A suggestion for an Inside the Park Home Run Derby. I think it would be more fun with lumbering sluggers.

It's not that the season is too long, it takes too long to crown a champion!

There's no such thing as too much baseball. The "problem" is that it seems to take forever to crown a winner. In Golf and Tennis, they play around nine months as well, but they crown four champions each year. The "drag" in baseball is not that they play too much, but they wait too long to crown the champion. Indeed, they don't play anywhere nearly enough. I'd go for two seasons per year, two champions. Get me more baseball.

Maybe do a northern schedule, April-September, five months of games, one month of playoffs and a southern schedule November-March, same thing. Or everyone can build a dome! The teams that could play all year would be the six on the west coast, Arizona, Texas, Houston, Florida, Tampa Bay, Milwaukee and Toronto (the Twins dome is doomed). Atlanta can get pretty cold in the winter, but they are a possibility. If they move two northern teams into San Antonio and Las Vegas each year, that would be 16. Four divisions, four teams each. Veterans can take the winter off, and players still under the reserve clause can make extra money! I'll have to think about this some more.

ESPN the Magazine asks writers and bloggers to look back on this season. My haiku didn't make it:

One hundred year drought,
Sweet rain of wins falls from Lou.
Rays shine in the end.

A number of people sent in requests for links today.

WhereIStand.com takes a mid-season look at the accuracy of reporter predictions.

David Gassko and Mitchel Lichtman are teaching a Sabermetrics class at MIT on Sunday. It's open to the public.

Maury Brown gathered writers from every possible corner of the baseball world to opine on the current state of the game at The Biz of Baseball.

Randy Sabia organized our annual outing to New Britain last night to see the Rock Cats, the Twins AA affiliate. They lost to the Binghamton Mets 3-2, but mostly we were four guys talking baseball and baseball history.

Meanwhile, the second round of interleague play started in the majors, although the first game I noticed was the 20-2 drubbing the Phillies laid on the Cardinals. When I saw the heart of the Philadelphia order hit four home runs, I assumed they were big ones. Only six of the twenty runs, however came on those four shots. If people were looking for the Cardinals to fall apart after all the injuries, that game pretty much says it all. Wellemeyer, one of their starters surprising people, was knocked around, as was most of the bullpen. The offense wasn't too bad, but couldn't turn ten hits into more than two runs. The Yankees won 2-1 on a Jeter homer in the eighth.

The other thing that caught my eye were a couple of high walk yet well pitched games. Joba Chamberlain and Shawn Chacon both walked four in about six innings, yet each allowed just one run. Worse was Zack Greinke, who walked seven in seven innings, but shutout the Diamondbacks during that time. Arizona took the game 1-0 in extra innings on a Chad Tracy homer.

Overall, the AL took 9 of the 14 games played against the NL last night.

Yesterday was pretty much the first day of the season I didn't pay attention to what was going on during the games. Here's what I missed.

The Chicago Cubs came back from an 8-0 deficit to defeat the Rockies 10-9. The ball was flying out of Wrigley as the two teams combined for seven home runs.

Chipper Jones went 0 for 5 to reduce his batting average to .409. Jay Bruce went 4 for 5 to raise his batting average to .571. The Braves lost another one-run game on the road as the Reds took the game 3-2.

The Phillies offensive machine is in full gear as they pounded the Marlins 12-3. Florida scored all their runs in the top of the first, but the lead was gone quickly as the Phillies scored seven in the second. Utley retakes the ML lead in home runs with his 18th of the season. More importantly, Philadelphia takes over first place in the NL East.

The Red Sox took 13 innings to defeat Baltimore 5-2. The Orioles left the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th. The Orioles struck out 17 times in the game, 10 against Beckett in the first six innings.

Baltimore falls to last place in the AL East as the Yankees take down the Twins. Mike Mussina and a Shelly Duncan error led to a 4-1 Twins lead after one, but the Yankees fought back to take the game 6-5. Bobby Abreu hit two triples. and scored four runs. Matsui went 3 for 4 with two RBI as he continues to be the hottest hitter on the team.

The Boston and New York wins allowed them to keep pace with the Rays, who took another tight game at Tropicana Field. They defeated the White Sox 2-1 on a walk-off home run by Cliff Floyd. That's the Rays sixth win at home this year in which they scored two runs or less.

The Royals lost a close one 5-4 to extend their losing streak to 12 games. They blow an early four-run lead as Cleveland gains on Chicago.

The Rangers pick up ground on both Oakland and LAnaheim as they get a well pitched game from Kevin Millwood and win 3-1. The Angels lose to Toronto as Overbay hits two home runs, and now four games separate the top three teams in the AL West.

The Giants turned a triple play, but lose to the Padres 7-3 in the second 13 inning game of the night. The Giant fail to gain more ground on the Diamondbacks, who lose their fifth game in a row. They fall to Washington 7-4 as Micah Owings gives up six runs.

The Dodgers do gain as they hang a 9-5 loss on the Mets. Kershaw pitches poorly for Los Angeles, but the bullpen, led by Chan-Ho Park allows one run the rest of the way and the Dodgers score five in the 8th to win it.

In the Central, St. Louis keeps pace with Chicago as they withstand a three run rally by Pittsburgh in the ninth to take a 5-4 win, and the Brewers heart was beating strong as Fielder, Cameron and Braun homer in a 5-1 win over the Astros.

And so they don't feel left out, the Mariners wasted two Adrian Beltre home runs as they fell to the Tigers 7-4. Carlos Silva allows seven runs in the first inning and his ERA is now 6.00. Nice move by Bavasi there.

Russ Smith explains that while baseball isn't the same game the old timers played, it's still an extremely strong sport. Baseball Musings gets a nice mention in the article.

In the mail, Working at the Ballpark: The Fascinating Lives of Baseball People from Peanut Vendors and Broadcasters to Players and Managers by Tom Jones. Tom sits down with a wide variety of people, from the owner of the Giants to a ticket hustler from Fenway. All the stories are told in the subject's own voice, and Tom does a great job bringing out what they love about their jobs. A nice addition to your baseball library.

My final article at Baseball Prospectus is available to subscribers of that fine site.

This has to be the greatest game recap story I've ever read.

Bugs & Cranks takes a look at how sandwich picks ruin July.

Vegas Watch figures the odds of all the teams winning the World Series. The Devil Rays are a real long shot.

And finally, Lion in Oil promotes Michael Vick Animal Awareness day.

Armchair GM says baseball players are just like us.

Sports Club Stats presents a new playoff odds calculator.

And Bugs and Cranks looks at the players who started out as poor fielders and worked their way into fine fielders.

Ozzie Guillen makes the most intelligent response to Gary Sheffield I've seen. It's not race, it's economics:

Guillen also told the newspaper that he believes there are more Latin players in baseball than African-Americans because players from Central and South American and the Caribbean can sign as free agents while American players have to go through the draft.

"It's not that they can control us; maybe when we come to this country, we're hungry," Guillen told the newspaper. "We're trying to survive. Those guys sign for $500,000 or $1 million and they're made. We have a couple of dollars. You can sign one African-American player for the price of 30 Latin players. Look at how many Latin players have won Cy Youngs or MVP awards the last couple of years, how many Latin players have been in the All-Star Game; it's quantity and quality."

For Baseball Prospectus subscribers, my latest column concerns dynamic pricing in baseball.

With my connections to the Connecticut legal community, I get to enjoy a New Britain Rock Cats game once a year with William O'Sullivan. He's penned an article for Connecticut Lawyer, tracing the history of the reserve clause in baseball.

I absolutely love the Bad Ruth picture that adorns the first page. It Babe still in his youth with the Yankees, the lean mean Ruth who would post consecutive slugging percentages over .800, not the fat Ruth we see so often in movie footage of that era.

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.

John Lowe contrasts the start and end of the baseball season:

It begins in the sunshine of February mornings in Florida and Arizona. Today, the Tigers' bus for their first spring-training game was due to leave their base in Lakeland at 7:30 a.m.

The baseball season ends in the near-midnight chill of late October evenings. You remember staying up well past 11 o'clock for those frustrating World Series games from St. Louis last fall.

Eugene O'Neill wrote, "Long Day's Journey Into Night." His title fits for the eight-month trek that is every baseball season.

And both are concerned with drug use!

My daughter and I shared a delightful day touring a couple of colleges in the Boston area. (The Harvard tour guide, however, didn't deliver the punch line to the story of the John Harvard statue.) Readers sent me a number of articles and interviews, so here's the collection for your evening reading.

Joel Jacobsen notes that life imitates Major League as Jhonny Peralta corrects his vision with eye surgery.

Jan sends this article on congressional hearings about the DirecTV deal.

Home Run Derby is a new blog dedicated to the home run. Rich Braasch, who runs the site also points out that MLB players will be sporting new chapeaus this season. I hope this means the end of those ugly sweat stains.

Dan Hauptman recommends Alan Schwarz's site, especially this Marvin Miller interview.

DRays Bay interviews David Price, someone they'd like to see Tampa Bay pick up in the draft.

Full blogging will resume tomorrow.

Jon Weisman asks at his blog:

Do you need major leaguers to play in order to enjoy watching a baseball game?

My answer is no, but I certainly notice the difference in quality of play. I go to a number of AA games a year and probably a couple of independent games. The place I notice the biggest difference is in the fielding. AA players make errors you seldom see in the big leagues. Watching AA ball is akin to taking a time machine back to the level of play (at least in fielding) seen at the start of the 20th century.

Phillip Scott asks if baseball needs saving. He's worried that a small number of teams are buying up all the good players and wants MLB to be more like the NFL.

Baseball needs to be fair. Baseball needs parity. The best way to do this without changing the system to much is to institute a hard-cap, similar to that of the NFL. If that happens, we might be able to see a day when the Yankees do not make the playoffs. What a beautiful day that will be.

Since 1978, there have only been three years in which the World Series winner repeated. (1993, 1999 and 2000). In the same time period, there were five Super Bowl repeats. And while there were 20 different baseball teams winning championships in that time, only 13 different NFL franchises did. When has an NFL expansion team made it to the Superbowl championship quickly? The Jets won in 1969 after being created in 1960, but they were not a traditional expansion team. The Mets, Diamondbacks and Marlins all won a World Series in less time.

And I'd say the reason is a lack of forced parity. Baseball teams, if they decide they want to win, can take any avenue they choose, including buying a team. While any NFL team may be able to beat any other NFL team on any Sunday, very few win the Superbowl. Baseball teams, with their freedoms of choice, can build long term or short term, and both can lead to winning.

The View from the Bleachers offers this Cubs Christmas poem.

The Biz of Baseball offers contributions from 30 people involved in the game on what's right and wrong with baseball today.

I'm doing my civic duty today on jury duty, although I haven't been in a court room yet. We were marched to the door, but the sides settled. That's a big reason we're there.

I took a quick look at my RSS feed on the way to lunch and noticed the Baseball Crank wrote a comparison of the 1964 Phillies and today's Cardinals, and Sabernomics looks at Joe Girardi for Moy. Two good topics.

Phillies Nation is in London and reports on a game between Great Britain and Ireland.

The game was played at the Finsbury Park Cricket Ground in Finsbury Park, north London. The cricket grounds have two baseball diamonds carved out, one for the amateur leagues I mentioned earlier and the other is home to the Little League London Mets. I arrived that Saturday afternoon just as the second game was ending. Ireland took the first one and Great Britain came back to tie up the series; both games finished 6 to 5. I found my seat on the grass just next to the Ireland bench as the players were returning from their between-games hot dogs and hamburgers. The third and final game, besides being the day's rubber match, also held special significance for the aforementioned Josh Chetwynd. Josh, who is American, also happens to play for the British National team and this was his final game. He is a solid ballplayer, I'd have to say, and graciously ended his career with a hit in his final at bat.

Let's hope the game continues to grow in popularity around the world, bringing more talent and revenue to the major league game. And let's hope that leads to expansion around the globe.

Can't Stop the Bleeding provides the bottom stories of the day.

Via MetsBlog.com, a quiz to test your knowledge of baseball and literature. I got all 21 right!

The Indians/White Sox game is still in a rain delay, but so far it's demonstrated just how much luck and play in scoring. In the bottom of the third, Michaels leapt for a ball, and the drive ticked off his glove for a double. A better leap might have caught it. If it were a foot closer to centerfield he might have caught it. Instead, it sets up a big inning for Chicago.

In the top of the fourth, the Indians third base coach sends Hafner, from first to home on a double off the wall in right. The relay throw should have one-hopped into Pierzynski's glove, but it hit a hard spot and bounce up and over the catcher's head. The Indians get a run there, and a follow up home run ties the game.

A little bit of luck went a long way for both teams tonight.

Andrew Godfrey attend his grandson's first game of the season and beams at the results of the seven-year-olds hard work.

Baseball Musings is conducting a pledge drive in March. Click here for details.

U.S.S. Mariner analyzes one of the greatest games ever played by one of baseball greatest, but banned players:

The exclusion of non-human players like Bunny is another shameful example of the long history of injustices done by baseball's racist policies. That black and rabbit players could only play against white players in non-sanctioned exhibition matches deprived the game of some of the best talent to ever play, and from what we've seen, robbed scientists of a chance to better study phenonema with wide applicability to questions of physics that could have greatly benefited all residents of the earth, be they human or Leporidae.

Although I've seen replays of this game hundreds of times, I never appreciated the physics lesson before. :-)

Baseball Musings is conducting a pledge drive in March. Click here for details.

Thanks to Randy Sabia (who is too sick to make it tonight), I'm off to the UConn Baseball Dinner. Brian Cashman of the Yankees and Ben Cherrington of the Red Sox are scheduled to speak. I'll do my best to get in a question.

The Seattle Mariners will hold their fan fest next weekend. It will a chance to get a look at new catcher Kenji Johjima, and his battery mate Felix Hernandez will be there, too. The last fan standing triva contest sounds like a lot of fun. Will any of the Mariners bloggers be participating?

Humbug Journal finds the geographic center of MLB, the leagues, divisions and rivals. The best one:

Mets/Yankees: On Rikers Island.

Yes, really, it's true...if you meet the Mets and Yankees halfway, you end up in prison.

One of the fun things about writing this blog is hearing from people the world over. I recently received this e-mail from a softball player in Iran.

my name is mahdi golmohammadi.iam the member of tehran baseball team i have been the member of national team for 5 years.i had 6 championship of the country and i was the best outfielder for 3 times and for one time the best batter.for one time participated for phillipin asian competition.and i attended in 9 american trainers classes and three major league players(don gordon-shawn boskie-jet hansen).iam prepering for 2006 doha(qatar).iam studying in sport sciences at tehran university.i intend to continue my sport activity in newer field.if you would like i will send you my pictures and my documents.( thank you)

I didn't know they played any type of baseball in Iran. So today Medhi sent me some photos that I'm happy to share with you (click on an image for the full picture).

Here's his award for the 2005 season:

Here's his certificate from the Manila tournament:

Here's his team at the Asian games:

And here's Mahdi with his American trainer Glenn Johnson.

And here's a story from Iran Today explaining how baseball came to Iran.

Alex Belth remembers a dear baseball friend as he guest writes at Baseball Analysts.

The regular season games are over. San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland all pick up victories to put a cap on a fun year. There was plenty of controversy as a new steroid policy sent players into suspensions. New stars emerged. Some old stars had unbelievable seasons, while others nursed injuries.

There was baseball in Washington for the first time in over 30 years. Washington finished in last place, but with a .500 record. For a few weeks, it looked like they might make the playoffs. They made a good impression on the city, enough to bring major league baseball a nice profit when they auction the team.

Some things were back to normal. For the 7th time in 8 year the AL East finished NY, Bos, Tor, Bal and TB. The Orioles got off to a great start and were leading the division in early July. The Orioles lost their power, however, as their slugging percentage was 75 points lower after the break than before the All-Star Game. The pitching slowed down also, leading them to play 22 games under .500 after the in the second half.

Mostly though, this season showed that game early in the season matter, too. The White Sox, Cardinals, Angels all got off to great starts, and those great starts allowed the White Sox and Angels to hold on as Oakland and Cleveland made impressive comebacks. All the early losses hurt the charging teams.

We came close to a sub-.500 division winner, but San Diego managed to finish two games over .500, the worst finish for a first place teams since baseball split into divisions in 1969. (For some reason, baseball doesn't count first place teams from 1994 as division winners. The Rangers were under .500 when the players went on strike). The seventh best record in the National league is going to the playoffs.

The Braves, Athletics and Indians all showed that good young players can perform as well as expensive old veterans. The Royals showed that players can be bad at any age. The Rockies showed that pitchers with unusual arm angles might be the answer to Coors field.

All in all, a fine season. The Padres and White Sox are here to bring some new blood into the playoffs and we have four more weeks of fun ahead.

It's a good day to watch Nine Innings from Ground Zero. My review is here.

Graham Knight runs two good sites, that while not blogs, are a great resource for information. Red Sox Connection features links to everything you'd like to know about the Boston team. Baseball Pilgrimage tells the stories of his visits to ballparks around the country. Stop by and say hi.

Balls Sticks and Stuff has a nice set of illustrations showing how Bobby Abreu uses a golf grip. If he keeps hitting like this, I'm sure others will adopt it as well.

Sean Kirst, a columnist with the Post-Standard in Syracuse and author of The Ashes of Lou Gehrig, pens this powerful column on how the cheers of little leaguers brings back memories of a son lost in Vietnam.

There's a good discussion going on in this post from yesterday about the relative merits of high offense on attendance. Let me sum up my feelings more consicely than I did there; yes, too little offense is boring, but too much is boring also. The drop in offense this season (so far) is to an historically normal level (if not a bit high), so I don't see a big hit in attendance based on runs scored this season. There's a difference between lower offense and low offense. This is lower, not low.

This is simply the pendulum of baseball swining back. We've had twelve years of high offense in which time the men who run baseball have been trying to figure out how to find an advantage in such an environment. They've mostly tried using a lot of pitchers, each in for a specific situation. Instead of helping, adding more pitchers lowered the overall quality of the staffs, keeping runs at very high levels.

In 2005, we're starting to see a movement away from the automatic use of relief pitchers. Complete game have almost doubled compared to the same period last year:

First Four Weeks	2004	2005
Complete Games	15	28
Games Started	702	700
CG Percentage	2.1	4.0

You saw a good reason why complete games are up yesterday in New York. Joe Torre followed conventional wisdom and brought in his setup man with a lead in the 8th, despite the fact that his starter had not thrown many pitches and was still effective. Gordon gave up a game tying home run. The increase in complete game reflects a "if it's not broke, don't fix it attitude" among some managers.

I'm going to need to do the research, but pitchers are being more efficient as well. I haven't really noticed high pitch counts in these complete games, but I'll need to gather the data to make sure that's true. Managers are not abusing pitchers to get them to go the distance.

Which leads to the question, is this better pitching or worse hitting? Most teams this offseason seemed to concentrate on acquiring better pitching or defense. The moves the Red Sox and Yankees made were geared toward cutting down on runs allowed rather than increasing runs scored. Remember the big story of the off season? It was decent pitchers getting big contracts. There wasn't a huge market for either Carlos Delgado or Beltran. By thinking the offense is fine, teams don't make moves to cast off the dead wood, and you end up with players like Mondesi, Jordan, Womack, Dye and others on major league rosters.

So the drop in offense was the inevitable result of competition. Teams are no longer trying to build the most powerful lineups; they're trying to build pitching staffs that can win games. With money flowing to the arms, there's less to spend on the bats. I don't know how far it will swing toward pitching, but if it stays at 9.0 runs a game, I'll be happy.

The Boston Pops are at Fenway, and as the played Also Sprach Zarathustra, banners were unfurled over the Green Monster for each previous World Series victory. As the Pops reached the end of the piece, a banner the size of the wall was unfurled over the smaller flags, covering them with World Series 2004 Champions. A well choreographed moment.

Update: Terry Francona just came out to get his ring. They have an image of each ring on the scoreboard in center. The name of the individual player is in the side of the ring. It's not clear what order they're using, as Francona is followed by Burks, then Wakefield, then Nixon.

Update: Derek Lowe is actually there, in a Red Sox shirt, and the crowd is giving him a big cheer.

Update: Johnny Pesky just got his ring. This has to be a huge moment for him. He connects the playoff disappointments that started in 1946 with the victory of 2004. It's good he lived long enough to see this day.

Update: They just raised the banner in centerfield. They had a number of Red Sox greats there to help hoist the banner as they played Hail Red Sox Nation. Pesky and Yaz had a big hug after the banner went up.

Update: Now the Yankees are being introduced, and you can hear some fans booing the equipment manager. I guess A-Rod is really going to get it.

Update: Mariano Rivera gets a big cheer from the crowd. He seems to be taking it in good humor.

Update: Torre gets cheered. Seems everyone respects Joe. The rest of the order is getting booed. Jeter, A-Rod and Posada got the biggest boos.

