jerry Gil can throw 400 feet, does that mean he's throwing 100 mph? Or am I wrong to assume Joel Zumaya could make the same throw only because he can hit 102 over 60 feet? I've always assumed pitchers turned position players, like Rick Ankiel who hit 95-96, must have the strongest arms in the league but am wondering if there's a factor I don't understand once distance is involved.

So I guess my assumption has been: whoever throws fastest also throws farthest (and the reverse, of course--Jerry Gil must be throwing 100 over 60 feet if he can outthrow the rest of the league)? Is this true?

My response that the two things that matter are the initial speed of the ball and the angle of launch. Since a 45 degree angle gives you the most distance for a particular initial velocity, I figured out the minimum speed it would require to get a ball 400 ft (133 meters). It worked out to 36 meters per second, or 80 MPH, neglecting air resistance. My guess is that a 90 MPH throw launched at a 45 degree angle will clear the fence no problem. Maybe a physics wizard can confirm that.

Dayn Perry looks at some of the milestones up for grabs in 2007. We may end up with four players reaching 500 HR, one at 600 and one topping the all-time record!

Earlier this spring, Joel Zumaya talked about slowing down. If this is how he's going to do it, I'm fine with the contrast:

Zumaya, who gave up only a harmless single in two innings, struck out Mark Bellhorn on a 102 mph heater to start the seventh, then followed by fanning David Ross on a tantalizing 85 mph pitch.

A 17 MPH difference between his fastball and changeup! That will fool a few hitters.

Baby Dash gives Ron Gardenhire a piece of his mind:

My mom says that your preference for veterans has been noted in the blogosphere. And I understand. Veterans are great. My parents, for instance, are not veterans and they have no idea what the #@$@#$@ they're doing. At the same time, rookies are not necessarily total #@$#@-ups. I'm a rookie, and I can pitch better than Ponson.

Out of the mouth of babes...

People are snapping up Diamondbacks tickets:

When the official word got out late last season that the Diamondbacks would be parting ways with popular left fielder Luis Gonzalez - and shortstop Craig Counsell, too - the organization was hit with a steady stream of negative feedback in the form of phone calls, e-mails and handwritten letters.

The fans had spoken, and many of them threatened to not renew their season tickets.

Some of them didn't, but Diamondbacks President Derrick Hall revealed Monday that ticket sales are soaring, and the club's season-ticket renewal rate has been at a solid 87 percent.

Sales of individual tickets are doing much better as well. Should we factor this in to prediction systems for a team's winning percentage? In general, fans like to see winners. If advance sales are way up, does that mean Diamondbacks fans think this is going to be a pretty good team? It's would make an interesting study to compare changes in advance ticket sales to actual season outcomes.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive in March.

The Braves starting rotation looks to be the team's weakness in 2007. So far, however, so good:

Atlanta's starters have stellar ERAs. Buddy Carlyle, who has not allowed a run in 10 innings, is followed by Lance Cormier (1.29), Tim Hudson (1.80) and John Smoltz (1.93). Braves starters have a 2.25 ERA, allowing 18 earned runs in 72 innings.

The top five candidates for the rotation, including James, have struck out 48 while walking just 12 in 67 innings this spring. Maybe Schuerholz has some magic left up his sleeve.

Last season we were wondering what was wrong with Zack Greinke. Today we're waiting for him to make the Royals rotation.

On Monday, Greinke pitched five strong innings in a spring-training game against the Chicago White Sox. He was awfully good. He broke three or four bats. He showed a devastating slider. He allowed just two hits, and one was a pop-up that turned into an Arizona-sun double. He made himself the favorite to win the final spot in the Royals' rotation.

More importantly for Zack, his head appears to be screwed on straight:

So after the game someone asked Greinke whether his confidence was at an all-time high. It was a softball question, a gimme, one of those easy sportswriter questions that are supposed to lead directly to the, "Oh yeah, I really feel confident right now," quote that you read in 549 different stories every spring.

Greinke said no. His confidence is not at an all-time high. Not even close. He said he was much more confident in 2004 coming off his solid rookie year. But, he said that his shrinking confidence was terrific news. See, confidence is not always a good thing.

"In 2004, I was too confident," he said. "I thought all I had to do was throw a strike to get a guy out. Now, I'm confident, but I'm not so confident that I think no one could ever hit me. I have to keep at it -- not just think you're going to succeed because you're you."

He says he's experiencing a new feeling, enjoying baseball. For the Royals, Zack Greinke living up to his potential means they're one step closer to respectability as a franchise.

The San Diego outlet of Cox Communications tries to keep customers from switching to DirecTV:

The company recently sent a letter to subscribers who purchased the "MLB Extra Innings" package last season offering a 100 percent rebate for anyone who signs up for the MLB.TV broadband service - an $89.95 value that includes video for every out-of-market game and audio for every game.

The offer affects a little more than 3,000 people in San Diego County, said Bill Geppert, vice president and general manager of Cox San Diego. Cox is the nation's fourth-largest cable operator with 5.4 million subscribers.

"You can't go wrong with free," Geppert said.

San Diego is one of two places where if you switch to DirecTV, you lose your home team's games, so switching doesn't seem to be a real option here. Still, it's a good move to try to keep the customers that might want to switch.

Update: Has any one switched to DirecTV? Was the process easy? How much did they charge?

Jeff Kallman details Jamie Moyer's work bringing joy to bereaved children:

The Moyers decided, wisely enough, that bereaved children should not have to remain as isolated in grief among their peers as occurred for too many generations. But they also did something about it. Already the creators of a foundation aimed at helping children in any kind of distress, the Moyers, parents of their own six children, opened Camp Erin, in Washington State, in 2002.

There came three camps in Washington state and one each in Idaho, Arizona, and Philadelphia, for whose Phillies Moyer now pitches. And Monday afternoon Moyer delivered an irresistible pitch: five years after the first Camp Erin opened, the work's beginning on expanding it to every city hosting a major league baseball team.

What a wonderful project! You can visit Moyer's web site for the project here.

The Texas Rangers ballpark is going back to a real name:

Three years after changing their stadium name to Ameriquest Field, the Rangers severed a 30-year naming rights deal Monday with struggling lender Ameriquest Mortgage Co. and rebranded their home field as Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

The new name is almost identical to The Ballpark in Arlington, the stadium's name before the reported $75 million sponsorship with Ameriquest was announced in 2004.

