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 go to the Jimmy Fund/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)

THE SKINNY: In a truly unique event, ESPN baseball guru Peter Gammons hosts his third annual fundraiser to benefit children's cancer research at the legendary Paradise Rock Club on Wed., Jan. 15. Gammons will be joined by American Hi-Fi, Kay Hanley, The Gentlemen, Bill Janovitz' Crown Victoria and other special guests in an evening that brings together rock and roll music and off-season baseball talk (aka, the Hot Stove), as well as a silent auction that has become a bonanza for baseball and rock memorabilia collectors.
Island-Def Jam recording stars American Hi-Fi will be kicking off a tour to promote their new release, "The Art Of Losing", which follows up on their ultra-successful self-titled debut (featuring the hit single "Flavor Of The Weak").
Former Letters To Cleo singer Hanley will be accompanied by her husband, Our Lady Peace guitarist Michael Eisenstein, in an acoustic set that will open the show. Buffalo Tom singer-guitarist Janovitz will follow with his Crown Victoria side project, while 2002 WBCN Rock And Roll Rumble victors, The Gentlemen, will lead into American Hi-Fi with one of their edgy, garage-rock sets.
Gammons, who sang and played guitar in a rock band during his days at the University of North Carolina, will also be performing for the first time in decades. He will be backed by an all-star band (featuring Janovitz, Eisenstein and Gentelmen Ed Valauskas and Pete Caldes) for a song or two.
At least one other surprise on-stage performance is confirmed but the act has asked that its appearance not be disclosed until 48 hours before the event.
The evening will also feature question-and-answer sessions with Gammons between sets, as well as a silent auction of baseball and rock memorabilia, including signed items from Pedro Martinez, Nomar Garciaparra, Barry Bonds, Jeff Bagwell, Jason Giambi, Derek Jeter and others.
Bidders will also have the chance to win several unique baseball opportunities that promise to provide a lifetime of memories. Among the packages being auction off are the chance to sit with Red Sox owner John Henry in his front-row seats for a game at Fenway Park, the opportunity to sit with Sox general manager Theo Epstein in his private luxury box, dinner and a game with Peter Gammons and a trip to Bristol, Conn., to watch Baseball Tonight from ESPN's studios.
"Most guys I know host charity golf tournaments," Gammons said. "Well, I don't golf, so this is my version of that. It's the best way I know to bring together my two greatest passions -- baseball and rock music -- while raising money for a great cause."
Tickets are $20 and are available at the Paradise box office or via NEXT Ticketing: www.nextticketing.com or 617-423-NEXT.

I can't go this year due to a prior commitment, but I had a great time last year. The music is good, lots of interesting items to bid on, and everyone wants to talk baseball! And of course, it's for a great cause. If you are anywhere near Boston, check it out.

Mike's Baseball Rant takes aim at Peter Gammon's ESPN column. (If you don't know what a fisking is, check here. For the winner of the first Fiskie award, check here.)

Bruce Kauffmann remembers the 30th anniversary of the designated hitter rule, and explains why it was (and still is) a bad idea.

In anticipation of tomorrow's Hall of Fame election annoucements, there are a number of articles on the web abou the voting.

Jack O'Connell in the Hartford Courant sums up the arguments for and against certain relievers:

Hoyt Wilhelm and Rollie Fingers are the only pitchers who worked primarily out of the bullpen who are in the Hall of Fame, and they were never really part of the era of the closer. Gossage and Sutter also began their time as relievers by coming into games whenever a fire needed to be extinguished, regardless of the inning. Nowadays, the closer for the most part is reserved for ninth inning duty only.

I continue to support Gossage, one of the most intimidating relievers in the game's history, and Sutter, who perfected and popularized the split-finger fastball to the degree that he was the first reliever who shortened the game for opposing managers. One look at Sutter warming up in the bullpen, and the manager in the other dugout felt he was headed for the ninth inning, even though the game might still have been in the sixth.

Smith has the glaring statistic of 478 career saves, most in history, and is the career leader in saves for two franchises, the Cubs and the Cardinals. Just as Gossage, intimidation was part of Smith's game while, again like Gossage, underneath he was a teddy bear. Smith's 71-92 record is a blemish, but he spent many years on mediocre teams. He also holds the bogus record of most consecutive errorless games by a pitcher (546), which is ludicrous because for many of those "games" he was around for only an inning or two.

That alone might be why relievers get short shrift from the writers. There are really no stats that accurately measure a reliever's value. Won-lost record and ERA are unsatisfactory gauges because inherited runners who score are not charged to a reliever's record, and the closer is most often faced with a save-or-lose scenario. While I admit that Smith was exceptional at what he did, I cannot vote for him in front of Gossage or Sutter. If they have to wait, so should he.

Tracy Ringolsby devotes his whole column to relievers in the hall.

I tend to agree with O'Connell; I like Gossage and Sutter for the Hall, but I'm less impressed with Smith. Modern relievers are used in such a way to maximize the number of save opportunites they convert, but putting them into the easiest situation in which to get a save (start of the 9th, your team with the lead). Over the last decade, overall save percentages have gone down, while save percentages for closers have gone up. This is due to middle relievers being put into game critical situations, rather than bringing in the best relief pitcher. Unless there is some way to change the save rule to recognize this, I don't expect the situation to change. So pitchers like Smith will have amass large numbers of saves at the expense of their teams actually winning.

Brian Decaussin sends a thoughful e-mail about this post:

I'd like to share some of my thoughts with you regarding your comments on collusion. (I'm long winded, so you may want to grab your coffee now.) You suggest two reasons for viewing this time in history differently than the time of the collusion case of the Eighties. First is the interest shown in Glavine, Thome, et al. The second is the new era of GMs. I've got some additional ideas about the latter, which I'll save for a moment, but I still think you may have missed a major reason. The economy.

This recessed economy is vastly different than the booming economic times of the Reagan administration (when the collusion case emerged) or even the recent epic upswing during the Clinton administration. The complete and surprisingly rapid collapse of various corporations coupled with the terrorist/war fears have made nearly organization re-evaluate spending. Baseball, considered by most pundits a dying sport, is no different.

I don't think it would be hard for Selig to suggest that these are unusual economic times and that MLB owners are just acting as the vast majority of corporate America has. The Millwood deal alone might justify his position. However, they could also point to the number of players not tendered deals or offered arbitration as another example of belt-tightening across the board. When people are losing their jobs, even in fields where the economy hasn't been quite as devastating, it's going to be easy for MLB to stick with the line "It's the economy, stupid".

On to your thoughts about the new generation of GM's. I guess I am a little concerned about this statement:

More and more, GM's are in the mold of Billy Beane, well educated men with good sabremetric skills. They can look at a player's stats, and figure out what he's worth.

This is the type of thought that keeps me from totally embracing my friends in the stathead community. It implies, perhaps unintentionally, that all GM's prior to Bill James arrival and sans a diploma were/are either ignorant, stupid or both. I find that not only unfair, but demeaning and shortsighted.

There is no question that James and his brethren have opened the door on a new universe of analysis, one that the baseball community hasn't quite figured out what to do with. However, to even imply that the GM's prior to this new realm of analysis weren't able to evaluate talent is far too broad a suggestion for me.

While unquestionably a number of "baseball people" throughout history were no more than drinking buddies of the owners or members of their family, there were men who worked hard to make solid personnel decisions. In fact, many of these GM's were able to evaluate talent long before the emergence of stat gurus. Stating, or implying, otherwise is simply unfair to them. Besides, we've got plenty of the well educated types, with access to these new tools, now making what appear to be horrible decisions.

A cursory search of history reveals that each passing generation is convinced of their superiority over their parents and grandparents. They feel they will not replicate the mistakes of those that came before them because, in part, they are better educated than their forefathers. There have even been times throughout history that a generation actually has thought that it may have reached the pinnacle of societal progress. Sometimes, when I hear today's "well educated men with good sabremeteric skills", I harken back to those countless generations that scoffed at those who came before.

Clearly, my honorary membership is SABR is not forthcoming. However, I am not so close minded that I don't find this modern statistical evaluation intriguing. I am even impressed and amazed at those individuals who continue to research baseball in this manner. I just remain far from convinced that this type of analysis had made, or will ever make, the game on the field any better. There are just too many variables (time, team finances, national economy, ownership's motivation, player development, etc...) to assume that these new stats are the end-all, be-all for our game.

Finally, (I bet you thought I that was never going to come, but I warned you) let me say that I enjoy your blog quite a bit. You have one of the two baseball blogs I check routinely. Aaron's Baseball Blog being the other. You are not only an excellent writer, but you appear to have mastered an art that often eludes me, obviously, concise writing. You have a very professional attitude towards your work and I believe that shows.

I have been very inspired by both you and Aaron's work and may get enough courage to start my own baseball blog. If I do, I'll let you know so you can hammer me in turn. Feel free to bash away at this e-mail immediately.

I wish you continued success with your endeavors in 2003.

Your fellow baseball fan,

Brian DeCaussin

First, I agree that the economy has something to do with the lack of contract offers, but I don't think it's that big. After all, there is a new labor agreement in place that is supposed to supply more money to the small market clubs. Yet, I don't see them spending money. The Milwaukee Brewers, the most profitable team in baseball, let their best player go and signed Royce Clayton to replace him. And everytime I do a google search for Kansas City Royals, I don't find much news. So maybe part of it is that these teams are just taking their revenue sharing and sticking it in their pockets. Which again, wouldn't be collusion.

Second, I think Brian is making a big leap to infer that I think that previous generations of GMs "were/are either ignorant, stupid or both." However, let me elaborate on what I meant so that there is no confusion. There is a lot more information available to GM's today, due to advances in technology, and GM's like Beane, due to their education and acceptence of sabremetrics, are better able to process it. When you give people with similar skills the same information, you're going to get similar answers.

As for each generation thinking it's better... I sure hope so. It's been my experience that the previous generations think everything was better in their time. I've been watching this game for over 1/3 of a century, and Whitey Ford is about the only ex-player I've heard say that today's ballplayers are better. Most complain that ballplayers don't know how to play, they don't respect the game, they don't do the little things, blah, blah, blah, blah. I heard it in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. Please. Every generation knows what the previous one did, and more. Today's GM's, managers and ballplayers are better than at anytime in baseball history. Doctors, lawyers, politicians, truck drivers, coal miners, secretaries, etc. are all better today. And they are better because they built on the accomplishments of the past, not dismissed them.

So I think Billy Beane would be the best GM of any previous era, not just today. And I think in 20 years there will be an even better one, because he'll have learned from Beane's mistakes.

Eliot Shepard has a bog about the Red Sox call Darn Sox. Give it a look, and check out his all birthday team.

So reports the NY Times:

Hillenbrand is exactly the kind of player the Mets are looking for at third: he hits right-handed, is only 27 years old, makes less than $500,000 and is coming off an All-Star season. To get him, though, the Mets would have to satisfy Montreal General Manager Omar Minaya's asking price for Colón or Vazquez.

I think there are a lot of questions as to whether Hillenbrand is really an all-star. He does have some interesting characteristics:

1. He's a right-handed batter who doesn't hit lefties very well (career OPS: .640 vs. LHP, .775 vs. RHP).


2. He's a Fenway player who hits better on the road (career OPS .650 home, .838 away).


3. He's shown very litte selectivity at the plate. Among players with at least 1000 AB over the last two years, Hillenbrand is tied with Christian Guzman for the fewest walks in the majors, 38.

He's an okay third baseman. He ranks tied for 10th in defensive win shares at third base among players with 100 games at the position last year, but more than once I've seen him make poor plays at the position.

So the Mets would get a cheap third baseman who may or may not be very good. If the Red Sox can pull off this trade and get Vazquez, they'll have a 1-2-3 punch in their rotation equal to or better than Oakland. It's not clear what the Expos will get, but it looks to me like a big win for the Red Sox and not such a great deal for the Mets.

This story on ESPN.com points out that the union may be looking for collusion this year:

The union wouldn't comment on the possibility of a collusion case, and Gene Orza, the associate general counsel of the players' association, said Friday that requesting agents to keep records was not unusual. The agents, however, said the union has emphasized record-keeping more than in recent years.

"Asking agents to keep good notes of negotiating meetings is nothing new,'' said Orza, the union's No. 2 official. "We've been doing it the last 15 years. It's the way we monitor the market. The operation of the free-agency market is always a concern for us.''

I've had readers over the last month e-mail me about this possibility, and frankly, I don't think it's happening. The 1986 collusion was very different. The top free agent that year was probably Jack Morris, and there was no interest in him:

After finding no other clubs interested in signing him, free-agent pitcher and 20-game winner Jack Morris agrees to salary arbitration with the Tigers while at the same time accusing the ML owners of collusion against free agents. Morris had offered to sign a one-year contract, with salary to be determined by an arbitrator, with either the Yankees, Angels, Twins, or Phillies, but was turned down by all 4.

The Yankees of that era were a great offensive team that lacked pitching. The boss signing Morris at any other time in his history would be a given. Today, while there was little interest in Thome, there was bidding for his services. There were negotiations and bidding for Glavine. Other top free agents are old, so it's likely clubs thought their money was spent better elsewhere.

The other difference between today and the mid-80's is the make up of front offices. More and more, GM's are in the mold of Billy Beane, well educated men with good sabremetric skills. They can look at a player's stats, and figure out what he's worth. I'm not surprised at all that a number of teams would come to the same conclusion.

So is there collusion? Probably not. But if there is, the owners appear to have done enough to make it really hard to prove.

The Mariners have signed Greg Colbrunn:

The Mariners signed infielder Greg Colbrunn to a two-year contract Friday, the first step in upgrade a depleted bench.

Infielder? He's a first baseman/DH. They make it sound like he's a utility player.

"Greg is a very nice addition to our ball club,'' new Mariners manager Bob Melvin said. "In addition to his abilities on the field, he's got a tremendous amount of character and his veteran leadership and daily approach will fit in very well in our clubhouse.''

Melvin should know. He and Colbrunn worked together the last two seasons in Arizona, where Melvin was the bench coach before taking the job formerly held by Lou Piniella.

Yep, that's what clubs need, players with lots of character. It reminds me of what Bill James wrotein the 1983 Baseball Abstract. He was criticizing Sparky Anderson for having Enos Cabell as his first baseman:

I mean, I would never say that it was not important to have a team with a good attitude, but Christ, Sparky, there are millions of people in this country who have good attitudes, but there are only about 200 who can play a major-league brand of baseball, so which are you going to take? Sparky is so focused on all that attitude stuff that he looks at an Enos Cabell and he doesn't even see that the man can't play baseball. This we ballplayer, Sparky, can't play first, can't play third, can't hit, can't run and can't throw. So who cares what his attitude is?

The 1983 Abstract was the first I read cover to cover, and this paragraph really stuck with me. If I'm with one of my baseball buddies, and a manager starts talking about attitude, "Christ, Sparky!" will pop out of one of our mouths.

That said, Colbrunn is a decent backup for Olerud and Martinez. Just don't give me the attitude excuse. As long as he's not betting on baseball or committing crimes, I can live with the attitude if he can hit.

Jed Roberts pointed out this article on OpinionJournal.com, touting the late Gil Hodges for the Hall of Fame:

They're looking at the wrong man.

The Hall of Fame, that is. While the entire baseball world fixates on the ban on Pete Rose, a true injustice goes almost unheralded: the exclusion of Gil Hodges from baseball's Hall of Fame. The good news is that when members of the newly revamped Veterans Committee cast their ballots this month, they will have the perfect moment to right this wrong.

Over 18 seasons, the Dodger first baseman hit 370 home runs, had seven straight seasons where he drove in more than 100 RBIs, won the National League's first three Golden Gloves for his position and was an eight-time All-Star. He played in seven World Series, where he twice hit game-winning home runs. As a manager, moreover, Hodges led the 1969 Miracle Mets to their first World Championship.

But the Hall of Fame isn't supposed to be just about numbers. Rule No. 5 states that voting should be based not only on the player's stats but on "integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played."

Yes, that's what rule 5 says, but I believe it's a moderating condition. So if you have someone on the bubble, maybe his character pushes him over the edge. Of maybe you have someone like Rose, who would otherwise get in, but his poor character keeps him out (as a warning to others).

So it seems to me, the question should be, "Is Hodges on the bubble?" Gil was a regular for the Dodgers from 1948 through 1961. Let's look at the most win shares over that time:

1948-1961          Win Shares

Mickey Mantle         401

Stan Musial           398

Yogi Berra            347

Duke Snider           327

Eddie Mathews         319

Warren Spahn          318

Richie Ashburn        317

Ted Williams          312

Willie Mays           309

Minnie Minoso         277

Robin Roberts         277

Larry Doby            268

Nellie Fox            262

Gil Hodges            260

Eddie Yost            256

Hank Aaron            247

Jackie Robinson       236

Given this list, it's hard to believe that Hodges was on the bubble. Look at Snider. They were teammates all during this time, and Snider put up 60 more win shares. Robinson was out of baseball by 1957, and Hodges barely beats him out. Mantle, Mathews, Mays and Williams beat him handily with fewer seasons played during the time period.

Gil Hodges was a good ballplayer and a great man. If he had lived and was able to establish a dynasty with the Mets, I think he'd have a better chance of getting in as a manager. But I just don't see him as qualifying as a Hall of Famer based on his playing days. It's a nice sentiment, and it's good that someone remembers him well. The veterans committee has certainly made worse picks. But I just don't think he belongs.

My ISP was having all kinds of routing problems yesterday and today, but I just looked and the blog seems to be back on-line. Now, I just need to find something to blog about...

As you probably know, the record setting HR ball hit by Barry Bonds during the 2001 season was awarded jointly to the two men who caught it. Now, they are having a difficult time trying to decide how to sell it.

A judge ruled last month that both Alex Popov, who gloved the ball for an instant, and Patrick Hayashi, who ended up with the ball, have a legitimate claim -- so neither should get it outright.

Now, the only thing the men can agree on is to postpone a court order that requires them to unload the ball and split the proceeds.

The judge should have been more creative in awarding custody. He could have used Solomon's trick of splitting the ball in two, and giving each half. Then see who is willing to give it up, and award the ball to him. (Newman used this effectively in an episode of Seinfeld to decide if Kramer or Elaine should keep a classic bicycle). Or, make them keep the ball, each getting to display it for 1/2 a year.

Oh well, they'll just have to be happy making a lot of money for very little work.

May your favorite team win the Pennant!

Edward Cossette is enjoying the arguments between the Red Sox and the Yankees, and I must admit, I am too.

In yesterday's NY Daily News, The Boss takes Lucchino to task over these comments:

DN: John Henry, your former partner and owner of the Red Sox, was quoted as saying after you signed Contreras that he "was and is a big risk." What's your response?

GS: That's just ridiculous. It makes him look stupid because they did everything they could to get him, including offering more money than we did. They offered $10 million to get him away from us. I give credit to Mr. Contreras. He wanted to play for the Yankees.

John Henry put down $1 million to buy into the Yankees. He gets back $4.7 million. I hope he does as well for his partners.

DN: Larry Lucchino, president of the Red Sox, called the Yankees "the evil empire" after the signing.

GS: That's B.S. That's how a sick person thinks. I've learned this about Lucchino: he's baseball's foremost chameleon of all time. He changes colors depending on where's he's standing. He's been at Baltimore and he deserted them there, and then went out to San Diego, and look at what trouble they're in out there. When he was in San Diego, he was a big man for the small markets. Now he's in Boston and he's for the big markets. He's not the kind of guy you want to have in your foxhole. He's running the team behind John Henry's back. I warned John it would happen, told him, "Just be careful." He talks out of both sides of his mouth. He has trouble talking out of the front of it.

Lucchino responds in the Boston Globe:

Lucchino, reached last night while on a brief family holiday, said, ''Is that the best he could do? I don't think he even gets the reference.''

Henry did not respond to inquiries seeking a response as of early last evening. In an interview published in the Globe Saturday, Lucchino acknowledged that he and Steinbrenner are longtime antagonists.

''Let's just say that on the list of top people with respect and affection for me, you will probably not find George's name there,'' Lucchino said.

Steinbrenner also has some words of warning for Joe Torre:

DN: Joe Torre has become a New York icon. Judging by some of your actions, such as the way his contract was dragged out last year, it sometimes seems that you think he gets too much credit and you don't get enough?

GS: Joe is the greatest friend I've ever had as a manager. It's a great relationship. I don't want to destroy that, but I will tell you this: I want his whole staff to understand that they have got to do better this year. I will not see him drop back into the way he was before. Right now he's a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Before he came to the Yankees he didn't even have a job. Three different times as manager he didn't deliver, and was fired. Look how far he's come. He's come that way because of an organization, and he's got to remember that. I'm glad that Joe is an icon. He's a hell of a guy, a tremendous manager and tremendous figure for New York. I just want his coaches to understand that just being a friend of Joe Torre's is not enough. They've got to produce for him. Joe Torre and his staff have heard the bugle.

and Derek Jeter:

DN: The Yankees haven't had a captain since Don Mattingly. Do you see Derek Jeter as a strong candidate?

GS: Joe (Torre) would like that right now, but I don't think now is the right time. I want to see Jetes truly focused. He wasn't totally focused last year. He had the highest number of errors he's had in some time. He wasn't himself.

As far as trying and being a warrior, I wouldn't put anyone ahead of him. But how much better would he be if he didn't have all his other activities? I tell him this all the time. I say, 'Jetes, you can't be everything to everybody. You've got to focus on what's important.' The charitable things he does are important. A certain amount (of his outside pursuits) are good for him and for the team, but there comes a point when it isn't, and I think we're getting close to that point.

He makes enough money that he doesn't need a lot of the commercials. I'm not going to stick my nose into his family's business. They are very fine people, (but) if his dad doesn't see that, he should see it. When I read in the paper that he's out until 3 a.m. in New York City going to a birthday party, I won't lie. That doesn't sit well with me. That was in violation of Joe's curfew. That's the focus I'm talking about.

Jeter's still a young man. He'll be a very good candidate for the captaincy. But he's got to show me and the other players that that's not the right way. He's got to make sure his undivided, unfettered attention is given to baseball. I just wish he'd eliminate some of the less important things and he'd be right back to where he was in the past.

This is what I love about Steinbrenner. He's always fighting complacency. And he fights it from the top. If he can criticize the top two icons on the team, what's Nick Johnson or Alfonso Soriano going to think? They're going to think, "I'd better make curfew early, or I'll be traded to the Expos!" And by the way, I think George is right on in his criticism, too.

The Red Sox have signed the former Yankee reliever to a two year contract:

As for Mendoza, the Sox envision using him much like the Yankees did, mostly in a setup role, though he also could close and spot start.

''I wouldn't be surprised if he pitches some of the most critical innings of the year for us,'' Epstein said. ''His versatility and overall characteristics make him another really good quality option for Grady.''