Update: For the first pitch, the Sox brought in other Boston champs; Bobby Orr, Bill Russell, Richard Seymor and Teddy Bruschi. The fans are real happy to see Teddy, and he looks pretty healthy.

First pitch coming up on ESPN2 in a few minutes. What a great way to start the season. Boston at the New York Yankees, Wells vs. Johnson, A-Rod and Varitek, Giambi off steroids, Jeter and Manny, bombers vs. idiots. I'll be live blogging the game.

Michael Gee in the Boston Herald looks at Baseball's popularity:

Baseball is just like Broadway. Both look like dying businesses until you try to buy a ticket.

Motion pictures, radio, and TV were all going to ruin live theater. High costs spelled doom for stage shows in 1905 and 2005. Broadway was called ``The Fabulous Invalid'' over 50 years ago.

Those who tried to score orchestra seats for the original cast version of ``The Producers'' found the invalid in robust health. Either they paid a bundle or more often they were out of luck.

Baseball's no different. The big leagues have existed for more than a century in which their demise was always right around the corner.

``Go back as far as you want,'' Players Association head Don Fehr once said. ``Two things are always true. No team ever had enough pitching and no team ever made any money.''

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

Mr. Snitch pens a long and thoughtful post on the national pastime, fate and deception.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

Scott Craven pens a nice essay on the hold of baseball over its fans.

There are other sports that may be considered more popular than baseball when judged by the numbers. TV ratings for football are almost unapproachable. NASCAR races routinely draw more than 100,000 fans to ovals across the country.

But numbers are too logical to explain our romanticism with baseball, Bellamy says.

"If you go by metrics, by statistics, baseball doesn't do very well," he says. "But the sport is about much more than that. It brings about feelings that are hard to quantify."

Baseball is Coca-Cola. It may not win the taste test, but it's fans are deeply loyal.

Baseball Musings is holding a pledge drive during March. Click here for details.

The Washington Times looks at the declining interest in baseball in Puerto Rico. Some blame the Expos.

Puerto Rico has long been known as a baseball-mad country with an enduring legacy that runs from Orlando Cepeda and Clemente — an icon on the island — through Roberto Alomar and Bernie Williams and on to Carlos Beltran and Nationals second baseman Jose Vidro. That legacy, however, has languished in recent years, with other sports growing in popularity and the overall level of baseball declining.

Bringing the Expos to San Juan seemed the perfect remedy for that lagging interest, as well as an opportunity for Major League Baseball to showcase its Latin fan base. But rather than resuscitating the sport there, the Expos left a baseball vacuum in their wake.

"It has had a devastating effect," Puerto Rican Winter League president Joaquin Monserrate said of the Expos' two-year stay. "Major League Baseball deflated this market without any kind of warning or cooperation with the Winter League."

Others blame the winter league itself.

Edwin Rodriguez, however, places the blame at the feet of Winter League officials. Rodriguez, a former Carolina general manager, runs www.hitboricua.com, the league's unofficial Web site. He said the problem is not with the Expos' departure but with a league that operates only five months a year and has not done enough to showcase players.

"Saying the Expos are the reason for the poor attendance — that's not true," Rodriguez said. "People who say that are looking for an excuse."

For years, any notion baseball could lose its foothold on the island was unthinkable. Puerto Rico dominated the Caribbean World Series — played among the top teams from Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic — in the 1950s, won four titles in the 1970s and took three of four from 1992 through 1995. The World Series was not played in the 1960s.

That background led many to believe that, although the Winter League had been in decline since the mid-1990s, Puerto Ricans would rally behind the Expos and draw baseball back into the national consciousness.

It hasn't happened.

Others go on to blame a growing interest in basketball, the ability to watch big league teams on cable TV and a growing list of activities for youngsters for the decline. All are probably right in one way or another. It's a problem the US minor leagues have had for years. How do you draw fans to an inferior product when the superior one is so easily available?

Dan Lewis asks five questions about the Mets signing Pedro at Armchair GM. He's also trying to make money off steroids. :-)

The Baseball Desert explains why.

It's snowing in Western Massachusetts today, and that can only mean that winter ball is around the corner. Gabrielle Paese rounds up who will be staying warm in Puerto Rico this season. Roberto Alomar will be playing for Carlos Baerga, who owns the Santurce Crabbers. Alomar and Baerga were both 2nd base prospects for the Padres in the late 1980's. Looks like there will be a good mix of veterans and prospects on the island. Seems like a good place to escape the snow and catch a ball game.

Update: Gabrielle writes with some links to Winter Ball web sites.

You might also want to alert your readers who follow winter ball that former player and Triple A coach Edwin Rodriguez has a website, www.ebaseballpr.com that keeps the day-to-day statistics updated. The website is in Spanish, but the numbers need no translation. Also for stats (of all four winter leagues), you can access (for free) www.baseballamerica.com and click on statistics and the winter leagues. All of the league's stats are done by SportsTicker (formerly Howe).

Also, the Manati Athenians, owned by former Chicago White Sox infielder Jose "Tony" Valentin, have their own website, www.atenienses.com (also in Spanish).

I'm back from my bicycle tour of Cape Cod. Not only did we get to see almost every town on the Cape, we got to experience almost every type of weather the area has to offer; hot and humid, drizzle, rain, delug and wind. It was the most challenging of the five rides I've done, but I survived (at times I thought I wouldn't) and am back home safe and sound.

Congratulations to Barry Bonds who hit hits 700th and 701st HR over the weekend. The Babe Ruth watch starts next. My Tivo kept the game; it wasn't his most impressive HR, an opposite field shot that just got over the fence. But it was nice to see the fans who sit behind him every game get a chance at the valuable ball.

Congratulations also go out to the St. Louis Cardinals, who wrapped up the division over the weekend. They have plenty of time to get injuries rested and their rotation in order for the playoffs. Their four man murders row is going to pose a difficult challenge to any opposing staff.

The Twins can clinch their division tonight with a win against the White Sox. The Twins starting pitching has a strength that works against their other three likely opponents; Twins starters don't issue walks. Since the Yankees, Athletics and Red Sox are all selective teams, it will be difficult for them to use the walk as a weapon against the Twins.

Finally, the Yankees took 2 of 3 from the Red Sox. Game 3 had to especially encouraging to Yankees fans and discouraging to Red Sox fans. The two aces, Mussina and Martinez are going in completely different directions. After struggling all season, Mussina is now 3-1 with a 1.20 ERA in September. His biggest problem, allowing HR, has vanished as he's given up 1 in his last 30 innings. Meanwhile, the HR bug has bitten Pedro. He's allowed five this month in only 24 innings. He's also walked 12 in those 24 innings. That's not Pedro Martinez. It should also be noted that Martinez is now at 204 innings, the first time he's gone over 200 IP since the 2000 season. Could it be that he's been overused? The Red Sox have done their best over the years to make sure the fragile pitcher is not seriously hurt. But maybe he's just not a 200 IP pitcher.

More later!

Hi everybody! My name is Jim Storer, and as the author of this blog has already noted, he and I have been the best of friends since our freshman year in college, the year that the Yankees' shortstop officially changed his name to Bucky "Bleeping" Dent in Boston. We watched The Game on tv together since, to listen to multitudinous story-tellers, the Red Sox must have sold about 3 million tickets to that one game, based upon the number of people who claim to have been there!

I'll be guest blogging (sorry but I still think"blog" is an ugly word, much like "mucilage" or "foment", and somehow it's even worse as a verb) while Dave is away. I am flattered to have this opportunity and certainly won't be able to match his volume of material, and I can only aspire to match his standard of excellence in content.

Now that I've finished sucking up to him, on to the business at hand. My perspective about most baseball issues is very similar to Dave's, because he's right almost all the time. I'm a huge fan of the minor leagues and the independent leagues and enjoy studying the legal and economic aspects of the game. (I am an attorney in private practice). Turn-offs include the Designated Hitter Rule, Bud Selig and artificial turf.

This week I'll be prattling on about some strange official scoring decisions, the evolution of relief pitching and why Larry Bowa should have been fired a long time ago.

One quickie just to get started: in yesterday's 12-inning affair with BALCO Barry and the Giants, the Mets won on a fly ball that RF Dustan (Don't call me "Dustin") Mohr just plain dropped. Ouch, poor guy. In what had to be one of the ugliest games ever, the teams combined for 16 walks, 3 errors and a record-setting 10 double-plays. Interesting...Kaz Matsui's been taking a lot of heat in the greater New York metropolitan area for his supposed defensive shortcomings - yesterday Wilson Delgado played the entire game at short and the Mets turned 4 DP's...

Jim

Daniel Drezner posts about a survey by the Chicago Tribune of baseball players. One of the most interesting things to Dan (and I agree) is that 74% say having a gay teammate would not be a problem. I guess the players are more open minded than we think.

There's a World Cup of baseball in the planning, and Scott Jefferies is writing a blog devoted to this subject, Baseball Cup. There are some interesting politics and financial dealings going on.

I'll be at the Baseball Prospectus Pizza Feed tonight in Boston. I hope to meet some of you there.

One reason I like watching minor league and spring exhibition games is that they remind you how difficult it is to play baseball at a major league level. I have the Braves-Cardinals on in the background, and every once in a while a I look up and see plays you seldom see in a regular season game. A slow roller goes through the infield for a double when the shortstop misplays the hop. A play at the plate allows two runs to score when the catcher can't handle the ball and the pitcher, backing up, can't pick the ball off the ground. It just makes you appreciate the skill of real major leaguers.

James Joyner of Outside the Beltway sent me a link to this Slate article by Josh Levin on why baseball is always dying.

Perhaps baseball's latest scandals will cancel each other out—if Giambi and Sheffield are forced off the juice, the Damn Yankees' satanically bloated roster looks a lot less formidable. But even if these scandals melt away over the summer, you can be sure that the game will be perched on death's door once again next year. Loving baseball is hating what it has become, then falling in love all over again. No other American sport or institution is caught in such a cycle of death and rebirth.

I'm pretty immue to this kind of talk. 1994 Was the most potentially devestating year for baseball, and it survived that it will survive this drug scandal. Let me disagree with Levin's last paragraph, however:

While baseball dies a new death every time it shows human frailty—money-grubbing, drug-taking, lying, cheating—moralizing partisans show their human sides too, perpetually forgiving America's prodigal game for its latest transgression. The columnists and fans who finally had their illusions crushed by this winter's scandal will be back in their seats by Opening Day, just in time to be crushed by the next one. Since there's no Babe Ruth—not even a Babe Ruth on steroids—to save the game this year, perhaps we should look to Steve Howe as our baseball totem. Howe is the former Dodgers and Yankees reliever who was suspended for drug use seven times before finally being banned for life in 1992. A few months later, he was reinstated. An arbitrator said the penalty was too harsh.

Just because there isn't an obvious Babe Ruth doesn't mean that one won't emerge. Albert Pujols is young enough that he should still be improving. Who knows what kind of numbers he'll wow us with this year. Mark Prior and Josh Beckett are still not mature pitchers. Maybe their stikeout artistry will entrance us this summer. Most likely, we don't know who or what the savior will be. That's what keeps us in love with the game; there's always something new and unexpected.

I attended the Baseball Prospectus Pizza Feed in NY last night. It was great meeting so many ardent fans, and a number of fellow bloggers. If you have the opportunity to attend one in the future, I highly recommend the event.

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Someone pointed out this site to me today. If you ever wanted to know what a "can of corn" was, or what "catcher obstruction" was, you can find it there.

I get the feeling that the two league championship series introduce the game of baseball to a number of new fans. I think we would have done more to keep the fans if either the Cubs or Red Sox had made the series, but there are a few converts, even if their idea of fantasy baseball is somewhat underdeveloped. :-)

The regular season is over. There were a number of nice surprises. The first the Kansas City Royals who were in the playoff hunt up 'til the last week of the season. They finished with 83 wins, their best season in 10 years and locked up Mike Sweeney.

Second, the Montreal Expos. With no owner, and forced to play a split home schedule, the also managed to win 83 games. They had pulled into a tie for the wild card as late as 8/28. Who knows what will happen to them next, but they put up a good fight. Congratulations to Frank Robinson and Omar Minaya for doing a super job.

And of course, the Florida Marlins. Off to a poor start, they changed managers, and Jack McKeon led them into the playoffs. They're the cinderella story of the playoffs.

There were disappointments as well. The two biggest are Phillies and the Astros. Each made a big free agent signing in the off season. Each was very close to making the playoffs. And each underperformed based on their runs scored and allowed. The Astros should have had a .586 winning percentage instead of a .537, and the Phillies should have had a .563 winning percentage instead of a .531.

In the same vein, the Seattle Mariners should have had the best winning percentage in the majors. Instead, they finished 4th in a very strong league, and didn't make the playoffs. Their offense started disappearing in August, and totally vanished in September. They were 3-8 in 1 & 2 run games in September, costing them a trip to the playoffs.

It was a fun season. On o the playoffs.

Steven Den Beste has an interesting post on Anna Kournikova and her failure to win a major tourament. Den Beste is one of the bloggers I enjoy reading. He's an engineer and looks at almost every situation from that point of view. His thesis is that Anna never became as great as she could have been because she did not want to trade her beauty for greater strength, since she would make more money off her beauty (remembering, of course, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder).

Den Beste then goes through the major sports and discusses the body types that are need to be successful in them, and concludes that most sports require athletes to be statistical outliers (he calls them freaks). But not baseball:

Of all the major sports, the one which seems to have the most balanced requirements is baseball, and that's demonstrated by the very broad range of physical characteristics of the men who play it professionally, especially those who excel. I don't know of any sport where there's as much variation in height and weight, for example, and when you meet a baseball player, unlike most other sports professionals he generally looks like a man who is optimally developed without being freakish. Baseball requires both arm and leg strength about equally, since it involves running, throwing and batting. The one thing it doesn't require to the same extent as most other sports is stamina. Most baseball players who are on the field spend most of the time standing around, without the kind of sustained activity present in other sports. There's no single aspect of the game which particularly favors some particular physical trait over others, the way basketball favors height or the way jockeys benefit from slight build. That's why baseball players don't look like basketball players or jockeys.

It's also why, once societal racial barriers were finally eliminated, baseball ended up with a greater racial mix than most other sports. No single racial group has a genetic advantage. (Soccer and other sports which primarily emphasize stamina also tend to have a very broad racial mix, since no single racial group has a genetic advantage when it comes to stamina.)

One of my stated reasons for liking baseball is that anyone can be the hero. Den Beste gives a physical reason why this is so. Thanks, Steven!

Baseball uniforms have certainly become more stylish over the years, but the basic white with black the Tigers wear is a classic. However, I do like the colorfulness of the Diamondbacks.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	1664	1669
Attendance	27798	28441

Cecilia Tan has a nice post on her time at the annual SABR Convention.

Edward Cossette doesn't think so, and he makes a great argument.

I've always thought that scoring a game makes it much more interesting. You really get an idea of the flow of the game, and if you do it enough for a team, you really learn how the team operates. Eventually, you get into the heads of the players and managers; you become part of the game.

Murray Chass covers four interesting topics in his Inside Baseball column in the NY Times today. The first is the Astros and Julio Lugo. The Astros have designated him for assignment after he was charged with domestic violence.

The decision to jettison the 27-year-old Lugo, a Brooklyn resident who was in his fourth season with the Astros, was not wholly a result of the alleged assault of his wife, Mabel, Hunsicker said. But barely three hours before the Astros made the move, they issued a statement on domestic violence without mentioning Lugo.

"The Astros organization is acutely aware of the issues surrounding domestic violence, and we completely support the steps necessary to deal with it," the statement said. "We disapprove of any violence; it is unacceptable. We are a family game with family values. The Astros family represents honesty, integrity and family values. We have no tolerance or acceptance for anything outside those values."

Lugo, of course, has not been convicted of punching his wife in the face and slamming her head against a car, as she has alleged. (The couple are said to be divorcing.) "He's been arraigned, tried and convicted in the last 24 hours," a lawyer who represents players said.

But the Astros linked Lugo's dismissal to their problems on the field, which have been considerable for a team some picked to win the division.

Lugo, it might be noted, has a higher OBA than Craig Biggio, who has been a disaster in the leadoff spot (.338 for Lugo, .311 for Biggio). I'm pretty sure that Biggio is washed up. His numbers are worse than they actually look, due to the effect of "The Park Formerly Know as Enron."

Biggio, 2002-2003	Home	Away
Batting Average	.274	.229
On Base Average	.346	.306
Batting Average	.429	.382

Biggio is a class act, and I don't expect the Astros to just release him. I do, however, expect him to pull a Mike Schmidt and realize that he's just not being a productive ballplayer and leave the game.

Next, with attendance down, baseball does what it does so well; go into hiding:

The early-season attendance is down for the second successive season, plummeting 14.4 percent over two seasons. This year's drop was 4.95 percent.

Officials have apparently become sensitive to the decline. Missing from the daily major league attendance report available to the news media are figures from last season.

Fortunately, there are other sources.

Attendance, through same period	2003	2002
Games	444	438
Attendance	25198	26416

I'll try to make this a daily feature.

And once again, MLB is talking about expanding the playoffs. Of course, that means they'll have to move the World Series to a neutral site where they can be sure of warm weather, or they can start the season on St. Patrick's Day and hope global warming is for real.

Finally, looks at why Frank Robinson returned to the Expos:

Once it was determined that the Expos would stay alive, Robinson returned for two reasons.

"No. 1 they asked me to come back," he said. "The second thing is I thought about it and thought I'd like to come back. The way the players played last year, the attitude and the effort they gave me and what we were successful in doing, having a winning season for the first time since '96 and finishing in second place, just the work habits and the enthusiasm, I felt something special was going to happen here and I wanted to be a part of it. This job was only half-finished last year. This club is going to be in existence for a few years to come. I just wanted to be part of it this year."

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

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

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

Lackey to Glanville, a ball. 2003 is here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I guess this news hasn't reached Oakland yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More importantly, Ray wonders how the fans will react:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I thought the new CBA was supposed to fix this?

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

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

Day seven takes Cecilia Tan to the Ted Williams museum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Rodriguez has a herniated disc in his neck.

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

I hope the Rangers have a good insurance policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm glad someone is taking this seriously.

Cecilia Tan travels through Georgia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, sure Larry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the ESPN baseball page they have this headline:

Vladimir, Marlins pitcher trade missed punches in brawl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One hitter this philosophy should help is Randall Simon:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What has changed?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shoeless, Mize and Cobb in today's entry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One bit I found interesting:

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

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

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

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

Isn't this better than trade stories?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

	Rich	Poor
Good Management	Yankees	Athletics
Bad Mangement	Orioles	Royals

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


• Pitchers to deliver in 12 seconds with bases empty.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Brewers are having a grounds keeping problem:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Literally.

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

The day before Hafner hit a home run.

The day before that, Broussard hit a homer.

Etc., etc., etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Templeton wishes he were Derek Jeter with the bat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Youngest outfields, 1901-2002

Total age by the 3 players with most games played.

Age used is seasonal age.


Team                 Year  Age

Texas Rangers        1986   65

Boston Red Sox       1910   66

California Angels    1966   66

Montreal Expos       1977   67

Texas Rangers        1987   68

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

(Read this with increasing speed)

• Catcher, George Bush.


• Left Field, George Bush.


• Right Field, George Bush.


• Pitching, George Bush.


• Third Base, George Bush.


• Center Field, George Bush.


• First Base, George Bush.


• Shortstop, George Bush.


• Second Base, George Bush.

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

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

USA Today explores why hitting a baseball is so difficult.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rockies are thrilled to have Johnson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn't aware of this:

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

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

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

Especially miffed is scrabble champion Javier Vazquez:

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

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

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

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

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

Former player and father of Barry, Bobby Bonds has lung cancer. This is very sad:

"My dad does have lung cancer,'' Barry Bonds said Friday before the San Francisco Giants played the Chicago Cubs in their first exhibition game. "It's not easy to deal with.''

Barry Bonds declined further comment. But the Contra Costa Times reported Friday that the elder Bonds was recovering well from his kidney procedure, only to be diagnosed with lung cancer during the winter.

Bonds was the leadoff man for the 1979 Pinto Hatchbacks strato-matic team, and although I know it's strange, I feel close to my former players. Let's wish him well and hope he recovers.

Phoenix is pitching to bring in more spring training tourists:

The point man for the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau couldn't have asked for better weather. In Kansas City, that is.

It was a frigid 19 degrees and snowing as MacKenzie explained the virtues of coming West to watch the Royals in their new spring training digs in Surprise, Ariz.

"We want them to know we are open, and we want their business," said MacKenzie, who planned to visit four other cities with Cactus League teams before spring training games started. "The Phoenix area should be their No. 1 destination."

I've thought about this myself. You can get there cheaply on Southwest, and once you are there, all the ballparks are close by, as this Catus League map shows. If you have a three day weekend, you could catch a lot of games without a lot of travel.