Another stadium sponsor bites the dust.

I've been wondering about fair use of TV video for use on my blog. If I'm watching a game and see something I want to comment about, can I take 10 second of video off my DVR, post it to the internet and use it in my blog? In the case of NESN, no.

No highlight of any Game (or any NESN content) may be used on the Internet, cell phones, wireless devices or any other electronic medium under any circumstances.

Update 3/21/2007: The NFL is in trouble over this.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive in March.

Melissa Lockard sums up her trip to see the Athletics in Phoenix. Good grades for the bullpen and youngsters, not so much for the starting pitching and position players.

On the last day of winter, Jeff Euston rounds up the renewed pre-arbitration players. I hope someone follows this for a few years. I'd love to see a study of how renewing or taking players to arbitration effects that player leaving for free agency or staying.

One interesting thing this year is that teams took the increase in the minimum salary as part of a player's raise:

Complicating matters this off-season is a significant increase in the minimum major-league salary, which jumps from $327,000 last season to $380,000 for 2007. Player agents see the new minimum as a starting point, while clubs tend to view the $53,000 jump in the minimum as a significant pay raise by itself.

The Marlins, who lead the league in young players, renewed 12 players on their 40-man roster, nine of them at the $380,000 minimum. Florida renewed Hanley Ramirez' (contract) deal for $402,000, a $75,000 raise over 2006. Yet Ramirez's 2007 salary will be just $22,000 more than the 2007 minimum, making him just the second Rookie of the Year to make less than $25,000 more than the following year's league minimum (Oakland renewed 2005 AL Rookie of the Year Huston Street (contract) for 2006 at $339,625, just $12,625 more than the minimum).

So a number of good second year players are just making over the minimum, because they are seen by the clubs as getting a big raise anyway. Eventually, it this will work itself out, but this particular class of second year players is taking a hit due to the change. I suspect it will take a couple of season to work itself out as well. As this class gets a bigger raise next season, the 2007 first years will be behind that.

Yanksfan vs. Soxfans sits down with Peter Abraham to talk about the Yankees. I liked this bit:

YFSF: What do you see happening with the Yankees post-Steinbrenner, and how close are we to that time (or are we already there)? What are your impressions of Steve Swindal?

PA: I think we are already at the post-Steinbrenner phase. His health is one of the most closely guarded stories in sports and that is obviously because it is fading. I believe that Brian Cashman, Randy Levine and Steve Swindal make 95 percent of the decisions and once George gives up his title or passes away, Swindal will be the man in charge with Cashman at his side. I like Steve a lot, his recent arrest aside. I think he will do what is right. But I don't believe you'll see the Yankees with a payroll $50 million higher than any other team.

One thing I like about George is his desire to win the World Series every year. If his successors can keep that with a more sane development system, this franchise could actually get better.

JD Arney hopes he remains wrong about Dustin Hermanson, the new Reds closer:

At first I didn't think the Reds would sign Hermanson. Then when he was signed I didn't think he'd make the team.

And then when it seemed that he had the team made, I didn't think there was any way the Reds would make him the closer.

Now he's the closer, and I'm thinking there's no way he'll succeed. Hopefully I'll be wrong one more time.

I have to agree with JD here. When you look at Dustin's career, 2005 sure looks like an anomaly.

When you watch spring training games, it's sometimes difficult to know what parts of the game a team is experimenting with that day. On Saturday, the Indians were practicing base running. The team swiped four bases, was caught twice and picked off once. But that was all part of the plan:

"We want to get a feel for their instincts on the bases," manager Eric Wedge said.

Instincts are a necessary, if less tangible, complement to pure speed. In recent seasons, the Indians have been short on each.

So the Indians have been working on training their runners, and now they're using game situations to see who's learned the lessons, and for the players to learn when they can and can't run. That's why there's spring training; it's a chance to fix weaknesses.

Tom Powers discusses the pain caused by the Twins fielders shifting from the Florida grass to the Metrodome turf:

Severe depression notwithstanding, for many of the players the worst part about the move north is switching from the natural grass to the artificial turf. The first week or so on the hard surface sends almost everyone running, or at least limping, to the medicine chest.

"It's not like here," shortstop Jason Bartlett said. "Your legs have got to get used to it. It takes a toll on my legs the first few days."

This is the newer turf installed in 2004, too. It's better than the previous rock-hard surface but still tough on the leg joints. And ground balls continue to shoot through the gaps.

"You play back in the outfield for most guys," shortstop Bartlett noted.

"The first week you feel some of the aches and pains from September that you forgot about during the offseason," Nick Punto said.

Artificial turf is almost eliminated. Once the Twins get their new park, Toronto and Tampa Bay will be the only remaining holdouts.

The Good Phight likes the idea of the Phillies taking a chance on making Michael Bourn the everyday centerfielder, then trading the redundant players on the team.

The answer might well be "yes." The rumored deal of Rowand and Lieber for some combination of top prospect Josh Fields, setup reliever Mike McDougal and a third player--maybe utility man Rob Mackowiak, maybe lefty bullpen prospect Boone Logan--would shore up the bullpen, strengthen the bench while adding a possible long-term answer at third base or in an outfield corner, and dramatically lower the payroll.

There's also a good discussion of Rollins as a leadoff hitter, basically saying that despite his low OBA, he does a good job of scoring runs due to his power and speed. There is still a cost, however, in outs, and those outs take chances away from Utley and Howard. In a way it's the Vince Coleman/Wade Boggs argument. Vince would make up for his low OBA by using his speed to score often when he was on base. Boggs reached base a lot, but it was tough for him to move more than one base at a time. So the runs scored evened out. But Boggs, by making fewer outs, expanded the offensive context for the rest of the team, increasing the run scoring capacity of the team as a whole. That's what Jimmy fails to do as a leadoff hitter.

John Beamer puts together his predictions for the division races at The Hardball Times. The most interesting thing about the standings is the National League is so bad. Arizona posts the best record in the senior circuit with an 86-76 mark. While I don't disagree there are no clearly dominant teams in the NL, just by chance one of these teams will win 90+ games. Run this a few times and see how often you get a 90 win team. (I get a 90 win team about 96% of the time.) By random chance, some team in the NL is going to much better than this projection.