Although Mendoza's strikeout numbers aren't high (5.32 per 9), but he walks no one and gives up very few HR. The Sox will need a good defense behind him, however, as he induces many more ground balls than fly balls.

Dr. Manhattan has an interesting post at Blissful Knowledge:

Similarly, while the integration of major league baseball was most importantly a cessation of an immense moral wrong, it also expanded the talent pool from which baseball teams drew. As such, it introduced a competitive pressure upon teams. Those that adapted to the post-Jackie Robinson era succeeded at the expense of those that did not.
All this was, or should have been, understood at the time by those whose primary priority was to win. While Branch Rickey certainly deserves tremendous moral credit for providing the means for Jackie Robinson’s entrance into the major leagues, he was just as undoubtedly interested in the competitive advantage his team would derive. When the Dodgers combined black players such as Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcome and Junior Gilliam with white players like Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Carl Furillo, the result was a team that won six pennants in Robinson’s ten seasons. As Adam Smith might have predicted, the Dodgers’ self-interest was a moral force.
The National League generally followed the Dodgers’ example to a greater extent than the American League did, with the expected result: according to Bill James’ Win Shares method, there were 11 National League players in 1963 that were better than any American League player that year. (The contrast is especially stark because Mickey Mantle was injured for most of that season, but the general point remains true.). Probably not coincidentally, the National League dominated the All-Star Game in that era.
Even the mighty Yankees were forced to adapt the competitive pressure exerted by the integration of baseball. As Bryant describes, the Yankees’ record on race was almost as bad as the Red Sox’s for a long time. The Yankees’ first noteworthy black player, Vic Power, was judged too “flashy” and quickly traded away despite his talent. The star catcher Elston Howard met the Yankees’ criteria, but not many others did. In his book October 1964, David Halberstam describes how the Yankees’ neglect of the talent afforded by the integration of African-American (and by then, Latino) players into baseball contributed heavily to the downfall of the Yankee dynasty in the 1960s. (There were, of course, other contributing factors: the Yankee player-development system was starved for resources in the early 1960s and didn’t develop many good white players, either.) When the Yankees resumed winning championships in the late 1970s, the team included outstanding minority players such as Mickey Rivers, Chris Chambliss and, of course, Reggie Jackson (who satisfied no era’s definition of decorum). And, as Bryant describes, the current dynastic Yankees are a model of diversity in terms of players’ backgrounds. Lingering prejudice against groups of players is, practically speaking, incompatible with George Steinbrenner’s monomaniacal desire for championships, and such prejudice has accordingly been overcome. The Yankees’ most recent moves - the signing of Japanese outfielder Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui and Cuban defector pitcher Jose Contreras - perfectly illustrate how the demand for the best players has overcome any prejudice against groups of such players. While it would be nice to assume high-minded motives on the Yankees’ behalf, it seems like Steinbrenner’s insatiable appetite for championships deserves the credit for the overcoming of such prejudice.

The one problem with the piece is that the lag time is not made clear. Jackie Robinson came into baseball in 1947. For the next 17 years, the game was dominated not by the Dodgers, but by the Yankees. What killed the Yankees in the 1960's was:

1. Ownership by CBS, which didn't have the killer instinct for winning.
2. The implementation of the baseball draft, which prevented the Yankees from signing the best young players to bonuses. The baseball draft, like today's luxury tax, was an item specificially designed to end Yankee hegemony at the expense of player wealth.

But once you account for the lag time, Dr. Manhattan is correct. The NL embraced blacks sooner, and was able to dominate the all-star game for a long time. Today, the All Star tide has turned because the AL was quicker to embrace latin players, and the dominance may continue in the future as the AL seems to be a little more in tune with bringing in Asian hitters. We should look forward to the day when the minority group dominating baseball is from the Middle East. Then we'll know we won the war.

The Everett, Washington Herald has a look ahead at the 2003 Mariners.

David Levens at Elephats in Oakland thinks the AL West has been too quiet this off-season. I agree with him on Anaheim. Disney has increased payroll. They should use that to address weaknesses on the team. Winners that stand pat usually fall off the next year.

In a related story, there's this article in the Contra Costa Times about a possible sale of the A's to an unamed south bay business man, including speculation about the A's moving.

Baseball seems to be catching on in Malaysia.

The NY Times has an interesting article on what Cal Ripken has been up to. The gist of the story is that Cal has created a corporation to increase the popularity of baseball through minor league ownership and youth baseball programs. What's very interesting is that the Ripkens seem to be giving Little League Baseball some competition:

His focus on encouraging young people has, of course, been welcomed by many influential people in the sport besides Mr. Vincent. But Mr. Ripken's moves in the youth baseball world have not gone over universally well with Little League Baseball.

The tension began in 1999, when the nonprofit Babe Ruth League renamed its age 5 to 12 division the Cal Ripken Division of Babe Ruth League Baseball, and Mr. Ripken reciprocated by helping to negotiate a television contract with Fox Sports to broadcast its championship games, setting up a competition for viewers. (Little League Baseball, which runs the Little League World Series, is broadcast on ABC.) Babe Ruth baseball will hold the Cal Ripken World Series next August in Aberdeen at the same time the Little League Baseball games are held in Williamsport, Pa.

Mr. Ripken and officials of Little League Baseball denied that there was competition. But Mr. Ripken said he thought that his strategy of branding and "rejuvenating fun" were the prescription for addressing the game's decline in popularity.

Nothing wrong with a little competition. If Ripken starts to succeed in drawing children away from LL, LL should respond with their own new ways of drawing children into the game. The hoped for result would be more young people getting interested in baseball, creating more life-long fans, and a healthier game.

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone claim that the income tax from visiting ballplayers will pay for a stadium. I went to a AAA game in Portland this year on a Monday night. They have a nice stadium. It was easy to get to, via light rail, and the people there were very friendly. But the stands were empty, so I wonder how much that city would really support an ML team.

ESPN.com has an AP article indicating that free agents aren't signing for as much this year:

Why the drop-off?

Except for the 32-year-old Thome, all the big-name free agents were either over 35 or coming off injuries. Teams are putting more players on the market, refusing to give contracts to 46 players by the Dec. 20 tender deadline, up from 34 last year and 27 two years ago.

Supply and demand. The more players that become free agents every year, the less you have to compete to get a player. Charlie Finley realized this back in the 1970's, when he wanted baseball to grant free agency to all players every year (each player would have a one-year contract). Unfortunately, he was the wrong messenger, and baseball set up a system that would lead to the free-agent price spiral.

Eric McErlain writes:

Let me preface, I'm a lifelong Mets fan, and no fan of Pete Rose. As far as I'm concerned, he has no place in the game of baseball.

But when it comes to the Harrelson incident, I clearly recall reading in the 1974 Mets yearbook that Harrelson conceded that he actually caused the fight. Harrelson made the admission at a dinner with New York sportswriters where he presented Rose with a "Good Guy" Award.

I've been looking on the internet for some confirmation of this. I found this quote from Pete Rose:

I ain't no little girl out there. If a guy hits me, I fight back.
Reds all-star outfielder Pete Rose

On his fight with the Mets' Bud Harrelson during the NLCS that nearly incited a riot in Shea Stadium. October 1973.

Of course, there's this from MLB.com:

In Game 3 of the 1973 NLCS, the Mets take a 2-1 lead in the series by whipping the Reds, 9-3. However, the highlight of the game occurs in the top of fifth inning when Reds outfielder Pete Rose and Mets Shortstop Bud Harrelson come to blows after Rose elbows Harrelson in the face. In the bottom of the inning, the Shea Stadium crowd showers Rose with debris. Willie Mays, Tom Seaver and Rusty Staub are finally able to calm the crowd.

You can read Eric McErlain's blog, Off Wing Opinion here.

This topic is generating some thoughtful responses:

David,

First off, Im a long time reader and admirer of your blog. Just so you know, I am an avid Atlanta Braves fan. My roommate, lives and dies for Boston Red Sox baseball. All year I hear Jaron lament about how the Yankees, "are buying another World Series", etc.. Im not going to insult your intelligence by discussing the fact that a majority of the Yankees payroll is comprised of home-grown talent or talent obtained through a trade. However, I do have a problem with the Boston president pouting about the Yankees. In my mind, the Red Sox are no worse than the Yankees. IN FACT, at least the majority of the Yankees "super-star" talent came from their own system (Posada, Jeter, Petite, Rivera, Soriano, Williams). Granted, Varitek and Garciaparra are "theirs". However: Pedro, Manny and Damon are all players which were the result of free agency.

Maybe a team like Pittsburgh has the right to complain about the Yankees. But not an organization whose payroll was well over 100 million last year.

Furthermore, the owners are the ones who are allowing foreign players to go to the highest bidder. From what I understand, a worldwide draft was something the players association was not all that opposed to.

Alas, I think the Red Sox organization is just already making excuses for another season of falling short.

Just my opinion.

Thanks,
Doug Childers

I'd just point out that Varitek was the result of a trade. I believe it was Slocumb for Varitek and Lowe, maybe the greatest trade the Red Sox have made in my lifetime. I think Doug's point about making excuses is correct, however.

I'd suggest there's something else at work here also. When I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I would sometimes meet people who had an association with Yale, but were experiencing Harvard for first time. I heard more than one of them say, "All Yale people talk about is Harvard, but no one at Harvard seems to talk about Yale." In my experience, that seems to be the telling the difference between the best and the 2nd best; a measure of confidence. Harvard doesn't talk about Yale, because they don't have to worry about being #1. Yale tries hard to show they are just as good by making comparisons. If you have to compare yourself to someone, you immediately make people think about the other group or person. If Yale really wanted to be #1, they'd change

"Our history department is as good as Harvard's."

to

"We have the best history department in the country."

My point, of course, is that the Red Sox are the Yale of the AL. They're really good. Most cities would love to have a team that good year after year. But instead of talking about how good the team is, they just keep comparing themselves to the Yankees. It's time for them to stop worrying about the Yankees and start thinking about how to put the best team they can find on the field.

Correction: Fixed my to by.

Reader Daniel Shamah responds to this response:

I think Weddell misses the point of Lucchino's complaint. He was more upset that any time the Red Sox target a free agent, the Yankees can just step in and outbid them. I don't believe he was really concerned with the possible impact on arbitration.

And that arbitration argument is a double-edged sword: yes, the Matsui and Contreras signings will have less impact on this year's arbitration hearings than a massive Greg Maddux or Cliff Floyd signing would, but these signings could also doubly hurt the Red Sox. The Yanks essentially paid middle of the road prices for two international all stars: what if they perform to that level here? Then the Yankees have two all star caliber players for the price of one: 15 million. Any time the Yankees actually save money, it kills their competitors, most of all the Red Sox.

Of course, those two stars might turn out to be duds in the US, in which case Lucchino's complaint is going to look silly. Actually, this is a bit of a lose-lose situation for Lucchino. If Contreras is a success, then why didn't the Red Sox pay more to get him. If he's a dud, why was Lucchino willing to spend so munch for an unproven player. No wonder he's mad at Steinbrenner.

I read that Paypal has the highest money market returns in the nation. So I opened an account, and since it's there, I put up a button for a tip jar. This site is free, and I don't expect anything, especially if you are a fellow blogger. But the button is there if you feel the urge to donate. They will be appreciated.

In case you missed them, the results are here.

I think that baseball should be very careful in measuring Rose's popularity. The one case of a bad survey that I keep in my mind is the one that resulted in the New Coke fiasco. Pepsi kept doing taste tests that showed that Pepsi tasted better than Coke. Coke decided it was true, so they changed the formula to make Coke sweeter, or more like Pepsi. What Coke didn't realize, however, was that the people who bought the bulk of the soda, drank Coke because it wasn't as sweet as Pepsi. Coke sales fell off. Coke then introduced Coke Classic for those who liked the old taste, and eventually, New Coke disappeared.

Our poll is a poll of baseball fanatics; the kind of people that keep watching through thick and thin; the people who buy tickets and watch on TV and listen to radio and really care about baseball. I don't think Rose's popularity with this population is very high. Baseball has to be careful that they are not appeasing the wrong population by letting Rose back in. It's not going to win them any new fans, and might cause some of the more die hard people to think less of the game.

Here are some comments I received:

Ratings based on how I admire them as a person as seen through the mists of media. Their accomplishments do count but my major issues are how selfish their concerns & what did they overcome to get to their stellar level.

Petey was always kind of an egotistical jerk, but he should be in the Hall, heck, 4000+ hits should count for something. As far as I can tell, even if he DID bet on baseball, or even his own team, he never bet on them to lose.

For the most part, I don't even care what the current HOFers say about Rose. Great (arrogant) player, lousy person. Utterly and totally living in denial. A Gambler, and a professional player who knew the rules. HE SIGNED THE AGREEMENT that keeps him out. I've read the Dowd report, more people should.

This is a pretty motley crew, David. A vengeful home run king, an egomaniacal stolen base king, baseball's Trent Lott, a couple of wildly overrated volume performers... why not Steve Howe or Vince Coleman or any of the real heroes of the generation?

I have heard that Maddux is an asshole, and I have a friend who worked at Pete Rose's Sports Bar in Florida, who says the same about him (but she did get me an autographed baseball card). I've also heard that some player said (I think during the 80's) that Nolan Ryan was the only player he knew who didn't cheat on his wife.

Rose is a sleezebag. Always has been, always will be.

admirable is something different than popular, which is how Rose was described. In general, I have no idea how admirable my favorite players are. (Or the people listed above.) And sometimes, it doesn't matter. I retain a fondness for Dwight Gooden, who doesn't seem to be particularly admirable, and love hasn't been admirable in a lot of ways.

Yes, Cal is lower than Rickey... all those stories about separate hotels and special treatment take their toll, especially against a mostly-innocuous group.

yep, you were right. Put him on a list with these guys (a smattering of his contemporaries), and Rose looks like the black sheep.

That's a funny list of players. I don't exactly know how admirable these guys are, so some of my picks are silly. I am sure that Pete Rose, Cal Ripken and Nolan Ryan are not people I admire. I also feel that Rickey isn't as big a douche bag as popularly believed, though I would be shocked if he doesn't place 9 to Pete Rose's 10.

If you gave me a list of every player in teh history of baseball Cal Ripken would still be last. What a phony. He hurt his team and he worked to project an image of a team player while seeking his own hotel on the road and other assorted examples of rampant arrogance and self-importance. Cal Ripken is the most selfish ballplayer I have seen and I lived in and around Baltimore his entire career. Yuck!

Hank Aaron seems to exude class as does Nolan Ryan. Cal Ripken rates so low for me because he truly seemed to put his personal goals ahead of his team. Pete Rose is a liar, plain and simple.

There's one other thing I'd like to get out there. I've never liked Pete Rose. In the last few weeks, I've wondered why. There are a number of bad-boys out there that I did like; Albert Belle and Rickey Henderson, for two. But Rose was somehow different. I think I finally put my finger on it. Rose was tenacious, yes. He was intimidating, yes. These are qualities that I usually admire in a player. But there was a difference with Rose. Rose was a bully.

How can you tell? Let's take the two most famous altercations in which rose was involved.

Let's start with a list of some of the 1973 Mets by weight:

 WT

----

 160  Bud Harrelson

 170  Rich Chiles

      Ken Boswell

      Willie Mays

 172  Felix Millan

 175  Brian Ostrosser

      Wayne Garrett

 180  Don Hahn

 185  Ron Hodges

      Jerry Grote

      John Milner

      Cleon Jones

 187  Duffy Dyer

 190  Rusty Staub

      George Theodore

      Jerry May

      Jim Beauchamp

      Jim Fregosi

 205  Ed Kranepool

I have Rose listed at 192. So who does he pick on? The smallest guy on the Mets. Not someone his own size like Grote or Milner or Kranepool. He goes after the little guy, Bud Harrelson. To Bud's credit, he stood up for himself.

The other famous altercation was with umpire Dave Pallone. Pallone was a scab, who had acquired his job during the 1979 umpires strike. He was never accepted by the other umpires. So Pallone was an easy target for Rose's wrath. He knew no other ump would back up Pallone. So when Rose was accidentially poked in the eye by Pallone, a fight ensued.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but I just don't see any reason why this particular player should be so popular. I will be very disappointed if he is reinstated.

Michael Weddell makes a good point about the effect of the Yankees foreign signings:

Regarding the Yankees' payroll, compared to the possible alternatives, Lucchino should be fairly happy. If one accepts it as a given that the Yankees will spend whatever it takes to have the best team on paper entering the season, then the Contreras signing is one of the least damaging things the Yankees can do with their money. As a player with no prior MLB experience, Contreras would be very hard to use as a comparison player in an arbitration hearing. Even as a use in free agent negotiations, Contreras' signing will have limited impact on negotiations between other players and other MLB teams because his value (and hence his ability to be used as a comparison) is so uncertain. This (and the Hideki Matsui signing) are much less damaging to other MLB teams' payrolls than if the Yankees had signed Greg Maddux to $18M per year or Cliff Floyd to $10M per year for example.

Larry Lucchino seems really upset at George Steinbrenner:

After the agreement had been reached, Lucchino initially offered a brusque "no comment" when reached by The New York Times. Then he pulled a 180 with his position.

"No, I'll make a comment. The evil empire extends its tentacles even into Latin America," Lucchino told The Times.

How do you really feel, Larry?

This surprised me a bit, because it appeared to me that the Yankees were trying to keep their payroll low so they wouldn't have to pay the luxury tax. But according to this article, the tax is only going to be about 7 million. I still think the Yankees will jettison Mondesi and White at some point, so it may not end up at the 153 million it currently stands at.

My advice to Lucchino: if you want to beat the Yankees, you're going to have to open the checkbook.

The results are in. Players were ranked 1 to 10, with 1 being the most admired, 10 the least admired. Scoring was using a Borda count (similar to MVP voting); players ranked 1 get 10 points, players ranked 10 get 1 point. If more than one player is ranked the same, the points for those positions are added together and averaged, and each player gets those points. So, for example, if the first five players are all ranked 1, they would get 8 points each. Also, the place in the voting is calculated, not necessarily taken from the ballot. In the above example, if the next player was ranked 2, the program recognizes that it's really a sixth place vote, and that's what the player is credited with.

Okay, now that I've confused you all, here are the results:

Votes by Rank          1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  Points

Hank Aaron            49  29  16  10   7   5   2   2   3   4  1028.0

Willie Mays           30  24  30  11   8  11   8   2   3   0   966.5

Greg Maddux           14  18  14  18  27  13  12   8   2   1   830.0

Cal Ripken Jr.        20  16  14  12   5  13  13  18  15   1   760.5

Nolan Ryan            12  13  13  20  13  16   8  16  16   0   738.5

George Brett           8  10  12  14  22  23  18  17   3   0   728.5

Johnny Bench           5   6  10  19  22  26  22  13   3   1   699.5

Tony Perez             2   4   8   8  11  17  27  24  17   9   538.0

Rickey Henderson       4   6   3  10   5   7  13  15  56   8   461.5

Pete Rose              5   1   1   3   2   0   1   3  12  99   234.0

No suprise to me that Aaron is the most admired player of this group. Being sent to integrate southern baseball in the 1950's earns him a lot of respect. I probably would have voted Maddux over Mays, because Mays was briefly banned for baseball for working for a casino, but that's pretty minor. Ripken, Ryan, Brett and Bench are pretty interchangable. I got the feeling people didn't know much about Tony Perez, and he was the least talented of this group (that's not saying he wasn't a superb player). People don't like Rickey. I would have rated him higher, since I think he gets a lot of bad press. He's a better guy than he comes off being, but he's never done anything to polish his image (like getting an education). And there's Pete, bringing up the rear.

It looks like I'll be snowed in tomorrow, so I'll go through the comments then and publish some of them.

Charles Donefer responds to my response.

Aaron Gleeman has an excellent rundown of the top remaining free agents on his blog. His comments on Travis Lee are right on.

I hadn't seen this cartoon before. :-)

I'm going to leave the most admired poll open until Tuesday morning. I'll have time tomorrow to work on compiling the results and commenting about them. You can find a link to the voting here. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.

Charles Donefer has offered this rebuttal to Instapundit's idea for a baseball stadium at ground zero. (See previous post). It's titled "A Silly Idea for Ground Zero," in case the link doesn't take you right to it. There is at least one thesis in the rebuttal that I disagree with.

Putting up a baseball stadium is a surrender to the failed practice of creating taxpayer-funded monuments to the low-paying service sector while the real jobs continue to flee for the suburbs.

and

New York would have to borrow even more money, something that the neither the City or the State have the capacity to do at the moment. The tremendous debt load is already a constant threat to credit ratings and yawning budget gaps won’t lighten it any time soon. George Steinbrenner is not going to pay for even a small portion of any new stadium, which means that government will foot the bill.

The Port Authority owns the site, and in fact built the original WTC. The PANYNJ raises money through bond issues, not taxes. Yes, those bonds are backed by the ability of government to tax people to pay for them, but that hasn't happened so far. And regardless of what is built on that site, the PA is going to have to issue lots of new bonds. So it's bond holders, not taxpayers who are financing the stadium, although taxpayers hold the risk. The PANYNJ is insisting that whatever is built on the site generate revenue equal to what they were getting from the WTC. For this, some want to push them out.

And what if they build new office towers, and no one occupies them? Are companies really going to put top people at risk again in the top terrorist target in the US? I really wonder about the viability of a new office tower at that site. It may turn out like the Empire State Building, which was not profitable for decades after it was built.

I think there would be plenty of action in the financial district with or without mammoth office towers. A baseball stadium would offer a nice diversion, be a lot cheaper to build and would nicely serve as a memorial to the tragic events of 9/11. I don't know if it would work (there's so much I don't know about the politics and physics of the site), but it's not a silly idea.

One other thing:

We already have a good ballpark. What’s wrong with Yankee Stadium? It has served the Yankees and their fans just fine for three-quarters of a century and can do so for another three-quarters of a century if it’s maintained well. Excellent attendance figures year after year show that Yankee fans care more about watching quality baseball than skyboxes and sushi bars.

NY also has a bad ballpark, Shea Stadium. I think the Mets are really the appropriate team to move to a new stadium. Also, I believe you can get sushi at Yankee Stadium (although I can't find a list of concesssions on the internet).

Update: Normally, I do object to tax-payer funded stadiums, and Mr. Donefer's arguments are this point I feel are correct. But this is a different situation, where the stadium isn't necessarily being built to generate revenue or create jobs, but as a memorial to a tragic event that generates some revenue and provides a lot of pleasure for the populace.

Instapundit has an idea for ground zero. Build a baseball stadium! He says it's a dumb idea, but I think it's great. Both the Yankees and Mets can use a new park. And baseball was part of the initial healing process. It's right at the hub of a transportation center. I think it would work well.

If you haven't voted, please do.