Bob Hohler of the Boston Globe discusses the third base situation in Boston. Bill Mueller comes off looking like a class act:

Mueller knew when he signed with the Sox that Hillenbrand might remain with the team on Opening Day.

''What happens when you get into a situation where they have an All-Star player in front of you or on the team already is, you look toward helping out and doing whatever it takes to build a winning team,'' Mueller said. ''At this point in my career, I'm not going to be looking back and saying I hit certain numbers. Nobody's going to remember how much I got on base. They're going to remember who won the World Series or the American League East. That's what I'm focused on, getting to a team that's committed to winning instead of worrying about numbers or other things that are pretty much selfish.''

Numbers figured prominently, though, in Boston's interest in Mueller. An above-average defensive player, Mueller also is a career .286 hitter with a .370 on-base percentage. Hillenbrand has hit .280 with a .313 on-base percentage, though he has shown much more power than Mueller, hitting 30 homers in 1,102 at-bats compared with Mueller's 41 homers in 2,674 at-bats.

However, general manager Theo Epstein appears to view Mueller's team-first attitude as valuable as his other attributes, just as the Sox consider Hillenbrand a team player. And everyone who has played with Mueller, including his former San Francisco teammates Doug Mirabelli and Alan Embree, have endorsed Epstein's evaluation.

Thus, no one snickers when Mueller says with all sincerity of his collegial competition with Hillenbrand, ''You shoot for winning the playoffs and World Series first, then let all the other stuff trickle down.''

After the last two years, I worry about Mueller's durability. But I think he would be a better offensive and defensive third baseman than Hillenbrand. The Red Sox have made a number of good moves this winter, and it will be interesting to see how they resolve this situation.

Quilvio Veras is attempting a comeback with the Dodgers:

Veras, who turns 32 on April 3, went 2-for-2 and stole two bases in the Dodgers' first intrasquad game Tuesday. He added a single in Wednesday's intrasquad game.

His performance caught the attention of Dodgers manager Jim Tracy, who said Veras looked much like the same player who wreaked havoc on the basepaths during the mid-1990s.

"This guy was a dynamic base stealer when he was in San Diego," Tracy said. "You really hated it when this guy got on base."

Veras certainly knows how to get to first: He owns a .372 career on-base percentage in seven seasons with the Padres, Braves and Florida Marlins. Shawn Green (.385) was the only Dodgers starter with a higher on-base percentage last season.

But he still faces an uphill battle in his quest to open the season on the major-league roster.

Rookie second baseman Joe Thurston went 6-of-7 with a homer and double in two intrasquad games this week. Alex Cora, who can play second base and shortstop, batted .291 with a .371 on-base percentage last year.

I've liked Veras for a long time. The Dodgers could certainly use the OBA at 2nd after having Mark Grudzielanek, who put up a .301 OBA for the team last year. Best of all for the Dodgers, they seem to have a number of good options at the position.

Larry Dierker is looking to get back into baseball:

One summer's vacation from baseball was enough for former Astros player, broadcaster and manager Larry Dierker. He's ready to get involved again.
''I didn't miss it so much last year because it was the first summer I'd had off since my junior year in high school,'' Dierker said Wednesday. ''Now I feel like I'm ready to do something. I've written a book. I could probably keep writing. I'd like to broadcast.''

Dierker served the team over a 38-year span before he resigned after the 2001 season. The club announced Wednesday that Dierker would be an occasional host at ''Larry's Big Bamboo,'' a new bar to be located at Minute Maid Park.

''I've kind of gotten a little anxious to get back into the flow of things and this is a little step in that direction,'' Dierker said. ''I hope there will be more steps in that direction.''

With Buck Showalter leaving ESPN, maybe Dierker can fill his shoes.

Kyle Nagel has an interesting article on the new surface at the new Reds ballpark.

The Reds are beating the Yankees 7-3 in the top of the fourth. Waiting for the first "Joe Torre's job is in trouble" articles to appear. :-)

According to Peter Schmuck of the Baltimore Sun, baseball is banning ephedrine-based supplements from the minor leagues:

Major League Baseball took another big step this week toward industry-wide restrictions on the use of ephedrine-based products by banning the use of the herbal supplement throughout the minor leagues.

The ban, which was implemented Monday and has been transmitted to the 30 major-league front offices over the past two days, covers all minor- league players not on 40-man major-league rosters.

Players on 40-man rosters are governed by Major League Baseball's collective bargaining agreement, which does not include restrictions on the substance cited as a contributing factor in the Feb. 17 heatstroke death of 23-year-old Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler.

The memo outlining the drug policy change, distributed by MLB deputy general counsel Jennifer Gefsky and obtained by The Sun, informs clubs that ephedrine, a stimulant found in over-the-counter dietary supplements, has been added to the list of substances prohibited in the minors and authorizes random testing to detect it.

The commissioner's office is expected to propose the ban be extended to major-league players, but figures to meet resistance from the Major League Baseball Players Association.

I wonder if someone at MLB is reading Baseball Musings. I suggested a minor league ban on the 21st.

This caught my eye this morning:

So Acevedo is competing for a spot. Manager Joe Torre will have 11 pitchers on the roster, and six starters will make it. So will the left-hander Chris Hammond and the right-handers Mariano Rivera, Steve Karsay and, most likely, Antonio Osuna. The left-hander Randy Choate will probably get the last spot.

Six starters? Does this mean a six man rotation for the Yankees? I don't know what to make of it. Given the age of the Yankee pitchers, it might be a very good idea. I remember in the mid-80's Bill James suggesting that the ageing Tom Seaver be used once a week. Seaver was still good, but there was some question as to his durability. If the Yankees go to a six-man rotation, it very well may benefit Clemens and Wells (Clemens has always needed full rest between starts anyway). It might reduce damage to Pettitte's elbow. Of course, they may just think that they'll get an injury right away, and really go north with five staters. Time will tell.

Exhibition season gets underway tomorrow (Thursday) and we start off with the Cubs and Giants in a home and home. The Sporting News talks about Baker adjusting to his new team, and what it will be like for Baker and his former charges to oppose each other:

Baker's past and present will collide Thursday, when exhibition games begin. Though the schedule was made out long before Baker was hired in November, the Cubs first two games are against -- who else? -- the Giants.

The Cubs play at San Francisco's park on Thursday, with the Giants coming to Mesa on Friday.

"I don't know how it's going to be," he said. "I've got a lot of guys over there I care about. I know half of the staff. It'll be a little different for me to come out of the other clubhouse."

It's going to be an adjustment for his former players, too.

"Yeah, it's going to look strange," Barry Bonds said. "He wore blue before, but when you're so used to seeing him in black and orange, it's going to be strange to see him in a Cub uniform. Dusty's a good manager, and the Cubs got a good one."

Nine games are on tap tomorrow, and Friday will feature a full slate. Play Ball!

Glenn Dickey of the SF Chronicle thinks that Ken Macha won't be intimidated by Beane the way Howe was:

Art Howe definitely was. Howe came to the A's with a philosophy from his playing days in the '70s in the National League, heavy on bunting, the hit-and- run, hitting to the right side to advance the runner, playing for one run. Little ball, in other words.

That was exactly the wrong philosophy for managing an American League club in the '90s, when offense had exploded for a variety of reasons: smaller parks, a livelier ball, wretched pitching. Giving up outs to score one run made no sense in games which were more often decided by 10-8 scores than 3-2 scores.

Beane hammered that point home to Howe so thoroughly that Howe forgot there were times when little ball still made sense. The A's became a station-to- station team, and remained one, even when they acquired some speed, such as Ray Durham and Mark Ellis.

Beane's philosophy is not original with him. When Earl Weaver managed the Baltimore Orioles in the '70s and '80s, he preached the virtue of the three- run homer and disparaged base stealers. Sandy Alderson, Beane's predecessor as A's GM, emphasized the importance of on-base percentage, combining hits and walks, as opposed to the outmoded measure of pure batting average.

It's a sound philosophy for the 162-game regular season. The exceptions to the rule aren't important because, even if they make the difference in one game or even a series, that's a very small part of a season.

But in the postseason, events get compressed and the opponents change. What works in the regular season against weaker teams doesn't work in the postseason against teams that match up physically.

Dickey thinks that in the post-season, you need to adapt your strategy. He's right. But I think he's wrong about Beane trying to intimidate Macha. My feeling is that Macha already has the respect of Beane. My guess is that they will work together very well.

Jan Bottone writes:

Anyway, just reading a quote from Ron Gardenhire in a piece by Howard Bryant, now with the Boston Herald, where the Twins' manager says: "If you look at my guy, Mientkiewicz, you can say he's only a .260 hitter. But if he's saving 40 runs a year with his defense and knocking in 60, to me that's a 100-RBI guy. I'd like to see how many of those big hitters out there are actually saving their teams runs. If you factor how many they give back, maybe the numbers don't look so good after all." -- Do you agree with Gardenhire? Thanks for your input, David.

I don't agree. First of all, what does he mean he's saving 40 runs a year? Versus whom? Forty more than Giambi? Forty more than Olerud? What's the standard? I think Gardenhire is just trying to talk up a player he likes.

But we can look at this. We now have win shares. Here are the defensive win shares at first base for all 1B's who played 100 games in 2002:

   WS     Name
--------  --------------------    
0.55  Vaughn    
0.79  Conine    
0.90  Klesko    
1.11  Casey    
1.14  Cox    
1.16  McGriff    
1.36  Thome    
1.55  Sweeney    
1.61  Konerko    
1.79  Spiezio    
1.94  Young    
1.99  Snow    
2.33  Delgado    
2.35  Lee    
2.37  Lee    
2.38  Bagwell    
2.42  Martinez    
2.62  Sexson   
2.68  Mientkiewicz    
3.07  Helton    
3.23  Olerud    
3.62  Karros

So first of all, Mientkiewicz wasn't event the best first baseman in the majors last year. Secondly, remember that 3 win shares equal 1 win. So the best defensive first baseman added only 1 win to his team with his defense. A rule of thumb is that 1 win equals 10 runs. So the best defensive first baseman (Karros) saved about 10 runs with his glove vs. the worst 1B (Vaughn).

Sorry Ron. Your calculations have nothing to do with reality. I doubt that there's a shortstop that saves 25 runs for a team! (Just checked. The difference between the best and worst shortstop is 2 wins, or about 20 runs.) Personally, I'd rather have the slugger at first base any day.

Baseball Crank has some thoughts on Bernie Williams in the post-season.

Seems under the new voting system, no one was selected by the veterans committee this year.

I'm not surprised. It's a much tougher voting system, and that's probably as it should be. Apart from non-players, I think the writers do a very good job of selecting inductees. As time goes on, we'll find that the vets have very few errors to correct.

I made a correction to the Rob Neyer post.

It's verteran committee day. Here's an article from ESPN.com explaining the new voting procedure (more like the other procedure, except living Hall of Famers get to vote). For the record, I think Marvin Miller should go in.

Gordon Wittenmyer of the Pioneer Press has a very positive article on first overall pick Joe Mauer:

The youngest player in the Twins' major league camp for the second straight year, Mauer, the No. 1 overall draft pick in June 2001, already seems a master of the science of hitting, and he's not likely to be out of Class A ball until at least the middle of this season.

In just the first week of camp this year, he has impressed Twins staff from the front office to the coaches with the progress he has made since an impressive 2002 camp.

"I see a lot,'' hitting coach Scott Ullger said. "He's getting the feel for pulling the inside fastball. … He has great balance, quick hands, good bat-head awareness, centers the ball on almost every swing. … But obviously, he's got to get some at-bats under his belt.''

That last quote seems to be the mantra of the Twins staff.

On the other hand, the kid rated by Baseball America magazine last year as the top minor league catching prospect hit .400 in a 110 at-bat debut at Class A Elizabethton in 2001, hit .302 with 23 doubles in 411 at-bats at Class A Quad City (Iowa) last year, and even in big-league camp as an 18-year-old last year went 5 for 12 (.417) before Twins brass averted the "Bring Joe North'' campaigns by sending him to the minor league side of camp.

He'll likely start the season with the Twins' highest Class A club, in Fort Myers.

The soft-spoken Mauer looks more like a veteran among the big leaguers with every week he spends in their midst.

"I'm pretty much coming in trying to learn as much as I can. There's a lot to this game,'' said Mauer, who also threw out 42 percent (45 for 108) of attempted base stealers last year. "It's a lot more relaxed this year. I'm more confident out there. I know all the guys. Last year coming in, I knew of them but didn't know them. It's exciting to get this opportunity again.''

Mauer was in camp last year as a stipulation of the $5.15 million contract he signed after being drafted. This year, the invitation was earned.

"We expect him to get more of the same out of it, although he's prepared to take on more,'' general manager Terry Ryan said. "He's to the point where he's been through a full year as a pro. He kind of knows what's expected here and is getting familiar with the pitchers on the staff. He just needs repetition. He needs games. He needs experience.''

I think the Twins may be holding back too much here. The catcher can clearly hit A-ball pitching. I don't know what they think he's going to learn there. It will be interesting to see how impressive he is in spring training. If he's the natural he appears to be, he may start at AA (and I can see him in New Britian!), or who knows? I-Rod was in the big leagues at 19. Maybe Mauer will be, too.

Jayson Stark writes about Mike Hampton's attempted comeback with the Braves. Mazzone has the best line in the article:

It was so obvious that when Hampton first threw for his new pitching coach a few weeks ago in Atlanta, it took Mazzone barely a minute to see that Hampton's delivery of the sinking fastball was drastically different from his four-seam sailing fastball.

"I don't want to make it into any big deal," Mazzone says. "The only thing I saw was that, when he threw his (four-seam) fastball, he was fine. But when he went to the sinker, he was trying to really make it sink. He got out of sync trying to make it sink. That's the best way to put it."

The Braves have to hope he doesn't sink like 'NSync. That would stink. (Must resist temptation to channel Dr. Suess!)

Too late.

This one,
I think,
is called
a Yink.

He likes to wink,
he likes to drink.

He likes to drink, and drink, and drink.
The thing he likes to drink
is ink.
The ink he likes to drink is pink.
He likes to wink and drink pink ink.

SO...
if you have a lot of ink,
then you should get
a Yink, I think.

Craig Wachs of the ESPN research department writes me to say that Homer Bush has retired.

We aired this last night and figured somewhere you'd be smiling...we found your graphic from 1999 and updated it.

Most homers, one season, guys named Homer 
'99 Homer Bush     5<<    
'27 Homer Summa    4 
'26 Homer Summa    4 
'05 Homer Smoot    4 
'03 Homer Smoot    4 
>>11 career HR 

Most homers, guys named Homer 
Homer Summa         18 
Homer Smoot         15 
Homer Bush          11<< 
Homer Peel          2 

>>Career-high 5 in 1999 >>Six other "Homers" never homered

I was concerned about Homer's career here. Looks like the all-time Homer homer record is safe.

Batter's Box vents about the Blue Jays Dance troupe. Remember when Toronto sold out every game? That was because they had a great baseball team. Now they need dancing girls to bring in the fans.

Abben Maguire writes about baseball and other things at Abben.com. He'll be posting some of my better articles there.

Bob Montgomery points out that I'm wrong about Kauffman Stadium. They moved the fences in a few years ago, and last year it was the most extreme hitters park in the AL. So you can ignore this post.

Mike's Baseball Rant continues his series on relievers.

I'm linking to Rob's column today because he basically agrees with me. One point of contention, however:

There's another misconception about Steinbrenner's Yankees, which is that between their World Series appearances in 1981 and 1996 -- 14 seasons -- they were little more than a budget-busting joke. The truth, however, is somewhat more complex. In 1982 the Yankees did crash to a 79-83 record, their worst since 1967. But from 1983 through 1988, they won at least 83 games in every season. In 1993 they won 88 games, and in 1994 they had the best record in the American League when the strike hit.

So there were really only four years, 1989 through 1992, when the Yankees weren't the Yankees. And for the latter two of those four seasons, Steinbrenner was serving a suspension that somewhat limited his ability to meddle.

I think the suspensions actually helped the Yankees. During these periods (there was one in the early 70's as well), the Yankees laid the foundation for the championship teams that followed. That may not have happened if George was interferring in trades and drafts during those time periods.

Correction: In the first sentence above, Rob changed victories to appearances. I've made the same correction here.

Instapundit relays a problem at the NY Times.

Pete Rose was not elected to the Canadian Hall of Fame. I guess a partial season with the Expos isn't enough to get you elected, even if you did get your 4000th hit with the team.

Joe Carter, however, was elected. Maybe Canadians just prefer nice guys. :-) Kudos to Joe Carter, and kudos to the voters for not electing Rose.

The Brewers have been hit with an early season injury, and Chuck Carlson of the Oskosh Northwestern doesn't like the way the Brewers management is handling it.

Faster than you can say, “shaved labrum,” the Milwaukee Brewers are already facing their first disaster of the new season and they haven’t even had a chance to get sun-burned in Arizona yet.

Hotshot right-hander pitcher Nick Neugebauer has scheduled arthroscopic surgery on his funky right shoulder and it will likely cost him the entire season. Seeing as the Brewers may be staring down the barrel of another 100-loss season, this isn’t necessarily awful news for the 22-year-old kid, who now won’t be hit by any of the collateral damage that usually comes from a terrible season.

Here's the Brewers spin on how this will effect the team, and Carlson's response:

It may be all, or none, of the above but what will be interesting is how new general manager Doug Melvin and neophyte manager Ned Yost handle the first hiccup in their administration.

Already, Melvin has opted for the explanation that this won’t hurt too badly because, well, Neugebauer was never slated to pitch with the big club this season anyway.

Yeah, right.

The team has spent all winter trumpeting a new, young pitching staff that includes, among others, Ben Sheets, Glendon Rusch, perhaps promising young pup Ben Diggins and, yes indeed, Neugebauer.

What the Brewers have to offer — which is all they have to offer — is a titillating peek at the future and at players who, in time, could develop into legitimate big league talent. And make no mistake that Neugebauer is in the vanguard of the youth movement.

If he had found the strike zone with any consistency in spring training he would have taken his place easily in the Brewers starting rotation and everyone knows it. To deny he would have pitched with Milwaukee this season is disingenuous at best.

Compare this to the post on the Orioles' handling of the Bechler death.

When baseball reaches Mars, pitchers will have a hard time throwing curve balls, according to Orrin Judd. (Thanks to Jed Roberts.)

The Royals hitters are finding Surprise Stadium a breeze:

Outfielder Carlos Beltran put on an stirring power display Saturday when he and several other Royals got their first swings inside Surprise Stadium as part of a free Fan Fest for the public.

Oddly, Beltran then went and got his eyes checked. (The exam is part of the spring training routine for all players. He passed.)

Beltran wasn't the only player who routinely flexed his muscles at home plate. Just about everyone had fans scrambling for baseballs on the grass berm beyond the outfield wall -- even middle infielders Carlos Febles and Angel Berroa.

"It's going to be fun for us here," Beltran said. "This is the first time I've been in Arizona. The ball carries a lot."

I wonder if this is going to cause a problem for the Royals. Given their history of player moves, I can't say that they have a lot of sabremetric savy. There are going to be hitters who have great springs whose bats are going to disappear when they move to the pitcher's paradise of Kaufmann Stadium. The A's face a similar situation every year and it doesn't seem to affect them (May is their bad month). Maybe the A's are used to it (or maybe the management understands and adjusts for the problem). Still, I bet there will be a number of stories about the great springs the Royals hitters are having, and sometime in May some writer will wonder what happened.

Correction: See this post.

Paul Hoynes tells the story through the eyes of Alex Escobar. It seems baseball players have become targets because they have money:

"When the oil workers went on strike, the country shut down," Escobar said. "People are getting desperate."

The desperation has made some of Venezuela's big-league ballplayers and their families targets.

Houston's Richard Hidalgo was shot during a car-jacking attempt. Former player Chico Carrasquel was robbed. Anaheim pitcher Francisco Rodriguez said members of his family were robbed this winter.

Escobar and his family have been fortunate. They live in Valencia, which is about a two-hour drive from Caracas.

"Most of the trouble is in Caracas," he said. "Where we live is peaceful and quiet. But my parents don't go out much. They don't spend much time in the street. I'm always worried about them."

Escobar knows why players are being robbed and shot.

"It's hard for people to get a job," he said. "It's hard to get a loan. Inflation is outrageous. People have to feed their families. They see in the paper that some Venezuelan guys have signed for good money. They go after it. They don't care."

On the baseball side of things, Escobar is making progress in recovering from his ACL injury:

Doctors Mark Schickendantz and Lou Keppler of the Tribe's medical team performed the surgery. They took two muscles out of Escobar's left hamstring to repair the ACL.

"This is always a tough rehab, but Alex has done a great job," Schickendantz said. "From a pure medical standpoint, our goal is to get Alex out there and playing. The year after a surgery like this is usually an up and down one."