John Delcos talks to Orlando Hernandez about his hamstring. The leg's okay, but El Duque seems uncertain about being ready for opening day.

U.S.S Mariner discusses two ways to look at trades:

1) Each trade should be evaluated on what's known at the time. If a trade turns out much better than expected, or much worse, that shouldn't affect our opinion of the trade.

2) Each trade should be evaluated on the results of the trade. If a trade looks like it's an amazing rip-off, even if at the time everyone acknowledges it as such, but the victim turns out the winner due to unforseen circumstances, the victim's still the victor.

Obviously, in practice it doesn't work out that way. Members of the first camp are willing to concede that results are why you make trades, and members of the second camp might well admit that you make the best deal you can and then it's a bit of a crapshoot.

I tend to use number 1, mostly because my interest in evaluating a trade is at the time it happens. But Zumsteg makes an important point. While any trade might work out good or bad by sheer luck, the long term track record of the GM might give us a clue at the moment of the deal:

Take the Braves. For a long time, the Braves ran up an almost unblemished record of giving up pitching prospects in trades that turned into dogs. Every trade, it would look like they might even have given up too much, and those guys would turn to dust. It starts to look suspect: that they knew so much that they gave up pitchers where they knew the perceived value far exceeded the actual value.

And this is where I think the people grinding an axe about the M's trades in the last... uh, forever... have a good point. As much as we can say that the Garcia-for-Reed trade looked great at the time (and we did, you can look it up), or they got good value dumping guys off left and right during the last three seasons, the total of everything they've received in trade is Mike Morse, Jeremy Reed, and Jon Huber. As a group of trades, you've got to look at that and wince.

So if the Mariners trade Ichiro, the trade might look good on paper, but be aware of Bavasi's track record.

The battle for the number five spot in the Rangers' rotation is producing good results:

Loe's outing came less than 24 hours after Wright was solid in his 3 1/3 innings of work. Chen must have a good outing today against Colorado to keep up.

That's what competition can do for a staff. And Washington said he's never seen a competition for the No. 5 spot this stiff in his years as a coach.

"This is what you want to see," Washington said. "They are pitching well to move up to four or three [in the rotation]. So I'm very satisfied. I'm happy for every one of those guys."

Given that earlier in the off season depth chart writers had a tough time putting down four names for the Texas rotation, this is good news for the squad from Arlington. Starting pitching may turn out not to be a weakness here after all.

Lou Piniella talked about his use of one-run strategies early in the game:

This is now the Lou Piniella era with the Cubs and you pretty much can forget about giving up outs.

There will be no "small" in his ball. Piniella believes in the offense going on the offensive.

"No, no, no," Piniella said when asked about sacrificing in the first inning on a cold day. "I like to bunt more, believe it or not, when we have a lead so we can add on. I like those situations better than any other time.

"I've never really bunted early. I'm going to run, hit-and-run, steal, double steal, but I don't like the idea of bunting early in a game. Late in the game with a 3-2 lead, 4-2 lead, you get the first couple of runners on, you're looking to tack on, I like the bunt then."

I like the idea of bunting later in the game with men on first and second and a weak hitter up. You put two men in scoring position and set up the sacrifice fly to score a run.

Gustavo Chacin got into a bit of trouble with the law:

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Gustavo Chacin was arrested and charged with driving under the influence.

Chacin was stopped by Tampa police early Friday morning, according to a copy of the charge report posted on the Hillsborough County sheriff's Web site.

You'd think with all the players arrested for this over the last few years, the others would get the message and at least hire someone to drive for them.

Brandon Ducksworth is pain free after elbow surgery and is making a case to go north with the Royals:

Duckworth, 31, allowed just one run in five innings in his first two spring outings before giving up three bases-empty homers over three innings in Thursday's 7-6 victory over the Giants.

Even then, he struck out five -- which gives him 11 punch-outs and no walks in eight spring innings.

That's the kind of number that should impress a coaching staff, and the injury to Bale gives Duckworth the opening. We'll see if he can take advantage of the opportunity.

Jason McAdams live blogged both Pettitte's and Papelbon's pitching performances. He liked what he saw in each case.

Here's the birthday card my wife gave to me today.

That captures me so well. That TV, however, doesn't look capable of supporting HD. :-)

Baseball Musings is conducting a pledge drive in March. A birthday is a great day to make a donation!

Bobby Livingston may turn out to be a good example of the stats vs. scouts debate. A successful minor league pitcher in the Seattle system, the Reds were able to claim him off waivers because the Mariners didn't like Livingston's fastball:

Cincinnati was more than pleased to lay claim.

So does a major-league pitcher have to throw 90 or higher? A left-hander?

As Livingston talked about it, seated across the clubhouse was Reds Hall of Famer lefthander Tom Browning, who not only never broke the sound barrier, he probably couldn't break glass, but pitched a perfect game.

Livingston operates in Browning-like fashion -- work quickly, throw strikes, move the ball in, out, up and down and never, ever throw one right down the middle.

"I know what I'm doing out there, not just throwing the ball," he said. "You can tell I know what I'm doing, and I'm not just trying to blow the ball past people. When you don't throw 95, you spot the ball, move it around, change speeds."

Of his lack of velocity, Livingston said, "Seattle was always harping on the gun and how hard you threw or didn't throw. When I had success (in the minors), nobody every said anything to me about my velocity. The name of the game is getting outs, even if they're hitting the ball hard. As long as they are outs.

Livingston's strikeout rate in the minors was acceptable, but his walks and home run rates were outstanding. So far, he's pitched five bad innings in the majors. We'll see if the Mariners lack of confidence is the Reds gain.

Dan Rosenheck looks to see if Manny Ramirez's defense is hurting his value to the Red Sox (full disclosure, I was consulted on the article):

The truth most likely lies in the middle: the average of the P.B.P. systems' results for Ramírez is 15 to 20 runs below average. That's enough to take a significant bite out of his value. If his hitting begins to deteriorate this season (he turns 35 in May), and his base running remains poor (subtracting another two runs or so), he is likely to be worth about as much in 2007 as Oakland's up-and-coming Nick Swisher. In other words, an All-Star, but not a franchise player, and certainly not worth anywhere near his $20 million salary.