I had two posts on Floyd yesterday. One was about Floyd going to the Orioles. As the previous post points out, Floyd actually went to the Mets (scroll down). Interestingly, the Sun took down the article that I originally linked to claiming that Floyd was for the Birds.

When it seemed that Floyd was going to Baltimore, I speculated that the luxury tax was having a different effect than what was intended; it was spreading talent around, not by poor teams getting more money to spend, but by mid-level teams having access to free agents because the big teams couldn't afford to sign them. Of course, with the Mets signing Floyd, I'm not sure that statement is really valid either.

What is clearly valid is that the luxury tax is really a salary cap. Teams are going out of their way to avoid the level at which the tax will kick in. This is probably better than the owners had wanted in terms of controlling salaries, but it isn't going to do anything to help Montreal or KC or Minnesota's ability to spend more on players. It's not going to help Tampa Bay compete with the Yankees. It's not going to even help Milwaukee compete with the Cardinals or Astros. I feel bad for the fans of these teams who thought the new agreement was going to level the playing field. It helps some of the mid-level team, but it doesn't spread enough money to give all teams a chance, because given a method of avoiding taxes, they will be avoided.

As a Met. This helps fill the void left by the departure of Alfonzo, and gives the Mets a good outfielder for the first time in a few years. And it looks like the Mets will look East for a new third baseman.

A number of years ago I subscribed to the Phillies electronic news letter. Most of the time, they just send me promotional junk, but a few minutes ago, I got this in the mail:

PHILLIES BREAKING NEWS
December 20, 2002

PHILS ACQUIRE KEVIN MILLWOOD FROM ATLANTA
The Phillies traded catcher Johnny Estrada to the Atlanta Braves for right-handed pitcher Kevin Millwood, General Manager Ed Wade announced today.

So the remaking of the Braves rotation is complete. They're keeping both Marquis and Maddux, but the third M is off to division rival Philadelphia. This should be a very interesting battle in the NL East next year. Phillies have no doubt improved themselves. The Braves are strong but with question marks. Atlanta could easily run away with the division again, but I think the Phillies will challenge, and I think the Phillies are in a good position for when the new ballpark opens in 2004. And again, the luxury tax is looking more like a salary cap, where Atlanta wasn't able to keep one of it's better pitchers.

Update: Shawn Bernard is shocked by this trade:

The Braves couldn't find a taker for Millwood in any other division? They had to trade him to their biggest division rival? My mind is totally boggled by this trade. For a backup catcher?

Not even a month ago, there was talk of trading Ortiz (the same Ortiz the Braves traded Moss for) for JD Drew. But the Braves trade Millwood for a 2nd string catcher? What the hell?

Shawn

It's the luxury tax/salary cap. Unintended consequences?

The Baltimore Orioles are close to signing Cliff Floyd, according to this story by Joe Christensen in the Baltimore Sun. It seems the Dodgers don't want to pay the luxury tax, and signing Floyd would push them over the limit. The Mets also are having a hard time finding the money. The Orioles seem to be the beneificiary, and may try to sign I-Rod also, although the two sides are fairly far apart on money.

It seems that rather than transfering wealth from big market teams to small market teams, the luxury tax is preventing players from signing with some big market teams, making them available to others. The tax may not be keeping the price of free agents down, but it does seem to be distributing talent a little more evenly.

At the suggestion of Jason Grady, I've put up a form for the popularity poll. You can vote here. Should be faster than e-mail.

Looks like Maddux will accept arbitration.

Wake Raymond Burr. Break out the nuclear warheads. Summon Mothra! The Yankees have signed Hideki Matsui.

Here is a link to his career stats. Like many great players, he came up at a young age (19) and just kept getting better. I'm impressed with his walk totals. Five times he's drawn over 100 walks in a season. And remember, they play a shorter season in Japan, so the most games he's ever played in a year is 140.

People wonder if he'll make it here. I think what we will see with Japanese hitters is very much what we saw after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. The majors picked up the top Negro League players. They didn't take the okay or the good players. Right now, MLB is only going to take the Japanese hitters who are not going to fail in the US.

I'd love to see a chart of where Matsui hits the ball. If he's a pull-hitter, Yankee Stadium could be very good to the lefty.

It's pretty clear that at least two of White, Mondesi or Spencer will be gone by opening day. And once again, Steinbrenner grabs the backpage of the tabloids.

Allen Barra in the Wall Street Journal has this as his opening paragraph in an opinion piece on why Rose should be reinstated:

In 1989, after months of investigations, Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti concluded that Pete Rose--manager of the Cincinnati Reds, baseball's all-time leader in base hits and the most popular figure in the game--was to be banned for life for betting on baseball. For 13 years Rose has never wavered in his denial that he bet on baseball.

Most popular figure in the game? By what measure? I'm going to have to find the poll that's based on, because I'll bet (oops!) that it's a biased poll. What I'd like to see is something like this:

Rate these players 1 to 10, one being the player you admire the most, 10 being the player you admire the least:

• Hank Aaron


• Johnny Bench


• George Brett


• Rickey Henderson


• Greg Maddux


• Willie Mays


• Tony Perez


• Cal Ripken


• Pete Rose


• Nolan Ryan

Then do a Borda count and see who wins.

Okay, let's do it. If you like, send me an e-mail with your ratings. Get your friends to fill in the ballot. I'll tally the scores if I get enough ballots and let you know the results. To make it more fair, you may want to get friends to fill it out without the anti-popular preamble. I'll be happy to take as many ballots as you can send in. Click here to email me.

Update: You don't have to e-mail me. You can now fill out this form.

Looks like I was right about Biggio moving. Mike's Baseball Rant has him moving to left. Biggio needs to get his OBA back into the high .300's if he's going to be a good offensive player again.

The Washington Times editorializes against the public financing of a ballpark.

The Baseball Crank points out the downside of acquiring a Braves pitcher.

Jeff Kent has signed with the Houston Astros. The article by Jose De Jesus Ortiz does not say what position Kent will play for the Astros. FOXSports.com has him likely playing third, which makes perfect sense.

I don't know how much this really improves the Astros, however. The combination of third basemen Houston had last year posted numbers well above the NL average at third base.

As Third Baseman

Statistics through OCT-21-2002


               Avg   G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI  SB CS TBB HBP SO GDP OBP  SLG

Merced,O.    1.000 ---   1   0   1  0  0  0   0   0  0   0  0   0  01.0001.000

Loretta,M.    .545 ---  33   7  18  3  0  1   5   1  0   6  0   1  0 .600 .727

Ginter,K.     .333 ---   3   1   1  1  0  0   0   0  0   2  0   1  0 .600 .667

Vizcaino,J.   .318 ---  85   7  27  3  0  1  11   0  1   8  0   8  3 .372 .388

Blum,G.       .284 --- 331  39  94 20  4 10  51   2  0  45  0  59  8 .368 .459

Ensberg,M.    .233 --- 129  14  30  6  2  3  17   2  0  15  3  25  8 .327 .380

               AVG   AB   R    H  2B  3B  HR RBI  SB  CS  TBB   SO  OBP  SLG

Team Average  .294  582  68  171  33   6  15  84   5   1   76   94 .376 .448

League Avg.   .260  619  77  161  31   3  18  81   6   2   57  100 .326 .407

Yes, Kent is better than this, but is he really worth all that money to improve an already good position? Maybe Biggio is on his way out. Biggio had his worst year getting on base since his rookie season in 2002. Kent had nearly double the win shares of Biggio, 29 to 15. Replacing Biggio improves the team a lot more, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Craig move.

This NY Post article has the latest on Clemens and Godzilla's status with the Yankees. Also, Ron Guidry is to be honored this year:

Ron Guidry will be honored at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, Aug. 23 with "Ron Guidry Day." Club didn't announce if Guidry's No. 49 will be retired, but that's likely since nobody has worn it since Guidry retired after the 1988 season. Guidry's 170 victories are fourth on the all-time Yankee list.

"This is just about as big a compliment as you could receive from your organization," said the 52-year-old Guidry, who is a spring-training instructor for the Yanks. "I just can't think of a higher recognition."

If Guidry's number is retired, it will be the 16th Yankee number taken out of circulation.

Guidry is one of my favorite players. I'm glad to see him getting his due.

If the Yankees do sign Godzilla, can the Red Sox signing of Mothra be far behind?

The Braves continue to remake their starting staff. The new rotation looks something like:

Hampton

Millwood

Ortiz

Byrd

Maddux or Marquis

Tim Kurkjian thinks Maddux will return and the Braves will trade Millwood. I think the Braves let Maddux go and Millwood becomes the ace.

Only Baseball Matters likes the trade for the Giants. SF saves a lot of money, and gets a young lefty. I'm not too thrilled with Moss' K/BB (111/89). He didn't allow a lot of hits, but he had a great defense behind him. We'll see what happens with the Giants.

Well, that was a pretty boring weekend. The big winners were the Red Sox. They improved at both second base and first base. As I noted earlier, Todd Walker is an improvement at 2nd base. Daubach and Clark combined for 15 win shares last year, Giambi had 14 by himself in about 3/4 of a season. Walker had Sanchez beat in win shares 21-9. So the Red Sox have added about 15 win shares on the right side of the infield over a full season. That's 5 wins. That's not an insignificant gain without giving up that much.

Edward Cossette likes the Sox moves, too.

The other team that appears to have come out positively is the Giants. They decided to go with Alfonzo over Kent. I wonder if the Mets will try to sign Kent now? I think Alfonzo is fine, and appears to have saved the team some money. I still think they would do well to sign Pudge Rodriguez and move him away from catcher.

There was a four team deal, with the upshot being that the A's got Durazo. I don't think anyone hurt themselves with that deal, and I don't think anyone greatly improved themselves either.

The Mets, however, seem to be in total disarray. They no longer have a left side of the infield. They lost one of their better players in Alfonzo, but got rid of one of their weakest links in Ordonez. They now have only two offensive players worth anything; Piazza and Alomar, and both are getting old. They now have Stanton, but you have to have a lead for a setup man (or a closer) to be effective. Right now, I don't see the Mets having any offense.

So it wasn't an exciting meeting. It may get better as the Expos decide what they want to do.

He's a Met now.

Scrappleface catches the catch-22.

Sorry, blogger was broken last night and I couldn't post anything about the deals. I'll try to get things up this morning. Initial take, however, is that the Red Sox really improved themselves, while the Mets no longer have an infield.

A nice profile of Mark Shapiro's first year by Paul Hoynes of the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Bob Elliott's notes column has this tidbit:

SIGNING: Former Jays second baseman Homer Bush (.222, zero, five with the Florida Marlins, .231, one, two with the Jays) signed a minor-league deal with the San Diego Padres.

A couple of years ago I thought Bush would become the all-time Homer homer leader. Unless he can come back with the Padres, that's not going to happen.

With nothing going on at the baseball winter meetings, here's a story on Pete Rose from The Age, an Australian newspaper.

Nothing like a cat fight between commissioners. Where's Batman when you need him?

Bob Nightengale of USA Today has this report in which he makes this incredible statement:

So where does Griffey want to go? As a player traded in the middle of a multiyear contract he has the right to demand a trade after one season. He's not going to name the teams on the record, but if you speak with him long enough it's not hard to figure out that the Yankees are his top choice, followed by the Braves and Diamondbacks.

I was sure I've heard in the past that Griffey would never play for the Yankees, due to the way they treated his father (from what I remember, they retreated him like the old, washed-up player he was). There is some disagreement here in an article by Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News:

There could be some interest in Griffey from the two New York teams, the Mets and the Yankees. Griffey has said he is not interested in playing for the Yankees, but he has no say. He does not have a no-trade clause in his contract. When it was negotiated, he was given the right to list four teams to whom he wouldn't accept a trade. But his agent, Brian Goldberg, did not give the Reds the four teams, so Bowden is free to deal him to any team.

If anyone else remembers Griffey not wanting to play for the Yankees in the past, please let me know.

Update: I found this at BaseballPrimer. Scroll down to the section titled: "Posted 7:41 p.m., July 29, 2001 - The Griffey Fan Club."

The Boston Red Sox have acquired Todd Walker from the Cincinnati Reds. I've always liked Walker. At some point, he fell into Tom Kelly's doghouse, but I thought that was unfair. He did a good job of replacing Knoblauch, and has respectable batting stats for a second baseman. And he's much better than Rey Sanchez. Sanchez was a .275 BA and nothing else. Walker has a career .292 BA, with a .349 OBA (.311 for Sanchez) and a .435 slugging percentage (.338 for Sanchez). And Walker is 5 1/2 years younger. The trade doesn't do anything to address the rebuilding of the farm system, but it makes the Red Sox a better team this year.

Dayn Perry has an interesting article on steroid use at ReasonOnline. They have a new blog there too called Hit and Run, which is worth checking out.

Here are links to previous post on steroids, one based on comments by Joe Morgan, but the really long screed is here.

Dr. Manhattan has some thoughts on this year's ballot. He puts both Sutter and Gossage in. I had voted at Baseball Prospectus a couple of hours before I read this post, and also voted for both Sutter and Gossage. Glad to see someone agree with me.

Robert Saunders e-mails me, and nails the Rose situation:

But Rose's situation is positively Heller-ean: it's against the rules to bet on baseball, and if you do you can't go to the HOF; so, Bart Giammati asks Rose to sign a document in which he doesn't admit to betting on baseball, in exchange for which Rose can't get into the HOF; now, to get into the HOF, he has to admit that he bet on baseball, which I believe is still against the rules!

If he didn't bet on baseball, let him in. If he did bet on baseball, I don't care how great he was, he's OUT! That's what makes his story a lesson for young players and a tragedy to people who were his fans (not me). If Madame Bovary doesn't commit suicide, it's not a tragedy, it's a Julia Roberts movie!

The catch-22 is exactly right. If Rose bet on baseball, he broke the rules and the ban should stay in place. If he didn't bet on baseball, then he's probably paid the price for consorting with gamblers. If Rose had done something to change his life, given back to the community some way, I'd be more amenable to his returning.

As to the idea that Rose would be put back in charge of the Reds; ARRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know who's brilliant idea that is, but Rose should not be allowed near young players in a position of power. I remember being with BBTN at Disney in 1998. We were in the green room, and Ray Knight was talking about Pete Rose, and how good Pete was to him (and others) as rookies. It reminded me of the Bill James essay on Hal Chase. Chase would be nice to the new kids, while the other veterans just ignored them. Later, Chase would ask the kids for favors involving throwing games. I doubt Rose ever fixed games, but I bet Pete got the kids to look the other way when Rose would commit some other transgression.

I hope this is just a lot of speculation. The one area of agreement I've had with Selig is Pete Rose. For Pete to get back in, he's going to have to do a lot better job of apologizing than Trent Lott has.

I've gotten a number of letters on this subject, especially after Dowd came out with his opinions. I'll be blogging more on this later. Meanwhile, you should read this article from Baseball Prospectus that refutiates Bill James' view of the Dowd report. (Thanks to J Lentner)

Both Dave Abbuhl and Todd Morgan both have written to point out the flaw in the previous post. From Todd:

The reason corporations don't sponser ballpark names in the way you suggested is just for the reason you stated…

Phoenix Stadium sponsered by BankOne would be referred to as Phoenix Stadium by pretty much everyone. BankOne wouldn't be getting all of what they paid for, which includes its name coming out of peoples' mouths all the time. :-)

And from Dave:

Your comments yesterday about the naming of ballparks illustrate exactly why the teams and their ad folks do this naming stuff in the fashion you dislike. What's going to stick in the casual fan's mind (the target of the ads, of course) more: "Pepsi cola" or "cola drink sponsored by Pepsi"? So which ad form brings the higher price? The teams CAN do the naming in the fashion you suggest, but it would result in reduced revenues. Next thing you know, they "must" trade a veteran player for a couple AA reserve outfielders......

I would add, however, that it's not the casual fan's mind that they are trying get to say the name. They are trying to get the free advertisement on ESPN, Fox and other news sports outlets. I remember when Candlestick Park was renamed 3-Com Park. Chris Berman wouldn't use the name. The teams called him up and pleaded with him, telling him the real name was 3-Com Park at Candlestick Point. Berman started using the full name. That's where the real benefit lies.

Of course, that benefit doesn't look like it's that great. From what I hear, people do well to sell short companies that buy the right to name a field. Enron and United, anyone?

SBC has dropped the Pacific Bell name. This could lead to a change in the name of the San Francisco ballpark.

This is what I don't like about corporate names. Ballparks should have a name that can stand the test of time. Changing at the whim of some corporate executive just isn't right. Why not have a permanent name for a ballpark that can be sponsored by a company? Phoenix Stadium sponsored by BankOne? Then we can all just refer to Phoenix Stadium, and not worry about who the sponsor is.

Shawn Bernard sends me this link to a story about the Brewers signing Royce Clayton to play shortstop. That's a pretty big fall for the Brewers to go from an all-star to Clayton at short. Clayton has a .311 lifetime OBA. His 386 walks in 12 seasons is equal to about 2 1/2 seasons for Barry Bonds. He has no power. And I haven't heard to many comparisons to Ozzie Smith with the glove. Hernandez had 19 win shares last year, Clayton 8, so that's another 4 games in the loss column the Brewers are behind.

Allen Barra of the Wall Street Journal takes a lot at what was wrong about the way Roone Arledge broadcast sports.

I, for one, am tired of the up-close-and-personals. Back in 1972 when I first remember seeing them at the summer Olympics, they were a nice touch. But in 1972, you actually got to see the events. Now, they seem to spend more time on the behind the scenes pieces than on the events themselves. Once every four years, I like to watch archery! More sports, less fluff, please.

There's an article on ESPN.com today that Pete Rose and Selig appear to be negotiating reinstatement of the all-time hit leader.

Only Baseball Matters had a lot about Pete Rose earlier this winter. Start here and keep reading. The inclusion of the David Levens piece here is the best part of the series.

I don't like Pete Rose. I never liked him as a player, and as I learned more about him as a person, I liked him even less. He wasn't someone who hustled; he was someone who was obnoxious about hustling. He was a singles hitter who could have walked more. Rickey Henderson without the speed or the power. One of my college roommates hated Pete Rose. We once got him a dart set and a Pete Rose poster for his birthday. When I joined a strat-o-matic league in the 1980's, I knew I had found my home when they burned Pete Rose's card before the draft.

With my prejudices in mind, I don't think Rose should be reinstated. Bill James makes a great case that the Dowd report proves nothing, and I will not argue with James' conclusion on that. However, as David Levens piece points out, the Dowd report was probably trying to save a lot of people from embarassment. I think if we all knew what Rose was really like, he wouldn't get those standing ovations, and there wouldn't be much support for his induction into the Hall of Fame.

Olerud in Seattle and Thomas in Chicago. With all the lousy offensive first basemen out there, you think these two would have drawn some interest. Granted, Olerud did not want to leave Seattle, so maybe a lot of money didn't matter to him. But I can't believe no one wanted to take a chance on a bat like Thomas' making a comeback. If it weren't for the Phillies, Mets and Giants, you'd think collusion was going on.

And I haven't kept up with things. Only Baseball Matters has the low-down on the Giants moves this weekend. If it turns out that the Giants replaced Bell/Lofton with Durham/Grissom, the offense should stay about the same, and they may just suffer some defense at third. (Kent to third, Durham to 2nd? Or does Durham play the outfield if Kent stays?)

Aaron Gleeman has a good run-down of the Hall of Fame candidates for this year at Aaron's Baseball Blog.

Tom should like Shea, a real pitcher's paradise. I would expect he'll have success there. Three years may be too long for a 36 year-old pitcher, but he's a lefty who can get out righties, so I think he'll be around for a while (ala Tommy John). As long as he has a good defense behind him, he'll be okay.

MSNBC reports that the Reds are denying they are trading Griffey for Nevin.

One of the great things about signing Griffey for a discount is that it makes him much more tradeable. If there is a team that believes they can motivate Jr. to play, he'd be worth the $12 million a year.

The NY Times is speculating that Clemens will also take a pay cut to stay in NY, ala Robin Ventura.

In bargaining a new labor deal, the owners wanted to put a stop sign in front of George Steinbrenner, while the union wanted a caution light. It looks like the owners got their stop sign.

The Orioles have hired Jim Beattie and Mike Flanagan to be co-GM's.

I don't know how all this will work. I hear Flanagan is very smart, and Beattie was with the Mariners when they developed the core of the mid-'90s team. The Yankees actually work this way, where Cashman is the GM in title, but there actually are a number of people who have input into decisions.

Birds in the Belfry aren't too thrilled with the arrangement.

There is an editorial at Baseball Truth about the demise of the STATS Major League Handbook. I'm as disappointed as anyone that this and other books will no longer be published. However, I think there are some inaccuraccies in the editorial, and since the title of the site seems to be devoted to truth, I thought I should set the record straight.

The reason: money, pure and simple. FOX Sports, yes, THAT FOX, which bought out STATS Inc. a year ago, has decided it makes more financial sense to join with The Sporting News to put out one annual, well, two -- the Register and the Guide.

The sale of STATS was in January of 2000, nearly three years ago. The original sale was to a subsidiary of Fox. That subsidiary went under, and STATS was the only entity of that group that survived, and was placed under the control of Fox Sports.

The first indication of trouble came last year when the Bill James name was removed from the Handbook after 12 years. Many others, such as founders John and Sue Dewan and Don Zminda, also jumped (or were pushed) off the sinking ship. Last year, FOX put out the first few books -- the Handbook, the Profiles book of player breakdowns and the two Scouting Notebooks -- but did not publish the Scoreboard, a decade-old collection of analytical studies.

Don Zminda is still on the ship. When the deal was finalized in 2000, Fox decided that STATS should be it's research department. Don Zminda became the head of that department, not because they were killing the publishing arm, but because Don was the best man for the job. Secondly, STATS did put out one new book, Win Shares, by Bill James, so there was still a relationship there.

Withholding information was Elias' hallmark during the Eighties and the thing James and others like him fought. STATS Inc. was founded on the notion of making it available.

But when you look at the STATS Inc. Web site, it's depressing. There is no online database. Some stats it published, such as catcher ERA, will jump to the Sporting News books, but a vast amount is being taken private. STATS Inc., as far as the public is concerned, and as far as their Web site lets on, has become just a glorified fantasy-league operator.

Nothing has changed here. STATS has always sold it's data, not given it away. The difference between STATS and Elias is that STATS was willing to sell data to anyone at a relatively low price. The STATS web site does have a lot of statistical data, but you have to sign up and pay for it. STATS also supplies information to ESPN, BaseballDirect (see links on the right side) and others.

Also, there is a premium service called STATSPass. It allows you to build queries of the STATS database. However, I don't know if justanyone can sign up for it; it may just be for media clients.

The MLB Handbook was the Strat-o-Matic book of choice. It will be missed. But if you are going to call your page BaseballTruth, check your facts better.