Escobar has been wearing a brace on his left knee through the first week of spring training. Schickendantz said Escobar eventually will be able to play without it.

"The approach we're taking right now is to get Alex as many at-bats as we can this spring," said John Farrell, Indians director of player development. "We know his timing at the plate is going to need work after missing last season."

Escobar is scheduled to open the season at Class AAA Buffalo. He came up as a center fielder with the Mets, but the Indians probably will start him in right field to protect his knee and arm.

"I haven't been 100 percent for so long that I don't know what it feels like," Escobar said. "But right now, I feel 100 percent every day because I'm so much better than I was last year. My swing feels good. I'm getting good jumps on balls in the outfield. I hope to be there on Feb. 28."

The Tigers have moved the fences in, and Damion Easley thinks he'll benefit from it:

No Tiger has deserved to feel more frustrated by Comerica Park than second baseman Damion Easley.

No Tiger has more reason to look forward to this season at Comerica than Easley, because the left-centerfield fence will be moved closer to home plate -- from 395 feet away to 370.

An eon ago, it seems, Easley made the All-Star team. That was 1998, when he hit 19 homers at Tiger Stadium. He has hit 13 homers combined in three seasons at Comerica.

But then, the left-center power alley at Tiger Stadium was a cozy 365 feet.

"It's pretty simple from the standpoint of 365 to 395," Easley said. "That's 30 feet that you back everybody up. I'm not a guy who's a ground-ball, low-line-drive kind of hitter. Would I like to be? To a certain extent.

"But I'm a guy who's quick with the bat, and I pull the ball a little more. So some balls that other guys who are spray hitters might hit -- that might go up the middle or to right-center field -- go to left-center or left for me. But I drive the ball a little farther.

"Well, with that extra 30 feet, that's everything. You figure 365, so the outfielder has to scoot in. Now my line drive that is head high gets past him because he's closer. Well, you back him up 30 feet, my ball is running out of gas by the time it gets to him.

"Now the balls I drive into left-center and left are outs. They're not hits anymore. I'm not able to make those up. I wish I was blessed with the ability to say, 'OK, they take this away, I'll just hit to right-center.' There's no doubt the park has hurt me because of my style. I drive the ball. That's what I do."

Of course, the problem here is that if you bring the power alleys in, you play to the weakness of your pitchers, as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The article goes on to talk about how Easley's OPS is 14% lower on the road. But through the wonder of computers, we can do a much better study.

STATS, Inc. keeps track of where every ball is hit (direction and distance), as well as what type of hit it was (line drive, fly ball, etc.). So for the last three seasons, I found all balls put into play in Tigers games that were in the left field power alley and traveled 370 feet or more, and were either fly balls or line drives (the distance measured is where the ball lands). Here's the home road breakdown, and it shows that Comerica has a tough leftfield power alley:

Power Alley Shots In Tiger Games

2000-2002              Road           Home

Total                   219            167

HR                      142             57

Outs                     38             50

Other non-outs           39             60

Percent non-outs        83%            70%

So the park kills HR, but a lot of those non-HR go for hits anyway. Yes, offense is reduced, but it's not eliminated. And the Tigers could in fact take advantage of this with some doubles/triples type hitters. Now, let's concentrate on the home games, and compare the visitors with the Tigers:

Power Alley Shots In Tiger Home Games

2000-2002          Visitors         Tigers

Total                    93             74

HR                       30             27

Outs                     30             20

Other non-outs           33             27

Percent non-outs        68%            73%

So the Tigers are to some extent taking advantage of their park, making a smaller percentage of outs on balls hit to the left field power alley. But look at the overall numbers. If you turn those outs into HR, instead of being out homered by 1 a year, they'll be out homered by 7 a year! This is looking like a big mistake.

Finally let's look at Easley. How much has this power alley hurt him? Well, in the three years he's played in Comerica, he's hit 11 balls 370 ft or more into the left-field alley! And on those 11 balls, he has 5 HR, 1 triple, 2 doubles and 3 outs. I'm sorry, I'll take that. Easley is crabbing over nothing, and the Detroit pitchers are going to pay a heavy price for this folly.

FoxSports.com has an article about Frank Thomas getting over his salary demotion. Of course, if you read to the end, you see the real problem:

Thomas didn't make a great first impression Saturday.

He showed up nearly 10 minutes late for the first full-squad meeting of the spring as the rest of the White Sox sat in the grass to listen to introductory comments from Williams and Manuel.

But Thomas had a legitimate excuse for straggling down the hill from the clubhouse - he was the last player to get a physical and was getting treatment for a strained back muscle.

"It looked odd," Thomas said, adding he'd hurt his back while working with personal hitting guru Walt Hriniak. "I was not trying to be late or stir something up."

I've never been a big fan of Hriniak. I think his philosophy is to make everyone hit his way, rather than working with the strengths of a particular player's swing. But Thomas seems to like him, as this article implies:

DH Frank Thomas is working with Walt Hriniak again. Hriniak, the team's hitting coach when Thomas made his debut in 1990, was fired after the '95 season. The two reunited in 2000, and Thomas responded with the best year of his career: .328 batting average, 43 homers and 143 RBIs.

Adam Kennedy doesn't have to worry about winning a job this year.
"There was a lot of uncertainty last year, with me personally and the team," he said. "But everything we worked for the last couple of years came together."

Both the Angels and Kennedy took advantage of their time in the national spotlight in spectacular fashion.

The Angels captured their first World Series. Kennedy hit four postseason home runs -- three during Game 5 of the ALCS against Minnesota. Less noticeable was the fact that Kennedy's .312 batting average was 52 points higher than his average set a year earlier.

This spring, the Angels have the solid-hitting second baseman they thought they had acquired for Jim Edmonds in March 2000.

It's interesting that Kennedy's improvement seemed to come from being more aggressive at the plate. His walks went down from 27 to 19, but his BA and OBA went up 40 and 30 points respectively. I wonder if that will hold up.

Johnny Damon likes the new look of the Red Sox:

Clean-shaven Johnny Damon may not have fit in standing next to the mullet-faced Jeremy Giambi and Kevin Millar.

But Damon is looking forward to what the self-dubbed "Boston Mulletmen" will mean to the Red Sox when the season starts.

"Our team is a lot deeper this year," Damon said. "A lot of people say they could have used a day off here or there.We have the guys who can do it this year. With this lineup, every team around the league should fear us."

Seems like the Revolution all over again, with the Mulletmen trying to defeat King George. :-)

Laura Vecsey of the Baltimore Sun postulates that the way the Orioles management has handled the Bechler situation show things are getting better in the organization:

If the Orioles of the past five seasons were mired in anything, it was a lack of communication, a lack of organizational pride, a lack of top-to-bottom accountability, trust and respect.

If the Orioles of last September's dismal losing streak and slide into oblivion proved anything, it was that nothing was working. The organization's chain of command was too rusted and broken to even give the appearance of functionality.

It might be terrible to think that something as horrible as Bechler's death has given the Orioles an opportunity to so quickly demonstrate that they are operating under a new, better system, but this is what can be easily perceived, even after one day at training camp.

Read the whole thing.

Rick Ankiel appears to be making early progress. You wonder when he might pack in pitching and concentrate on hitting. I guess that would make him the reverse of Tim Wakefield.

Another good medical story. Nick Bierbrodt of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays has recovered from being shot twice last year and is in training camp.

The 24-year-old left-hander was shot twice in the chest last summer while on a minor league rehabilitation assignment in Charleston, S.C., and on Friday faced batters for the first time since the life-threatening incident.

"He threw the ball easily. He threw strikes. He seemed very comfortable out there," Devil Rays manager Lou Piniella said.

"I'm sure he's been waiting for that. It's a first step, but it was extremely encouraging. If you watched him, you wouldn't know anything had happened."

Bierbrodt was the victim of a pedal-by shooting.

The pitcher, sitting in the back seat of a car in the drive-through line of a fast-food restaurant, was shot twice by a man on a bicycle. Both bullets passed through his chest and settled in his liver, where they remain.

Bierbrodt was released from the hospital nine days later and began throwing again in early October. He's one of 39 pitchers in Devil Rays camp, competing for 12 jobs on the opening day roster.

I knew liver was a good source of iron, but Nick's at least is also a good source of lead!

I was going to blog about Nefi Perez, but Only Baseball Matters has done the job for me!

Rob Ramsey, a pitcher for the SD Padres, is undergoing chemotherapy for a brain tumor. Despite this, he's out practicing with the team. A brave man. Let's all hope for the best.

This article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer describes a drill Rene Lachman use to make the Oakland catcher do:

Lachemann, then and now assigned to work with the catchers in the spring, came up with a great workout drill. He had a pitching machine set up to deliver throws in the dirt near home plate. Each catcher had to take a dozen or so throws. While the ball was coming in, one of the other catchers would throw a football tackling dummy at the plate.

It was a way to simulate home-plate collisions. It was brutal, said Steinbach, visiting the Mariners as part of a tour he is doing for CapCare, a group that uses baseball to publicize the need for prostate health awareness.

"We went at it pretty hard," Steinbach said. "(Former Seattle bullpen coach) Matt Sinatro was there then, and he hurt his neck and finally had to have an operation a couple of years later."

Lachemann, back in the American League for the first time in a dozen years, has not said if that drill would return this spring. But manager Bob Melvin said, "We might have to try something like that. It's hard to simulate that play otherwise."

Seems like the balls in the dirt would be a good drill all by itself for practicing blocking bad pitchers. The tackling dummy just adds another level of pain.

I now have a webcam. From time to time, you can tune in to watch me blog (I know, how exciting). The link is in the title above. The camera will update every 30 seconds when I'm live, otherwise, you'll just see the last image. I'm going to try to do a lot of blogging tonight so you can check it out.

Carlos Delgado hit his peak at age 27 in 2000 (just where you'd expect). He's played well since then, but 2000 put expectations very high. He's hoping to do better this year:

At this stage, Delgado said he would prefer to contribute to more victories. The Jays won 88 games in 1998 and then steadily declined to 78 last season.

"[2000] was fun and I enjoyed it, but I want to do more stuff to help this team to become a better ball club," he said. "I want to win more games."

Delgado and the Blue Jays finished last season strongly. Toronto went 44-32 after the All-Star Game break and Delgado batted .330 (.363 in September) with 15 homers and 46 RBIs in 57 games after the break, despite a stint on the disabled list with a sore back.

After the season, Delgado underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to clean up some scar tissue. He arrived in Dunedin early in February to get in a week of work at the complex.

After coming off the DL in late August, Delgado made an adjustment in his batting stance, standing more erect, which gave him a better path to the ball. His and the team's late success has a prompted a sense of optimism.

"Our guys were so young, we still didn't know how good we can be," Delgado said. "We've got a long way to go. It was exciting. It was fun. It was good for the ball club but at the end of the year we were still in third place [in the American League East]. We've got to play well for six months."

I like Delgado's attitude. He's taking the positives from last year and trying to build on them. And he's more concerned about wins than his own stats.

A nice summary article on a conference on baseball economics Bobby Ross of the AP is at OnlineAthens. Alderson points out that bad outside investments are hurting some owners:

Sandy Alderson, executive vice president for baseball operations in the commissioner's office, cited ''lousy investments'' by Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks and the difficulty of AOL Time Warner Inc., the parent of the Atlanta Braves.

''I can tell you Tom Hicks is probably a lot more conservative than when he signed Alex Rodriguez,'' Alderson said Friday at a conference on baseball economics. ''Part of that is the recent history of the Rangers, given their success or failure on the field. But also a part is perhaps lousy investments in telecommunications. His investments have suffered dramatically.''

Nick Johnson's wrist does not appear to be healed from an injury last year:

Nick Johnson's left wrist is hurting again, and based on his history with hand problems, there has to be concern even if the MRI exam taken Thursday was negative.

Johnson, who came to Yankees camp early in order to rehab the wrist that cost him 24 games last year, saw a hand specialist yesterday and will undergo a bone scan Monday. He didn't hit yesterday and won't hit this weekend.

"It's sore, very sore," Johnson said. "When I swing and stay inside the ball, which is the right way, I feel it."

Wrist injuries always seem to be the worst for hitters. It seems to me they really need a year to come back from them, and when they try to come back too soon, it makes the injury worst.

I like Nick Johnson, but this is a big setback to his career. I also think that the replacements (White and Zeile) are nothing to write home about. It's bad for the Yankees all around.

Two stories. First, this NY Times article by Buster Olney talks about baseball doctors wanting to take a stand about amphetamines and dietary supplements that act as stimulants, but were warned against it by Gene Orza of the players union. Orza has not had a chance to defend himself.

Second, Selig wants to talk to the union about banning ephedra.

I think the real problem is that uppers have been part of baseball for a long time, and that if players address the issue, they are going to shine a very poor light on themselves. From the Times article:

Amphetamines have long been used in major league baseball, as a way for players to perform better or to help them get through the long season. Many players accept their use as a part of the baseball culture, in the way they would accept a cigarette smoker or a beer drinker. They have jokingly referred to the amphetamines as greenies, for the color of some pills, or beans. A player who takes an amphetamine in preparation for a game is said to have "beaned up."

I think to get baseball players to stop with these drugs, MLB is going to have to do what it's done in the minor leagues with chewing tobacco. They've banned the use there, and send around people to educate the players on the dangers of smokeless tobacco. It's going to be tough to get a star to quit, or even accuse a star of abuse. But if minor leaguers are busted and thrown out of baseball, maybe they won't get started in the first place.

I think the ball is really in the union's court at this point. I'll be interested to see how they come down on the civil liberties vs. health issue.

A baseball related tongue twister from Amish Tech Support.

Sandy Koufax has ended his relationship with the Dodgers because a Murdoch newpaper questioned his sexual orientation:

Hall-of-Famer Sandy Koufax, perhaps the greatest living pitcher and a symbol of personal dignity, has ended his longtime relationship with the Los Angeles Dodgers because of a story in the New York Post, which, like the ballclub, is part of Rupert Murdoch's vast business empire, the Daily News learned Thursday.

Koufax has told club officials he would not appear at spring training, work with pitchers or the coaching staff, and did not want his likeness on any Dodgers products.

His anger was communicated to the team's management after an article in the New York Post that ran Dec. 19.

The Post, like the Dodgers, is owned by Murdoch's News Corp., which also owns the Fox Television Network, Twentieth Century-Fox studio, and a vast global entertainment, media and communications empire.

I get the feeling the author, Brian Dohn, is close to Koufax, or at least doesn't want to antagonzie him, because he buries the reason for Koufax being upset way down in the article:

A private man who rarely talked to the media and shied away from any publicity, Koufax agreed to give access to a writer for a book titled "Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy." Although Koufax's name was not mentioned, the Post reported that a Dodgers Hall of Fame left-handed pitcher who was recently the subject of a book had given access to the author with a promise that the book would not question the pitcher's sexuality.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the evidence seems to put Sandy in the heterosexual camp, which doesn't help because that camp needs a shortstop, real bad.

Leah Garchik of the San Francisco Chronicle called The Word last week to further scuttle the recent whispers elsewhere that Dodger great Sandy Koufax, is a closeted homosexual. More proof that he is neither: Garchik reminds us that in 1969, Koufax married Anne Widmark, daughter of actor Richard Widmark. After their divorce in the 1980s, Koufax married and divorced again before hooking up with his latest flame. Last week, they were together in Tortola.

Levity aside, I think Koufax is punishing the wrong people. My experience with the Murdoch empire, of which I was briefly an employee, was that they let their pieces pretty much manage themselves, which is the way it should be. Sandy should ask for an apology, but I don't think he should punish the Dodgers. Besides, who really cares?

From the Miami Herald:

Former baseball great Bob Gibson has been sued by an Omaha man claiming the Hall of Fame pitcher punched and kicked him last year in an act of road rage.

Gibson's attorney, David Herzog, said the man's version is inconsistent with the facts.

Duh. Everyone knows Gibson would have thrown a ball at the guy's head.

Gibson was guest analyst on Baseball Tonight once during it's first year in 1990. I have never seen the staff in Bristol so in awe of a person. Gibson sat there all day watching games, and one by one, people would go up and shake his hand and express their respect for his accomplishments. Gibson was polite about it, but I think he would have rather been left alone. The other thing I noticed about Gibson was that he was still in great shape. I had seen him the year before at an old-timers game at Fenway, and thought his fastball was still really good. Seeing him in person confirmed that this was a powerful human being. I think if Gibson had clocked this guy, he would have given him more than a black eye.

Here's a nice long article on how Griffey isn't talking. Can you imagine how long it would be if Griffey said something?

Griffey at this point is on the Hall of Fame bubble. If his career ended tomorrow his getting in would depend on how much the sports writers like him. My experience is that writers don't like him, and his not talking in the above article is one reason why. If he comes back and finishes his career with 600 HR, it won't matter what the writers think. But if he plods on for five more years with injuries, I don't think they'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He'll end up in the Canceso category.

Sorry to bring up the supposed Steinbrenner-Jeter war of words again, but it gives me a chance to discuss a pet peeve:

Steinbrenner's words were a tad softer than the ones he used Wednesday, when asked if he felt his message had been received.

"It better have. I got my message through," he told The New York Times. "If I'm paying a guy $16 million, I want him to listen.

"I think (manager) Joe Torre will get that across to him. I think (Jeter's) going to be fine. He always gives 100 percent. But I need 110 percent."

It's this whole 110 percent thing. I know it's just a figure of speech, but people can't give 110 percent. If you are giving 100 percent, you are giving all you have. If you can give more than 100 percent, why stop at 110? Why not demand 120% of Jeter? A-Rod's getting a lot more money. Should we demand 200% from him? I have never heard someone say that a ballplayer gives less than 100%. But if they are capable of 110%, is 100% really 91%? (That's 5B% Hex, for you programmers out there.)

Let's face it. Steinbrenner thought Jeter wasn't trying his hardest last year. That's fine. But let's not sugar-coat it. If a manager or owner thinks a player isn't performing to his or her full potential, say so. Ask for 100%. But asking for anything beyond that is ludicrous and impossible.

Rob Neyer has a good two part column today, and I'm posting about the 2nd part. It appears that Bob Boone wants to use Adam Dunn as his leadoff man. Rob appears not to like the move much, mostly because Dunn has a high OBA and power.

So the question becomes, is this really the best lineup that Bob Boone can come up with?

Without running every reasonable lineup through a computer simulation a few hundred times, my answer is, "Probably not. But it's probably not far off, either."

Based on projections -- and what most of us think anyway -- Dunn is the best hitter the Reds have. And it's odd to see a team's best hitter at the top of the lineup, especially when he stands six-feet-six and weighs 240 pounds.

Rob correctly points out, however, that there is a lot of power in the Reds lineup. So I really question, then if you are wasting Dunn's power in the leadoff spot. Griffey, Kearns and Casey need someone to drive in. Why not put your best OBA guy in front of them. So what if he's slow, with that kind of power behind him, he won't need to be fast.

Nate Silver has an excellent piece on player turnover on ESPN.com. He points out that due to free agency (and baseball wealth) that turnover among veteran players is higher than it's ever been:

What has caused the high rate of player turnover in the Selig Era? Most of the period has been characterized by rapid economic growth, both of the Alan Greenspan boom economy in general and of baseball revenues in particular. In a market as dependent on local sources of income as is baseball, a greater surplus of wealth can very easily create greater differentiation in the ability to generate marginal revenue, especially when accentuated by profound differences in front office smarts. Jason Giambi is worth more in New York than he is in Kansas City, and the gap is greater than it was in the early days of free agency.

And so, Selig and his cronies have it half right; although recent seasons have been characterized by high turnover of veteran players, these conditions have arisen not out of any economic struggle, but out of baseball's abundance of wealth.

It's not for the squemish, but this article tells about how Ted Williams was frozen.

Not a good week to be an Orioles pitcher. At least Jason Johnson recovered from this.

Just saw this article about Miguel Tejada missing the voluntary reporting time due to his daughter's illness. Why is this a big deal? Or more importantly, why are there two different reporting dates? Is it just to embarass players? Is it a way for the owners to thumb their nose at the owners? How much spring training do these players really need.

No one's late until the mandatory reporting date. I wish these stories would stop.

Part II of Bronx Banter's Burns Bloggerview is up. :-)

Will Carroll, the host of Baseball Prospectus Radio writes:

Greetings,

Hi David - love your site. I'm curious where the "Baseball and Medicine" material comes from. It's reasonably accurate, but doesn't seem to have a good grasp of how diagnoses are made and the process that both teams and players go through. While the players have no incentive to reveal injuries, they have little disincentive to do so. With contracts structured as they are, with medical care completely at the whim of the player, and with injury not considered in arbitration, spending a season on the DL isn't as bad as it should be for the player. Where the player has an incentive is in preventing injuries before they occur. Once players realize this and are combined with an owner who sees players as an investment rather than a cost, some team will get a serious advantage. The A's are almost there and there are a couple others close behind.