I put the cost of Manny in left field at no more than 16 runs in 2006, whereas Dan believes that the minimum. Dan is also basing Manny's worth on Ramriez's worth on his continuing at that level of defense and his offense declining due to age. But of the three years I've measured Ramirez, 2006 was by far the worst reading I've seen on him. Manny complained of a bad right knee in 2006. If that's better and he becomes more mobile, I suspect the number of balls he gets to goes up as well.

So I'm not quite as dire as Dan in assessing the worth of Ramirez. He a great player in his mid 30's, and I'm not surprised he is showing signs of decline.

Al from Bleed Cubbie Blue watched Mark Prior pitch this morning and was totally unimpressed:

I'm here to tell you it's unhinged. Prior threw four innings, fifty-nine pitches (only a little more than half of them, thirty-two, were strikes). He walked two, hit a batter, was constantly behind hitters, gave up two hits and no runs to a team consisting of players who will wind up spending this year playing for Tennessee and Daytona (some names I recognized: Dopirak, Fontenot, Spears, Simokaitis). The outs were hit fairly hard, and it was just not very impressive. There weren't any scouts with radar guns -- just one of the Cubs' minor leaguers behind the plate with one. I was able to see it while Jason Marquis (who was the opposing pitcher; he went today in this game because the Cubs wanted Angel Guzman to face the White Sox) was on the mound; Marquis was consistently at 90.

But while Prior was throwing, this player (who I couldn't identify; he was wearing warmups) hid the gun so no one but him could see it. It didn't matter. It was easy to see that Marquis' fastball was popping into the catcher's glove; Prior's wasn't. Prior seemed to be dropping down his arm again -- that's a sign of something wrong, even though he and everyone else denies it.

But most importantly, the guy who used to look like he was on top of the baseball world had absolutely no mound presence. Constantly wiping his face (it wasn't that hot at 8:30 in the morning!), scuffling around, he looked as if he'd rather have been just about anywhere else in the world than on that pitcher's mound.

He also noted something about the physical appearance of Prior:

You'll like this. I was talking to Bruce Miles while we were watching Prior throw, and I casually mentioned, without making an accusation, the difference in the size of Prior's calves (remember "Calfzilla"?) when he first came up, compared to now -- they look almost sticklike. Guess who, standing right next to me, rolled her eyes and said, "Oh, come on!"?? That's right, Carrie Muskat. Draw your own conclusions.

So Prior pitched today with no velocity, a bad arm angle, and his legs are weak. So much for saving the Cubs this season.

Miguel Tejada took complaints about his lack of range seriously this off season. He's come to camp in excellent shape and is actually working on increasing the area he can cover:

Shiner said Tejada's workouts have been focused on improving his foot speed and movement. During one drill, Tejada shuffles back and forth between cones as Shiner rolls baseballs to him. The exercise is designed to maximize the steps to get to the ball, simulating the act of fielding a baseball while moving left or right. Team officials have been pleased with the range Tejada has shown thus far in camp.

"He is moving around a lot better than he did last year," Perlozzo said. "When his knee was bad [last year], I knew there was nothing that I can do about that. ... It was an up-and-down year for him defensively for multiple reasons."

Teammates said Tejada got a bad rap for his defense last season, considering that he was nursing knee and hamstring injuries the first couple of months of the season. Tejada did make 19 errors, tying his lowest total for a full season in his career. But it was his range that was often criticized by scouts and baseball officials.

"He wasn't fully healthy early last year and yet he still went out there and did all he could. Of course, your range is going to be limited, but most guys wouldn't have even been out there," Gomez said. "He got healthy soon thereafter, and I thought he was great. I don't think anybody could deny that. He got this label, where someone says one thing about range and all of a sudden you don't have range. It sticks. I think it is really unfair."

We'll see if his PMR improves at the end of the season.

Those of you hoping Homer Bailey would make the Reds out of spring training are going to be disappointed as he was assigned to Cincinnati's minor league camp today.

The Baseball Analysts hold a round table on the AL West. Jeff Sullivan talks about the Mariners:

I think I've written "the Mariners are the worst team in a weak division" a million times this winter, but it seems like every time I do, I come away even less impressed with the best than I was before. Put simply, neither Oakland nor Anaheim are very good, and there might only be a five- or six-win separation between the top and bottom rosters in the group. That's a tiny, tiny gap, and the sort of thing that makes for a wild September.

Having read Lookout Landing all winter, I was expecting this team to be really bad. But when I looked at the team for my podcast two weeks ago, I was surprised at just how competitive they are with the rest of the division. Mostly, there's a lot of room for improvement and not much room for players to do worse than last year. In a way, they remind me of the Tigers at the start of 2006. If everything goes well, if everyone stays healthy, if they get a great season from Hernandez, they can win the division. Now, I'm talking about Hernandez having a Gooden 1985/Clemens 1986 type season, but stranger things have happened. It should be a fun division race.

The Baseball Zealot points out the Paper of Record site, which has The Sporting News back to 1886! I remember taking trips to the library to pour over microfilm looking at old boxscores. This site might make that trip obsolete!

Update: I was looking to see if I could find anything on Gehrig and grand slams, and came across this page from January 1934 on MLB hitting records. Times change. The "long hit" is given much more prominence than the home run, and doubles are called two baggers.

The press box at Chain of Lakes Park had an unexpected guest recently.

Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke explores the Pirates options at third. He doesn't like either Jose, but would rather see Bautista there than Castillo. I have to agree. At least Bautista isn't a complete offensive black hole. If he can catch the ball at all, play him at third.

Where's Kernan? speculates on where Alex Rodriguez might end up if he opts out of his contract at the end of 2007:

One quick point though. For all those dreaming that A-Rod could wind up a Met and what position would David Wright move to if that became true, I got one question: Are you kidding me?

Do you really think Rodriguez would leave the Yankees to stay in New York where who knows what Yankee fans would say to him in public? Come on, get a grip.

If he leaves the Yankees he will get out of town to one of three places - Anaheim, L.A. or Wrigley, to be reunited with Sweet Lou, who loves A-Rod like a father. Anaheim, though, is the most likely landing spot.