In case you missed it, Rob Neyer has an interview with Bill James and John Dewan about the demise of the Handbook.

Dan Lewis has a link to a NY Times OpEd on the new Mets Ticket pricing strategy.

Josh Schulz is writing Go Cardinals. He has a nice post there right now on the Cardinals needs.

How often do you see an established veteran take a pay cut to stay with a team? According to this SportsTicker report, that's what Robin Ventura is going to do. I remember a decade ago free agents were taking less money to not play in NY.

A blog about the Cubs. If anyone knows of other team specific blogs, please let me know so I can link to them.

It's not a done deal, but ESPN has the story here, with a good sidebar by Rob Neyer. The way I see the deal, it was time these players moved from starters to backups, and it was easier for another team to demote them.

Update: I found this piece by Teddy Greenstein that seems to confirm the likely backup status of Karros and Grudz.

As eager as the Cubs were to rid themselves of Hundley, the Dodgers were equally determined to move Karros and Grudzielanek. Although Grudzielanek, 32, is a career .282 hitter with decent pop for a middle infielder, his on-base percentage has fallen from respectable (.376 in 1999) to disappointing (.335 in 2000) to awful (.301 last season).

Although he's subpar defensively, the Cubs say they plan to use Grudzielanek to back up Bobby Hill at second base and Alex Gonzalez at shortstop.

So Grudzielanek becomes the utility infielder. As for Karros:

Karros, 35, has at least one thing going for him: He hit .317 against lefties last season.

Plus the Cubs have been looking for a right-handed-hitting first baseman to complement rookie Hee Seop Choi.

So Karros will be the right-handed platoon player at first base. That means he'll get about 20% of the AB there.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has linked to my blog! Instapundit is my favorite blog; it's updated constantly and I check it out whenever I have a spare moment. It's about politics and the law, not baseball, but worth the read. Check it out.

Dr. Manhattan of www.blissfulknowledge.com and I exchanged e-mails today on the Hall of Fame ballot, and it got me thinking about first ballot inductees. Seems to me it used to be really special to get in on the first ballot, and now it happens all the time. So I decide to check it out.

After the original 5 were inducted in 1936, no first ballot HOF'er was elected until 1962, when Bob Feller and Jackie Robinson went in together. The sixties was a tough decade for players being elected by the sports writers; only 6 were elected over all, but four of those were first timers, (Williams and Musial being the other two). The 1970's had 13 players elected by the sports writers, five on the first ballot (Koufax, Spahn, Mantle, Banks and Mays). I think part of this is that sports writers were catching up on all the players they should have elected in the 1960's; so deserving players had to wait. It was considered bad form to elect none but the greatest on the first ballot.

By the 80's, however, the backlog had been cleared, and more first ballot players were elected (10 of 18). The percentage went up again in the 1990's, as 10 of the 15 players elected got in on the first ballot. And so far in this decade, 3 of 5 have made it on the first ballot. What's happening now is that almost every year there is someone who is an obvious Hall of Famer. Rather than making them wait, like back in the 1970's, the competition is so thin that writers really have no choice but to vote for a player. And likewise, if you didn't vote for a player on the first ballot, what is going to change your mind about voting for him later. So players like Jim Kaat and Jim Rice never get over the hump (that last statement does not constitute an endorsement of either for the hall). About the only time a player has to wait is when you have a large number of great players in the same class; in 1999 you had Brett, Yount and Ryan make it while Fisk had to wait a year.

As time goes on, I believe the percentage of first time ballot elections will continue to rise until we have about 90% of players being elected on their first try.

Oakland and the White Sox trade closers in a six player deal. We shouldn't be surprised by this deal. Beane doesn't believe in spending too much on a closer:

Koch's success -- opponents are hitting .204 against him and he has struck out an average of more than one per inning -- plus his durability have prompted Beane to do something he rarely does: initiate long-term contract talks with the closer.

The A's normally aren't willing to spend much of their limited payroll on a specialty item like a closer. In fact, even though the front office thought Jason Isringhausen was the most interested in staying among a key group of free agents that included Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon last winter, the team found him too costly. Koch could be different.

I guess not.

Beane seems to have the Dick Wolf philosophy with closers. Wolf, the creator of the various Law and Order series believes in the stories, not the stars. If someone asks for a raise that Wolf considers too big, he replaces the actor with someone cheaper. And the show doesn't suffer because the stories are still very good, and competent actors don't hurt a good story. Beane appears to believe that any competent closer can save most of the games you put him into, so why spend a lot on the position?

As a Philadelphia resident, Jayson Stark likes the Phillies with Thome. I didn't realize until I read this column that Polanco was going to move to second base. That should add a couple of wins to the Phillies, so now their pitchers only have to pick up 6 wins. Third base, however, is Polanco's best position, so we'll see how good this move really is; I don't know if I'd go so far as saying that the Phillies will have the best defensive infield in the NL. Stark is right, however, in noting that there are going to be a lot more people interested in seeing the Phillies than there have been in the last few years.

Update: Phillies have announced a press conference for 4:30 PM EST. You can hear it here.

How much of an impact does an impact player make. I remember Dan Patrick, at the end of the 1990 season, attributing all of the Tigers 20 game turnaround to Cecil Fielder. This, of course, ignored the contributions of Tony Phillips, and the fact that the Tigers pitching staff had given up 60 fewer runs. So what was the impact of Fielder? Six, maybe seven games.

And that's what the Phillies have bought themselves in Thome. Travis Lee posted 13 win shares in 2002; Thome 34. That's a difference of 21 win shares, or about 7 games. It's significant. But does it make them a playoff team? They go from 80 to 87 wins, still 8 wins short of a wild card in 2002. Bell makes no difference for them at third; Palanco put up 7 win shares in 53 games for the Phillies, or about 20 over a full season. Bell had 19 (his highest ever) for SF last year. So third base is a wash. Tom Glavine is unlikely to supply them with the other 8 games. The chances of the Phillies making the playoffs have gone up, but they are going to need knock about a quarter run off their team ERA to have a real shot.

Of course, now they have a major star under contract for when the new stadium opens in 2004.

At least, that's what Bob Brookover is reporting. It won't be official until tomorrow. I guess this means Travis Lee is out of a job. Now there's a guy who wasted his talent. I'll try to have more on what all this means to the Phillies later tonight.

I started watching baseball in 1969, the year the Orioles started their Braves-like domination of baseball. Their rotation of Palmer, Cuellar, McNally and Dobson each posted 20 wins in 1971. More importantly, McNally was a freedom fighter:

McNally, who won 20 or more games in four straight seasons from 1968 to 1971, quit baseball in June 1975 after starting the season 3-6 with the Montreal Expos. Even though he said he was retired, the Expos offered him $125,000 to sign a contract.

He refused and joined Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers in a grievance filed by the Major League Baseball Players Association, claiming the teams couldn't renew their contracts in perpetuity.

Arbitrator Peter Seitz agreed with them, issuing the decision on Dec. 23, 1975, that overturned baseball's century-old reserve clause. Owners and the union then negotiated a labor deal under which players could become free agents after they had played in the major leagues for six seasons.

There are reports that Jim Thome will make up his mind today whether he'll be an Indian or a Phillie for the forseeable future. I don't quite understand why there has been so little interest in him. As I've talked about before (here and here), there are a lot of poor hitting first basemen out there. Maybe teams think they have cheaper alternatives (which they should), but as far as I can tell, they don't take advantage of them. This lack of interest is another sign that teams are still in tight control of their purses, and that revenue sharing is not going to improving teams, but into the pockets of the owners.

Just in case you think all ballplayers are jerks, check out this story about Harmon Killebrew.

Phil Rogers of ESPN.com writes about how Pudge Rodriguez has become an afterthought in the thinking of Texas management:

Ivan Rodriguez's impending free agency evoked a widespread passion back in 1997. But now that Rodriguez has finally reached the marketplace, after three consecutive last-place seasons, the deification of Alex Rodriguez and the rise of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and NHL's Dallas Stars, he twists in the wind as little more than an awkward public spectacle.

I think part of this has come from the realization that despite shutting down the opponent's running game, pitchers don't do that well throwning to Ivan.

Scouts and even some teammates have long whispered that Rodriguez is too preoccupied to bring out the best in the pitchers he catches. But he didn't seem to handicap a constantly changing pitching staff in 1996-99. The Rangers won three AL West titles with John Burkett as the only pitcher on hand for every playoff run.

Yes, but those weren't exactly great pitching teams.

Rodriguez, who had knee surgery in 2001 and was sidelined with a herniated disc early in 2002, is especially sensitive about concerns that he's headed toward a short career. Some believe he's worn himself thin by starting an average of 135 games a year from 1991-99.

Since when is 12 seasons for a catcher a short career? It seems short because he came up when he was 19, and he's only 31 now.

Maybe the right thing to do with Rodriguez, given his recent injury history and his reputation for not handling pitchers, is to move him to another position. ESPN did a piece a few years ago on I-Rod's quick feet, and how that would let him adapt easily to 2nd base. With his strong arm, the quick feet would work well at third as well. And of course, his bat fits in anywhere. I-Rod strikes me as a Felipe Alou type players, and the Giants need a third baseman, and they may need a 2nd baseman by the time the off season is over. Why not take the money saved on Kent and Bell, and give it Ivan to learn a new position?

John McGrath of KnoxNews.com doesn't like this idea:

Opening Day is a distinctly American ritual that celebrates the concept that all teams are created equal - well, in the standings, anyway. Opening Day is when the celebrities in the stands might be a mayor or congressman, not some yawning star of a Fox Network sitcom.

I tend to agree with this. It was nice once to have opening day in Japan. But I've always thought of opening day as a national holiday. McGrath is on the right track here.

This article on ESPN.com has Omar Minaya denying it. I can't find the original NY Post article on-line.

All-in-all, I think it's a bad trade for the Yankees. If they want to do the Colorado trade, they would be short outfielders, and wouldn't want to trade Juan Rivera. And of course, I like Nick Johnson a lot. I think it would be a much better deal for the Yankees if they got rid of White and Mondesi and let Rivera play right and teach Nick Johnson to play left.

Just wanted to wish all my readers a very Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your time with your family and friends.

Bronx Banter has musings mostly on the New York teams, but also on baseball in general. Check it out.

The previous post (scroll down) prompted this question from Shawn Bernard:

So what's your definition of 'great'? Is it subjective, or do you have some statistical definition for it? ;) It would be interesting to see a list of all the teams with the numbers (and names) of all the great players per team.

When I wrote the comment below, I was taking a top of the head measure of greatness, with out giving it much thought. However, to answer Shawn's question, I thought I'd look at teams with players with 20 win shares. Players are listed with their current team, which means for free agents who haven't signed, their 2002 team. Here's the list:

Red Sox                 6

 Manny Ramirez           29.0

 Nomar Garciaparra       27.0

 Cliff Floyd             22.0

 Derek Lowe              22.0

 Pedro Martinez          21.0

 Johnny Damon            21.0

Yankees                 6

 Jason Giambi            34.0

 Bernie Williams         30.0

 Alfonso Soriano         30.0

 Derek Jeter             24.0

 Jorge Posada            22.0

 Robin Ventura           20.0

Diamondbacks            6

 Randy Johnson           29.0

 Luis Gonzalez           26.0

 Curt Schilling          24.0

 Steve Finley            23.0

 Junior Spivey           23.0

 Byung-Hyun Kim          20.0

Athletics               5

 Miguel Tejada           32.0

 Eric Chavez             25.0

 Barry Zito              25.0

 Tim Hudson              23.0

 Ray Durham              20.0

Angels                  4

 Garret Anderson         24.0

 Tim Salmon              22.0

 Troy Glaus              22.0

 David Eckstein          20.0

Mariners                4

 John Olerud             27.0

 Bret Boone              25.0

 Ichiro Suzuki           25.0

 Randy Winn              23.0

Braves                  4

 Chipper Jones           31.0

 Andruw Jones            28.0

 Gary Sheffield          26.0

 Rafael Furcal           20.0

Cardinals               4

 Albert Pujols           32.0

 Jim Edmonds             29.0

 Scott Rolen             28.0

 Edgar Renteria          26.0

Indians                 3

 Jim Thome               34.0

 Ellis Burks             21.0

 Omar Vizquel            21.0

Blue Jays               3

 Carlos Delgado          26.0

 Eric Hinske             22.0

 Roy Halladay            21.0

Astros                  3

 Lance Berkman           30.0

 Jeff Bagwell            22.0

 Roy Oswalt              20.0

Expos                   3

 Vladimir Guerrero       29.0

 Jose Vidro              29.0

 Bartolo Colon           22.0

Twins                   2

 Jacque Jones            25.0

 Torii Hunter            21.0

Reds                    2

 Todd Walker             21.0

 Adam Dunn               21.0

Phillies                2

 Bobby Abreu             29.0

 Pat Burrell             25.0

Padres                  2

 Ryan Klesko             31.0

 Mark Kotsay             22.0

Giants                  2

 Barry Bonds             49.0

 Jeff Kent               29.0

Rockies                 2

 Todd Helton             27.0

 Larry Walker            26.0

Marlins                 2

 Derrek Lee              23.0

 Mike Lowell             21.0

White Sox               1

 Magglio Ordonez         26.0

Royals                  1

 Carlos Beltran          21.0

Brewers                 1

 Richie Sexson           22.0

Rangers                 1

 Alex Rodriguez          35.0

Cubs                    1

 Sammy Sosa              27.0

Dodgers                 1

 Shawn Green             30.0

Mets                    1

 Edgardo Alfonzo         25.0

Pirates                 1

 Brian Giles             32.0

The Red Sox are tied for first if they don't lose anyone, although the Yankees top 6 is probably deeper. Still, not to shabby for young Theo Epstein to start with. By the way, the Sox don't exactly have a young team. Of the regulars, only Nixon and Hillenbrand are younger than Epstein.

After having breakfast this morning, I came upstairs and my wife said, "I heard something on the radio that the Sox had hired a new GM, and he's 12 years old!" All reports look like the Red Sox will choose Theo Epstein as their GM today. Bambino's Curse has one Sox fan's perspective, and it seems to be a positive one.

Epstein is an Ivy leaguer in the Alderson/Beane mold of a GM. It will take some time to rebuild the farm system, but the Sox have four great players (Martinez, Lowe, Garciappara and Ramirez), which gives Epstein a chance to work magic by finding the right pieces to fill in around them. The Sox management team appears to approach the game correctly. There's no reason, given the popularity of the Red Sox and the revenue they generate that the Sox can't build a consistent winner over the next few years. And if you have a good base, it's only a matter of time until all the lucky breaks come your way and the World Series throphy comes home.

Peter Gammons has a list of 25 things wrong with baseball. Well worth reading. Here are my comments on the 25 items:

1. No brainer agree.


2. Aboslutely agree.


3. I think they work with someone like Cal Ripken, who you want to keep forever. But those players are rare.


4. I'd say the same apply to NL teams. Unless it's the pitcher batting, don't bunt.


5. 100% Agreement. I've never understood the roster expansion.


6. Same as #5.


7. This is something wrong with a few players, not baseball.


8. Regular readers know how I feel about the Expos and Bud Selig.


9. Reminds me of an old Bill James essay, where he shows that only triples have less relevance to winning than SB.


10. Goes without saying.


11. I'm not passionate about this. I think the occasional tie adds a little bit of fun.


12. The season is long enough. If you want to go to seven games division series, then shorten the regular season with 7 double headers during the year.


13. I think that baseball has the least prejudice against short players, so I don't think this is a big problem.


14. Yes.


15. Agree.


16. The problem with this is that so many outfielders move around, it's hard to peg them.


17. I didn't know they didn't take infield practice every day!


18. One thing at a time. If MLB wants to get rid of arbitration, then they will have to free players sooner.


19. Agree, although this could be fixed by not awarding first base to players hit leaning over the strike zone.


20. Love the quote here from the GM. Some of us figured that out in the 1980's!


21. I think this depends, but in general I agree.


22. K per 9 is the best measure, but my guess is that K per 9 is pretty well linked to how hard you throw. Speed on the gun is a good first measure, but it shouldn't eliminate someone who has a good K per 9 anyway.


23. If you read the rule book, you find that uniform rules are not worth the paper they are written on.


24. This is an interesting idea. But if teams are willing to walk Bonds with the bases loaded, I don't think it will make that much difference. Why not just go all the way and eliminate the IBB?


25. Yes!

David Bell has signed a four year, $17 million dollar deal with the Phillies. Bell's a decent player. He put up 19 win shares last year for the Giants, the third best among position players on the Giants. He's no Rolen (28 win shares between the Phillies and Cardinals in 2002), but the Phillies are getting four years for the price of one. However, it should be noted that 19 is Bell's career high in win shares, and he is 30. Still, the Phillies have filled an important hole for them without breaking the bank.

Still no SF angle on this deal yet. If they lose Kent also, Alou will be taking over a team that has lost 2 of it's 3 best position players. This may turn out to be a tougher job than Felipe thought it was going to be.

I attended a conference on blogs yesterday at the Yale Law School. A newly renovated building, it's simply beautiful (as a Harvard man, it pains me to write that, especially on the day of THE GAME). Some images from the conference can be seen here. In the first picture, I'm at the far left in the blue jeans. I'm in the same spot in a few other pictures. If you go to the main LawMeme blog, you can read about the conference, and find links to other bloggers who were there.

It was very enjoyable. I got to meet Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com and a number of other bloggers, all very nice people. The main idea I took away from the conference is that blogging may not be the way to make money on the internet, but it is the way to promote yourself and your ideas. If you are not involved in the blog conversation, I would greatly encourage you to start!

In what has to be one of the strangest deals I've ever seen proposed, the Yankees, Mets and Rockies are working a deal that would bring Neagle to the Mets, Mondesi, White and Burnitz or Ordonez to the Rockies and reduce the Yankees payroll so they can acquire Hideki Matsui. As part of the deal, the Yankees would also pay 3.3 million of Neagle's salary! This trade is based on unnamed sources, so be sure to take it with a grain of salt until the deal is actually done.

Felipe, that is. John Perricone has a long article about Alou over at Only Baseball Matters. I found these paragraphs interesting:

I don't know what type of manger he was, in terms of strategy or philosophy or whatever. I'd say that the way the Expos were run during his tenure would suggest that maybe no one does. How could you? How could you know that he is a swing away manager? His son Moises is one of the top OBP guys in the league, so was Larry Walker. Vidro is pretty good at getting on base. Guerrero doesn't walk a lot, but he's a hacker, and he can hit anything. Most of the players who you could categorize as free swingers are also exceedingly young, some as young as 21 or 22. Aren't most young players free swingers? In 1994, when he had a few guys with some experience, his starters did OK in OBP, and his first four guys off the bench all clocked in above .350. In 1993, his guys did even better than that. He had Deshields at .389, Walker at .371, Alou at .340, Grissom at .351, Berry at .348, Vanderwal off the bench at .372.

Looking at the team's statistics, it appears (to me, at least), that it was only after the team started watching all of the experienced, top-level talent leave that the hitters devolved into free swingers, and that's why he started to develop a reputation as a manager who ignored the benefits of a high on base approach.

Alou didn't develop Walker and Moises. He did develop Guerrero, and Vlad's walks went up significantly (from 60 to 84) under a manager whose approach was be selective. If you take Alou from 1995 through 2000, the time period where he was developing young players, the Expos were last in the majors in walks! (Not counting the 1998 expansion teams.)

I don't think Alou is going to screw up any veterans, but he's not the man I'd want teaching the importance of getting to my players.

The AP reports (via ESPN.com) that Richard Hidalgo was shot during a carjacking in Venezuela. It doesn't appear to be too serious according to this report.

Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the Houston Chronicle has more, including what ballplayers think of the political situation in Venezuela. It appears that many of them are afraid to return home while Chavez holds power:

Because of the political turmoil in Venezuela, many Venezuelan players have remained in the United States this offseason.

The political climate and crime rates have worsened over the last year as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez fights to maintain power. Some players were pleased when Chavez was temporarily overthrown in April by an interim government led by Pedro Carmona.

But Chavez regained power less than 48 hours after the coup.

Carmona was president of the chemical company Venoco, which owns the land where the Astros have their highly regarded baseball academy.

Many major-league clubs, including the Astros, had serious doubts about sending their prospects to the Venezuelan Winter League. Hidalgo and lefthander Carlos Hernandez were not participating in winter ball, but Hidalgo's incident highlights the concerns Venezuelan players have about returning to their country while Chavez remains in power.

Check out El Sur, a blog about South America with many posts about Venezuela.

Roger has his World Series wrap-up in this week's New Yorker Magazine. Unfortunately, it's not online. However, it's worth the trip to the library for the read. I especially like his take on Bonds' mental toughness, his comparison of Bonds, Soriano and Eckstein, his comparison of the way Eckstein approaches a plate apperance to Paul O'Neill, and how this group of Yankees have lost that approach and finally, the holy redemption of Mickey Hatcher.

I've subscribed to the New Yorker for about 16 years now. In most of that time, I've only read a handful of Roger Angell stories. It seems I read the first page and get bored. But lately, he's been much better, on the level of his early books. I wonder if he has a new editor at the New Yorker? His last few articles have been much higher quality, and it's nice to see.

Reader James Townsend send this link to an online baseball magazine, The Diamond Angle. Lots of articles, photos and interviews. Check it out.

The Montreal Expos will play 22 games (two home stands) in San Juan, PR this year.

Expos president Tony Tavares said that with the guaranteed income from the games in San Juan, his team will not have to conduct a "fire sale'' of players such as Vladimir Guerrero and Bartolo Colon. Still, he did not reveal the Expos' planned payroll.

Keeping those players is a good thing. Sometimes I get the feeling the league wants the Expos to fail so they can draft their players.

Tim Kurkjian has the wrap-up here. He points out something important about Charles Johnson:

The Wilson and Johnson contracts aren't good -- together they are owed $52 million -- and neither player is particularly good. But Johnson can handle a pitching staff and has good character, and Wilson should hit some home runs at Coors, and has developing character.

I don't go in much for character (Bill James once quipped that there are lots of people with good character, but only a few hundred that can play a major league brand of baseball), but I do go for catchers who can handle a pitching staff. The year the Rockies made the playoffs, they had Joe Girardi, and the pitching on that team was good. If Johnson can bring the Rockies road ERA down like Girardi did, he'll be a valuable pickup.

Yale Law School is holding a blog conference this Friday. You can see the details here. I will be attending, and if any of you are also planning on being there, let me know. It's free, you just have to register. Glenn Reynolds, the keynote speaker, writes Instapundit, my favorite blog.

This is the type of piece I love to read by Gammons, as opposed to his trade rumor articles. This gives you a clear idea of what is going on behind the scenes; how GM's are strapped for cash, and no one but the Phillies seem to be moving on free agents. Here's the irony for Cleveland fans:

Cleveland, meanwhile, can't get into the five-year, $75 million range on Jim Thome that the Phillies are willing to expend. The Indians this winter are paying into revenue sharing and the Phillies are getting $15 million, so Cleveland will be helping to pay for Thome's salary should he leave.