Will, thanks for the insights, and I encourage all to read Will's team health reports.

Bonds' elbow is hurt, but it's not a big deal (move along people). Looks like an internal suture has become an irritant. According to the article, he'll only miss a few days of spring training.

Robert Saunders writes:

I was wondering what your thinking was on the issue of owners' obligations to assess medical problems of their players. Obviously, the most recent baseball death spurs the note, but it's not limited to deaths. Year after year, you read about players who are injured during the season but postpone surgery decisions to the off-season, considering surgery all off-season, then not going through with surgery until after the next season begins. If they had just had the surgery in the first place (or if they had done more comprehensive testing and diagnosis that would lead to a surgery), they might have been ready sooner. I know some surgeries are not 100% effective and may cause other complications, but conditioning exercises apparently are not 100% effective either (though they avoid surgical complications).

Oakland seems to be doing great things by working with the orthopedists in Birmingham to maintain arm mechanics and prevent arm injuries for their staff. I wonder if there will come a time when teams will go beyond the standard physical (e.g., take full body MRIs). Texas apparently did more than the usual once-over of R.A. Dickey--a Tennessee grad who seemed a sure bet for big $ as a high draft pick--when the Rangers discovered he was born without an elbow ligament and used the info against him in negotiations.

I guess that's part of the problem: players have no incentive to reveal health problems because they are hurt financially; and, owners' incentives to discover them are limited because they have to pay for the surgeries (directly or through insurance).

Still, it seems players and owners in all sports could make better judgments about the timing of surgeries and being more aggressive in discovering problems. And they could take a more active interest in policing their players, whether for illegal drugs (Mets) or legal drugs (the ephedra cases), given the investment they're making in the players. But, I guess that's where the Union's opposition and the owners' plantation mentality (players are essentially replaceable) come into play.

I think it's in the owners best interests to keep players healthy, especially the ones who have long term contracts. That's one reason you see players going on the disabled list more often that you used to. It's not that there are more injuries, but players are less likely to play through them.

Some teams are doing more. Oakland is mentioned above. A good friend from college who is a radiologist has spent time the last two years at the Phillies camp performing ultra-sounds on pitchers elbows and shoulders. His group is developing ways of using ultra-sound to do less invasive surgery to remove bone spurs and fix rotator cuffs. On the other hand, I've heard that the Yankees have a poor conditioning program for their pitchers, which may be one reason Andy Pettitte spends his winters working out with Roger Clemens. And surgery is a tough thing to agree to. I assume players get more than one opinion, and I would hope that these opinions give them probabilities of success. When there are other choices, surgery should be a last resort, since so much can go wrong on the table, even in minor, simple surgeries.

The ultimate responsibility for health lies with the player. It's up to him to make sure that he's not increasing an injury by playing hurt, but also that he's not getting railroaded by a team doctor who might not have his best interest at heart. In the best of all worlds, it would be a cooperative process, but I'm afraid we're a long way from that with most teams.

I thought this was interesting:

Sheffield, reporting a day ahead of position players, said he dropped out of winter workouts with his good friend Barry Bonds in November to focus on strength work with a personal trainer. He arrived in camp weighing 218 pounds, seven pounds less than he weighed at the end of last season and 12 pounds lighter than he reported to camp last spring. He said he cut back on his running and improved his eating habits.

(Bonds') workout got me 25 home runs," Sheffield said. I'm not doing that any more. I feel like I needed to change the scenery, get my own trainer, and do my own thing. I feel I came to camp in shape this time. I went back to what made me successful in the first place, just living good.

I don't know if (Bonds) was happy or not, but I had to do what I had to do."

Sheffield, 34, said he plans to continue playing until he's 40. That would give him enough time to hit another 160 home runs and reach 500.

That's why I'm training, so I can get to 500 home runs and win a couple more World Series," he said.

I wonder if he blames Bonds work out for his injuries? Barry's workout doesn't hurt him any, it seems.

Keeping with the theme of recovering pitchers, Kazuhiro Sasaki appears to be making great progress recovering from elbow surgery.

Pitcher comeback stories seem to be very popular this week. Here's one about the Reds' Scott Sullivan:

The right-hander's 2002 season went downhill after he was struck on the elbow May 13 by a ball off the bat of Milwaukee's Richie Sexson. Sullivan was 3-0 with a 2.10 ERA at the time, then went 3-5 with a 7.98 ERA.

``All the problems he had last year go back to getting hit on the elbow,'' Reds manager Bob Boone said.

Sullivan isn't worrying and believes he can again be a premier setup man.

He led the majors in relief innings pitched for four consecutive years, from 1998 through 2001. He averaged 106 1-3 innings pitched each year during that time.

He lives in Auburn, Ala., and has been working with athletic trainers at Auburn University, his alma mater. He also hired a personal trainer for the first time.

``I made it a priority,'' he said.

The Reds are watching his progress closely this spring. Boone, a former catcher, wants to see whether Sullivan has regained the rhythm that enabled him to become a day-to-day workhorse.

``He's a hard guy to judge,'' Boone said. ``You can't look at the (radar) gun with him. Last year, he was throwing too hard at times. With him, it's more of a rhythm.''

Sullivan not only led the majors in relief innings between 1998 and 2001, he led by 60 innings. There was a greater distance between Sullivan and #2 than between #2 and #12. That's a lot of innings for a reliever, and one has to wonder if that didn't have something to do with the slow comeback.

You have to scroll down through sailing and cricket stories, but if you read the whole thing, you'll find this gem from Paul Oberjuerge:

Makes you wonder about the baseball acumen of commissioner Bud Selig when the team he bought and once ran, the Milwaukee Brewers, is working on a streak of 11 consecutive losing seasons.

Indeed.

FRAN BLINEBURY has written a very glowing article about Roy Oswalt. My favorite paragraph:

It is, as they say, how you play the game. Oswalt plays it like a member of the bomb squad, certain of which wire to snip.

A great way to look at pitchers is to turn their stats into opposition batting stats. For his career, batters against Oswalt have a .242 BA, a .289 OBA and a .366 slugging percentage. Would you keep a hitter like that on your team? I didn't think so. Oswalt turns hitters into the current Vinny Castilla.

You know not much is going on when a batting practice HR is big news.

On the other hand, I think Phillies supporters are rightly excited about this season. It's not every year you add the talent of Thome and Millwood to your team.

Update: Michael Blake comments:

This article about Thome's homerun isn't a one-time thing, sadly enough. I have counted about 5 or 6 different articles (mostly in the Philly papers) solely about the power shows that Thome has put on since he started hitting on Friday. The Philly papers appear to be following his every move -- understandably -- and it's hard to read an article around here that doesn't mention him more than 5 lines in. And you get the impression that after the last few days, the beat writers around here are expecting 60 homers from him this year. It's insane.

Thanks, Michael.

Seems he wasn't mad at Steinbrenner. And you heard it here first.

Since I started the Extreme Tracker in September, I've gotten 52 hits from the Czech Republic. If you are from there and reading this, drop me a line. Is baseball popular there, or are you an American ex-pat? Hits from the Czech Republic rank 5th among countries without an MLB team. I would not have expected that.

Ted claims his shoulder is healed. That's good news. I like Lilly. He's a lefty that strikes out people, rather than finessing them. Last year he started to get his waks and HR under control. With the A's philosophy, I suspect that will get even better, and the Yankees are going to be sorry they let him go.

Jason Isringhausen continues to recover from this surgery. He's playing long toss, and right now the Cardinals look for him to start the season on the DL, and will use him sparingly when he gets back:

Pitching coach Dave Duncan said Friday that Isringhausen likely will open the season on the disabled list as he recuperates.

Duncan stressed that even when Isringhausen has recovered, the Cardinals likely will devise a maintenance program for him, and a strong recommendation against using him more than two days in a row.

Kline looks like he'll get the first shot at the job. He doesn't have the K numbers that Izzy does, but he does have some success in save situations, converting 15 of 18 over the last two years.

I know what you are thinking, "I liked Baseball Musings before it went commerical." Fair enough. But I think the ad strip to the right will be a nice way to bring in some income from the site. If you run fantasy games, sell collectibles or have a blog that you want to be seen, consider taking out an advertisement. It's really quite inexpensive and you'll reach an audience of die hard baseball fans. My policy of linking to any baseball blog that asks has not changed, and I'll continue to link to any article or post that I enjoy or with which I'd like to argue. But you can get added exposure to the right, so feel free to take advantage of it.

Looks like the Braves and Greg Maddux split the difference and settled on $14.75 million for this year.

Good for Greg. I love the way he pitches. Since joining the Braves in 1993, he's first in the majors in wins (178), 2nd in shutouts (21), 2nd in games started (327), first in innings pitched (2308.1) and first in ERA (2.51). In those ten years he only allowed 273 unintentional walks. That's less than one per start. He gives up 1 HR every 18 innings, the best in baseball, and that during one of the biggest power decades of all time. He's been the most efficient pitcher in the game over that time, throwing only 12.9 pitches per inning, over 1 less than his nearest competitor, Bob Tewksbury (14.1). He throws strikes, makes batters put the ball in play on the ground, but can get the K when he needs it. And he stays healthy. I couldn't think of a better way to spend nearly 15 million dollars.

Steve was a young pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles. According to this story, heat exhaustion got the best of him. A very sad way to start the season. My sympathy goes out to his family and teammates.

Update: It's worse. According to this on FoxSports.com, his wife is seven months pregnant.

Update: I'm sorry, I had Steve's name misspelled earlier. Thanks to Ben Jacobs for pointing out the error. Ben also points out that an article ran last night that Bechler did not report to camp in shape. This Washington Times article points that out, and also claims Bechler had ephedrine in his locker.

Still haven't found the quote I was looking for, but Alex Belth wrote me about that winter:

The bub-bub around Yankee camp this spring is mild in comparison with 1982. I think I found what you were looking for with regards to George's Great Speed Experiment:

According to Bill Madden and Moss Klein, in their excellent account of the Bronx Zoo years, "Damned Yankees" (1990):

'[Davey] Collins had no business coming to the Yankees. He was a well-paid victim of George Steinbrenner's panic-button plan to turn the Yankees into a speed" team for 1982---defying the tried-and-true tradition of building Yankee teams around left-handed power.

Although Collins didn't sign with the Yankees until December 23, 1981, the official begining of his Yankee career was October 28, the night the World Series ended with the Yankees losing to the Dodgers. Before the game had ended, a grim Steinbrenner prepared a terse statement: "I want to sincerely apologize to the people of New York and to Yankee fans everywhere for the performance of the Yankee team in thos World Series. I also want to assure you that we will be at work immeditately to prepare for 1982."'

Which brings to mind, a comment Nettles made in "Balls:"

"George has never learned how to lose. He thinks being a good loser is a sign of weakness. And that's not how life is. You're going to lose sometimes."

Madden and Klein continue:

'The next day, Steinbrenner called a press briefing and explained his newly hatched plan. "I'm tired of sitting around and waiting for someone to hit a three-run homer," he said. "To be a big-inning team, you have to have speed. And we'll be going for more speed."

Thus, Steinbrenner embarked on a mission to turn the Bronx Bombers into the Bronx Burners. Home runs were out, speed was in. First he traded for potential free agent Ken Griffey...His next step was the signing of Collins.

Basically, Steinbrenner just overwhelmed Collins...a whopping $2.475 million, three-year package that was ludicrous even in those free-spending free-agent days for a player of Collin's limited ability. Collins was both overwhelmed and confused. He knew the Yankee outfield was overcrowded with talent. Dave Winfield, Griffey, and Jerry Mumphrey all had spots, and Lou Pinella and Bobby Murcer were still around as reserves. What's more, Steinbrenner still had not officially let Reggie Jackson go as a gree agent. First base was occupied by Bob Watson.

So even though Collins was eager to take the Boss's generous offer, he also wanted to play. He called Steinbrenner directly to ask him about the situation, and Steinbrenner responded with a promise. "You'll get more at-bats than Winfield," the Boss said. "Don't worry about it."

Would you believe that spring traing was a zoo in 1982?

"Meanwhile, the camp had been turned into a circus by Steinbrenner. Consider the development of March 2, less than a week before the exhibition games were to begin.

The Yankees showed up for the workout, only to be informed there would be no workout---at least not in the usual sense. Instead of hitting, throwing, pitching and base-running drills, the players were told to don their sweat suits and head to the back field to run 45-yeard sprints under the direction of Harrison Dillard, the former Olympic hurdling champion, who had been imported by Steinbrenner as a special spring training instructor. Dillard's assignment was to teach the Yankees to run. He was to scutinize the running styles of all the players and then offer tips on how to improve each one's technique.

"You can't underestimate the importance of speed," said Steinbrenner, who reminded his players that he had been a champion hurdler in his college days at Williams.

"They must have used ankle high hurdles in those days," cracked Craid Nettles.

The Yankees' "Day at the Races" was a fitting sequel to the Marx Brothers comedy. Bobby Brown, the talented young outfielder, turned in the best time, sprinting to the finish line in 5.18 seconds to beat Jerry Mumphrey...

Collins, meanwhile, had come through with flying colors for Steinbrenner in the sprint. He was paired againt Winfield and edged him out, even though Winfield jumped Yogi Berra's command of "Go!" and had a head start. Steinbrenner went out of his way to congradulate Collins, who was now beginning to realize this was anything but your ordinary baseball team.

"I don't think any team ever had a spring training workout like this one," Collins said, shaking his head.'

Collins, of course, was traded after the 1982 season, just in time to make way for the likes of Steve Kemp.

Thanks, Alex.

If nothing else, Cubs reporters should get a lot of good quotes out of Dusty Baker. From the funny:

"I've been told a lot of things about him, mostly negative," Baker said. "When you are 26, good looking and single, you have a lot of temptations."

To the serious:

"Has he been here for a while with quality or has he been here for a while because he throws 100 mph?" he asked of Farnsworth.

Farnsworth has had one outstanding season, 2001. Otherwise, his K numbers aren't that impressive for someone with his velocity. Baker's putting pressure on Kyle, and rightfully so, since the payoff may be a reliever who can blow away the opposition.

Randy Johnson wants to keep pitching. And he's working very hard to stay in shape.

Johnson took October off, then began his workout routine, which eventually included twice-weekly sessions with a trainer.

"Sometimes I think anybody needs to get pushed a little bit to, not necessarily get motivated, but just to get where you need to be," Johnson said.

He spent two days in San Diego with House, who also was working with 22-year-old Mark Prior of the Chicago Cubs.

"He showed me I could get six or seven more inches out of my height and my delivery," Johnson said. "I didn't believe him at first, but we were doing tests in throwing, and I was doing that."

That could add even more velocity to Johnson's pitches, and make that long left arm release the ball even closer to the batter.

Now I get scared whenever there is a closeup of Johnson on the mound. Think how a batter must feel, and think how much more scared they are going to be if they think the Big Unit is going to throw even harder.

Johnson's seasonal age last year was 38. He now has 3746 career strikeouts. At the same age, Nolan Ryan had 4083 K's, and would have 1631 over another 8 seasons. Johnson is striking out a lot more batters than Ryan did over the same stretch. He needs a little under 2000 K's to break Ryan's record. If he can hold up as long as Ryan did, and put up 1000 K's over the next three years, I'm thinking he has a good shot at it. There is no sign of Johnson breaking down. I thought that record would be rather untouchable, but Randy is making me change my mind.

Steve Megargee of TCPalm.com writes about how Odalis Perez wants to win 20 this year. And Perez understands why it may be possible:

Perez ranked fourth in the National League last year with a 3.00 ERA. He won 15 games even though the Dodgers scored three runs or less in 17 of his 32 starts.

"We have a lot better team than last year," Perez said. "Last year we had one real power hitter (Shawn Green). on the team. This year Brian (Jordan) is healthy and we've got (Fred) McGriff with (Paul) LoDuca and Shawn Green. We should score a lot of runs."

So Perez realizes that with the same ERA, more run production will mean more wins. Interestingly, Perez' run support was 4.9 per 9 IP last year, better than the Dodgers overall runs per game. But his distribution of run in support isn't normal; he pitched in 5 games where the Dodgers scored 9 or more runs (and won all five), but in over half his starts (17), the Dodgers scored two or fewer runs (he was 3-9). So even with the same run support this year, if the distribution is convex rather than concave, Perez should win more games.

One other thing Perez could do to win more games in start more often. Perez averaged 94 pitches per start last year. He's efficient. Of his three complete games last year, two were under 100 pitches. Tracy should consider using him on a five-day rotation, rather than a five-man rotation, as the Diamondbacks do with Schilling and Johnson.

It's nice to see players with winning attitudes (especially on the Dodgers) coupled with a realization about how teams win games. I think with 32 starts 20 wins will be tough for Perez, but I would expect him to improve to 18.

This AP article interviews Gerry Hunsicker about the Astros. I thought this was interesting:

Hidalgo struggled last season after a career year in 2001. He suffered a gunshot wound to his left arm when robbers tried to steal his car in his hometown of Valencia, Venezuela, last November. Hidalgo bats and throws righthanded.

"He's a man on a mission," Hunsicker said. "He's determined to come back and have a solid year after the carjacking. He's bounced back miraculously from that. He's down to 215, which is as light as he's been in three years. I think he's going to surprise a lot of people this year."

Sometimes a non-sports injury can spur a player on to improve him or herself more than they otherwise would. Nancy Kerrigan was a good example of this. In rehabing his left arm, Hidalgo has probably picked up good training techniques and strengthened his right arm at the same time. No way it's a blessing in disguise, but it may help him have a better year.

The Red Sox have finally obtained Kevin Millar from the Marlins for cash. I assume that Giambi, Millar and Ortiz will form some kind of lefty-righty first base/DH platoon.

Millar is a good doubles hitter, and I would think Fenway would enhance that.

The Giants are in trouble. Alou is talking about speed:

This team will be aggressive on the basepaths, Alou said.

"We're introducing more speed," he said. "With Jeff Kent gone, we might not have the one-two punch we had with him and Barry (Bonds), but we can be as effective with our speed."

There are, in life, a few signs that accurately portend a rough road ahead. Experts declaring that there's a new way to value companies. Large armies massing at your border. And managers compensating for power with speed.

I knew the Yankees had finished their great run of the 70's when George Steinbrenner signed Dave Collins. I can't find the quote, but I remember Steinbrenner announcing something like "this was the age of speed." That sent the Yankees into a twelve year slump. Speed is nice, but it's going to take an awful lot of it to replace Kent's power.

P.S. If someone has a source for the Steinbrenner quote I'm thinking of (news conference signing Dave Collins), let me know.

This AP article on the Tigers shows how in flux this Tigers team is. Seems that only two pitchers are guaranteed jobs, and the middle infield may be up for grabs. Looks like the new manager certainly has his work cut out for him.

In looking at the Tigers from last year, the one thing that really stands out is the number of HR given up by the pitchers. They allowed only 61 at home, but 102 on the road. Meanwhile, the offense was evenly split (61 home, 63 road). The Tigers, in putting this team together have to realize that no matter what they do they aren't going to score much at home, and build the team for the road. They were 22-59 on the road last year, a .373 winning percentage. The Tigers have to build a team that can homer on the road offensively, and at the same time keep the ball in the park. If they take the tack that their ballpark stifles offense, and build a small ball team like the Astros used to, they'll never win. They have to be willing to play long ball to win on the road, and hope that the pitching staff is good enough at home that 3 or 4 runs will win games for them.

I've often thought that extreme pitcher parks (like the Astros in the Dome) needed home/road platoons. They'd have sluggers for the road games, and speedy bunters for the home games. Maybe someday some clever manager will try it out.

Looks like Jose will be arrested soon:

Circuit Judge Leonard E. Glick issued the warrant after being told Canseco has failed to begin community service, take anger control classes and not leave Florida for longer than 30 days. Those were among the conditions of his probation, as well as the payment of court costs and sending monthly reports.

"The subject does not appear to take probation seriously," probation officer Ileana Ortiz told Glick in a report. Ortiz said Canseco has been in Los Angeles since Dec. 20.

From what I remember, he didn't take baseball seriously either.

Michale Blake is now blogging about the Phillies at View from the 700 Level. His current post is about how the lineup, rotation and bullpen of the Phillies will look.

Scott Jeffries has started Buck and a Half, a blog concentrating on managing, studied by watching Buck Showalter. Right now he has an interesting post on the difference between pitchers training in Florida and training in Arizona.

Joe Posnanski of the KC Star doesn't like Mike Sweeney's negativity:

A word for Mike. Anybody who has ever even glanced at this column knows how I feel about Mike Sweeney. He's one of the great hitters in baseball. And he's one of the best people I've met in sports.

But Mike has been pretty whiny this off-season. He has complained about the team's direction. He has said that he can't imagine playing in October. He has suggested again in the last few days that the Glass family misled him when they said they would spend money to build a winner in town.