A-Rod is at that point in his career where he needs to do what is best for A-Rod. Anaheim would be the perfect fit because Southern California is the perfect place to play baseball. Same, of course, goes for Dodgers.

One other thing to factor in is his chase for the all-time home run record, what ever it is. I'd want to go to a good park for homers. That might make Wrigley a better choice, but Arizona has the warm weather and a very good management team. And the ball flies out of there. Over the last three seasons, it's tied with Philadelphia for the highest HR Index in the National League.

The Texas Rangers added Sammy Sosa to the 40-man roster:

By making the 40-man roster, Sosa -- fifth on the career home run list -- is officially a big leaguer again.

"The reason why I took the chance to come here is because I know I can compete," he said. "I believe that putting myself in that situation, coming here knowing I have to fight for a spot, is something that I liked, something that I'm proud of."

Sosa's home run on a 1-0 pitch from Edgar Gonzalez was his third in 10 spring training games. Although he struck out in his other two at-bats, he's hitting .452 with seven RBIs.

"I still have a ways to go," said Sosa, the 1998 NL MVP with the Chicago Cubs. "Because I made the team doesn't mean I've got to slow down. No way."

At this point he's going to make the opening day roster as well. We'll see if he can keep this up once the games get real.

My Baseball Bias doesn't like what he's seen from the Devil Rays hitters so far this spring. And while you need to take two weeks of spring training games with a grain of salt, he makes a very good point here:

Are there reasons for concern? I would say yes even though it's a very small sample size. Their current team K/BB ratio is 4:1, which tells us that this is still a very impatient group of hitters.

The correct spin might be that they've been working toward specific goals in games, and once the we get closer to the season they'll start playing to win. But you would think that being selective at the plate would be part of that plan.

Bowie Kuhn died today. My thoughts go out to his family and friends as they grieve their loss.

I'm no fan of the former commissioner, however. Kuhn let his personal animosity toward Charlie Finley get the better of him as he stopped the A's owner from selling three of his stars for big money instead of losing them to free agency. Finely could have used the money to rebuild his club, but instead just saw the players leave with no compensation. That confrontation brought about the rule that the commissioner has to approve cash transactions over a million dollars. It limited teams ability to realize value from their best players.

It was done in the name of the fans, that keeping the stars in Oakland the most important thing. But of course, without the cash, Finley couldn't afford to keep them around. It was a bad decision made for the wrong reason.

Via Dodger Thoughts, there's a new trick play in baseball:

Born in the imagination of a minor-league pitching coach, carried from Class A to the brink of the big leagues by an over-achieving, side-arming right-hander, "The 3-2" is a pick-off move that is challenging umpires at least as much as it is eliminating baserunners.

Footage of the move, captured accidentally Friday night by a Venezuelan film crew stationed behind home plate at Surprise Stadium, has been carried on compact disc from Arizona to the Major League Baseball offices in New York City. Duplicates will go out to umpiring supervisors and trickle into the minor leagues.

The pickoff play begins with the bases loaded or runners at second and third. The pitcher fakes the throw to third, then allows that momentum to carry him - 270 degrees counter-clockwise - into a throw to second base. It works best with the bases loaded, when it comes disguised as the more familiar third-to-first pickoff.

I can't find a link to the video on Google or YouTube, so if someone finds it let me know.

Emma Span is blogging at Bronx Banter this season.

The Florida legislature passed a bond issue to make up the shortfall in the money the Marlins need to build a new stadium.

The team, Miami and Miami-Dade County have committed to paying $460 million of the $490 million project. The remaining $30 million would come from bonds backed by the $60 million in state money.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush was against the idea, but new Gov. Charlie Crist has said he supports the use of state money because he believes it creates economic development.

Haven't studies shown that last statement isn't true?

I was checking out the DirecTV site to make sure my subscription to MLB Extra Innings was automatically renewed. The answer is yes! However, all that extra programming that's been talked about, the mix channel and the highlights channel, are not included in the package. Four extra channels, two for HD games, one for the mix and one for the highlights called Strike Zone cost an additional $39. Now, if you sign up today, you get a forty dollar discount on the Extra Innings package, and I'm sure they'll be encouraging you to use that saved money to get the extras. DirecTV has to pay that $100 million dollar bill somehow.

Harper Gordek expresses his displeasure with Cristian Guzman playing short for the Nationals:

He's back. The worst everday [sic] player in major league baseball in 2005. Arguably the worst everyday shortstop in major league baseball from 2002-2004 is back in the field. Guzman played short yesterday. Perhaps this is the season where everything changes for him. Perhaps laser-eye surgery works like that episode of "Future Lawyers" where the guy had a bionic eye and it made him a great hitter. Or maybe the nearly 4000 ABs Cristian has had so far are more of an indication on how he'll do this year. I don't know. Just a thought.

I feel your pain. This is one of those cases where I'd rather see the 22-year-old AA shortstop get the job. He's going to earn a low salary and at least he has a chance of getting better.

The Cleveland Indians extended the contract of GM Mark Shapiro through the 2012 season:

After winning only 68 games in 2003, the Indians jumped to 80 wins in 2004. The following season Cleveland went 93-69 but missed the playoffs when they collapsed in the season's final week. However, Shapiro was named baseball's top executive by the Sporting News.

The Indians were expected to contend last season, but a poor start coupled with baseball's worst bullpen resulted in a 78-84 record and fourth-place finish in their division.

The Indians are a trendy pick to win the AL Central this season. I'm not sure I buy that. They've underperformed their Pythagorean projections two years in a row. Last year, they outscored their opponents by 88 runs, but still posted a losing record. Was this:

• A run of bad luck?
• Poor in-game management?
• Poor construction of the team?

The contract extension indicates that the Indians ownership doesn't think it's the last option. It's may be number one, but if we that happen again, I'd suspect Wedge's job will be on the line.

Rick Hurd writes on the steps the Giants are taking to protect catchers in light of Mike Matheny's career ending concussion:

Conte was the Giants' lead trainer when Matheny's saga began, and as the weeks passed without any resolution, he said the team's medical staff pursued as much information as it could. He said they interviewed more than 250 professional catchers about headaches, blurred vision, dizziness and other symptoms that occurred often after a steady diet of foul tips to the grill.