Gammons also names a number of players that teams are trying to move:

"Why wouldn't I be smart to wait?" asked one GM. "There are going to be several free agents that freefall into the first of the year. And look at all the players teams are begging to unload."

Here are a number of them:

Juan Gonzalez. Jay Powell. Todd Van Poppel. Carl Everett. David Segui. Marty Cordova. Scott Erickson. Brook Fordyce. John Burkett. Keith Foulke. Mark Wohlers. Dmitri Young. Matt Anderson. Damion Easley. Craig Paquette. Dean Palmer. Shane Halter. Bobby Higginson. Danny Patterson. Joe Randa. Timo Perez. Michael Tucker. Jeff Suppan. Rick Reed. Raul Mondesi. Rondell White. Sterling Hitchcock. Carlos Delgado. Jeff Cirillo. Greg Vaughn. Mo Vaughn. Ben Grieve. Todd Hundley. Hampton. Neagle. Walker. Richard Hidalgo. Eric Karros. Mark Grudzielanek. Jeffrey Hammonds. Eric Young. Burnitz. Ordonez. David Weathers. Roger Cedeno. Travis Lee. Jason Kendall. Kevin Young. Bubba Trammell. Livan Hernandez. J.T. Snow ...

The interesting thing about this list is that few of these players are any good. It used to be that when former players ran clubs, they'd see someone who was good once, and take a shot at them. That doesn't happen as much. Why?

What we are seeing is Bart Giamatti's vision of the future of baseball management. He hoped that a classical scholar who turned to the baseball business would encourage many bright and energetic university graduates to follow their hearts away from Wall Street to baseball, and that is precisely what is happening. Mariners GM Pat Gillick is considered a traditionalist, but as a 20-year-old graduate of USC was way ahead of his time, and a man whose brilliance has long been recognized. Sandy Alderson, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard Law, obviously has had a dramatic impact, with Beane and Blue Jays GM J. P. Ricciardi following his teachings, and now two future GMs under Beane in Harvardians Paul DePodesta and David Forst waiting in the wings. Shapiro is a graduate of Princeton, Jim Beattie of Dartmouth. Theo Epstein came out of Yale and got his law degree while working under Kevin Towers in San Diego. It now seems nothing for someone to go from any Ivy League or small, elite institution like Williams (Jim Duquette) or Amherst (Neil Huntington, Ben Cherrington) to go into baseball.

"The young circle of general managers like Beane, Shapiro, Brian Cashman, O'Dowd, Ricciardi, Towers and guys like that are very different," says agent Scott Boras. "Some of them are very bright, and very creative. I hate to admit it, but I think we agree more than we disagree on a lot of issues about which I have long felt very strongly." While discussing this very subject, one of the members of Boras' staff kidded him by saying, "we're not smarter than everyone anymore."

And that is good for the game. And so is a large number of free agents.

I've been keeping my eye on this, but it always seemed to fluid to get a real feel for. Now, it appears to be done.

Hampton was a failure in Colorado. That's not so surprising, since Coors is a tough place to pitch. What is surprising is Hampton's home-road record as a Rockie: 12-9 with a 5.73 ERA at home, but 9-19 with a 5.77 ERA on the road! If Hampton had been able to put up his previous road ERA of 4.08, he probably would have been the best pitcher in Rockies history.

This all makes me wonder if Coors teaches pitchers bad habits. It seems to me that you need to be too different pitchers when you're working for the Rockies. I've sometimes thought that the Rockies should have home-road platoons on the pitching staff, although they'd probably have to carry 15 pitchers to make that work.

I think Atlanta is taking a huge risk here. Hampton, before the move to Colorado, was greatly helped by his home fields (2.89 ERA at home pre-Colorado). I think I'd rather keep Glavine.

I'm very excited for Charles Johnson, however. He handles pitching staffs well, and he has a decent eye for the strike zone, although he's not that good a hitter. I suspect Coors will add to his power, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him start the All-star game next year.

And of course, the best part of the trade (from the above AP article):

Later, the former 22-game winner was traded by the Marlins to the Braves for reliever Tim Spooneybarger and an unnamed prospect, the Journal-Constitution reported.

When you get Tim Spooneybarger, does the other player really need a name? :-)

Bob Melvin has been hired to manage the Mariners. I'm disappointed once again that Willie Randolph didn't get a shot. But the Mariners seemed to have gone with a strategist this time:

Kidding aside, Melvin organized Arizona's spring training over the past two seasons, and he is credited as a major contributor to Brenly's success with the Diamondbacks.

''There's no doubt Bob Melvin has been a huge part of what's happened around here the past two years,'' Brenly said.

During his 10 seasons as a player, Melvin often posed questions to his managers as situations came up during games. It groomed him, if unwittingly, to be a manager himself.

Dave Campbell likes him, too:

Teams generally go with a different type of personality than the manager they had before. We haven't seen Melvin as a manager, but he has always been a low-key guy. Melvin is a solid, astute baseball man. He will command respect and get the players' attention, but he won't be nearly as fiery as Lou Piniella was.

I remember the 2001 postseason, seeing Melvin and Bob Brenly talking in the dugout, especially in one Division Series game against St. Louis and then again in Game 7 of the World Series. From a strategy standpoint, Melvin appeared to be the coolest guy on Earth while under fire.

I don't have much to go on here, but I'm very interested to see what his first lineup will look like.

Here's the AP story via ESPN.com:

But Baker is well aware of what he faces. Asked about baseball's lovable losers, he's said the manager who got the Cubs to win would be ''the mighty man of Chicago.''

And if anyone can get the Cubs winning on a regular basis, it could be Baker. He went 840-715 in 10 seasons with the Giants and over the final six seasons his teams averaged 91 victories.

I don't know about that last statement. As evidenced in the World Series, Baker isn't that great a strategist. So his contribution has to be motivational, and if you can't be motivated playing with Sammy Sosa in front of a packed house every day, I 'm not sure what Baker can do.

What could make Baker win is signing Jim Thome. The same article reports:

''We're very thrilled to have him,'' MacPhail said. ''His record speaks for itself. He's an enormously popular manager with his players. As result, the field of players that would like to play for the Cubs has increased with tonight's announcement by a large amount.''

In fact, the Cubs might now actively pursue Jim Thome, who hit 52 home runs for Cleveland last season. They've already acquired catcher Damian Miller from Arizona in a trade.

If the Cubs can sign Thome, Baker would have a Chicago version of Bonds/Kent. And if Thome comes to Chicago due to the signing of Baker, that a major positive for Dusty. However, the Cubs were not weak at first base last year, so it will be interesting to see what other parts Andy MacPhail and Jim Hendry bring in.

That's Felipe, as manager. A good choice given the Giants team makeup. Alou is a tough man who commands the respect of all his players. Those of you who remember the BBTN Online chats from last year know that I don't think he's as great a manager as people make him out to be. Despite having some talent, he was never able to accomplish what the Twins did last year, for example. I think with the loss of Kent, the Giants will have a hard time getting back to the playoffs next year. This is a team that will be good but not great, so it's a perfect opportunity for Alou to show that he can make a difference in the W-L record of his charges.

The AP article is on ESPN.com here.

I'm not surprised Tejada won the MVP, but I am surprised he won it by such a wide margin. I thought it would be fairly close between Tejada and A-Rod. Tejada is a very deserving candidate, and I'm not going to criticize the votes for him.

What I am going to criticize is that Rodriguez was almost beaten by Soriano. If you look at the complete voting, only twelve voters had A-Rod first or second; five had him worse than third. I can understand the argument for not voting A-Rod first (even though I don't agree with it), but I can't fathom any argument that he's not in the top two or three. And congrats to whoever voted for Soriano 10th. Anyone who had him above Giambi needs a good lesson in Sabremetrics.

Dan Lewis has added discussion/forum boards to his blog. Go check them out. And also check out a couple of posts on Cuba and baseball here and here.

Barry Bonds has won his 5th NL MVP award, extending his record for MVP's. He won unanimously, the 14th player to do so. The results of the voting can be seen here.

He's had an amazing career. If he were a nice guy, they'd probably rename the NL MVP after him when he retired. Even Reggie Jackson thinks Bonds is good:

"The guy to me, Bonds, has been the most dominant from what I've seen in 35 years of watching major league baseball," said Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, the AL MVP in 1973. "I haven't seen anybody do what Bonds has done the last two years."

Dave Van Dyck has a roundup of the GM meetings. Given that the Expos don't have a budget, you wonder if Minaya is still happy about staying with the Expos.

Billy Beane is staying with the Oakland A's.

''As corny as it sounds, Billy just took a good, hard look inside,'' said A's spokesman Jim Young. ''He decided that, even with a very attractive offer on the table, his heart really belonged in Oakland.''

The development rocked the Sox' search for a permanent GM, robbing team officials of their last hope of landing their top candidate and leaving them with a list of fallback contenders more than six weeks into the process.

''We did, in fact, have a deal with him,'' said a Sox official close to the talks, ''but personal matters ended up overwhelming the deal.''

So in 24 hours, the Red Sox go from being a sabremetrician's dream team to looking like something is seriously wrong. I think this story is being spun to keep from embarrassing the Red Sox too much. Why is it that the Red Sox are having such a hard time hiring a GM? I mean, Omar Minaya would rather stay with the Expos than build a famous franchise into a winner. Beane's worried about his daughter? Great, but I have to imagine that any GM jobs keeps you from your family, no matter where you live. And if you are making $2 million a year, you can fly her out to Boston to spend the summer with you (it's not like there's nothing to do in Boston). No, I'm afraid there is something deeper going on here. Someone in the Red Sox organization is turning off potential GM candidates.

Zito, that is. Barry wins the 2002 Cy Young Award. It was decently close, as Zito beat out Pedro Martinez 114 to 96, and nearly universal support for Derek Lowe being third. No one put Lowe first instead of Martinez, but I wonder how many voters put Pedro third and Lowe 2nd? If Pedro had been ahead of Lowe on all ballots I believe he would have won the award.

NL and AL Cy Young awards each agree with win share totals. It will be interesting to see how the MVP voting goes.

Dusty Baker is leaving the Giants:

At 53, Baker just completed his 10th year with the Giants. He led San Francisco to its first World Series since 1989 before losing in seven games to the Anaheim Angels.

But Baker apparently felt slighted because Magowan always pointed out everybody else's contributions when asked what he thought of Baker's role in the team's success.

Baker also became angry when Magowan said in spring training that this was the best team the Giants had fielded in his 10 years of ownership. Baker thought that put too much pressure on the players.

Well, I guess Dusty won't be managing the Yankees anytime soon. :-) Only Baseball Matters thinks Dusty will stay.

Rob Neyer, a former assistant to Bill James has the story. This is probably going to work a lot better than Duquette's attempt, because John Henry is going to have everyone on the same page:

However, the Red Sox have yet to hire a new general manager. Of the serious candidates mentioned to this point, none are particularly known for their statistical acumen. That said, it's unlikely the Red Sox will hire a new GM who's not at least somewhat amenable to the sort of work that Bill James does.

As Lucchino said, "We've got a list of 10 or 12 attributes that guide us in our search for a general manager, and one of the ones near the top of the list -- in fact, I keep this on my desk to remind me -- reads: "Acceptance of, at least openness to, more modern quantitative analysis of player evaluation and performance, and equal comfort with more traditional observational approaches."

So you've got the assistant general manager (Theo Epstein), the President and CEO (Lucchino), the owner (Henry), and presumably the general manager ... all of them aboard the Sabermetric Express.

And now they've got Bill James. The Red Sox' top executives believe in sabermetrics, they've got one of the biggest budgets in the game, and they've got the man who, though he didn't invent sabermetrics (aside from the word itself, which he did invent), did create a generation of sabermetricians.

I'm very happy for Bill. I've had the pleasure to sitting across from him and watching his mind work. He's an intuitive mathematician, and his intuition is astounding. If Bill can help put the Red Sox over the top, it will be a banner day for Sabremetrics.

Randy Johnson has won the Cy Young Award unanimously. After Schilling fell apart in September, the Big Unit became the obvious choice. What surprises me is that Schilling got nearly all the 2nd place votes. Greg Maddux had as many win shares as Schilling, but doesn't get a mention. Nice to see Colon, who had more win shares than both, got a vote.

Correction: Michael Longfield points out that I looked at the wrong list of win share leaders here. I looked at the short form results, instead of the long form results. Given this, Schilling more than deserved the 2nd place vote. Sorry for the mistake.

I was busy yesterday and missed the announcement. However, this year there didn't seem to be a lot of buzz about the choices. I'll take a closer look at ROY and CY later tonight, as part of election coverage. :-)

By the way, being election day, I took the "which founding father are you" quiz. Here's the result:

Massachusetts high schools are going back to using wooden bats:

Except for the pros and a sparse number of amateur leagues, they just aren't used anymore. Aluminum bats are lighter, easier to hit and don't break. But has the technology gone too far, sacrificing safety for performance?

Members of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) think that it has.

Baseballs are hit so hard with aluminum bats they threaten the safety of players in the field, says the MIAA Baseball Committee which voted Thursday in favor of requiring wooden bats in the 2003 tournament, the first step toward instituting a rule that could ban aluminum bats in all high school games beginning next season.

There are some people who feel the aluminum bat has led to the explosion of offense in the 1990's. The speculation is that the aluminum bat lets the hitter easily connect on the inside pitch, a pitch that is difficult to hit with an aluminum bat. So the college pitchers never learn to pitch inside effectively. I don't know how true this is, but it's interesting speculation.

I've been a fan of Willie Randolph's for a long time. I'm glad to see the Mariners liked what he said in his interview:

The Mariners talked to Randolph and Perlozzo on Day 4 of their search.

"Willie comes from an organization that's had a winning background,'' Gillick said. "He basically wants to win and he knows how to win. He's got some good ideas on how to carry that forward.''

However, I'd love to hear what those ideas are. Otherwise, it just might be a GM saying nice things about a candidate.

Hideki Matsui is heading for the US major leagues. It appears that he's the Barry Bonds of Japan (in the good sense):

Matsui, nicknamed Godzilla, just missed winning the triple crown this season. Along with a Central League-leading 50 homers and 107 RBIs, the left-handed hitting Matsui posted a .334 batting average, second only to Kosuke Fukudome of the Chunichi Dragons, who had a .343 average.

Also Friday, Matsui was named the Central League's MVP, picking up the honour a third time.

Unlike Ichiro and Shinjo, Matsui would be expected to be a power hitter in the US. The reaction to his leaving is mixed; the Yomiuri Giants wanted to keep him, but the prime minister is looking forward to seeing him play in the majors.

I think Japanese baseball is now facing a very big challenge or opportunity, depending on how you look at it. Like the Negro Leagues in the late 1940's, the Japanese leagues face a syphoning off of their best players, reducing the quality of their play. But unlike the Negro Leagues, Japan has the resources to fight back; they can make their teams more multinational. It's rumored that American ballplayers in Japan are limited so that Japanese records are not broken. It's time to stop this, and for Japan to make every effort to put together teams that are competitive with ML teams. That may mean signing American and Latin players; it might mean going after the best Korean, Chinese and Austrailian players. By doing this, they will improve their level of play, and give a good reason for their home grown stars to stay. It could even lead to a real World Series, where the North American champion plays the Asian champion. Japanese baseball is at the cross roads; let's see which way they turn.

I made a mistake in this post. Macha was not a catcher, but a third baseman. For some reason, I must have just seen his catching career, and not the rest of his fielding career. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm somewhat encouraged by the potential number of free agents this year. One great way for clubs to keep costs down is to have a large supply of players to choose from. There are already over 100 players who have filed, and up to 180 can file this year. And there does appear to be some competition at positions. Just as an example, you have Thome and Olerud at first. Each would improve any number of ML teams. Then you have the "declining but still good" veteran pitchers, including Clemens, Glavine and Maddux. How many of these players remain with their former teams will certainly make a difference, but because there is more than just Bonds and Giambi out there, you might see teams making very good deals for players this winter.

Bruce Allen keeps tabs on what the Boston sports media is writing and talking about. Great if you are a Red Sox, Bruins, Patriots or Celtics fan.

A trend seems to be developing here. Ken Macha is going to manage the A's, and Ned Yost is going to manage the Brewers. Both were catchers with brief major league careers.

Chuck Rosicam has an article at Baseball Library about the large number of managers who are or have been catchers. However, the trend lately has been to hire successful major league catchers. The recent hirings of Macha, Wedge and now Yost seem to be going toward the old trend of career minor league catchers as managers (where's Crash Davis). Again, I'm going to have to do some research on this.

Correction: Ken Macha was not a catcher, but a third baseman. He caught four games in his career, and for some reason, when I looked him up, that's all I saw. Sorry for the confusion.

I'll have to look this up, but I remember when I was younger that Wedge types were prevelent as mangers (minor league catchers with little major league experience). This may turn out to be a very good choice.

The Indians, who began rebuilding midway through last season by trading away some high-priced veterans, had 19 rookies on their roster by the end of the season.

Wedge managed many of them in Buffalo on their way to joining the Indians.

In two seasons, Wedge led the Bisons to a 178-108 record and he was named The Sporting News' minor league manager of the year this past season.

Bill James has pointed out that minor league success often leads to major league success. If this holds true, the Indians could be poised for a quick resurgence, similar to the gains made by the Twins over the last two years. If anyone from Buffalo has watched Wedge manage, I'd be interested in hearing about his tactics.

Last night I really questioned Dusty Baker's strategy of not having a reliever ready to replace Hernandez at the first sign of trouble (See this post and this post and this post). This morning, I was flipping through the channels and came across the 7th game of the 1965 World Series, LA at Minnesota. Jim Kaat is starting for the Twins. The announcers point out that in the first six games, all the winning pitchers recorded complete games. As Kaat is throwing to the first batter, Maury Wills, the TV cameras show that there are two pitchers warming up in the Twins bullpen! Somehow, the Twins knew in 1965 what Baker didn't know yesterday; that even a great starter can break down quickly, and you have to be prepared for it.

I want to be clear on this. I don't think it was a mistake to start Hernandez over Rueter. But I do think it was a huge mistake not the have Rueter ready to go the second Hernandez showed signs of not being right on. And that happened in the first inning. How Baker didn't have someone ready at a moment's notice is beyond me.

Glaus wins the MVP for the series. That makes this my favorite post of the year.

I wonder if Disney is going to display the WS throphy next to their Oscars? :-)

Lofton smacked one, but not deep enough. Erstad catches it for the first out.

In the end, Dusty Baker not being prepared for a Livan Hernandez melt down doomed them. The Angels pitched great, and the Giants bench did not have the firepower to overcome the relievers. Snow and Bell deserve a lot of credit in this series; they performed well above expectations. I don't think Bonds should get the MVP, mostly due to his play in the field yesterday. I'd vote for Glaus.

Still it was a great game, and I'm very happy the Angels won. New blood in the series is great. I feel a bit bad for Bonds; this may have been his last chance to pick up a championship.

Let the hot stove league begin!

Shinjo K's. It's up to Lofton.

Percival's first walk of the post-season to Bell. 1st and 2nd, 1 out, and the best the Giants can do is put up Shinjo. I hope he tries to draw a walk as well.

Snow singles. Giants not dead yet.

Nice to see the Giants are still playing hard. Too bad for them their bullpen didn't pitch like this last night.

In comes Percival, three outs to break 41 years of frustration.

Francisco Rodriguez had great command of the plate, walks Bonds and strikes out three. Percival will need to get three outs in the ninth, and will face Snow, Goodwin and Bell. Giants fans have to hope that Troy suddenly turns into the late Donnie Moore.

Aurilia, Kent and Bonds due up in the 8th. I think Scioscia should bring in Percival there. If you get those three, the rest of the order is pretty easy. Why give those batters the chance to get on vs. a lesser pitcher?

Bell and Lofton drive the outfielders to the wall, but fall just short. Still 4-1 at the 7^th inning stretch.

Great catch by Kent to end the inning. Giants need a run an inning to tie, and you have to assume that three of those outs are going to come vs. Percival. Time is running out on the outs.

I have to disagree with this. If you don't think Reggie can hit, sit him down for Goodwin. Otherwise, you waste a player early. Secondly, I haven't seen anything from Goodwin that makes me think he's any better than Sanders anyway. Giant pinch hitters are now 0 for 15, and Goodwin's K with men on 2^nd and 3^rd squanders a golden opportunity.

Tom Goodwin may have the worst follow through on a swing that I've ever seen.

Heart of the order coming up for the Giants in the 6th. This is where they need to make their move.

Lackey is close to 90 pitches through 5 innings. He may have one more inning in him, but I don't expect much after that. Still he has a good ball-strike count (31 Balls, 55 strikes), and although it will be a short performance, it's a strong one so far.

Great catch by Erstad off Bell. The Angels are playing with every bit of insensity they can muster.

Zerbe comes in, throws strikes (5 of 7 pitches) and gets out of the inning with no more damage. Two batters too late, however. Giants offense has to get to Lackey now.

Garrett Anderson hits one down the right field line to clear the bases. Why wasn't Rueter warmed up? Why wasn't anybody warmed up? It was obvious in the first that Hernandez didn't have his good stuff. Maybe Baker doesn't deserve to come back to SF next year.

Dusty is blowing the World Series right here. There's no way he shouldn't have someone warm at all times. Bases loaded, no one out. It will take a miracle to get out of this.

Eventually, someone gets a big hit after one of those walks. Molina doubles in Spiezio to tie the game at 1.

Sanders Sacfly scores Santiago.

David Eckstein runs into a line double play. I'm flabbergasted. He really misread that ball, and that seems to be unusual for him. I wonder if the crowd noise worked against him and he got deked by a fielder?

Scioscia has Erstad sacrifice. Hernandez can't throw a strike, and he's playing for 1-run. I don't agree with that move.

Get Livan Hernandez out of there now. He walks Eckstein to lead off the game, but it looks like he just doesn't care on the mound. There is no passion behind his pitches.

Seems like all these games start 1-2-3. Lofton was swinging early again. You have Lackey on the mound, going on short rest. I think it would be incumbent on Lofton to take some pitches and try to wear this guy down. Kent and Aurilia did a better job, getting him up to 14 pitches for the inning.

Here's another good description of the effect of the Rally Monkey:

It arrived faster than the formation of Air Force jets in the pre-game flyover and left just as much noise in its wake.

It was an emotional tsunami, a wave that came from out in the Pacific and swept over the World Series. It crept out of the dugout and spilled over the edges of the jampacked stands, as surprising, as shocking as a sudden snowfall in Southern California.

It was thousands of ThunderStix and a handful of late-inning lightning. In other words, the usual.