He has let frustration and losing get the better of him.

A word for Mike: You're better than that. This isn't doing anybody any good.

Look, we all know why Mike Sweeney is frustrated. The Royals lost 100 games last year. They lost their two best pitchers. They did not sign one marketable, established player. They cut payroll. Mike isn't the only guy frustrated around here. Everybody around here feels pretty discouraged.

Here's the difference: The Royals aren't paying everybody 11 million bucks this season.

Basically, Joe wants Mike to be a cheerleader:

Mike Sweeney needs to see hope where everybody else sees darkness.

Here are some hints: You know, Royals prospect Ken Harvey could win Rookie of the Year this year. Why not? The guy can flat hit. He hit almost .500 in the Arizona Fall League. He has a minor-league batting average of .340. This guy can smoke it.

You know, another prospect, Mike MacDougal, threw 103 mph in Puerto Rico. Get that? They may have hopped-up radar guns down there, but 103 is 103.

How about Jeremy Affeldt? Might be the most talented young lefty in baseball. Big-time fastball. Big-time breaking ball. Big-time future.

This is what Mike Sweeney needs to be talking about. Say that Mark Quinn will stay healthy and have the breakout year. Say that Runelvys Hernandez has pretty remarkable guts for a kid. This guy went into Yankee Stadium in his fourth major-league start, threw five shutout innings and didn't want to come out. That's someone you can believe in.

Say that the bullpen could have four guys throwing in the upper 90s. Say that the young pitching is finally coming. Say that the middle of the lineup right now - with Carlos Beltran, Mike Sweeney, Raul Ibanez and Joe Randa - is better than defending champion Minnesota. Say that Angel Berroa, before he got hurt, looked like the next great shortstop. He's healthy again.

Say anything. But get people fired up. Inspire. Bring the city on board.

So the Royals sign Sweeney, convincing him they are trying to move in the right direction by putting clauses in his contract that if they are not over .500 in 2003 and 2004, he can bolt. A new CBA is negotiated that is supposed to bring more money to clubs like KC, but the Royals cut salary. Now, if I were in Sweeney's shoes, I'd be a little miffed. But Posnanski is right, at this time of the year you should be positive, because strange things do happen in baseball. If the Royals are 20 games under come July 1st, complain about management all you want. But spring is the time to look at the bright side of things.

David Cone has signed a minor league contract with the Mets:

"David Cone's record and accomplishments speak for themselves," said Mets General Manager Steve Phillips. "We are interested to see if he can fit into our plans for the upcoming season."

Since the Mets' plans at this point seem to be to have a losing season with an aging pitching staff, Cone should fit in quite nicely. :-)

On the ESPN front page they currently have this headline:

Angry Jeter lets critical Steinbrenner have it

But when you click on the link, you get this headline.

Jeter bothered by questions about his work ethic

Which fits the piece much more appropriately. In my reading of the AP article, it seems Jeter is mad at the press for blowing his social life out of proportion after Steinbrenner made the comments:

"He's the boss and he's entitled to his opinion, right or wrong, but what he said has been turned into me being this big party animal," Jeter told AP national columnist Steve Wilstein in a phone interview from the Yankees' spring training camp in Tampa, Fla. "He even made a reference to one birthday party. That's been turned into that I'm like Dennis Rodman now.

"I don't think that's fair. I have no problems with people criticizing how I play. But it bothers me when people question my work ethic. That's when you're talking about my integrity. I take a lot of pride in how hard I work. I work extremely hard in the offseason. I work extremely hard during the season to win. My priorities are straight."

Also, there's a side bar about how the Yankees aren't paying Giambi strength coach anymore.

This is probably the first time in his career that Jeter has to endure negative press from the NY media. It probably hurts, but that's life in the big city. Up until now I thought he was handling it well. Jeter's best bet is to just ignore things for a while and get off to a good start when the season comes. Nothing like a high batting average to turn the press in your direction.

The Cubs have a year to settle with rooftop seating owners, according to this AP article on FoxSports.com.

I think this is one of those situations that was handled badly by both sides. I believe the rooftops used to be a party place. Someone would set up a grill and cook and have friends over to enjoy the game. Then someone came up with the idea of putting seats up there and selling tickets, acting like a good capitalist. However, whoever did this crossed a line from enjoying a free game to profiting off someone else's hard work. Are these people really suprised the Cubs are upset by this? I think the copyright violation is a stretch, but I'm not surprised the Cubs are angry that someone else is making money off their product without any of the risk.

Given that the Cubs have a case, however, I don't think they should make it. Cubs attendance has been very good; the 2002 average was 34,526, down slightly from 2001 but still the 2nd highest average in Cubs history. So it's hard for me to believe these roof seats are really hurting the Cubs. In fact, they are probably helping the Cubs. They make the experience of a game at Wrigley unique. You can sit in the stands and look at the cool rooftop seats. It makes you more interested in the Cubs, not less. If the Cubs were really smart, they would work out a deal where they promoted the roof seats in exchange for a piece of the action. That would help both parties, and not make the Cubs management look like whiney Frenchmen.

Eric Carra reports:

I'm happy to say that I attended the "Not-quite-as-grand-as-the-previous-night-but-pretty-darn-grand" Opening of the "Baseball as America" exhibit at the Chicago Field Museum on Wednesday, 2/5/03. A relative is a "Friend of the Museum," and got special tickets for it (the previous night was THE Grand Opening, with hall-of-famers, etc).

The Field Museum always does these things up right. They served honest-to-gosh baseball food (hot dogs, popcorn, nachos and the like) beforehand, had a very good speaker (according to my cousin; I didn't attend the speech. I could have given the speech, by all accounts), and then, of course, there was the exhibit itself.

Baseball Heaven. From the "Doubleday Ball" (a lot smaller than we're used to) to a Babe Ruth Celebriduck, just about anything you could imagine was there. I walked around the exhibit with a goofy grin on my face.

The exhibit is self-guided, so you can take your time on the topics that interest you, and it's set up so that each area is self-contained, without being confining. Over here, advertising and endorsements involving players. Around the corner, Jackie Robinson and the breaking of the color barrier. Just past that, evolution of baseball equipment (I got to explain just why Steve Yeager invented the flap under the catcher's mask to a rapt audience).

Interspersed you come across video monitors with informative and entertaining films. By far the best was baseball in the entertainment field, from "Casey at the Bat" to Bugs Bunny, Charlie Brown to "Field of Dreams."

It was hands-on, as well. There were examples of bat weights through the ages (how Ruth swung his bat is a mystery to me... my wrists ache just thinking about trying to check my swing with it), and an clever device that showed rotation on various pitches.

Simply an incredible experience, it was. Short of actually going to Cooperstown, I can't imagine a better museum display. I'm sure it'd be even better during the season, when you could go to the museum, spend a few hours there, then go catch a game, to boot... which I fully intend to do.

Congrats to Greg Gajus, who turned the counter to 100,000. Greg wins a mention in the blog! Thanks to all my readers who have made this first year of Baseball Musings so successful.

The counter to the right is about to hit 100,000. If you are the person to turn it over, please send me an e-mail so I can give you a mention on the blog!

Rickey Henderson is looking for a minor league contract. He's still better than a lot of players out there. Someone should take the $300,000 risk.

Alex Belth at Bronx Banter has an interview with Ken Burns, the documentary film maker. Well worth the read.

And Al's Ramblings has an interview with Mike Gimbel of Red Sox infamy. Mike has a comment that I agree with:

Every single MLB team has the possibility of contending immediately, even the worst organizations. I think that was proven both in Montreal and Boston when I was a consultant to Dan Duquette. There were numerous players available to fill holes. The first step is to decide what players are valuable and what players might have more value in trade than actual value on the field. All other players are expendable.

Read the whole thing. Gimbel rubs people the wrong way, but he makes a lot of sense.

From these two letters, published today, Portland residents seem to be wary to attracting a major league team. This would rather see real businesses come to town, while this one worries about essential services.

John Hunt of the Oregonian has a nice preview of the Mariners as they start spring training. And I'm going to be watching the progress of one player in particular:

The Mariners also will closely watch the progress of left-handed Independent League signee Bobby Madritsch as well as hard-throwing J.J. Putz (pronounced "Pootz"), Aaron Taylor and Allan Simpson, who has reached 99 mph on the radar gun and has been cleared for participation by a vascular surgeon despite suffering from lupus.

If my name was Putz, I'd make up another way to pronounce it, also.

Melvin seems to be making a project out of turning around Cirillo:

In handicapping the AL West race, one set of numbers jumps out: 30, 34 and 6.

Those are the home run totals of Anaheim third baseman Troy Glaus, Oakland third baseman Eric Chavez and Seattle third baseman Jeff Cirillo, respectively.

Cirillo struggled severely, hitting .249, although his career batting average is still above .300. His statistics were even dwarfed by David Bell (20 home runs for San Francisco), the man he replaced at third for the Mariners.

Melvin, who coached Cirillo in Milwaukee, threw to Cirillo two weeks ago in Arizona and still can't believe Cirillo's slide.

"I didn't see the struggles," Melvin said. "The guy is a lifetime .300 hitter and a great defensive player. I expect that just to be a bad year for him. I think it kind of snowballed on him a little bit."

Cirillo, who has family in Seattle, was clearly pressing last year and often clashed with manager Lou Piniella, who has since moved to Tampa Bay. Not only does Melvin have history with Cirillo, he also has a kinder disposition than Piniella. Melvin probably won't be seen throwing up his hands in the dugout, much less kicking dirt on the plate.

"I know I'm going to be very positive and upbeat, and I know I'm going to stick up for our players," Melvin said. "How upset I'm going to get and what I'm going to do is uncharted waters, so we'll take that one step at a time."

The problem, of course, is that Cirillo has two straight years of decline. And if you count his first year in Colorado where there was no improvement from Milwaukee, possibly three. What I find odd about Cirillo's decline is how his walks have fallen off. He's always had a good OBA, so unless he can turn that part of his game around, he's only going to be valuable for his defense.

If you are in Chicago, get out to the Field Museum for an exhibit from the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The BC women's basketball team just tied UConn at 61.

Update: Never mind, UConn just ripped off 5 straight points.

I found this site due to the fact that they link to mine. My friend David Aceto will be very happy. :-)

Actually, my friend George Parker and I used to have seats in center field in Fenway Park, the seats that are now closed during day games to give the hitters a better background. It's where all the bleacher season ticket holders sat. The two sections never did the wave, and booed if any visitors to the section did. So I hope this site has a lot of success.

Due to an oversight on my part, I did not have a link to this wonderful baseball site in the links on the right. This has been rectified.

Rays add defense with signing of first baseman Travis Lee

Most teams look to add offense at first base, but the Rays are trying to add defense. Does this make sense? It does seem to be part of a plan:

Lee, 27, has played the outfield before, but most likely is going to be at first base. New manager Lou Piniella has said repeatedly he wants to "put the best defensive club we can on the field every day."

General manager Chuck LaMar said late Thursday: "We think Travis Lee is an outstanding defensive first baseman who can rebound offensively. We also think he's a good enough athlete, depending on how things shake out, that if we need him to play right or leftfield he's capable of doing so."

Is this the right course to take? The Devil Rays were in fact very bad defensively last year. My favorite measure of team defense is the defensive efficiency record (DER). The DRays had a DER of .688 last year, tied for fourth worst in the AL. And there is a lot of evidence their first basemen were poor fielders. STATS, Inc. keeps a statistic called Zone Rating, that attempts to measure balls fielded per fieldable ball. They can make this estimate because the direction and distance of each batted ball is recorded. Although there is some subjectivity associated with the calls on these batted balls, it can be used as one more piece of evidence when evaluating fielding records. The case of the DRays first basemen is a perfect example. The DRays first basemen had the fewest chance in the AL last year. Now, there can be numerous reasons why this might be so:

1. The DRays pitchers strike out a lot of batters.


2. The composition of the pitching staff is such that not too many balls are hit to first base (lots of lefties).


3. The DRays allowed a lot of baserunners, so the first baseman was always holding, limiting his range.


4. Luck

We can test some of these reasons. For example, a quick look at pitcher strikeouts show the DRays near the bottom of the league. The DRays had 374.2 innings pitched by left-handed pitchers, which is not extreme at either end. The Rays were near the top in hits+bb allowed, which gives some credence to the third possibility. But, the Rays were last in the AL in zone rating, which given all the other evidence would lead you to believe that the first basemen were indeed poor defensively.

Doing all this research, I believe the DRays are going in the right direction. They have a pitching staff that doesn't strike out a lot of batters, so the ability to turn a batted ball into an out is extremely important to them. They were horrible defensively at first, so getting a good fielder there is okay. As for Lee bouncing back offensively, I think there are some positives there. From what I've heard of Travis, the complaint isn't about his talent, it's about his lack of drive, a lack of competitiveness. I think it's going to be difficult to play for Lou Piniella and have a bad attitude. (By the way, if Piniella had had the Phillies, which player do you think he would have complained about, Rolen or Lee?) On top of that, Lou is an excellent hitting coach, so if there is a flaw in Lee's mechanics, Piniella may very well find it. And finally, Lee took a big pay cut this year, and missed an opportunity to play for a division champion:

Lee will get a $500,000 salary this season with the chance to make another $500,000 in incentives. There is a mutual option for 2004 at $2.5-million, with a $500,000 buyout, and another $500,000 available in incentives.

Lee was let go by the Phillies after the signing of Jim Thome and turned down an offer of at least $1-million from Atlanta. "I didn't know it would take this long, but that's the way the market has been going," Lee said. "I'm just relieved to have a team. ... I'm excited to come down there and help turn things around."

Travis Lee has wasted his career thus far, and it's come back to hurt him. He's one of the really nice guys in baseball, so I'd like to see him turn his career around. Maybe this was the wakeup call he needed.

There's a discussion going on about the playoff format posts at Baseball Primer.

Bob Montgomery (watch out, Monty) writes on the post below:

The post on a possible round-robin league playoff is interesting, and pretty cool, but...

I see one fatal flaw: what to do in the case of ties?

Take this example:

AL 2002
#1 seed is Yankees
#2 seed is Athletics
#3 seed is Twins
#4 seed is Angels

So, say the Yanks sweep the Angels, take 3 of 5 from the Twins, and 2 of 5 from the As, and
the As sweep the Angels, take 2 of 5 from the Twins and 3 of 5 from the Yanks
The Twins sweep the Angels, take 2 of 5 from the Yanks and 3 of 5 from the As
The Angels get swept by everybody.

Final standings: Yanks: 10-5, As: 10-5, Twins: 10-5, Angels: 0-15

Who goes to the WS? The Yanks have the advantage over the Twins, cuz they beat them head-to-head (in the round-robin tourney), but the As have advantage over the Yanks for the same reason, and the Twins have advantage over the As for the same reason. Would Selig throw up his hands and declare a tie?

Any tie-breaker method is going to be ugly, I think - if you have more games, it increases the already long schedule (under this system, a WS that goes 7 games would force the two participating teams to play a 184-game season - 3 games longer than the longest currently possible [162+5+7+7=181]) and, with three teams tied, you could remain tied indefinitely - if you take head-to-head records or some complicated points system, someone will definitely feel robbed.

I don't really like the current playoff system either but, as it currently stands, it has the enormous advantage that every possible outcome will be decided on the field. I don't think you can say that about the round-robin system (though, admittedly, my scenario is fairly unlikely, I suppose).

I don't see this as a really fatal flaw. There are ways of breaking ties in the regular season that could be applied here. However, I think the big flaw is that at some point, a team gets eliminated but has to continue playing. Will teams really want to play on if they are just spoilers? Even when you are down 0-3 in a series, there's still a chance that you can win. Do we really want teams in post season who have nothing to play for?

Ken Peters of the AP writes about how the Angels haven't changed much from last year:

Just about everybody will be back for the Anaheim Angels this year, including the Rally Monkey.

"It's really going to be neat, having the same guys back," right fielder Tim Salmon said. "Our biggest moves - uh, move - was signing back Brad Fullmer. We also got Eric Owens, and other than that, we haven't done much.

"That's a testament to the club we have. We've got a good club, and we've got everybody signed."

This is a typical way of reacting to winning. We won last year with this team, so why not again? Unfortunately, teams that don't win tend to try to improve themselves, so even though the team may be as good as last year, the people you beat may be better. The one team that seems to have successfully fought this lethergy is the Atlanta Braves. Every year during the 1990's they made small but significant changes, each designed to address a weakness from the previous year.

For example, in looking at batting stats by position, the Angels could use an upgrade in offense at catcher and center field. Do they think that Erstad will bounce back to his 2000 season, even though that looks like an anomaly in terms of his whole career. A smart GM might find a way to move a player like that for someone good.(Remember Roberto Kelly for Paul O'Neill?) Also, if you want Bengie Molina for his defense, why not have a back-up who can hit, so you don't waste a pinch hitter? Yes, the Angels still have a good team, but so do Oakland and Seattle. The smart organizations constantly address their weaknesses. They don't stand pat.

All day today, CNBC is doing reports on how to get a job or how to get a raise. At 4:00 PM, they are having Alex Rodriguez and his agent on to tell us how he got Alex so much money. I can just see it now. "First, become the best shortstop in the game..."

Doug Purdie and I have been exchanging e-mails about division setups and wild cards, and in doing so Doug proposed an interesting idea for the playoffs:

I hereby offer a revolutionary idea for the League championship playoffs involving the existing wildcard scenario. I think it's a win-win for all parties. Please pick it apart. I can't see many holes in the idea, but then again, it's my idea and I am biased.

Have a 15 game round robin mini-season where all four teams are scheduled. Every team plays every other team five times. Stack it in favor of the higher seeded teams by awarding lopsided home field advantage. The top seeded team, the division winner with the best record, plays the lowest seeded team, the wildcard team, 5 of 5 at home. They play the #3 seed 4 out of 5 at home and they play the #2 seed 3 out of 5 at home. The top seeded team gets 12 of the 15 games at home overall . The #2 seed gets nine home games, etc. The wildcard only gets three home games, but at least their fans get to see three games.

It would last not much longer than the current league tournaments - 20 days to be exact. It does not devalue those teams who succeeded the most during the long, arduous, 162 game regular season. The networks and owners would love it too, because there would be at least one game in each league every day, most of the time two games, throughout the playoff. More games means more revenue both at the gate and in broadcast advertising.

Maybe it seems a nightmare to schedule. It really isn't. I've already done it. See the attached Excel file showing a schedule based on last season's four National League playoff teams.

I have the spreadsheet. If anyone wants it, let me know and I'll mail it to you.

I think this a real interesting idea. It does a number of things well:

1. It cuts down on good teams being eliminated in a short series by luck.


2. It avoids the long stretches between series when there are sweeps.


3. It rewards depth.


4. Teams that are good over a season (the Braves) are likely to do better in this type of scenario.


5. All the playoff teams make more money.


6. We get to watch more baseball, and there will probably be more afternoon games.

Now how to we get this into the main stream conversation?

Update: See this post for a flaw in this playoff scenario.

Dave Justice has retired.

Justice was a very good player who couldn't stay healthy. He had a career .378 OBA and a .500 slugging percentage. Those are the sort of numbers that can get you in the Hall of Fame if you play full seasons for 15 to 20 years. Justice, however, only had two season where he even came close to playing every day. Maybe the most impressive thing about Justice is that his teams made the playoffs every year from 1991 to 2002, sort of the anti Ernie Banks.

Bill James once wrote in an Abstract a piece about what players you should use in a sacrifice situation, and which players you shouldn't. At one extreme was Babe Ruth (don't bunt) and the other was Mario Mendoza (bunt). My roommates and I thought the same scale could be applied to issuing intentional walks. So in a perfect baseball world, those little walk/don't walk signs you see at street corners would flash a green "Ruth" or a red "Mendoza."

Daniel Shamah defends Stark on pickoffs:

While Mike makes some good points with respect to Stark's suggested rule changes (specifically the intentional walk stuff), he's way off on his response to limiting pickoffs. He writes: Do we really need to legislate away bad decision-making?

(6) I believe it was Bob Gibson who said that the best pickoff move is the one that's never (or rarely) seen. Excessive pickoff attempts are a sign of a faltering pitcher and usually just add to the wear on his arm. There is no way to say with any degree of authority since pickoff attempts are not recorded and successful pickoffs appear as caught stealing, but I would think that throwing to first more than a couple of times is a bad idea. The runner gets to see more of your move and, I believe, is usually more successful because of it. Let the pitcher learn from his mistakes.

The point of rule changes is to avoid over-managing and getting back to playing the game. That's why the NBA instituted the 3-point line: too many teams were just finding the biggest guy out there. The NBA wanted to reward good jump shooting, a fundamental part of basketball. It's also why they brought in a 24-second shot clock. Inferior teams were just grabbing a 2-0 lead and dribbling around for minutes at a time, killing clock. This forced teams to stop screwing around, and get back to playing basketball.