They also examined the effectiveness of hockey masks -- a one-piece mask that covers more of the skull -- when compared with conventional masks against 94- to 104-mph baseballs. They watched every game of the 2005 season on videotape and determined that catchers get nailed slightly less than one time per game.

They also discovered that early concussive symptoms in catchers were present through the course of a season, "only we never knew it because catchers are conditioned to play through anything," Conte said.

So now they're watching for signs of concussion early:

Now, in the name of Mike Matheny, it's time for the un-conditioning to start. The Giants' research helped lead to refinements in a basic cognitive-skills test that the St. Louis Cardinals already had in place, and Conte said it's hopeful that the test eventually will be standard operating procedure for every team in the majors.

"It would give you a baseline to start with," he said. "That way, we'll have a better idea if something fishy is happening."

Metsblog.com notes pessimism about Pedro Martinez's future coming from a Jayson Stark blog entry (subscription required).

At his blog for ESPN.com, Jayson Stark talks with a high-ranking official of an American League team, who is reasonably familiar with Pedro Martinez's medical history, who doesn't think Martinez will win 10 more games the rest of his career.

Players could post a 4.50 ERA and easily win 10 games with a good offense. So either this official thinks that Pedro won't regain any percentage of his stuff, or that the shoulder will just break down again once he starts pitching.

There's a number of stories that get printed every year around this time. There's the marginal ballplayer getting one last shot at the majors. The pitcher developing a new pitch. The player with some corrective surgery that changed his life. Today we get the story about the lack of African Americans in the game. This one is a bit different, as for the first time no one is blaming baseball for being racist. C.C. Sabathia seems to understand the situation very well:

Sabathia thinks another reason for baseball's dip in popularity among urban youth could be traced to the lure of big-money contracts in other sports.

"Black kids see LeBron (James) coming out of high school and getting his millions," the 26-year-old said. "So they see basketball and football as the quickest way out. But they don't realize I got to the big leagues when I was only 20."

However, the line that got me was this:

"That's amazing. That's unbelievable," he said. "I don't think people understand that there is a problem. They see players like Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado and just assume that they're black."

I always assumed they were Australian aborigines. :-) Of course, another way of looking at this issue is what percentage of major leaguers wouldn't be playing today if Jackie Robinson hadn't broken the color barrier. Jackie didn't just break it for blacks. He broke it for assumed blacks, too.

Now, let's get serious and look at the research:

According to a 2005 report by the University of Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, only 8.5 percent of major leaguers were African American - the lowest percentage since the report was initiated in the mid-1980s. By contrast, whites comprised 59.5 percent of the majors' player pool, Latinos 28.7 percent and Asians 2.5.

I assume here that Latinos are both white and black Latinos, so the 59.5% of whites are white Americans. That means of the US born players on major league rosters, African Americans make up 12.4%. According to the census, if you look at the population of white only and black only, the percentage is 16.4%. So indeed, African Americans are underrepresented in major league baseball.

I don't pretend to know what to do about this problem, or even if this is really a problem. Baseball is open to more people of varied backgrounds than ever before. The one place where I'll praise Bud Selig without reservation is in his efforts to bring minorities into the game. It may just be the natural cycle of things. Different ethnic groups dominated the game over time, then waned away. In 20 years we might be asking, "What happened to all the Latino players?"

I'm glad people are both talking about this and actually trying to fix it. For the good of the game, I'd like to see as many people interested in baseball as possible. So if stories like this help in that regard, I'll read them once a year.

If you missed tonight's show, you can hear the recorded version here. It's also available on demand at TPSRadio. Tonight the AL Central race is analyzed.

The Baseball Musings Radio Show is coming up in a little while at 8 PM EST. You can leave questions during the show in the TPSRadio Chat Room at Stickam.

Pete Rose admitted on the Dan Patrick show today that he bet on the Reds:

Rose spoke Wednesday with Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann on ESPN Radio to discuss the new Pete Rose exhibit that will be on display at the Great American Ballpark as part of the Reds Hall of Fame. The exhibit will be on display for 11 months.

"I bet on my team every night. I didn't bet on my team four nights a week. I was wrong," Rose said.

Rose said that he believed in his team so much that he bet on them to win every night.

"I bet on my team to win every night because I love my team, I believe in my team," Rose said. "I did everything in my power every night to win that game."

I don't know if this will help or hurt him get reinstated. The years of denial did a lot to damage him with the people who supported him all that time. And the more he talks, the more we find out it's all true. Some kudos should go out to the late Bart Giamatti for doing the right thing.

Update: One other point. An accusation I've heard over the years is that Rose didn't bet on the team every night, giving the bookies an idea of when Rose thought the team would lose. Saying he bet every night flies in the face of that, but he's lied so many times in the past it's tough to believe that's true.

Gary Matthews unequivocally denied using HGH:

"I have never taken HGH -- during the 2004 season or any other time," Matthews said in a statement. "Nobody has accused me of doing so, and no law enforcement authority has said I am a target of any investigation for doing so."

That's good. My feelings on these is to take the player at his word. I just hope time proves it to be better than Palmeiro's denial.

The Baseball Musings radio show will be on TPSRadio tonight at 8 PM EDT. Check out TPSRadio's other sports programming as well.

You can stop by the chat room at TPSRadio during the broadcast and leave a comment. We're now using Stickam for the chat, so there are no logins required. Also, feel free to leave a question in the comments to this post and I'll be happy to answer it on the air.

Tonight's show will preview the AL Central race.

WasWatching notices Jeff Karstens new found speed.

It looks like we'll get more names leaked in the Albany, NY drug investigation:

Albany, N.Y., district attorney David Soares told the New York Daily News in Wednesday's editions that he will send those athletes' names to the NFL, major league baseball and any other leagues.

"We're going to be sending information to vet those names, see if they are who they say they are," the newspaper reported Soares as saying.

The people who know the names, the more likely they'll get out to the public. We'll see if any other active players are revealed.

According to this article, the Tigers are planning on batting Ivan Rodriguez in the leadoff spot in 2007:

Rodriguez batted first against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on Monday, something he has done seven times in 10 spring games. He has hit first in all four of his starts against left-handers, including Monday (Casey Fossum). He also has batted leadoff against three right-handers, including two accomplished men by the name of Roy (Halladay and Oswalt).