You might not believe in the rally monkey. But in this October beyond anything in their franchise history or their imaginations, you have to believe in the Angels going bananas.

Fran Blinebury of the Houston Chronicle also gets mega kudos for using the word "penultimate."

It's hard to find news stories dealing with the positivies of the Angles last night. Most of the things I'm finding on the internet focus on the Giants losing, rather than the Angels winning. Here's one that tries from Dave George of the Palm Beach Post:

Where Angels fear to tread? They haven't invented the place yet, at least this side of the World Series' Game 7.

Crushed 16-4 in their farewell appearance at Pac Bell Park, Anaheim's Red Raiders put all that behind them Saturday night in their Southern California monkey house. Put a 5-0 San Francisco lead behind them, too, with home runs by Scott Spiezio and Darin Erstad and a two-run double by Troy Glaus that finally put the cork in the Giants' champagne celebration.

That's the point of this piece by Harry Schulman of the SF Chronicle. Here he is talking about Dunston:

Dunston looked forlorn. At 39, he became the sixth-oldest man to hit his first World Series homer. He had not homered in 147 at-bats. He only hit one in all of 2002, back on April 15 against San Diego's Bobby J. Jones, whose name reverberates in Giants' postseason lore for all the wrong reasons.

So this was a great moment for him and for the team. But someone as experienced as Dunston had to know how fickle this game can be, how tough it would be to snuff out the American League champs.

"Outs get harder," he said. "It's human nature to think what could happen. That's why we've got to stay focused. They've got a good ballclub. Scott Spiezio looks like he's been here 100 years.

"I'm not heartbroken," he said. "We've got a game tomorrow. Hopefully we can keep them quiet and cage that monkey."

Again, the players on the Giants have lost their whole careers. They aren't going to lay down after a tough loss.

Just looking at Mike's Baseball Rants preview of game 6, and he got it pretty much right, although he had the score 6-5 Giants. He thinks that an Angel win last night gives them the series.

Only Baseball Matters is a little upset at the Giants loss last night:

The Giants suffered perhaps the the most disheartening and distressing loss in the history of baseball tonight, losing 6-5 to the Anaheim Angels, who became the first team in the history of the game to win an elimnation game of any kind after trailing by five runs or more.

John is a Giants fan. Of course, Baseball Tonight has only been on the air since 1990, so I guess the 1 game playoff loss the Red Sox suffered in 1978, or the Red Sox 1986 game 6 loss, or the Angels 1986 game 5 loss or any of the other big losses that happened before that show just don't count. :-) Yes, it was a devestating loss. But the Giants are full of grizzled veterans who have lost their entire careers and want to win a World Series badly. I don't think they are going to sulk off to a corner and let the Angels run over them tonight. I think they come back looking for vengence.

Ryan Wilkins has some thoughts on getting new fans involved with game 7:

If anyone reading these words knows somebody who isn't much of a baseball fan, and probably hasn't tuned into a game all year, be a friend and give that person a call. Fill them in on the background of the series, and let them know exactly how significant Sunday evening's game really is. Chances are, if you can get that person to watch Game Seven instead of their usual Sunday-night lineup of "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City," you're going to get yourself a brand-new fan of the greatest game in the world.

In other words, share the love.

My guess is that ratings will be very big tonight. Seven game series have a way of doing that. I'll also point out that the last 3 game sevens have been dramatic, one run, last AB gems. The Diamondbacks beat the Best Closer in the Game^TM 3-2 in 2001. The Indians and Marlins played a back-and-forth series in 1997, ending with an 11th inning, 3-2 victory, and of course, the classic 1-0, 10 inning complete game shutout by Jack Morris in 1991. And it's all just 12 hours away.

Then the Rally Monkey came out when the Angels got two hits with one out in the seventh inning and Dusty Baker brought in Felix Rodriguez. You have to be at Edison Field to understand the impact of the monkey. I don't want to hear about purists; it's about the fans who created the experience. Of course, the monkey phenomenon began in June of 2000 when the Angels beat ... Robb Nen.

I've noticed in the Anaheim games, I can't hear the announcers. They are very muffled, and there is this huge din in the background, created, I assume, by the ThunderStix. It was there early last night, but disappeared when the Angels weren't doing anything. When Fox came back from commerical after Ortiz was relieved, it was there. I can't imagine how loud it must be in that stadium that you can drown out announcers who have a sound man doing his best to balance things. It seems to have shaken up the Giants pitching staff.

Wow! What a game. This is the kind of game the Autry Angels would lose in the post-season. I can't say enough good things about the Angels hitters tonight, nor enough bad things about the Giants bullpen. We have a game seven, should be wild.

It's hard to believe how bad the Giants bullpen has been tonight. Ortiz put them in the perfect position to win, and they dropped the ball. Giants have three outs to get 1 run, and they'll have Dunston, Lofton and Aurilia trying to set the table for Kent and Bonds in the 9th.

Glaus doubles to put the Angels ahead 6-5. Two questions:

1. Why don't you walk Glaus, who's the most damaging hitter on the team, to set up a force at any base?


2. Was Bonds out of position? He didn't seem deep enough to me.

Nen has 1 two inning save this year.

A blooper by Anderson gives the Angels 2nd and 3rd with no one out. Robb Nen is coming into the game for a potential two inning save. None of the Giants relievers have done the job so far.

Erstad goes deep to make it a 5-4 game. Now the Angels only need one run in six outs. This team is relentless.

Donnelly does his job. Wild to the first batter (walk to Santiago), he struck out two in the inning. The Angels have six outs to get two runs.

Spiezio goes deep to make the score 5-3. Like all good relievers, Felix Rodriguez gives up the starter's runs.

Russ goes 6 1/3 innings, leaves with 2 men on base. More importantly, the bullpen only needs to get 8 outs to give the Giants their first World Series victory since 1954.

Bonds is now 7 for 14 with 6 extra-base hits in the series, to go along with a dozen walks. His OPS is well over 2.000.

I wonder if all the children in the Giants dugout has cut down on the profanity? :-)

Ortiz has gotten through 6 innings. Now Dusty doesn't have to worry about the Fultz's and Witasick's of his bullpen. Three innings left, and he just has to concentrate on this three big bullpen guns, Rodriguez, Worrell and Nen to get the job done.

Bonds takes K-Rod deep leading off the 6th. Maybe they shouldn't pitch to him. :-)

Good job by Lofton, manufacturing a run on his own. Double, stolen base, wild pitch. Giants up 3-0 after the top of the fifth. Let's see if Ortiz can do what Appier couldn't; get through the fifth.

A single, homer and double drives Appier from the game in the 5th. He had thrown 71 pitches. Scioscia can't afford to leave him in longer.

Ryne Sandberg's long time DP buddy gives the Giants a 2-0 lead with his first World Series HR.

Both pitchers have now given up 1 hit each through 4 innings. Aurilia almost got Salmon on a tough play. It would have been the kind of play (if made) that people would talk about as preserving a no-hitter. Giants turn a nice DP afterward to keep the shutout going.

This game is moving right along. That happens when you get good pitching. Maybe I'll be able to get to bed early and take advantage of that extra hour. :-)

Ortiz looking good so far, 10 batters, only 1 walk. His ball-stirke ratio is getting better, too now at 16 balls, 28 strikes.

Twice now Kenny Lofton has let Appier off the hook by putting the first pitch in play. Appier is a nibbler; the leadoff man especially should make him throw a lot of pitches.

Wow. Two strikeouts for Appier in the 2nd inning. Maybe this will be the pitching duel that didn't occur in game 2.

Oritz got through the first with only 11 pitches thrown. However, nearly half (5) of them were balls.

Just in case you weren't watching, Fox put up a graphic that said that Santiago was six for eleven after an intentional walk to Bonds in the post-season. He's six for twelve now, but those still aren't great odds.

They're walking Bonds with a man on first and two out. ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's an article by Rupert Cornwell on Independent.co.uk directed toward a British audience. He thinks this series has saved baseball and rehabilitated reputations.

ESPN.com is reporting that Newsday is reporting that Bud Selig is angry at the Mets:

Citing an unnamed baseball executive close to the situation, Newsday reported Saturday that the MLB commissioner is mad about how the Mets handled their managerial search and is expected to fine the team $50,000 for the distraction during the Fall Classic.

Can someone explain to me the purpose of the moritorium? Does Bud really think that the World Series is so boring that the Mets hiring a manager is going to make us forget to watch game 6? I thought the whole idea was to generate as much buzz about the game as often as possible. Next thing you know, Bud will want to edit every beat reporter's game summary. Bud, the more talk there is about the game, the more people will be interested in the game. More and more, Bud acts like the Kommisar, not the commissioner.

Sorry to keep bringing this up, but the bunt rolling fair just reminded me of the theme song from the sixties show F-Troop:

The end of the Civil War was near when quite accidentally,

A hero who sneezed abruptly seized retreat and reversed it to victory.

You can see the whole song here. And you can listen to it here.

Sixteen to four is the final. In the middle of game 4, it looked like the Giants were done. Then a lucky bunt turned things around, and a bunch of HR blasts sealed tonight's victory. However, of the last 7 teams to go home trailing 3-2, six have taken the last two games to win the World Series. Game 6 Saturday.

Giants have tied the record for most HR in a World Series. It's 16-4 and officially a blow out. :-)

Jeff Kent seems to have shaken off the Kryptonite and is back to his normal powerful self, as he hits his 2nd HR of the evening.

Dusty needs to keep a better eye on his son. JT Snow almost ran him over at the plate, but instead, picked the child up as he was scoring and got him out of harm's way. Maybe bat boy isn't the best job for a three year old, no matter how cute he is.

I love Ben Weber's intensity. He reminds me of Al Hrabosky.

Kent (HR) and Worrell (1-2-3 inning) get the job done. It's 8-4 Giants going to the bottom of the 7th.

Zerbe makes a great fielding play to hold the runner at third while tagging the batter, Erstad. Doesn't make up for Lofton's poor play, however. Kenny's speed used to let him compensate for mistakes like that, but with age he's lost a couple of steps.

Schmidt started strong, but ran into trouble here in the fifth. Time for the Giants bullpen to earn their World Series shares.

The Angels are one of the most relentless teams I have ever seen.

Glaus doubles to make it 6-3. Eckstein with a hit and some heads up baserunning was in the middle of the rally, also.

Dan Branda writes:

The Mets hiring Art Howe reminds me of when the Mets hired Jeff Torborg because he was successful with the White Sox.

The A's gave away Howe without asking for compensation. Shouldn't the Mets sit down, think, and realize that's because the A's--the smartest organization in baseball--would much rather have Macha as their manager?

Dan Branda

It's funny, it's 6-0, but I don't feel like the lead is safe. And now the Angels have two on with one out in the top of the third.

Maybe Erstad should play Aurilia more toward right. That's twice he had to run a long way to make a catch off the shortstop.

He just said what I wrote in the previous post!

Washburn walks in the third run of the inning. He's given up four walks as the Giants bring up the 9th batter of the inning, but none to Barry Bonds.

Giants need to get Bonds up in 1-2 or bases loaded situations. He delievers a double in the first for a 1-0 Giants lead.

They put three balls in play and got two hits. It will be harder to get the bat on the ball vs. Schmidt which gives the Giants an edge in this game.

ESPN.com is reporting that Piniella is close to signing with Tampa Bay. I found it interesting that some people reported that PIniella was using the DRays to leverage his deal with the Mets. Seems if Lou really wanted to be closer to home, Tampa Bay was the only choice. So maybe he used the Mets to leverage Tampa Bay. :-)

Piniella should help Tampa Bay, if for no other reason than brining in some fans who want to see the native son manage, or see his antics with umpires. Plus, Lou is very good with hitters. Maybe he's what the disappointing Ben Grieve needs.

I just found this article through Jim Baker on ESPN Insider. Bill Madden of the NY Daily News says there are talks to have the Expos play at Fenway next year:

According to a source with knowledge of the discussions, the Expos would play in Fenway for one year while MLB continues to search for a buyer - and a suitable permanent location for them.

Under the discussed deal, MLB would pay the Red Sox rent for the Expos as Fenway tenants. The new Red Sox ownership group, headed by former Yankee limited partner John Henry, is said to be heavily leveraged after paying $700 million for the club and the added Fenway revenue would be an unexpected resource for them.

This makes so much sense, Bud Selig is sure to say no. :-) Although I would feel bad for the people of Montreal. It's really too bad that they haven't had an owner who showed some commitment to making the team work in that city. However, living a couple of hours outside of Boston and having little chance to buy decently priced tickets, I'd welcome the Expos coming to town Vlad peppering the wall sounds like a lot of fun to me.

I was going to criticize this move by the Mets, but Jon Heyman of Newsday does it much better than I could:

Beset by panic and poor taste, the Mets have settled on the worst possible man for an impossible task. Good luck to Art Howe, a nice man with a misleading resume, misguided confidence and almost no chance to succeed as Mets manager.

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that the wayward Mets organization found the very man who is most ill-equipped to handle a difficult city and an impossible clubhouse. Howe agreed in principle yesterday on a four-year, $9.4-million contract with the Mets, and I couldn't decide whom to pity, him or the organization that felt glad to take him.

To get away from a boss whom he believed disrespected and underpaid him, Howe dived right into a hornet's nest without insecticide. The only possible result is that he'll get stung. It is only a matter of time.

Reminds me of John McNamara. Nothing terribly wrong with him, but nothing terribly great either. In the right situation (lots of good players) he's fine. But turning a team around, forget it. I don't think Howe will last the season, and Phillips will be gone with him.

They say baseball is a game of inches. Tonight, it was a game of microns. A slow roller that went foul long enough for Troy Glaus to reach down for it, but not long enough to stay foul changed this whole game. Santiago and Kent, who have struggled this series each had RBI, and K-Rod was human, picking up a loss to go with all those wins. We're going to have a game six. This exciting series continues with Schmidt and Washburn tomorrow.

McCarver got that one right. He didn't think Bell should run, he ran, and the Angels got the strike'm out, throw'm out double play. To the ninth, Giants need 3 outs to even the series.

Bell delivers a single to drive in Snow. Giants lead 4-3. I still don't know why Bell isn't batting higher in the order.

Sanders bunted at the ball, instead of just trying to catch it on the bat. Poor execution.

Kirk Rueter pitched a good game. The Angels got hits, but a couple of DP's helped Kirk. Now it's up to the pen and the offense for the Giants.

Gems by Anderson, Erstad and Glaus keep the game tied after 6 innings.

A small mound of dirt or a rock may have changed this series. Lofton's roller down the third base line was foul, but as Glaus went to pick it up, it hit something and rolled back fair. The third intentional walk to Bonds doesn't pay off, as Santiago delivers a single. It's tied at 3.

Benito hits into another bases loaded DP. After such a great LCS, this has to hurt. They'll keep walking Bonds until Benito makes them pay.

Kent lines into the pitcher's glove. Jeff can't buy a hit.

Has Dusty thought of re-flipping Bonds and Kent in the order? Kent's been a huge hole in the middle of the offense. Maybe it's time for Bonds to be on first protecting Kent, rather than Bonds' bat behind protecting Kent. The latter is not working right now.

HR number 7 of this post-season for Glaus. I wonder why the Giants don't walk him? :-) And follow this link to see what I've been thinking about Troy.

Lackey didn't drive in or score a run, but his hit set up the sac-fly that gives the Angels a 1-0 lead. We'll credit him with an assist.

Fails to bunt in his first professional AB, but, like all the Angels, he puts the bat on the ball and gets a hit.

It looks like the Angels are very confident they can get the rest of the Giants lineup out. That's at least the 2nd time they've walked Bonds with men on first and third and basically got out of the jam.

I was suprised that Eckstein was so aggressive in his plate appearance. He looked like he fouled a few balls that were out of the strike zone. The way to get to pitchers like Rueter who work off the plate is to give them a chance to throw balls, then make them come over the plate. The rest of the batters in the first seemed to be willing to do this.

Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe laments the lack of star starting pitching in this series.

Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune has a excellent summary of last night's game. He's impressed with the Angels offense:

Only one thing helped Giants pitchers save face Tuesday night: the presence of pitcher Ramon Ortiz in the Angels' lineup.

Ortiz was hopeless at the plate, going 0-for-3 and stranding seven baserunners in the second, third and fourth innings.

Not that it mattered. The Anaheim offense was so potent in its 10-4 victory in Game 3 of the World Series, Team Disney could have won using Donald Duck as its No. 9 hitter.

I also like the quote from Erstad:

"We know that no lead's ever safe," said Darin Erstad, who went 3-for-6. "The idea is to pour it on. It's like how a prevent defense in football is not a good thing. I guess you could call it a killer instinct. We understand it's very important to put runs on the board."

They've shown that aggressive style throughout the playoffs. What I love about watching this team is that they know how to hit. So many teams go up and just swing for the fences. The Angels are trying to make contact, and when they do they really drive the ball. Eckstein chokes up on the bat! I never see anyone do that anymore. Get the bat on the ball and good things will happen. I'm glad the Angels are teaching us that again.

A huge win for the Halos. Again, I think they will get to Rueter tomorrow, which will force Dusty to go to the pen early again. I think the Giants have dug themselves into a deep hole here, and I'm not sure they can recover. The offense is going to have to put up a lot of runs, or Rueter is going to have to surprise me tomorrow. Angels fans have to be real happy right now.

Defense costs the Giants a run in the 8th. Eyre wasn't fast enough to cover first on a hard ground ball to Snow, then Eyre makes a bad throw to the plate with the bases loaded and 1 out. 10-4 Angels.

I love it that the SF fans are waving rubber chickens after Bonds is walked on four pitches. There are few situations where rubber chickens fail to make me laugh. :-)

Giants finding their groove in the 5th. Aurilia and Bonds have homered, it's 8-4 Angels. Is it too little too late?

Bonds joins Hank Bauer (1958) as the only players to homer in each of the first three games of a World Series.

Just to be fair, Ortiz has thrown 50% balls and strikes tonight, also. Giants are now down 6 runs, so they are going to have to get to Ortiz quickly to come back. Luckily for the Giants, after 3 innings (although only 26 pitches) K-Rod may not be able to go that long today.

Livan Hernandez last only 3.2 innings. I think the Giants are in big trouble right now. They have to use the bullpen a lot in this game, and they are down 4 runs. Tomorrow, Rueter pitches, and the Angels hit lefties well (.292 during the regular season). If the Angels hold on and win this game, I think the odds of them winning the series go way up. Livan's poor performance may have cost the Giants everything.

The Angels offense is starting to ratchet up. Right now, I show Hernandez with 62 pitches thrown, only 32 for strikes. The Angels are just waiting for their pitch, and as they've shown all through the playoffs, when they get a pitch to hit, they make it count. It's 4-1 Angels.

A rare poor play by David Bell, allows a run to score, and more importantly, fails to get an out. It's 1-1.

Ortiz doesn't get the DP, but he gets two ground balls and only allows 1 run. Luck was on their side.

They're walking Bonds!??!!?? This is very dangerous. Bases loaded, 1 out, the run potential is very high.

Nice strong start from Hernandez. 1-2-3, ten pitches. Low pitch counts will be important from the starters tonight, as some relievers were used extensively on Sunday.

Everyone wants a piece of the action. :-)

Pitchers are saying the WS balls are harder and tighter than regular season balls, according to Jayson Stark. I don't buy it. There was a lot of lousy pitching in game 2, but there was plenty of good pitching, also. (See K-Rod and Percival)

I think this series, along with the settlement of the labor dispute is doing a lot to bring fans back to the game. Tim Keown gives some reasons here. Baseball is fun again.

Percival gets the save, despite giving up a tremendous blast by Bonds. Bonds also ties the record for most post-season HR with 6.

Giants have to be happy with the split, although they have to be disappointed in blowing the lead after fighting back from a 5-0 deficit. Both these offenses are tenacious; it's been an exciting, close series so far, and I expect this to continue. Three games in SF coming up, and I can't wait.

This is the 6th time 20 runs have been scored in a WS game.

Consecutive 2 HR games by Angels players. F-K Rod in line for the win.

I can probably write 3 posts in the time it takes Felix Rodriguez to throw one pitch. What is he waiting for?

They're calling Francisco Rodriguez K-Rod in Anaheim. I've been calling him F-Rod. Maybe we should compromise and call him F-K Rod, and call Felix Rodriguez just F-Rod? :-)

If the Angels can take the lead here and hold on, Francisco Rodriguez would become the youngest pitcher to win a World Series game.

After praising Baker for Zerbe, I have to fault him on the guys who relieved Zerbe. Witasick had a good year, but why not leave him in for more than one batter. Instead, he brings Fultz, his worst relief pitcher, into a game tying situation and Fultz gives up the hit to tie the game. That's actually a situation where I could see going to a closer like pitcher in the 6th.

I like the way Dusty used Zerbe. Instead of trying to play musical relievers, he left him in as long as possible. Now the real bullpen can take over, and they only need to get 10 outs instead of 22.

The use of Lackey by Scioscia is also interesting. I wonder if around 30 pitches was deemed the most he could throw and still be able to start game 4. It was probably Lackey's throwing day, so that may have been the same workout for him.

I thought they were going to call him out. You usually see that on those types of close plays at 2nd. Looked like on the replay he was out, but we can't get a good read on the position of Eckstein's foot.

The walk to Bonds came back to haunt them. That was a situation where you should pitch to the slugger. They walked him and opened up the flood gates.

I don't think putting the tying run on base with one out is a good idea. The worst Bonds could do is tie the game. Now a HR gives the Giants the lead.

First 9 runs by the Giants have now scored on HR. That's a record.

Most consecutive runs scored on HR by a team to start a WS.


Team                 Year   HR   Runs

Giants               2002    6    9

Dodgers              1978    3    6

Royals               1980    3    6

Orioles              1971    3    5

Orioles              1970    4    5

Padres               1998    3    5

Tim Salmon adds to the barrage with a 2-run HR. At this rate, they make break the 29-run one game record the Blue Jays and Phillies set in 1993.

Bell goes deep to center to make it 5-4. All the Giants runs in this series have scored on HR.

Sanders homers again, making the score 5-3. In less than two innings, the two teams have scored more runs than all of last night.

I can't believe Santiago fell for the double steal.

The first four hitters for the Angels have gotten base hits, and they now lead 2-0. Seems this team will get into a groove where every ball in play goes for a base hit.

Analysis by Old Hickory on how the Giants fare against lefties:

Bonds now has hit more home runs (23) against left-handed pitchers in one season than any left-handed hitter in baseball history. But an underestimated thing about the Giants is their overall ability against left-handers. After Aug. 20, they went 9-3 to the end of the regular season against lefties, beating Randy Johnson, Odalis Perez and Al Leiter. And in the postseason they have won games against Tom Glavine, Chuck Finley and now Jarrod Washburn.

It was one weakness the Giants had relative to Anaheim. That weakness appears to be gone now.