I think limiting pickoffs and pitching changes is an exact analog to those cases in the NBA. Yes, pickoffs are an effective strategy for limiting stolen bases. But so was killing clock in the NBA. The whole lefty-righty matchup game that micromanagers like La Russa and Valentine play in the 7th inning of every game not only represents a tiny advantage, it's actually poor managing more often than not.

Let's remember this game is about entertainment. I can't imagine anyone finds 12 consecutive pickoffs or pitching changes entertaining. I'm not advocating full-contact baseball to appease fans: I'm just saying, stop screwing around and play baseball. And there's nothing wrong with bringing in a few new rules to help with that.

One of the most interesting early work that STATS did was in counting pickoff throws. The research they did back in 1990 showed that one pickoff throw was enough to reduce base stealing success. More than one had no effect. It appears that first pickoff sends enough of a message, keeps the runner close enought that no others are needed. Of course, not many have picked up on this fact.

Actually, I like the way pitchers like Jim Palmer and Dwight Gooden approached base runners; they didn't care. If you get the batters out after allowing a man on first, the likelihood is that runner isn't going to score. So Palmer and Gooden concentrated on that, rather than worrying about giving up a stolen base. I think that's the right strategy.

Tim Schultz write me and defends eliminating the intentional walk:

David-

Though I don't take credit for the "Abolish the IBB" mini-movement, Jim Baker posted my suggestion on ESPN Insider last year, and Gammons ran something about it the week after I mailed him. The chief objections to the proposal seems to be these, and I find them both wanting:

I. "We Don't Change The Rules for One Player"

This has added salience since that one player happens to be a hated player. But I fear that the Walk The Slugger strategem will be employed with greater frequency, because 1) Managers saw it "work" with Bonds, and will confuse a causal relationship between the stratagem and the Angel's success; and 2) In high profile games, the "We Didn't Let (Sammy/Barry/Alex) beat us" is likely to become conventional wisdom, because it's essentially irrefutable.

a) "Improve the players around him." Fine. But even if that player has a 950 OPS (Kent), the IBB will apparently continue. Short of Thome, Giambi, or Sosa, it doesn't seem like *anyone* is good enough to deter the walk.

And remember, the *reason* we want to scrap it is because it's Aesthetically Repugnant. The Hack-a-Shaq strategy was ended not when Shaq became Rick Barry (or even Vlade Divac) at the line. It ended because the NBA did not want the last two minutes of each game to degenerate into "Grab the Other Guys Center, if He Happens To Shoot Less Than 70%" Because it would be aesthetically repugnant to let the Hack Device mestastasize, the NBA nipped it in the bud.

II. "It's Unworkable."

I agree that it's unworkable if the only three options are those that Stark presented. But a *hybrid* of the two could be quite effective.

Here's my Rule:
1) A player may veto any four-pitch walk. (Obviously, managers would have some say in this)

2) The veto option ends when a strike is thrown.

3) Seven consecutive balls to any batter triggers a "Two Base Walk."

Advantages:
1) The Four Sinkers in the Dirt IBB doesn't work.
2) It would eliminate Stark's fear of the "92 pitch at-bat"
3) It would leave would be Mike Sciosia's with a choice: throw the Slugger one Strike, or Concede the equal of a Ground Rule Double, after your pitcher has upped his count by 7 (because the nibble pitches would need be with effort, lest the pitcher miss over the plate with a fat one).

In Practice, 4-3 game, Barry up in the 8th with 1st and 3rd, one out:

1) Pitcher just misses on 4 straight sliders.
2) Manager faces choice...he says "keep nibbling."
3) Pitcher just misses on 2 straight slitters.
4) Manager faces terrible choice: groove one or walk him.
5) If pitcher misses again, Bonds goes to 2nd, one to 3rd and the other scores.

I believe that this *possibility* would greatly deter the IBB in the first place.

And we wouldn't miss it.

Tim makes a good case. However, I'm still not convinced. One thing I'd love to see is how the press reacted to Babe Ruth's intentional walks. As you may know, IBB were issued back then, but not recorded. Even when he was a pitcher, the other team realized what a dangerous hitter he was.

At the Polo Grounds, Babe Ruth and the traveling Red Sox stop the Yankees, 7–1. Today's game is the last stop on a 29-day road trip for the Sox. Ruth allows five hits and bangs his 2nd ML homer, a 3-run shot, again connecting off Jack Warhop. After his 2nd inning drive, the Babe is given two intentional walks. Ruth ends up kicking the bench and breaking his toe, sidelining him for two weeks.

Now, we don't sit around talking about all the times the bat was taken out of Ruth's hands. Having Gehrig behind him probably didn't help much, since Gehrig set the record for grand slam HR, and you have to think a number of those came after Ruth was walked with men on 2nd and 3rd (if anyone has info on this, I would be very interested). People like Bonds and Ruth come along twice a century. I think we can tolerate the IBB rule for that.

If you wanted to get rid of the IBB, then get rid of it. Then if a team wants to risk throwing four balls out of the strike zone to a squatting catcher, that's fine. There's more risk there, more chance of a wild pitch or passed ball. I think that would be the right balance. Don't change the 4 balls or 3 strikes rules.

Both Mike's Baseball Rants and Elephants in Oakland have posts on Jayson Stark's columns on rule changes. They are not kind to him.

Dr. Manhattan has a very nice piece at Blissful Knowledge on baseball, politics and Bill James. He links to an Eric Neel piece about how early Abstracts affected him. I had much the same experience, although it started with the 1982 Abstract and I was graduating from college at the time. I would love to see Bill James do something on politics. I know it's a subject that interests him from various writings I've seen. A few years before the 2000 election, and the red/blue America paradigm set in, Bill postulated that the US would eventually break up the way eastern Eurpoean countries were doing. While I disagree with this thesis, it was well thought out, and I don't discount the possibility that James (as he so often is) could be right.

Jim Baker on ESPN Insider alerted me to this article on the Giants batting order:

New manager Felipe Alou said he prefers Alfonzo to bat behind Bonds and prefers Bonds to bat fourth. Alou called Cruz a likely No. 3 hitter and is tinkering with a lineup of Durham, Rich Aurilia, Cruz, Bonds, Alfonzo, Grissom, J.T. Snow and Benito Santiago.

I've always worked under the assumption that your #3 hitter should be your best all-around hitter. He can either drive in the table setters, or get on base for the big slugger in the #4 spot. Cruz has a career .330 OBA and has only slugged over .500 once (2001). At best, he's someone who should be finishing off the offense, not batting in the middle of it. It's ideas like this that make me sure that Alou is overrated as a manager.

The best way to protect Bonds is to have as many men on base in front of him as possible. That means Durham and Alfonzo batting 1 and 2, and Bonds 3rd. Cruz batting 3rd means Bonds will be leading off a lot of innings next year.

Looks like the Baltimore Orioles, unable to land a big hitter during the winter, are going to waste a spot on BJ Surhoff. Surhoff has had one good year in his career, 1999,and a partial good year in 1995. Yet, a lot of people consider him a good hitter. At age 38, he might be a good pinch hitter, but the Orioles shouldn't waste a 40-man roster spot on him until he proves he can play.

The Onion scoops all other sports news outlets. Thanks to Josh Schulz.

Jayson Stark has a piece on ESPN.com about intentional walks, and ideas to eliminate or reduce them. This comes from his (and others, I assume) belief that Barry Bonds walked too much over the last couple of seasons, and somehow this is ruining the game. He talked to both La Russa and Alderson about this, and they had interesting comments. From Alderson:

"First of all," Alderson said, "I don't totally agree that those intentional walks (in the World Series) created some kind of black hole of excitement. As I was watching those games, to me, there was a lot going on.

"You were always thinking about what happened with (Kenny) Lofton, what happened with (Rich) Aurilia and (Jeff) Kent, about what was going on ahead of Bonds. Obviously, it deprived people of the opportunity to see Bonds swing the bat. On the other hand, it created a lot of interesting strategic considerations, which I think most baseball fans would appreciate." No one, of course, appreciates a good strategic consideration more than a manager. But La Russa, whose team walked Bonds 10 times in only 21 trips during the NLCS, wasn't so sure he wanted to appreciate these particular considerations.

And from La Russa:

One intentional walk per player per game
This was a suggestion advocated by Giants owner Peter Magowan during the World Series: Just legislate a limit to how many times a team could hold up those four fingers every night. Sounds easy, right? Uh, not so easy.

"The biggest hole in that one," La Russa said, "is, you can walk a guy intentionally in an unintentional way. Just have the catcher sit out there and throw four sinkers in the dirt."

No one knows how many of Bonds' 130 "unintentional" walks last year were oozing with intent. But it was closer to 100 than zero. And most of them were so obvious, Darren Baker could have seen them coming. But "clearly," Alderson said, "there's an enforcement issue, having to distinguish between intentional and unintentional."

I think La Russa has it right. If you eliminate IBB, then teams will just carefully pitch around players like Bonds. Besides, I really don't think teams realize the huge penalty they are paying by walking Bonds so much. Any time you trade a runner for an out, you are putting yourself in the hole. And if you really want to see the IBB go down, Alderson has a great solution:

"And the way it stands now, the best solution with Bonds is just to find a better guy to hit behind him. And not just in the fifth spot, but in the fifth and sixth spot. That's how you make teams pitch to him. You don't have to change the rules."

The Giants, in fact, have spent their winter doing just that, adding Ray Durham, Edgardo Alfonzo, Jose Cruz and Marquis Grissom to deepen their lineup all around Bonds. And that's fine. That's what they could do about it, and they did it.

Marge seems to be in a dispute with the current owners of the Reds over the seats she's getting in the new stadium:

Schott's lawsuit says she had use of a private box at the Reds' old stadium, Cinergy Field, and 21 blue-level seats that were grouped together and near the playing field. But in the new ballpark, the seats allocated to Schott are scattered about the stadium and are at the back of the premium section.

I believe what happened was that Marge sat in what she thought were her seats. An usher came by and said, "Wrong seats, buddy," to which Marge replied, "I must be in the front row!" Little did she know that she would end up in the last row of the bleachers. :-)

Jeter and Steinbrenner have worked things out:

Derek Jeter isn't about to get into an argument with George Steinbrenner about the owner's accusations that the New York Yankees' shortstop isn't focused enough on baseball.

"One thing you realize is, the Boss is the Boss," Jeter said Monday. "Right or wrong, he can say what he wants to say."

In an interview with the Daily News in December, Steinbrenner said that Jeter was staying out too later and spending too much time on non-baseball activities.

"I want to see Jetes truly focused," Steinbrenner told the paper. "He wasn't totally focused last year. He had the highest number of errors he's had in some time. He wasn't himself."

Jeter, a four-time All-Star, hit .297 with 18 homers and 75 RBIs last season. He made 14 errors.

"We met, we talked about it and it's pretty much over with," said Jeter, who added that he won't change.

As he does each season, Jeter is among the players participating in early workouts. The sessions include batting practice and fielding grounders.

So Jeter is doing what he's always doing. And George is doing what he's best at, lighting a fire under the troops.

The Phillies have signed Pat Burrell to a six-year, $50 million contract.

Ed Wade, the team's general manager and vice president, said the deal wasn't the easiest to negotiate, but that he was glad to get it done.

"As we've stated many times in the recent past, our goal is to draft, sign and develop championship-caliber players, bring them to the big leagues and then retain them for the long term,'' Wade said. "I can't think of a single player who better exemplifies that plan and commitment than Pat Burrell.''

It seems to me the Phillies don't want another Scott Rolen incident. Burrell is a good player who had a major improvement last year at the age of 25. It's the perfect time to sign him to a six-year deal. The Phillies will get the best years of his career, and $8 million a year for someone of his caliber is very reasonable. It's a good deal for Ed Wade, and it looks like the Phillies continue to be very serious about winning. 2004 Is shaping up to be a great season for them.

J Lentner points out this article on Baseball Prospectus and he has these comments:

You might want to alert your readers to the article in Baseball Prospectus regarding the “study” MLB is doing on an expansion of the playoffs. For people who love the game it is alarming to think the 162 game schedule will be rendered even less meaningful than it already is. I don’t know what is worst: a three game round in which any team, from the Devil Rays to the Angels has close to an even chance of winning, or another round of five games resulting in the World Series regularly ending around November 7th.

I really have a hard time getting excited about middle of the division teams, and I have no problem with a great team not making the playoffs. I think you can get the same pop in attendance by having smaller divisions with competitive teams. I would still like to see baseball expand to 32 teams with eight four-team divisions. Then have the winner of each division make the playoffs. Yes, some great teams will be left out, but that just gives them that much more desire to improve and win the next year. Also, if you go to another round of playoff games, you have to shorten the season. One hundred sixty two games is not written in stone. Either shave a week with scheduled double headers, or go back to a shorter season.

This is something baseball should be doing all over the country.

Seems like players have been lying about more than their ages.

Doesn't that usually go the other way? :-) The Cardinals signed Ochoa and Orlando Palmeiro to increase their outfield depth.

The Cardinals intensified interest in Palmeiro in the past two weeks. Based on the respective deals, Palmeiro represented a more attractive commodity than the righthanded-hitting Ochoa, whom the Cardinals targeted shortly after last season. For the first time since last season, the Cardinals' major-league roster stands at the 40-man limit.

Palmeiro, a lefthanded bat, can play every outfield position and is a potential leadoff or No. 2 hitter. He is also a contact hitter who last season saw 4.43 pitches per plate appearance, second-most in the American League, and struck out once every 14.29 plate appearances, the AL's fourth-best ratio among players with at least 300 plate appearances.

Palmeiro started 63 of 110 games played last season. He did not homer despite batting .300 in 283 at-bats. The lack of power slots him as a part-time player.

Palmeiro is a part time player, but in most of his seasons he has done a good job of getting on base. His lack of power is severe; his career slugging percentage (.348) is lower than his career OBA (.361). Definitely someone you want starting an inning, not finishing it.

Our friend sent us an e-mail. I thought I'd share a couple of things with you.

I would just like to pass on some words, that Dave had told me, for I know that he would had liked for all to hear. One of my many conversations that Dave and I have had over the last few months was about if something should happen to he him during this mission As he turned towards me and looked right into my eyes, he said "that I want you to find the person that caused the accident, go to them and tell them that I hold no animosity for the decision that resulted in the lost of the vehicle. But also tell them that I died doing what I loved to do..... and I hold no regrets.

We all know that Dave was at the pinnacle of his life.....He had fulfilled his dream.

For the people that did not get Dave's last e-mail, I would like to share part of that as well....

I will make one more observation - if I'd been born in space I know I would
desire to visit the beautiful Earth more than I've ever yearned to visit to
space. It is a wonderful planet.

As regular readers may know, I attended the launch of the shuttle Columbia a little over two weeks ago. I didn't write about it because it didn't have much to do about baseball, but since this tragedy happened I'd like to get some thoughts down.

My sister's best friend has worked on the shuttle project for well over a decade. A little over three years ago, she ran into an astronaut named Dave Brown, and they began dating. I met Dave at my sister's house during Christmas, 1999. He was a doctor and navy pilot. He had trained in medicine on his own, then joined the navy, and since the navy will teach you one thing, he wanted to learn how to fly. He became a flight surgeon and also flew planes off aircraft carriers. He autographed business cards for all the children, and we all thought if he ever launched, we'd go down to watch.

As far as I can tell, he was what you would think of as a typical astronaut; calm, cool, ready for every emergency. He was flying our friend back from California one day when his engine lost power. We asked her later if she had been afraid, and she said she took her cues from him. He was in control of the situation, found an emergency place to land and put the plane down without incident. Just what you would expect from a navy pilot.

This flight had been delayed a number of times. We had plane tickets and hotel reservations last summer when the fuel line cracks pushed everything back. We finally headed down on Wednesday, Jan. 15th, and got to NASA in time for the pre-flight reception for family and friends. Dave held his in conjuction with Laurel Clark. Dave and Laurel had come into the program together, both were M.D.s, and had become very good friends. Each had a videotaped presentation thanking every one for their support and telling how excited they were to be going into space to conduct science. Laurel's husband addressed the crowd, and he spoke of how proud they were of Laurel.

In the same buidling as the party was an exhibit on the early space missions, from Goddard to Apollo-Soyuz. One thing that particulary struck me was the Gemini capsule on display. I don't remember which mission it was from, but two things jumped out at me:

1. How small it was. I don't know how Lovell and Borman survived two weeks crammed in like that.


2. How little protection they had against the heat of re-entry. The heat shield appeared to be an asbestos blanket. You could see where it had been burned during the fall to earth, and I thought to myself how much scarier it must be to come down than go up.

We got to the hotel later that night, and as we pulled in our van was stopped and searched by bomb sniffing dogs. At first we thought it was just shuttle security, but as we saw that Jersey barriers were set up to prevent any cars getting close to the hotel, I figured we had the Israelies staying there. Sure enough, the members of the consulate were in our hotel, and we later found out there were snipers on the roof. At least we were in the safest place in Cocoa Beach!

We got up at 5 AM the next morning and made our way to the Kennedy Space Center. From the visitors center we were bused to a spot 3 to 5 miles from the pad. NASA had guides on each bus, friendly folks who answered all our questions, and knew the space program inside out. As a person who's been watching launches since I was 4 years old and am a space geek, I was in heaven. From on observation area, we could see the top of the shuttle. The countdown went off without a hitch. At 10:39, we saw smoke (steam, actually) engulf the shuttle. A few seconds later, we saw the shuttle rise above this cloud and make it's way into space. We were all nervous that something bad would happen, but incredibly excited as the flight wore on. I've always wanted to see a rocket launch, and I had gotten to see a great one.

So this morning I woke up and blogged a little and watched the NASA channel. A little before 9 AM eastern I woke my wife and daughter so they could see the landing. I wasn't paying that much attention as we all talked, but I heard something about losing signal, but thought it was from the heat. But then I noticed it was 9:15, and we weren't seeing anything. I flipped over to CNN, and they started showing the film of the shuttle breaking up. I knew they hadn't made it.

My sister has talked to our friend, and she's numb. Our friend talked to Dave Brown's parents, and they hadn't realized the seriousness of the problem yet, so she had to tell them. However, she had talked to Dave quite a bit during the flight, and he was having the time of his life. She's glad he got to fulfill his dream of working in space. Here's a picture Dave took and e-mailed to our friend. It's a picture of her floating in the space shuttle. As she said when she forwarded it, "This is the closest I'm going to get to being in space."

My thoughts go out to all who suffered from this loss. I hope your thoughts will be with them, also.

Update: Our friend sent an e-mail last night. Some of the contents are in the next post, above.

Eric Wedge seems to be impressing the Cleveland fans:

The 35-year old Wedge worked the Tribe faithful into a partial lather Thursday afternoon at the R&L Recreation Center during the annual Indians Press Caravan stop. The major league's youngest skipper was joined by prospects John McDonald, Ben Broussard and Milton Bradley.

"I can't predict the future, but I feel like the Cleveland Indians are in a great place," Wedge said. "I'm in the loop on this (rebuilding) plan. I believe in it and I know that it's going to work ... I demand a lot from myself and I demand a lot from my players.

"I've done it at the minor-league level and I'm going to do it at the major-league level."

He clearly has enormous confidence. It will be interesting to see if he can transfer that to his players, and more importantly, into wins.

Brian Giles has told the Pirates that he would be willing to move to center field to help solve their outfield problems. Of course that would have them looking for a left-fielder who can hit, which should be easier than a centerfielder who can hit. However, as Giles points out:

"If we're going to go out and get somebody who can help us out and make us a better team, I'll move to center," Giles said. "Like I said, center field is my most comfortable position and left field is probably my least comfortable."

Especially in PNC Park, where a huge gap in left center field gives Giles more ground to cover in left than center.

"Left field is bigger here than center field," Giles said. "It might be better for me to move to center."

So you just can't get a lumbering slugger to play left here. You'll still need someone fast who can catch the ball, which are traits you usually look for in a CF. So this move doesn't really solve that much.

Pirate CF ranked 24th in the majors in OPS last year at .675. However, that was better than the Giants (.654) who made it to the World Series. The difference, of course, is that the Pirates are also weak at 1b, 2b, 3b, ss and rf. They have a great player in Giles, but they are going to have to find a number of decent players to put around him, or it won't matter what position on the field he's playing.

This looks like good news for the Rockies.

The White Sox are selling the naming right to Comiskey Park. It will be U.S. Cellular Field. It's a 23 year deal. The way communication companies are going, especially ones that name ballparks, I would expect them to be out of business in a year or two.

Crunch time is over at work. I was writing a paper that had to be submitted yesterday. The last two weeks of writing is always stressful to me. If the paper is accepted, I'll get to travel to Toronto in late July. I checked yesterday, and the Blue Jays will be home. Since they'll be playing the Devil Rays, I shouldn't have a problem getting a ticket. :-)

Michele at A Small Victory doesn't like Ted Turner.