As with Leyland's lineup, the results are self-evident: Rodriguez is batting .429 this spring after a 2-for-3 in Monday's 3-2 win.

He hit a no-doubt home run to leftfield off Al Reyes. He lined a leadoff single to center and smacked a hard grounder to second in his final plate appearance.

He appears more selective -- and certainly less pull-conscious -- than last year. Still, it's difficult to tell whether Rodriguez has changed his approach because he's at the top of the order or whether he's simply hitting the ball better.

Or it's a small sample size. I could see leading off the 2004 Pudge, but the last two seasons his OBA is just .312. Maybe moving up to number will make him a more patient hitter, but my guess is that over time the real Rodriguez's abilities take over. Plus, the extra strain of catching the top of the first and running right back out to lead off might be too much for the older catcher. If Leyland tries this during the regular season, I don't think the experiment will last very long.

The Orioles extended Brian Roberts' contract through the 2009 season at about $7 million per year. Given that money, all involved seem to agree that 2005 was a fluke season, with 2004 and 2006 closer to Brian's real production.

So far, it looks like the Diamondbacks made the right move keeping Micah Owings.

Micah Owings, one of several candidates looking to earn a slot in the Diamondbacks' rotation, tossed three scoreless innings and Arizona beat the Chicago Cubs 6-5 on Scott Hairston's RBI single in the bottom of the ninth.

The competition is tough, but that should make the DBacks rotation all that much stronger.

Speaking to a reporter this afternoon about the Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR), I realized I never published the chart of how pitchers were helped or hurt by their defense in 2006. So without further ado:

Probabilistic Model of Range, Fielders Behind Pitchers, 2006. Smoothed Visit Model with Distance for Fly Balls

Pitcher	Team	In Play	Actual Outs	Predicted Outs	DER	Predicted DER	Difference
Kris Benson	Bal	595	425	402.81	0.714	0.677	0.03730
Chris Young	SD	468	357	339.63	0.763	0.726	0.03712
Ervin R Santana	LAA	603	435	412.64	0.721	0.684	0.03708
Roy Halladay	Tor	686	491	466.71	0.716	0.680	0.03540
Kevin Millwood	Tex	670	458	434.82	0.684	0.649	0.03460
Joel Pineiro	Sea	569	378	361.55	0.664	0.635	0.02891
Kenny Rogers	Det	656	472	454.00	0.720	0.692	0.02743
Chris Carpenter	StL	638	455	437.61	0.713	0.686	0.02726
David T Bush	Mil	621	440	423.21	0.709	0.681	0.02704
Jeff Suppan	StL	634	435	420.48	0.686	0.663	0.02290
Carlos Zambrano	ChC	563	409	396.36	0.726	0.704	0.02244
Johan Santana	Min	603	433	419.91	0.718	0.696	0.02171
Tim Wakefield	Bos	440	320	310.49	0.727	0.706	0.02162
Chris Capuano	Mil	677	461	446.73	0.681	0.660	0.02108
Woody Williams	SD	489	350	339.78	0.716	0.695	0.02089
Kirk Saarloos	Oak	421	287	278.99	0.682	0.663	0.01902
Noah Lowry	SF	521	370	360.15	0.710	0.691	0.01890
Chien-Ming Wang	NYY	758	526	511.78	0.694	0.675	0.01875
John Smoltz	Atl	662	457	444.95	0.690	0.672	0.01820
Bronson Arroyo	Cin	707	509	496.17	0.720	0.702	0.01815
Mike Mussina	NYY	570	395	384.84	0.693	0.675	0.01783
Steve Trachsel	NYM	552	389	379.44	0.705	0.687	0.01733
Greg Maddux	ChC	454	311	303.18	0.685	0.668	0.01722
Matt Morris	SF	687	481	469.65	0.700	0.684	0.01652
Brandon Webb	Ari	701	483	472.33	0.689	0.674	0.01522
Nate Robertson	Det	640	448	438.33	0.700	0.685	0.01512
Jose Contreras	CWS	614	433	424.27	0.705	0.691	0.01421
Carlos Silva	Min	664	446	436.62	0.672	0.658	0.01413
Ricky Nolasco	Fla	443	298	291.93	0.673	0.659	0.01371
Josh Johnson	Fla	440	311	305.16	0.707	0.694	0.01328
Josh Beckett	Bos	590	429	421.42	0.727	0.714	0.01284
Roy Oswalt	Hou	668	459	450.87	0.687	0.675	0.01217
Randy Johnson	NYY	590	416	409.33	0.705	0.694	0.01131
Erik Bedard	Bal	583	394	387.98	0.676	0.665	0.01033
Jon Garland	CWS	715	486	479.00	0.680	0.670	0.00979
Josh Fogg	Col	581	394	388.42	0.678	0.669	0.00960
Freddy Garcia	CWS	695	494	487.36	0.711	0.701	0.00955
Gil Meche	Sea	539	372	366.94	0.690	0.681	0.00939
Jaret Wright	NYY	467	313	308.80	0.670	0.661	0.00899
Felix A Hernandez	Sea	551	371	366.17	0.673	0.665	0.00877
Eric Milton	Cin	495	354	349.80	0.715	0.707	0.00848
Justin B Verlander	Det	564	394	389.49	0.699	0.691	0.00800
Mark Buehrle	CWS	688	471	465.66	0.685	0.677	0.00776
Jason Jennings	Col	655	456	451.33	0.696	0.689	0.00713
Dan Haren	Oak	668	466	461.60	0.698	0.691	0.00658
Jamie Moyer	Sea	531	370	366.51	0.697	0.690	0.00656
Jason Schmidt	SF	607	432	428.09	0.712	0.705	0.00643
Jarrod Washburn	Sea	619	437	433.23	0.706	0.700	0.00609
Jeff W Francis	Col	626	445	441.42	0.711	0.705	0.00572
Aaron Cook	Col	744	507	503.15	0.681	0.676	0.00517
Clay A Hensley	SD	571	402	399.10	0.704	0.699	0.00509
Casey Fossum	TB	413	284	281.93	0.688	0.683	0.00502
Tim Hudson	Atl	705	482	479.36	0.684	0.680	0.00375
Tom Glavine	NYM	621	431	429.08	0.694	0.691	0.00310
Matt Cain	SF	528	383	381.46	0.725	0.722	0.00291
Derek Lowe	LAD	716	492	490.39	0.687	0.685	0.00225
Curt Schilling	Bos	592	399	397.74	0.674	0.672	0.00212
Vicente Padilla	Tex	608	415	414.25	0.683	0.681	0.00123
John Lackey	LAA	635	433	432.39	0.682	0.681	0.00096
Rodrigo Lopez	Bal	616	407	407.54	0.661	0.662	-0.00087
Brad Radke	Min	549	371	371.63	0.676	0.677	-0.00114
John V Koronka	Tex	424	294	294.76	0.693	0.695	-0.00178
Brad Penny	LAD	583	386	387.05	0.662	0.664	-0.00180
Ted Lilly	Tor	524	362	363.16	0.691	0.693	-0.00221
Doug Davis	Mil	619	421	422.39	0.680	0.682	-0.00225
Jason Marquis	StL	648	456	457.72	0.704	0.706	-0.00266
Jake Westbrook	Cle	720	479	480.93	0.665	0.668	-0.00268
Jamey Wright	SF	507	354	355.81	0.698	0.702	-0.00357
Scott M Olsen	Fla	490	348	349.80	0.710	0.714	-0.00367
Andy Pettitte	Hou	652	430	433.13	0.660	0.664	-0.00480
Mark Redman	KC	573	385	387.79	0.672	0.677	-0.00488
Miguel Batista	Ari	692	467	470.53	0.675	0.680	-0.00510
Brian Moehler	Fla	436	283	285.38	0.649	0.655	-0.00545
Jon Lieber	Phi	557	378	381.60	0.679	0.685	-0.00647
Paul G Maholm	Pit	559	371	375.05	0.664	0.671	-0.00724
Paul Byrd	Cle	647	426	430.91	0.658	0.666	-0.00760
Tony Armas Jr.	Was	500	343	346.80	0.686	0.694	-0.00760
Esteban Loaiza	Oak	520	351	355.50	0.675	0.684	-0.00866
Byung-Hyun Kim	Col	473	306	310.22	0.647	0.656	-0.00893
Jake Peavy	SD	542	372	377.82	0.686	0.697	-0.01074
Wandy E Rodriguez	Hou	427	281	285.85	0.658	0.669	-0.01135
Jeremy Bonderman	Det	615	413	420.29	0.672	0.683	-0.01186
Cliff Lee	Cle	658	455	463.03	0.691	0.704	-0.01220
Chan Ho Park	SD	436	302	307.47	0.693	0.705	-0.01254
C.C. Sabathia	Cle	562	383	390.88	0.681	0.696	-0.01402
Barry Zito	Oak	655	464	473.26	0.708	0.723	-0.01414
Javier Vazquez	CWS	594	399	407.80	0.672	0.687	-0.01481
Claudio Vargas	Ari	538	365	373.65	0.678	0.695	-0.01607
Zach Duke	Pit	726	480	491.99	0.661	0.678	-0.01651
Ian D Snell	Pit	539	362	371.02	0.672	0.688	-0.01673
Sean C Marshall	ChC	400	280	287.55	0.700	0.719	-0.01888
Kelvim Escobar	LAA	570	383	394.00	0.672	0.691	-0.01930
Brett Myers	Phi	549	378	388.95	0.689	0.708	-0.01994
Ramon Ortiz	Was	654	442	457.19	0.676	0.699	-0.02323
Dontrelle Willis	Fla	690	466	482.36	0.675	0.699	-0.02372
Joe M Blanton	Oak	668	439	456.28	0.657	0.683	-0.02586
Ryan Madson	Phi	441	278	291.21	0.630	0.660	-0.02994
Livan Hernandez	Was	496	332	346.94	0.669	0.699	-0.03012
Aaron Harang	Cin	684	454	476.58	0.664	0.697	-0.03301