The story I always heard was that there were no Angels fans, just transplanted fans of other teams who came out to see their favorite team play the Angels. Yet, in 1986 and 2002, there were Angels fans in the seats making a lot of noise. Disney take note. If you give the fans a good product, they'll come out and watch and buy Thunder Stix and red shirts and rally monkeys. I think this franchise is a steal at $180 million, and some smart person is going to make himself a lot of money.

Susan Slusser of the SF Chronicle looks ahead to tonight's matchup between the Giants and Appier:

Appier is 0-2 with a 6.00 ERA lifetime against the Giants, and Barry Bonds is 4-for-7 with two homers off him.

"That's a small sample," Appier said with a laugh. "And it doesn't include the (1995) All-Star Game -- he grounded back to me. But even on good pitches, he's gotten hits. Last year he hit a good pitch straight up in the air, and it still went out."

Well, Kevin knows a little about statistics but not a lot about physics. Indeed, 4 for 7 is a very small sample. But if Bonds had really hit the ball straight up, it would have come straight down again. So I guess Bonds hit it at an 89 degree angle. :-)

Troy Glaus now has six post-sesaon HR, tying a record set by players as diverse as Lenny Dykstra and Ken Grifey Jr, among others. Of the players with 6, Bernie Williams in 1996 was the only player to accomplish this over 3 series. If the series goes 7, Glaus may shatter this record. Unfortunately, 4 of the 6 HR have come in losses. And they've all been solo shots.

Jim Caple has the perfect analogy for J.T. Snow's catch last night:

If you didn't see first baseman's J.T. Snow's catch in Game 1, don't worry. You will. This one was so good, it not only deserves repeated showings on SportsCenter and ESPN Classic, it ought to be shown on the Cartoon Network, too.

With runners at the corners, one out and San Francisco pitcher Jason Schmidt laboring to protect a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning, Tim Salmon hit a high foul popup down the first base line. As Snow ran under the ball to catch it, he slipped on the artificial surface in front of the dugout and did one of those classic Fred Flintstone flops where he slips on Pebbles' roller skate, flies through the air and lands flat on his back so hard that half of Bedrock shakes. You almost expected to hear Snow holler, "WILMAAAA!!!!"

I actually thought of Bugs Bunny when I saw the play last night, although I couldn't put my finger on it. I got the impression of an outfielder lounging around, eating carrots and reading a magazine while he waited for the ball to come down, but I don't think that happened in a Bugs Bunny baseball cartoon. Maybe someone can help me out on this.

Nen pitches a fine ninth, throws 13 pitches, 11 for strikes.

Just to show how things continue to be evenly matched, the Giants won the first game in both the NLDS and NLCS and went on to win the series. The Angels lost the first game in the ALDS and ALCS, but those were the only two games the Angels had lost in this post-season before tonight. So based on this history, both teams are destined to win the series!

Game 2 tomorrow. Ortiz vs. Appier. Hope it's as good as this one was.

Kennedy, Eckstein and Erstad for the Angels, a combined 4 for 11 in this game.

Nice job by Worrell not giving in to Palmeiro when he fell behind 3-0. Tim battled and got the pop up. However, I would have been real tempted to bring in Nen after the walk.

Great game so far. It's close, good defense, some home runs, a two home run game and the pens are pitching well. We'll see if the rally monkey can work his magic in the 8th.

Adam Kennedy is about to pass Ted for the title of luckiest Kennedy. :-) Angels finally get a hit with runners in scoring position.

Meghan Sheehan of STATS, Inc. tells me that there have been 15 WS games where all the runs scored on HR.

J.T. Snow follows up his defense with some offense, driving the ball the opposite way for a two run HR. Again, Washburn gets into trouble after there are two outs, but this time it costs him. Angels go to the bullpen.

The fall catch by Snow was great. J.T. never lost concentration, and the ball just seemed to stay up there for him. A great recovery. Giants opponents are now 16 for 82 in the playoffs with runners in scoring position, .195.

But he gets himself into trouble after that. It's almost as if the strike out of Bonds made Jarrod a little over confident.

By the way, does anyone else think that Washburn could double for Kiefer Sutherland in "24"?

Both pitchers are keeping the counts decently low. Schmidt 44, 34 strikes. Washburn 46, 31 strikes.

Adam Kennedy is slugging 3.000 over his last 5 AB.

Glaus hits one into the bullpen. If this keeps up, 2002 will go down in history as the solo HR series. :-)

I love the replay of Bonds' HR from the third base side of the plate. You can see how perfect his swing is, and how the pitch was in the perfect place for a batter to hit it. A great example of the excellent hand-eye coordination a hitter needs.

Now the Angels are in trouble. If Sanders can hit in the post-season, any Giant can. :-)

As I've pointed out before, Bonds had a better HR rate vs. lefties this year than righties. I guess he's over his post-season slump.

Schmidt keeps up with Washburn, throwing 9 pitches, 8 for strikes to get the Angels in order in the first. Notice that the Angels did get wood on the ball, except for the third strike to Salmon. This is what makes the Angels so pesky; eventually those batted balls turn into hits.

Impressive inning by Washburn. 1-2-3 with 2 K and a popup. Giants were swinging at some balls out of the strikezone, however. It will be interesting to see if they lay off those pitches as they see more of this pitcher.

to whoever entered a link to the post on win shares leaders at ESPN.com. I've been getting a lot of traffic from that. :-)

Henry Schulman on SFGate.com explores the symbiosis between Barry and Jeff:

Finally, after six years of watching them play together and live together inside the clubhouse, someone was able to peg the symbiosis between Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent.

"They're similar in a lot of ways. They're just different guys," manager Dusty Baker said Friday during the Giants' final workout before today's Series opener. "One's black, one's white, but they're both great ballplayers.

"I equate it to the movie with Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis ("The Defiant Ones"). Both are handcuffed and one guy (wants to) throw the other guy off the cliff. Then he realizes, 'Oh man, if he goes, I go too.' They end up being cool and partners at the end. This has been quite a transformation for both of them, actually. They're both great ballplayers, and they're both better together than apart."

This reminds me of the relationship Reggie Jackson and Thruman Munson had. They seemed to hate each other, but Reggie was crying in the outfield after the NY fans gave Thurman a 10-minute standing ovation after Bob Sheppard asked for a moment of silence following Munson's death. They were better together, because each drove the other to perform better to get the attention each desired.

Yes, they cover the series down under. They'll be able to watch it first thing in the morning there. Gerard Wright gives the Aussies a taste of how valuable WS tickets can be:

Among the items offered as trade for tickets to these games are Rolling Stones tickets, a Porsche, a Volvo 740 turbo station wagon and a piano.

The enterprising ticket-holder could be set for life, and so, in this case, it may turn out to be.

"I would like to barter (these tickets) for healthy sperm," the advertiser announced. "I am currently trying to get pregnant, and for reasons that are none of your business, I must acquire sperm from a donor.

"If you agree to be a donor, note that the donation will absolutely, positively NOT, be made 'the old-fashioned way'."

This is the sort of advertisement that would warm the heart of your average American guy, who has lived in fear that the nation's pastime is losing its grip on the masses. Sperm donations! Porsches! Who said they've fallen out of love with this game?

My wife has told me I can't apply.

Jim Caple has a nice article on the paths different players took to get to this year's World Series. It also applies to teams, something I've believed for years:

They said that only a handful of teams could reach the World Series. That the Yankees might as well include the Series on its pocket schedule. That the only path to October was through New York City or Atlanta.

They were wrong. There are many ways to October, many paths to the World Series. Here are a few.

I saw this paragraph in an article on ESPN.com about the Brewers hiring Macha:

If Macha doesn't want the job, Melvin will likely select his manager from the five whom he's already interviewed: Brewers coach Cecil Cooper, Yankees coach Willie Randolph, Braves coach Ned Yost and Diamondbacks coach Bob Melvin.

If they hire Bob Melvin, I would expect their first trade to be for Melvin Mora. Maybe they can get Melvin Laird to coach defense. :-)

Man, this is a hard one to call. Usually there's a major difference between the two clubs, some weakness that may be exploitable in the short term. These two teams are really evenly matched.

Consider extra base hits, for example. The Giants led the NL in this category with 535. The Angels also had a decent AL showing with 517 (unlike the Giants, the Angels don't have a pitcher batting nearly every game). But, this power by the batters is balanced on each side by the lack of power allowed by the pitchers. The Giants staff allowed the fewest EXBH in the majors, while the Angels allowed the 2nd fewest in the AL.

What about the DH/Pitcher? Despite have poor pinch hitters during the season (which probably means they won't have a good DH), the Giants pitchers had the 2nd highest BA in the NL. So while the Angels will pick up an offensive advantage at home, the Giants gain it back in Pac Bell.

The Angels play well against LH starters, so Dusty Baker is planning only one start from his left, Rueter. SF has trouble with lefties (compared to the Angels), but Scioscia may only start Washburn twice. And the teams are evenly matched when a RHP starts.

The Giants are excellent base stealers, swiping at a 77.9% clip this year, best in the NL. But the Angels catch stealers at a 39.4% clip, 2nd best in the AL, neutralizing that strength.

The Giants and the Angels have the exact same ground ball to fly ball ratio, 1.01 to 1, the lowest in the majors (ML average is 1.21 to 1). However, the Angels have a higher percentage of their balls put into play go for line drives, 21% to 18%. And most line drives go for hits (79% for the Giants, 76% for the Angels).

The Giants' pitchers are at the low end of getting balls over for strikes. As we know from previous posts, the Angels are very good at putting the ball in play, which proved to be very useful against the Yankees. I wonder if a little more wildness will work to the Giants advantage?

So who wins? I don't know. I think it's going to be close and exciting. The last time the Yankees weren't in the series, 1997, we had two unexpected teams play and they put on a great, close exciting series. I would not be surprised if we had 7 very close games. I'm looking forward to this series. Can't wait for it to start!

I just read Rob Neyer's piece, and he makes great points about the strategy of walking or not walking Bonds. He also concludes:

And given that the best team doesn't win a high percentage of postseason series anyway ... well, I'm still picking the Giants. But I wouldn't bet more than a dollar on my "expertise," because this World Series is up for grabs even more than usual.

I haven't looked at all the little flaws yet, but so far I haven't seen any big flaws that would make one of these teams clearly better than the other.

It's been a busy week at work, but I'll get to this soon. Meanwhile, OnlyBaseballMatters has a look at the series.

Matt Rauseo of FourAces.net writes with these thoughts on my Frank Thomas post:

Hey David.

Thought I would shot you a quick note about your Thomas/Sox blurb.

My thoughts on the Red Sox are as follows. They are very close to being a playoff team. With a little luck they easily could have surpassed CA as the AL wild card. When I say a little luck, that really is exactly what I mean as a .500 record in 1 run games would have done it (though I can't find the numbers at this moment). With that said, it seems evident to me the Red Sox must be risk averse this off-season. They have the core, and they do not need a a lot to go right for them to make the post season, they need things to not go wrong. They are at the close to the top of the success cycle, and with that they need to make moves that are consistent with that placement. Find supporting cogs, where their isn't a lot of projection involved. Much like the Giants did, with Sanders and Bell, not world beaters, but players who you knew what you were going to get from. I liken the situation to that of a person who is 62, and approaching retirement at 65. He has his saving, and he knows what he needs to reach his goal, he just needs to avoid disaster with his funds. So he proceeds to move his money from Growth Funds to Bond Funds. I think this is something that the internet baseball community often overlooks. Which is the issue of risk management.

Matt

It's an interesting idea. I think, in general, successful teams stand pat too often, but that's not what Matt is suggesting here. In fact, he's suggesting moves that are very much in line with the kinds of things Duquette did well; bringing in underappreciated players. I just think at this point Thomas may be in that category.

Dr. Manhattan has some observations on the win shares leader board. I think he's right on about A-Rod and Tejada.

Sean MacLeod is upset about Schilling being picked outstanding pitcher in the NL by the players:

how could they possibly select curt shilling as pitcher of the year? even though bonds clearly was better this year than a-rod, at least I can see how players don't quite understand the value of a .580 OBP and .800 SLG as opposed to 57 HRs and 143 RBIs, but the pitcher decision is ridiculous. shilling is 10th in ERA, a whole run over Johnson, who pitched the same number of innings, struck out 20 more batters, allowed fewer hits and HRs, had one more win and two less losses. how dumb can the players be. at least last year when they gave the award to shilling there was a win discrepancy.

-Sean

I think what happened is that the players voted on Sept. 18. In three starts after that, Schilling gave up 17 ER in 16.1 IP. I think if the players had that information, they would have voted differently, and I suspect the Cy Young voters will take that into account.

I got a couple of responses to this today. Josh Getman and I had this correspondence:

David:

Love the blog. However, you wrote:

"Does anyone think picking up Frank Thomas for $6 million a year wouldn't help the Red Sox, for example?"

A "slugger" who will cost at least twice as much as Brian Daubach, is 4 years older than Daubach, is probably a worse fielder than Daubach and is just as likely (given his radically inconsistent health and performance of late) to underperform Daubach as overperform him? And a potential clubhouse cancer to boot? Please, by all means, bring him on!

By the way, Daubach's clearly not the answer either, but that's another story.

J Getman

To which I replied:

Josh,

Thanks for the comment. I'd be willing to risk $6 million if the odds of his being healthy were good. He's a potential .400 OBA guy, something the Red Sox could use to counter Shea Hillenbrand. And if he is healthy, he'd pound the wall.

The Red Sox clubhouse is cancerous by nature, so I don't think adding Thomas would make it any worse. :-) All in all, I think he's a risk worth taking.

Thanks for reading,

David

To which Josh replied:

I completely agree that the failure to recognize the importance of on-base guys has long haunted the team. I can only hope that the new regime's interest in GM's such as Billy Beane signals the end of this.

However, risking a good chunk of change on the very risky possibility of gaining a .400 OPB guy sounds a lot like the logic that brough us Jose Offerman (who was going to "replace the on base percentage of Mo Vaughn," to paraphrase Duquette). Offerman got hurt, Offerman couldn't field, Offerman declined drastically.

The idea of the "Maybe Big, Maybe Not So" Big Hurt coming to Boston sounds eerily similar.

I'd rather take the same risk of injury and inconsistency on a younger, possibly cheaper Edgardo Alfonzo (move Hillenbrand to 1st).

However, Edward Cossette of Bambino's Curse likes the idea:

"Does anyone think picking up Frank Thomas for $6 million a year wouldn't help the Red Sox, for example? "

Hell, yeah!

Oh, you've got me dreaming little day dreams ...

-- Edw.

Scott Martelle and James Bates write about the value of the Angels and how they don't fit into Disney's plans. What I find interesting is that Disney is now entertaining bids of $180 million for the Angels, down from $300 million a few years ago. I believe when the Orioles were sold in bankruptcy court, they went for around $180 million.

There's a real bear market right now in franchises. Unless it's one of the blue chips (like the Red Sox), you can get into a number of established franchises for under $200 million. And, in the case of the Twins and Angels, good franchises to boot. Start looking under your couch for change, it's time to buy!

It looks like the White Sox are going to invoke the diminished skills clause in Frank Thomas' contract, according to this AP article on ESPN.com:

Thomas' contract calls for him to be paid $9,927,000 in each of the next four seasons, including $3,827,000 deferred with interest. But because he didn't make the All-Star team and isn't going to finish among the top 10 in MVP voting or win a Silver Slugger this season, the White Sox can cut his salary.

They would then have to pay him only $250,000 plus $10,125,000 deferred over 10 years without interest.

Thomas has his choice of accepting this or becoming a free agent.

I think these clauses are a good idea. How often do we see teams get stuck with a big contract for a player who is underperforming? Now the White Sox will be able to take that 10 million a year and use it to improve the team. Meanwhile, a change of scenery might do Thomas good. And there are plenty of teams that could use a slugging first baseman. Does anyone think picking up Frank Thomas for $6 million a year wouldn't help the Red Sox, for example?

According to this AP article on ESPN.com, the Angels may already be concentrating too much on Bonds:

Everywhere the Anaheim Angels go, the question is the same: Pitch to Barry Bonds or walk him?

Listening to the talk Tuesday at Edison Field, it seems the Angels will be playing only against Bonds in the World Series, trying to devise a plan to somehow beat him, 25 on 1.

"The last two seasons, he's had the most incredible seasons in the history of baseball, if you look at all his numbers and all the microstatistics,'' Anaheim manager Mike Scioscia said.

Of course, San Francisco will have 25 players on the roster when the first all wild-card World Series opens Saturday night. But Bonds is the focus, which puts Scott Schoeneweis in the spotlight. Bonds is 1-for-7 against the left-hander with four strikeouts, no walks and no home runs.

"The best-case scenario is to get the guys out before Barry comes up,'' Schoeneweis said.

Schoenewieis has it right. The other hitters are a lot easier to get out than Bonds. Make sure you know how to get them out, and the damage Bonds can do will be minimized. Likewise, the best thing the Giants can do is put men on base in front of Bonds, especially on first base. For a long time I've felt that the best protection for a batter isn't the guy hitting behind you, but the guys on base in front of you.

Jim Henzler of STATS, Inc. was nice enough to send me the top ten lists of leaders for the AL and NL.

American League Win Shares Leaders, 2002


Alex Rodriguez, Tex         35

Jim Thome, Cle              34

Jason Giambi, NYY           34

Miguel Tejada, Oak          32

Bernie Williams, NYY        30

Alfonso Soriano, NYY        30

Manny Ramirez, Bos          29

John Olerud, Sea            27

Nomar Garciaparra, Bos      27

Carlos Delgado, Tor         26

Magglio Ordonez, CWS        26

National League Win Shares Leaders, 2002

Barry Bonds, SF             49

Brian Giles, Pit            32

Albert Pujols, StL          32

Ryan Klesko, SD             31

Chipper Jones, Atl          31

Shawn Green, LA             30

Lance Berkman, Hou          30

Randy Johnson, Ari          29

Jeff Kent, SF               29

Jim Edmonds, StL            29

Bobby Abreu, Phi            29

Vladimir Guerrero, Mon      29

Jose Vidro, Mon             29

American League Pitching Win Shares Leaders, 2002

Barry Zito, Oak           25.2

Tim Hudson, Oak           22.7

Derek Lowe, Bos           21.8

Roy Halladay, Tor         21.0

Pedro Martinez, Bos       20.5

Billy Koch, Oak           18.6

Mark Mulder, Oak          18.5

Paul Byrd, KC             18.2

Jarrod Washburn, Ana      17.6

Mark Buehrle, CWS         16.7

National League Pitching Win Shares Leaders, 2002

Randy Johnson, Ari        28.7

Curt Schilling, Ari       23.7

Byung-Hyun Kim, Ari       19.7

Roy Oswalt, Hou           19.7

Eric Gagne, LA            19.4

Greg Maddux, Atl          19.0

Kevin Millwood, Atl       18.9

Tom Glavine, Atl          18.4

John Smoltz, Atl          17.2

Octavio Dotel, Hou        16.7

You can compare these numbers to the short form win shares here.

Bonds' 49 win shares ties him for 10th for the period 1900-2001 with the 1946 Ted Williams and the 1956 Mickey Mantle. There have been three 47+ seasons since Mantle in 1961. All three of those belong to Barry Bonds. Long form also confirms that Johnson and Zito should win the Cy Young award.

The Mariners are going to release Piniella from the final year of his contract so he can find a job closer to home.

If home is really the reason Piniella is leaving, I don't see why he just doesn't take the Tampa Bay job. New York is close to Tampa Bay only compared to Seattle. According to Rob Neyer in his ESPN chat session last night, Piniella is probably using the Tampa Bay offer to get a better deal from the Mets. I can't imagine someone as competitive as Lou leading a hapless team like the Devil Rays.

If the Division Series didn't salvage Bonds' post-season image, this series certainly has. It's good to see. I would hate to see Bonds end up like Ted Williams (no, not as a corpse in a custody battle), a great hitter who's career was tainted by failure in the post-season.

I'll start posting about the WS matchup tomorrow.

Santiago MVP: Well deserved. His offense and defense were superb, and he made the Cardinals look bad after walking Bonds in the 8th last night. His arm looked as strong as it did in 1990. A fine choice.

I think this series and this game destroyed the opinion that La Russa is a genius. From keeping Rolen to not having the bullpen ready, La Russa made too many mistakes. It's hard to believe this is the same man that managed Oakland so well a decade ago.

That was the first hit with runners in scoring position tonight.

Lofton singles in Bell. Giants win 2-1. I think you have to consider David Bell for MVP. Not many runs or RBI, but he was probably the most consistent hitter. Santiago and Bonds will certainly get consideration, too.

Lofton will bat.

Great game by Morris. St. Louis bringing in the lefty Kline to pitch to Lofton. Will SF PH with a RHB?

Dunston singles. 1st and 2nd, 2 out. Dunston has a good career BA vs. Morris. Lofton is up.

Bell singles. He's had a great series. Dunston up.

Snow flies out deep to left. It's up to Bell.

Martinez pops out. Snow up.

Morris still on the mound for the Cardinals. Ramon Martinez to pinch hit.

Cardinals fail to score. Giants will send a pinch hitter (Sanders?), Snow and Bell to bat in the 9th.

For those keeping score at home, neither team has a hit with runners in scoring position tonight.

Santiago grounds out. 8-9-1 hitters up for St. Louis.

Santiago tried to bunt for a base hit, but it was foul. Runner wasn't going, not a squeeze.

Bonds takes the first pitch deep to left for a sac fly. It's 1-1. Runner from 2nd was also able to tag.

The bases are loaded for Bonds. They have to pitch to him, and the relievers aren't ready yet. St. Louis is trying to delay. Horrible managing.

Kent was in the same situation last time and hit into a DP.

Aurilia follows with a single. McCarver pointed out that no one was warming up at the start of the inning, as if it were a good thing. Somebody better warm up quickly.

Kenny's doing his job, getting on base tonight. Singles with one out in the 8th.

This will be the Giants best chance to score. Dunston, then the top of the lineup.

Matt Morris has only thrown 78 pitches through 7 innings. I think the way he's going there's a good chance of getting a complete game out of him.

Fly ball scores the runner. It's 1-0.

Rodriguez, in for Rueter, threw to third on a bunt, but did not get the runner. You have to get the sure out on a bunt. Now the Cardinals have two changes to score the runner on a fly ball.

Good explanation by a former umpire on the interference play on Santiago. It was obstruction, and Santiago was awarded third base, which was the umpires judgement.
Update: Steve Palermo is the ump giving the explanation.

This is the game of missed opportunities. Cardinals 0 for 6 with RISP, Giants 0 for 5.

With 1st and 2nd after Aurilia is HBP, Kent grounds to Cairo, who steps on third and throws to first. This takes the bat out of Bonds hands, as he's intentionally walked. Santiago gets another chance to shine.