The Braves were fun. Dale Murphy remains to this day one of my favorite basbeall players ever. The team also boasted another favorite player of mine, Brett Butler.

In 1983, Ted Turner saw fit to trade Buttler. He was sent off to the Cleveland Indians for a player to be named later. But Ted let it leak. That player was Brett Butler. So Butler had to play his time on the Braves out, knowing his days with them were numbered.

In exchange, the Braves got Len Barker. This is where you shake your head pitifully. Such a sad day it was for me when the news of Brett's impending departure leaked out that my friend Chris sent me a sympathy card.

I disagree with her about Ted's ability to run a ball club. Yes, the Braves were very bad in the mid-80's, but Turner eventually brought in the right people and the down turn allowed them to draft people like Glavine and Justice and the others who became the core of the great 1990's team. Besides, Brett Butler's caught stealings seriously deflated the value of his OBA.

TwinsFest 2003 is this weekend! Sounds like everything a Twins fan (or a baseball fan) could want, and only $7.

Dadof4 has some thoughts on the Rodriguez signing.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the Hall of Fame...

It's crunch time at the day job, so blogging will be light for another week. Luckily, news is pretty light lately. I should be free and clear for spring training, however.

John Geer e-mailed me this under the heading, "Owners are losing big money..."

Go ahead, drink the Kool-Aid...

Former New York sports executive David Checketts has made a $650 million offer to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers

News Corp. bought the Dodgers from the O'Malley family in 1997 for a then-record $310 million.

Checketts also wants the Fox Sports Net channel that broadcasts those games for that price.

Why not buy the Angels? They're a better team, and you can get them for 1/3 of the money.

According to this report, Rose may be on his way back. Of course, if he admits he bet on baseball, how can you let him back in? I think the answer lies here:

What remains to be determined, a source told ESPN on Wednesday, is whether Rose would be permitted to work in baseball or if so how much of a role he would be allowed to have.

It seems to me Bud is looking for a way to let Rose into the Hall of Fame. My guess is that Rose will be reinstated to the point that he can be in the Hall, go to ballparks, play in old-timers game, etc., but I doubt he'll ever have an inside baseball job again.

The Marlins have signed Ivan Rodriguez to a one-year, $10 million contract. Looks like a pretty good deal all around. Most of the money is deferred, so he's not costing the Marlins a lot this year. Ivan gets a year to prove he can still play, and if so, he can try free agency again next year. The deal has a lot of upside potential for the Marlins, with very little downside risk.

I was glad to see the Twins sign Torii Hunter to a four year contract. He's improved his slugging percentage every year in the bigs, but more importantly, it gives the Twins fans the sense that the team is serious about building a winner. If they want to keep winning fans back, they'll have to continue to make moves like this.

I'm really catching up here. I like Osuna as a reliever. He K's better than a batter an inning, doesn't give up too many HR and doesn't walk a lot of batters. That's important with the Yankees porous defense. The White Sox get Colon, and he should improve a starting staff that was 8th in the AL in ERA last year. The Expos get stuck with Hernandez, but they are getting him cheap, with the White Sox and Yankees picking up most of the contract. I guess it's another form of revenue sharing. Moving into the pitcher's park that is Olympic Stadium might give El Duque a lift. A good trade all-around; Yankees and White Sox improved their staffs, and the Expos reduced their payroll.

Albert Pujols has been named St. Louis Baseball Man of the Year, but he thinks there's room for improvement:

The St. Louis Cardinals' cleanup hitter was honored Tuesday as the Baseball Man of the Year by the city's chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. But like a lot of his teammates, Pujols' bat went silent in the playoffs as the Cardinals were eliminated by the Giants in a five-game National League championship series, so there's a bit of a sour aftertaste.

"I think if we would have hit a little better, including myself, I think we would have had a better chance," said Pujols, who was 5-for-19 with two RBIs. "I had a lot of opportunities to drive some runs in with men on third base with no outs and I didn't do my job.

"That's how it is. That's the game."

To manager Tony La Russa, that attitude is another indication of how far Pujols has come in such a short time.

"I'm glad to hear that," La Russa said. "I think that's really healthy, instead of just turning the page and saying everything's OK."

That's the right attitude to have. If Pujols is really as young as he's listed, he's going to have a monster career.

When I was at Disney World over the weekend, I ran into these four gentlemen, who combined two of my favorite hobbies.

I used to play sax in school.

I'm catching up on work today. Hope to be blogging again tonight.

Thought you would like to see a picture from the launch. It was a spectacular sight. Photo by my wife, Marilyn.

The Hall of Fame responded promptly to my e-mail inquiry about logos on caps:

Dear Friend:

Thank you for your e-mail message.

The choice of which team's logo appears on a player's plaque is the Museum's decision, though we always consider the wishes of an inductee.

We're a history museum and as such, it's important that the logo be emblematic of the historical accomplishments of that player's career. A player's election to the Hall of Fame is a career achievement, and as such, every team for whom he played is listed on the plaque; however, the logo selection is based on where that player makes his most indelible mark.

Example: It would not be appropriate from an historical standpoint if Babe Ruth's cap had a Red Sox logo, if Ty Cobb's cap had a Philly A's logo, or if Hank Greenberg's a Pirates logo. However, when instances come up where a player's career achievements were fairly evenly divided, as was the cases with Dave Winfield or Carlton Fisk, we give the player more ownership in the decision, though the Museum retains the final one.

My college roommate, David Aceto, would be happy they used whom properly. :-)

I'm leaving for Florida to watch the shuttle launch so blogging will be light over the next few days. Before I go, however, I have some e-mails that correct some things I recently blogged about.

On Eric Owens (here and here), Ivan Baxter writes:

While I agree with you about Eric Owens playing abilities, I have lived in San Diego for the last 5 years and Bisheff is correct about the Padres most popular player. Tony Gwynn was OBVIOUSLY past his prime and the fans around here recognized it. Gwynn was still popular, but most fans I knew wanted him to retire a year or two before he did. Granted most of them are fans of sabermatrician columnists, so they might not reflect the population at large:). But people loved Owens around here.

I sometimes forget there's a difference between being popular and being good. Endearing himself to fans may have kept Owens in the game longer than his talent would allow.

As for the previous post about Carter's hat, two readers wrote to correct me on who makes the decision. Jerry Christensen writes:

David- long time reader of your blog. I enjoy it and appreciate your viewpoints. If I recall correctly, after the whole Dave Winfield incident in which he made a drama about which cap he was going to wear in the HOF, I believe the Hall decided they would pick the caps for the players. Some of this logic was to prevent players like Wade Boggs from wearing a Devil Rays cap should he be elected, or from players receiving "payola" from owners like Steinbrenner to wear their team's specific cap. I am almost certain of this unless the article I am recalling was a suggestion/ column rather than a news story. FWIW I think Carter should wear a 'spos cap.

And Jason Brannon agrees:

Hi, David. I'm probably not the first person to tell you this, but the choice of team cap on his HOF plaque isn't up to Gary Carter, it's up to the Hall of Fame.

I think a lot of the confusion stems from the induction of Dave Winfield, who I think was given a choice in the matter because he spent roughly equal time w/ the Pads and Yanks. Around the same time, Wade Boggs was said to have made a deal w/ Tampa saying he'd wear a D'Rays cap on his plaque. All of this has fed into the common misconception that players choose their HOF caps.

I expect the Hall will put a Montreal cap on Carter's plaque, even if it "does (him) no good", to use Carter's phrase.

I'm predicting a national firestorm on this issue when McGwire becomes eligible.

This is probably the article confusing people. I looked at the Hall of Fame web site, but could not find a policy on hats. I've written them, and I hope they get back to me before the summer. :-)

However, if the issue is payola, all the policy does is move the payola from the players to the committee making the decision. Why should we think the people in the Hall are any more virtuous than the players? The Hall can always use cash. When the Boggs debate comes up, what's to stop Steinbrenner from coming up with a big donation to the Hall? I guess it's the capitalist in me. If I have something valuable that multiple people want, I should be able to sell it to the highest bidder. If it's the Devil Rays, so be it.

Michael Longfield asked me to post a link to a page where you can sign a petition to get Gary Carter to go in to the Hall of Fame as an Expo. I'm a bit agnostic on this, since I think it's really up to Carter, but it would be nice to have one Expo in the Hall before the team disappears.

Don Mattingly and Cal Ripken are buying into a minor league team that's being moved to Mattingly's home town.

A star player who manages his money well will be able to buy a major league team upon retirement. No doubt this will happen. I wonder how this will affect the league? Will it force owners to be more conciliatory to the union? Will trust break out among the parties? Or will the former players now owners be more concerned with the bottom lines than their brothers in the union?

Actually, this would be a great way for a players league to happen. One by one, former stars can buy teams, and run the league the way the union wants. I doubt it will happen that way, but it would be a very interesting scenario.

Jonathan Leshanski has a new blog, At Home Plate. Jonathan has already started profiling clubs for 2003 and has comments on the lengths of games and attendance.

Another casualty of the strike in that South American country.
Update: Instapundit has some more Venezeulan links.

Steve Bisheff was nice enough to reply to my comments about his piece on Eric Owens:

Since I don't know anything about you or your background, I'm certainly not offended. But trust me, this wasn't a puff piece. I'd seen Owens play extensively when he was with San Diego, and I think the guy is a fine player who definitely fits into the style the Angels play. Sorry if you don't agree. But anyone who has read me or knows my style understands that I NEVER write puff pieces. Check with the Angels. I've been their biggest critic through the years. Nice hearing from you, though.

I'm one of those who is less impressed by hustle than by results. Eric Owen may truly be a hard-nosed player. But I'd rather have someone with a .360 OBA or a .480 slugging percentage if Salmon gets hurt.

A long article by Jim Souhan of the Star-Tribune about the Twins lagging behind other clubs in the Dominican Republic, but also a nice overview of how baseball is expanding world wide.

This is one of the worst puff pieces I've ever seen. Steve Bisheff of the Orange County Register makes Eric Owens sound like someone valuable:

Eric Owens was playing Mike Scioscia's style of baseball before Scioscia's defending world champions were. He was running and bunting and skidding all over the outfield grass to make catches. He would hit ground balls to the right side to move runners over from second and do almost anything humanly possible to get a teammate home from third.

Maybe that's why he was the most popular player in San Diego when he was with the Padres from 1999-2000.

Unfortunately, playing a style of baseball is all Eric can do. He doesn't get on base. He doesn't hit for power (carreer .320 OBA, .352 slugging). As for being the most popular player on the Padres? I remember a guy named Gwynn who was still around then.

Owens can play all three outfield positions and even three of the four infield positions if needed. What that means is that Tim Salmon, seemingly more fragile now at age 34, probably will see more at-bats as a DH this season.

"Eric will not only fill a role for us, he will help our energy level," Scioscia said. "He competes. He does whatever it takes to help his team win."

This is no coincidence, by the way. This is a guy General Manager Bill Stoneman studied carefully before signing to a free-agent contract.

"We had Owens on a list of players we'd be interested in, and when he became available, we went after him," Stoneman said. "Sometimes, the player and his agent aren't always as interested as you are in them. Happily, this time they felt the same way."

Stoneman tries not to smile when describing Owens.

"He's an (Darin) Erstad, (David) Eckstein kind of player. He's perfect for our ballclub."

I guess we don't have to worry about the Angels repeating if this is what the manager and GM thinks pass as a good ballplayer. I'd rather have Salmon playing hurt.

Weekend edition on NPR reported that today is the 30th anniversary of the designated hitter rule. I suppose there will be an equal amount of celebration and saddness.

I've never been too extreme on the DH. I'd be happy to see it go, but I don't think it's a tremendous blight on the game. It certainly hasn't lived up to it's billing. The DH should be about the best hitter on the team, but seldom is. Often it's just used as a way to keep an injured bat in the lineup, or extend the career of a broken down fielder. And these players are usually overpaid. I don't really buy the strategy arguments. I don't sit open-mouthed in awe whenever I see a double switch. But I do love seeing a pitcher who can hit bat. I think we missed something by not seeing hurlers like Clemens take a few more hacks during his career. At least the NL keeps the dream alive.

Spring training is starting earlier than you thought!

Selig wants the league that wins the All-Star Game to get home field in the World Series. He believes that this will invigorate the All-Star Game.

I don't buy it. I don't know that there is any great league pride in the World Series. I bet most Red Sox fans root against the Yankees when the Yankees are in the fall classic. Can you imagine Red Sox fans saying, "Go out and play your butt off Nomar so the Yankees can have home field in October!" Plus, what does the All-Star Game have to do with anything? It's a bit of fun in the middle of summer. You will have injustices like a team winning 103 games having to play on the road to a Wild Card team that won 85 games. If you think home field is important to the series, then make home field based on season record. If you want to invigorate the All-Star Game, pay a huge bonus to the players on the team that wins. (Winner gets $200,000 for each player, loser gets nothing.) Then you'll see some competition, and you won't see many all-stars opting out.

The Florida Marlins have signed Todd Hollandsworth:

"We're fortunate to get a quality athlete, plus that left-handed bat," Marlins manager Jeff Torborg said. "Those guys that were with us all last year heard me talk about needing a left-handed bat from the middle of the season on ... and this was the opportunity to do that."

I'm not sure they are quite that fortunate. Hollandsworth had a big fallof in his road numbers last year:

2002       Home         Road

BA         .358         .224

OBA        .429         .272

Slug       .606         .346

In his first two years in Colorado, he hit well on the road, so I don't know if last year was a fluke, or a real falloff in his ability. In Miami, he's moving to a good pitchers park. If the 2002 road numbers are for real, we could see a huge falloff in his production this year.

According to this AP report on ESPN.com, Livan Hernandez has been charged with assualting an elderly man.

Hernandez, 27, was charged with felony aggravated assault after he got into a "violent'' scuffle Wednesday with the man, who received a minor cut on the back of his head, according to a witness account cited in a police statement.

Two things:

1. Why is violent in quotes? Has anyone seen a non-violent scuffle? Is the AP trying to tell us this isn't for real?


2. Does anyone really believe that Hernandez is only 27?

UPDATE: Steve Bauman, Editor in Cheif of Computer Games Magazine, clears up the quotes:

Without the quotes, it can be interpreted as a statement of fact by the reporter, and AP could be held liable if it turned out the incident never occurred, that it turned out it was a tap on the shoulder, blah blah blah.

With the quotes, you know that it's not AP's judgment; it was probably listed in the police report that way, hence the quotes.

Thanks, Steve!

Chris Lynch has a take at SportsPages.com. Looks like the bean counters are having as much as an effect as Billy Beane. :-)

The Cub Reporter takes the test and finds Sandberg borderline.

It appears it wasn't a scoop at all. AP had sent a number of stories, including stats on Sandberg and Lee Smith, as Adam Bonin has pointed out. A moment of glory dashed.

Of course, Mike C. never said it was definitive.

Brad Harris was also shocked by Sandberg receiving less than 50% of the vote:

I, too, was shocked to see Sandberg receive less than 50% of the votes. Unlike those suggestions made in your blog, however, I believe it has more to do with the "first ballot" phenomenon than anything else. Sandberg's numbers, short career or not, shout Hall of Fame. And if there's a voter or two out there who is blind enough to compare a middle infielder's 277 home runs to the 350+ by guys like Rice or Dawson, then we've got a whole 'nother issue on hand. Giving the BBWAA voters the benefit of the doubt, that leaves us with a very substantial portion of the electorate who must subscribe to the ridiculous notion that "Sandberg deserves election, but not on the first ballot."

I've witnessed my share of discussions about the Hall of Fame and future candidates (Eckersley, Molitor and Boggs in the next two years alone) where at least one person inevitably forwards the theory that there is a distinction made (or at least should be) between first-ballot inductees and other inductees. As ridiculous as it seems, and as flawed as the logic that support that argument is, there is a very vocal minority that supports the idea.

Apparently, many of the voters are of similar sympathies. We'll know for sure this time next year, when we see just how much higher Sandberg's percentage of support rises. If it increases dramatically, I think we'll have our answer.

In the meantime, shame on the 252 voters who didn't write his name on their ballot.

Sandberg had 10 very productive years (1984-1993). And looking at the stats again, he had a decent enough OBA for a power hitting 2nd baseman during that time. But you also have five poor offensive seasons surrounding the peak ten. Sandberg had his last good season at age 33. That's very young to fall apart and still be a Hall of Famer. It's similar to Dale Murphy. Murph had his last good season at age 30. Neither of these players did anything to extend their Hall Credentials in their 30's, and that's why they are marginal candidates now. Ryno does have the great defense at 2nd as a plus, but if you start comparing Sandberg to Joe Morgan, who was an effective ballplayer into his late 30's, you wonder if Sandberg really belongs.

Chris Lynch sent me this link to an article he wrote on the SportsPages.com WebLog. I must admit, Bud sure makes it easy.

Alex Lash offers a defense of Peter Gammon's Saturday column, mentioned in this post.

Yes, Gammons' prose is bad. It looks like someone dictated his TV-broadcast monologues verbatim. In fact, it's quite possible that's how it works over at ESPN.com: Gammons calls an "editor," rambles for 10 minutes, and his comments are transcribed for his Web column. Whether he dictates his column or slams it out on his laptop on a tight deadline, it's not his fault that his material is full of bad grammar, typos and twisted syntax. For all that, the blame lies squarely with ESPN, which either can't afford an editor or can't afford an editor with half a brain. As a veteran writer and editor, I can assure you that Gammons' prose is no worse than most reporters' first drafts. It's not his fault that no one is doing even a cursory line edit before publication. But it does make ESPN look bush-league.

As for his clubbiness with GMs and his Boston bias, there's certainly truth in that, but every "national" reporter has a home base and trusted sources from those days that he or she still leans on. Tom Verducci was a Mets beat writer. Tim Keown covered the Giants for the SF Chronicle. Jayson Stark came from the Philly Inquirer, hence the Ed Wade chumminess and the tiresome quips from Doug Glanville. (By the way, is there anything more grindingly boring than Stark's "Useless Info"?) I will concede, however, that Gammons' weekly droolfest over Susan Tedeschi and his other favorite New England rockers has no place in a baseball column. Tedeschi may be the second coming of Joni Mitchell who can't quite get the big break, but she sure as hell can't throw 90 MPH or hit .310 with power, so enough already.

I have to agree with Alex on the editing. When I was reading Mike's Rant, I kept thinking, "Where was the editor?"

David Bloom follows the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Tampa professional players in general. Check out his blog.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit for the link. I may end up with more hits today than all of last week!

It's official, Murray and Carter get elected. But we already knew that. :-)

The big surprise for me is Sandberg not getting 50% of the vote. I agree with it, but he's the type of player (high average, few walks, some power at a position that doesn't expect it) that Hall Voters usually like. I wonder if his dropping out of baseball has anything to do with it?

Then there is the longevity issue. After starting the 1994 season hitting .238 in 56 games, Sandberg abruptly retired, walking away from his contract because he thought he was shortchanging the Cubs. There were personal issues with the breakup of his marriage, too.

From what I heard, it was mostly about the breakup of his marriage. Voters could have easily held this against him. It will be interesting to see how he fares in future votes. The ballot at ESPN's sports nation had him second, but still below 75%.

I think Cal has it right:

"The issue about whether (Rose's) career should be celebrated in the Hall of Fame, I think absolutely. He's the all-time hit leader, his accomplishments are as great as anyone who's ever played the game," Ripken said in an exclusive ESPN interview Monday. "And so if you think about the Hall of Fame in a way that celebrates the history of baseball, he certainly should be celebrated in the Hall of Fame."

When someone says, for example, "Roger Maris should be in the Hall of Fame," I will say, "He already is." The argument for Maris rests on his breaking Babe Ruth's HR record. That feat, however, is already celebrated in the Hall. And that's one of the purposes of the Hall, to remember not only great players, but great accomplishments. If Roger Clemens had broken down after the 1986 season, he would still be in the Hall of Fame for his 20 K game.

Ripken offers a fair compromise to the Rose situation. Have a permanent exhibit about Rose without enshrining him. Today's quickie seems to agree.

Mike's Baseball Rant uncovers evidence that Gary Carter has been elected to the Hall of Fame. If so, he is very deserving. The 80's lacked great catchers. Carter was the Bench/Berra/Lombardi/Cochrane of his era.

This is worth attending:

PETER GAMMONS' 3RD ANNUAL HOT STOVE/COOL MUSIC FUNDRAISER CONCERT

WHAT: Charity fundraiser concert and silent auction to benefit The Jimmy Fund/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
WHEN: Wednesday, January 15
WHERE: The Paradise Rock Club, 967 Commonwealth Ave., Boston
WHO: American Hi-Fi, Kay Hanley, The Gentlemen, Bill Janovitz' Crown Victoria and special guests
TIME: Doors at 6 p.m.; first band 7:15 p.m.
PRICE: $20 (all proceeds g