Looking at the Hardball Times, Benson has a much better ERA than FIP, as does Chris Young. Hernandez is negative for Washington, as is Harang for Cincinnati. So it looks like the arrows are pointing in the right direction.

In discussing this, another question arose. Which pitchers give their fielders the easiest balls to field? We can answer that by sorting on Predicted DER. At the top of the list is Young, Zito, Cain, Sean Marshall and Scott Olsen. At the bottom, the worst was Joel Pineiro, followed by Millwood, Moehler, B. Kim and Carlos Silva. Now you need to be careful with those number, since home field has a say in this (more balls turn into outs in PETCO). I'm going to try to work on an adjustment for that. However, not that Young also led this category in 2005 in a completely different home park and league.

The three copies of The Baseball Economist are gone. Thanks for the donations! Remember, any amount is greatly appreciated.

Ducksnorts looks at Khalil Greene's extreme home/road splits. While managers platooned players based on handedness for decades, I've often wondered if home/road platoons might be appropriate in extreme parks. If the Padres found a shortstop with great OBA skills at PETCO, they could play him at home and Greene on the road. I've often thought that sort of thing would work for Rockies pitchers as well.

Kevin Kernan explores the reasons Little League is opposed to a ban on non-wood bats.

• More than 10 years ago, the major manufacturers of non-wood bats reached an agreement with Little League to limit their bats to a "Bat Performance Factor" (BPF) of 1.15. ... The BPF is essentially a measure of a non-wood bat's performance (how fast the ball exits the bat when hit) in relation to a standard wood bat's rating of 1.00. A very good wood bat's BPF is 1.15.

• That means today's best non-wood bats (usually made of aluminum) used in Little League perform statistically the same, in terms of how fast the ball exits the bat, as the best wood bats.

• For the last 10 years, bat manufacturers have only been producing non-wood bats for play in Little League that do not exceed the 1.15 BPF. Most of these bats are already printed with the BPF of 1.15, but beginning in 2009, all bats used in Little League Baseball must be imprinted with the BPF.

The article goes on to point out that even though the bats are swung faster than aluminum, the transfer of momentum is less. I personally like wooden bats better, since that's what you use in the pros. I understand the costs, however, but according to little leagues, injuries isn't one of them. The whole post is well worth the read.