He's swinging away! Hooray!

If Aurilia bunts, I'm going to scream!

Rueter is up to 95 pitches. The Giants can maybe get one more inning out of him. We'll see if Dusty goes to the bullpen early rather than too late.

Looked like it to me. Cairo made contact. Looks like a bad call by the umpire, although I don't think Santiago would have scored.

They pitched to Bonds and got him out. They should do that more often. Still no score, and no hits for the Giants.

Rueter has thrown 69 pitches so far. Giants are likely to go to the bullpen early tonight. Lofton just got hit, perfect game over.

Three more in a row for Morris. Nice to see Rueter hustling down the line on that deflected grounder.

That seems to be a better nickname for Rueter than "Woody." Giants dodge another bullet.

Pujols strikes out. Unbelievable.

Cardinals have 1st and third, middle of the order up. Eventually, if they keep putting runners on, you'd think they would score.

Seems like the real Matt Morris showed up tonight. Two innings, 24 pitches, 15 strikes, no baserunners.

Another out with runners in scoring position. Cardinals are now 3 for 32.

Tino's on the bench vs. the lefty. At least this give La Russa a good lefty bat off the bench.

Interesting change in the lineup for St. Louis. Cairo is batting 2nd, and Renteria has been dropped 6th. La Russa going with short term probablilities here; another managerial mistake.

Rob Neyer and Jim Baker will be chatting during the game tonight. You can get there from Rob's article on the Angels. I might stop by to ask a question or two.

Rick Hummel psycho-analyzes Matt Morris. Here's my favorite paragraph:

"I think being nervous is natural. If you're not nervous, you're not human out there. I'm going to focus on making pitches and keeping the ball down. I know that's what I said last time, too, but I'm serious this time," Morris said, laughing.

I bet St. Louis fans are relieved the only problem in game one was that he wasn't serious.

Rolen will not play tonight. I think it's pretty clear at this point that keeping Rolen on the roster was a big mistake for the Cardinals. They say he may come back by Wednesday, but I doubt:

1. That he will be ready to play


2. That the Cardinals will be playing on Wednesday.

Some baseball blogs are reviewed in the Chicago Tribune. Unfortunately, you have to register to see the article. Thanks to John J Perricone for pointing this out.

Don Amore of the Hartford Courant thinks the Twins future looks bright:

The Twins won 94 games and finished 131/2 games ahead of Chicago in the AL Central. With no one in the division expected to spend aggressively in the off-season, the Twins - with their nucleus of starting pitchers Brad Radke, Eric Milton and Joe Mays - could dominate their division again in 2003.

The new collective bargaining agreement puts contraction on hold through 2006, and nearly all of the Twins' key players are signed long term or are several years from free agency. Their $40 million payroll, ranked 27th among 30 teams, will rise somewhat as players go to arbitration, but their chances of keeping the team together for the next few years are good.

"They're going to be good for a long time," Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. "They played this series as tough as anybody we played all year."

I tend to agree with this. I still think a couple of winning seasons will start bringing the fans back. This is an exciting young team, and as long as Pohlad doesn't try to sell it off to enrich himself, they have a few good years ahead of them.

People will argue that they will never again be successful in that stadium. I'm willing to wait and see.

Mark Camps looks at the ex-Mets factor and other playoff trivia. And there's a trivia question that regular readers of Baseball Musings should be able to answer. :-)

Nen K's Drew on a 3-2 pitch. Great game. Giants in command at 3-1, game 5 tomorrow. Cardinals were 2 for 17 with runners in scoring position, now 3 for 31 in the series.

Nen blows Pujols away. One out to go. It's up to JD Drew.

Only drives in one, however. First and third now, 4-3 game. Giants need a K or a DP.

Giants unable to get two on a slow roller. 2nd and 3rd, with the heart of the lineup coming up for the Cardinals.

Vina singles, 2 on, none out. Nen is really in a save situation now.

That's the 2nd time this series that a Cardinal has reached on a mishandled third strike.

Nen comes in to do his Mighty Mouse impression.

Santiago makes La Russa pay. A two-run HR into the right field stands. Bonds scores, Giants up 4-2.

Walking Bonds with the bases empty and 2 outs. I sure hope this backfires.

Cardinals came into this game 1 for 14 with runners in scoring position. They are 1 for 13 tonight.

I'm sorry, I know he's not a great hitter, but he never bunts, and that was a bad one. Giants get the lead runner.

Snow with a rare defensive lapse. He should have taken that grounder himself. Eyre did not get over to cover in time.

If the Cardinals score in the 8th, do you bring in Isringhausen in the bottom of the 8th to face Aurilia, Kent and Bonds? That's where the save situation would really be happening.

Rodriguez pitches out of the jam in the 7th. The Twins bullpen could learn something from him. :-)

Kennedy did win the ALCS MVP.

Cardinals get out of the 6th. The game is tied at 2.

Snow ties the game with a 2-run double up the left center power alley. And Sanders is coming up, and he's hits White well (5 for 13).

Santiago called out on three taken strikes.

Santiago is 2 for 4 career vs. White.

I still think they should have pitched to him. Let's see if Santiago can deliver. Benes coming out of the game in favor of Rick White.

No lefty ready, Benes must pitch to Bonds. I suppose they might walk him, but that's playing with fire.

Heart of the order, Aurilia, Kent and Bonds in the 6th. Aurilia K's to start the inning.

Andy Benese has allowed 1 hit through 4 innings. He's thrown 61 pitches, which is a pretty good total. He's struck out 4, which is probably better than you would expect from him.

Very nice turning of the 3-6 GDP by J.T. Snow.

Livan Hernandez has thrown 21 of 29 pitches for strikes, but has no strikeouts. The Cardinals are just putting the bat on the ball, and they are getting hits from that.

Congratulations to the Angels. They've been waiting for this for a long time. They were great in all aspects of the game in this series. A well deserved victory.

Oh, now they're back with one out to go.

This really stinks. Two minutes of commericals, when I could have been watching the Angels win their first pennant ever!

Okay, if they are going to change to another game, let's see the game instead of commericals. They could have shown the first out of the ninth.

Pericval coming on to finish the game. Fox is switching to the Cardinals-Giants game. Fox should take the rest of this game to Fox Sports Network.

Adam Kennedy just got his 2nd hit of the inning, a single. He's 4 for 4 in the game with 3 HR. He was only hitting .100 coming into the game, but the game/series winning 3rd HR of the game may give him the MVP. It's now 13-5. The Angels have scored 10 runs in the 7th.

Chone Figgins just batted after pinch-running earlier in the inning. It's an unusual situation, where the batter bats without having a position on the team. He's not a pinch-hitter or pinch-runner at this point, and he has no position in the field.

For the 2nd time in the post season, Anaheim has scored 8 runs in an inning. And the inning isn't over yet. Twins went from hope to hopeless in less than 1/2 an inning. Bud Selig's probably breathing a sigh of relief; looks like he won't have to present the World Series throphy to the Twins.

have a 2.87 ERA in this series. I think if going in, you told anyone that the Twins starters would do that well, they would have bet on the Twins to win.

This was Santana's 4th game of the series. He had given up two consecutive hits. I was real surprised Gardenhire didn't pull him. Probably figured he had a good lefty-on-lefty matchup, and that Kennedy would bunt anyway.

Angles 8-0 HR lead is now the largest in LCS history.

This may be one of the most unbelievable things I have ever seen. He tries to sacrifice on the first pitch, goes down 0-2, then, against a lefty, hits his third HR of the game to give the Angels a 6-5 lead. In his career, he had 3 HR in 322 AB vs. lefties. The Twins bullpen fails again.

But can the bullpen hold it? Twins bullpen has a 6.75 ERA coming into this game.

Nice throw by Erstad, but the lead footed Pierzynski just beats it. Two-run lead for the Twins.

Wild pitch by F-Rod gives the Twins the lead. I wonder if Scioscia went to the well once too often with Rodriguez.

Kielty is pinch hitting. I wonder, with all the jiggling of the bat that Kielty does, if he's the wise choice against a hard thrower like Rodriguez?

Yes, he was selective, and Rodriguez walked him.

Three straight singles load the bases. Donnelly wasn't fooling anyone. F-Rod is coming on with one out. The Twins could use a long hit here. Will they bat for Rivas? Here's where not having Hocking could really hurt them.

In an otherwise well played series, the bottom of the sixth featured sloppy baserunning by Anaheim. Salmon was caught off third on a ground to the third baseman with 0 out, and Anderson just ran into a KDP to end the inning. Anaheim had a chance to blow the game wide open and blew it.

Angels have now outhomered the Twins 7-0. This would tie the largest difference in the history of the LCS:

Team                 Year   HR  HRA   Diff

Cubs                 1984    9    2    7

Giants               1987    9    2    7

Blue Jays            1992   10    4    6

Giants               1989    8    3    5

Athletics            1988    7    2    5

Indians              1998    9    4    5

Royals               1985    7    2    5

Braves               1997    6    1    5

HRA is HR against. Amazingly, the top two on the list lost the series.

Angels bullpen has been good, but again, the more relievers they use, the more likely the Twins are to run into one who isn't pitching well.

Adam Kennedy just hit his 2nd HR of the game. The broadcast said it was the third 2-HR game of his career. Given that he has 23 career HR in 470 games, I guess you can say they come in bunches for him.

Eight teams have played an LCS without hitting a HR; the last was the Cincinnati Reds in 1995. Only one of those teams won the LCS; the 1990 Athletics.

For a team that hasn't hit a HR in the LCS, the Twins hitters sure do like to admire their long fly balls. Oritz admired his double. Salmon might have thrown him out a 2nd if he had played it off the wall instead of trying for the catch. And Hunter stood at the plate on the pop-up. What if it had been dropped? Disappointing reactions, and I hope Gardenhire is chewing them out.

This article by William Gildea of the Washington Post is a couple of days old, but it's a good story about how Santiago has changed since his car accident.

They certainly are playing like champions. Taking a page out of the Yankees book, holding their own against the starters, and killing the bullpen.

They've score a run in the 9th with 2 out. Keep hope alive!

by Twins pitchers. They could easily be up 3-1 in this series. The offense has collasped. If Anaheim hangs on here (and I have little doubt they will), the Twins will only have a 12.5% chance of coming back and winning the series.

Jackson has now given up in order; a single, a double, an IBB, a triple. I expect Kennedy to homer here.

If you keep using pitchers, eventually you'll find one who stinks. Jackson is not getting the job done. It's now 5-0.

There's a fan in the stands with angel wings on her back. The only problem is they are red, which I think means that she should be in Detroit at a hockey game. :-)

The pitching moves don't work. Romero gives up a hit and another run. It's midnight and the coach is turning into a pumkin.

I really hate it when managers change pitchers every batter for no good reason. Here comes the third pitcher of the inning for the Twins.

Rodriguez continues his post-season domination. He gave up a leadoff bloop double to Mientkiewicz, but then got Mohr and Kielty on strikes, with Pierzynski grounding out in between.

Santana gets out of the jam. Two more chances for the Twins.

Brad hit Molina, Santana will be brought in with the bases loaded and two outs.

It was barely fair, a bloop just inside the right field line. 2-0 Angels.

Troy singles to left to bring in the game's first run.

Garret Anderson pops up. Twins backup looking for the double play.

A throwing error while Erstad tries to steal puts a runner on third with 0 out for Anaheim.

Eckstein lines into a double play. Through 6, Lackey has thrown 66 pitches, 45 for strikes, and Radke has thrown 57 pitches, 44 for strikes.

Angels get the leadoff man on in the bottom of the 6th. Only the 2nd hit off Radke.

Great play on a slow roller behind the mound. Good job reaching the ball and good job making a throw when he was running in the wrong direction.

Seems to be collision day in the outfield. Twice Vina almost collided with an outfielder today, and Mohr just ran into Rivas. Luckily, none of these have resulted in errors.

Eckstein leads off the fourth with a single to right.

Lackey is keeping his pitch count low. Forty-five through 4 innings, 29 strikes.

Current LCS BA's of Twins 1-4 hitters: Jones, .067. Guzman, .231. Koskie, .231. Ortiz, .200.

Radke gets the first nine batters. Thirty-one pitches through 3. I still think it was a big mistake not to get Radke two starts on full rest in this series.

The attempted steal by Pierzynski had to be the worst SB attempt I've ever seen. It was probably a botched hit and run.

Leadoff man reaches in the thrid.

Looks like it's setting up to be another great mound matchup. Twenty-two pitches for Radke, 17 strikes.

Mientkiewicz made him work, but another 1-2-3 inning. Fourteen pitches thrown that inning. If he can keep going at 12 pitches an inning, he'd be able to throw a complete game.

Radke puts down the Angels 1-2-3 with 2 strikeouts. Only 11 pitches for Radke, 8 strikes. Twins starters in this series have thrown a very high percentage of strikes.

I'm sure no one is making off color jokes about these things. :-)

That 6 straight plate apperances for Koskie with a strikeout. He didn't have a clue in this AB.

Lackey was not lacking for anything in that inning. 1-2-3, Retiring the side on 10 pitches.

Sanders flys out to Drew. Isringhausen was very impressive, striking out two and carefully pitching to Bonds. On to Anaheim!

Santiago strikesout. It's up to Sanders.

Isringhausen has great movement on his pitches today.

I'm not surprised at that result.

They haven't announced it, but I wonder if they are delaying the start of the AL game for the end of this one.

Isringhausen to face Kent and Bonds in the bottom of the 9th. Isringhausen has not given up a HR this year. My question is, if Bonds comes up with 1 out and the bases empty, will the Cardinals walk him rather than risk a tying HR?

Sanders K's with the bases loaded. This is Reggie's 8th post-season series. He's done well in two of them, but absolutely horrible in the other 6. With the K, he's now 22 for 122 in the playoffs, a Mendoza like .180 BA. Twice today with the bases loaded he's failed to deliver.

Amazingly, the Cardinals are playing the corners in against Kent. Can't anyone manage?

Will Dusty bunt him to third? :-)

I was on the roof at Fenway Park during the 1999 All-Star game when we had a fly over by jet fighters during the National Anthem. They were so close, I felt I could reach up and touch them. The amazing thing is that you don't hear them until they are by you, and then it's the loudest roar you've ever heard.

Three HR out to left. McCarver showed at the beginning of the game how he prevailing breezes help balls out in left field. Certainly looks like that's having an effect today.

Bonds homers off the lefty. He hit the kayak! Ties the game at 4. Getting a man on first in front of Bonds forces teams to pitch to him. That's another reason not to bunt Aurilia in the first, Bonds just ends up getting walked.

Russ Ortiz doesn't give up many HR. During the regular season, he only gave up 2 HR or more in a game 3 times in 33 starts.

Hard to believe all the runs in this game are earned.

Cardinals take the lead, but continue to fail to get hits with runners in scoring position. They are now 1 for 13 with RISP in this series.

Finley reaches on a K, Lofton misjudges a ball, and the game is tied.

That's the 2nd time Vina almost ran into an outfielder. I wonder if he can't hear because of the crowd noise, or if he's thinks he can't give up on the ball. If it's the 2nd, and he really is backing off at the last 2nd, that's okay.

I'm not used to seeing this from the Cardinals. Vina tried his best to give the Giants some runs, not covering 2nd and almost intefering with Edmonds catching the third out. Too bad Dusty gave an out away.

Kudos to Santiago for busting his butt down the line on the play where Vina didn't cover 2nd. I wonder if he looks at this as his last chance to win a world championship?

Why is Aurilia sacrificing in the first?

A couple of weeks ago I posted a bit about Dr. Carl Morris of Harvard, who had created a new runs formula. Dr. Morris has more information, including a short paper that explains the formula, and a calculator that let's you use it. Dr. Morris is writing a longer paper that will present a proof of his formula, which will be found on the above web site when it's done.

In reading the short paper, I see the gist of his argument, but he makes a lot of simplifying assumptions. This is usually the case when you work with lots of conditional probabilities. I'm also interested in why he only considers the cases of three men reaching base in an inning? I wonder if this really means 3 men reaching at once, since this is the most you can have on base. As I hear more, I'll keep you posted.

Looks like Rolen is still out. Jayson Stark notices something I wrote about the other day:

This lineup misses Scott Rolen. The bench misses Miguel Cairo, who has had to play third base in place of Rolen.

Tony La Russa couldn't afford to pinch-hit for Morris early in Game 1 because of that short bench.

The Cardinals can't afford to fall behind early again. And they shouldn't be too worried about a lefty on the mound. The Giants hit lefties better than righties, and Bonds showed a lot more power against lefties this year. Bonds hit 25 HR in 278 AB vs. righties, but 21 HR in 125 AB vs. lefties! That's a HR every 11.25 AB vs. righties, which is great, but he's almost twice as good vs. lefties, hitting a HR every 5.96 AB!

I give the edge to the Giants in this game, and if that works out, the Cardinals have had it.

Tom Krasovic of the SD Union-Tribune writes about Brian Sabean's ability to trade away the wrong pitchers and keep the right ones. Sabean gives some credit to a reliever from the 1970's:

Yesterday afternoon, Sabean chatted with a long-armed man who sported a handlebar mustache. He is Dick Tidrow, the team's vice president of player personnel. Previously he worked 13 seasons as a major league pitcher.

"In some ways, it starts with Dick," Sabean said.

Dick Tidrow was part of a trade that started to resurrect the Yankees in the 1970's. He came to the Yankees with Chris Chambliss and Cecil Upshaw, and was an important part of their run of success from 1976 to 1978. If he's Sabean's advisor on pitching, he's doing a good job.

Citypages.com has a continuing E-Mail conversation about the LCS between a reporter and his baseball fantasy archrival. Here's the latest installment, and you can check out previous ones by following the links.

Anderson makes a shoe string catch to end the game. Three of the last four games will be started by righties by the Angels. Gardenhire has to do something about his lineup against lefties, however.

The Twins don't have anyone who could pinch hit for Pierzynski?

Troy goes deep. It's 2-1 Angels. Angels have now out-homered the Twins 4-0 in this series.

Twins were very lucky that inning. Good defense by Rivas, poor base running by Figgins, and Garret Anderson just missing a grand slam. We go to the 8th tied.

Figgins is in as a pinch runner, but as far as I can tell, he doesn't know how to run the bases. He didn't score when Rivas had Eckstein's liner go off his glove into center, despite the fact that Figgins was half-way to third when it happened. And just now he didn't score on a wild pitch, even though Eckstein was able to go to 2nd. And now he gets thrown out at the plate on a grounder to 2nd. I'm not sure he was out on the tag, but if he goes straight in with his foot, I think he scores.

First hit by a Twins' lefty this game. Jones doubles to drive in Mohr. Game tied at 1.

Twins lefties are now 0 or 12. The righties are 5 for 14. Poor lineup construction by Gardenhire.

Great pitcher's duel so far. My boxscore has 134 pitches throw, only 36 for balls. That's only 27% of pitches for balls. The AL average this year was 37% balls.

What a great AB. He fouled off pitch after pitch, and with two strikes every pitch he took was a ball. Finally got a pitch he could hit, and singled to right. But that's the Angels. If it's in the strike zone, they'll hit it.

Garret Anderson has always been a decent hitter vs. LHP. And Milton has had trouble with lefties this year. He gave up 15 HR in 559 AB to RHB this year, but 9 HR in only 111 AB to lefties. A match made in heaven for Anaheim.

Through two innings, Washburn has thrown 26 pitches, 22 for strikes..

It's a funny effect. With all the fans in red shirts that match the seats, it actually looks like the stands in Anaheim are partially empty.

It strikes me this would be a better lineup against lefties:

1. Jones


2. Guzman


3. LeCroy


4. Hunter


5. Mohr


6. Lefties...

One of the keys to scoring runs when you don't have a lot of good hitters is to put those hitters together in the lineup (see 1990 Padres). By breaking up the righties with lefties throughout this lineup, I still feel Gardenhire is preventing a long offensive series that would lead to multiple runs.

The battle of the lefties, Milton vs. Washburn. Once again, the Twins have gone with their "dotted with lefties" lineup, which I believe is contributing to their poor showing vs. lefties. I'm guessing Milton does not find paradise tonight.

You can find detailed analysis before each Giants-Cardinals game at Only Baseball Matters. You can check out game 1 here, and game 2 here. When you are at game 1, notice that others are also doing this sort of thing. I encourage you to check out all of them!

It's being reported that Buck Showalter will be hired to manage the Texas Rangers. It's good to see someone who thinks through every facet of the game getting another chance to manage, although Buck's style does seem to grate on people after a while. I found this bit from T.R. Sullivan of the Star-Telegram most enlightening:

Showalter managed the Yankees from 1992-95. They had the best record in the American League in 1994, the year the players' strike wiped out the playoffs and World Series. In 1995, they won the wild card and made their first postseason appearance since 1981. After losing to the Seattle Mariners in the first round of the playoffs, Showalter stepped down to take over the Diamondbacks.

As their manager, he led the Diamondbacks to a division title and a record of 100-62 in 1999, their second year in existence. They dropped to 85-77 and a third-place finish in 2000 and he was replaced by Bob Brenly after the season.

In both cases, the Diamondbacks and the Yankees went on to win the World Series the year after Showalter left. That, more than anything, appealed to Hicks.

It almost strikes me that Buck is being brought in to build the team into contention, then when the Rangers are ready to win, they'll move someone else into the managers chair. That's not all that bad a way to do things. Some managers are better at building than winning. And Buck has shown that he can build a contender.

Update: John J Perricone of Only Baseball Matters points out that Buck didn't leave the Yankees job, he was fired.

The Boston Globe has an article on adding 10,000 seats to Fenway Park. It seems an engineering firm has determined that the existing foundation can support more decks to add that much capacity. I thought this was interesting, however:

Meanwhile, work began this week to add front-row seating at least two rows much like the dugout seats installed before last season that will eventually extend from the box seats down the left-field line around the infield and down the right-field line, adding several hundred choice seats.

This isn't the clearest writing, but I believe it means that they are going to add two rows of seats in front of the current box seats all around the park. Now, Fenway has a pretty small foul area as it is. I've seen a runner from third thrown out on a wild pitch, for example. If they add these rows behind home plate, I suspect that play will increase dramatically. And, of course, a few fewer foul pops being caught should increase offense as well.

Giants go home with a 2-0 lead. Great pitching in this game from Schmidt and Nen. Seems to be a different hitting star every day for the Giants. That's a very good sign.

All those Yankees fans who didn't want to see Tino leave have to be real disappointed. He's now 1 for 18 in the playoffs this year, and certainly should not be batting 5th for the Cardinals.

Giants get another insurance run on a triple by Snow and a squeeze by Martinez. Nen needs three outs for the save.

That's the 2nd time Bonds struck out swinging. He did not have a regular season game this year in which he struck out swinging twice.

Update: The last time Bonds had two swinging strikeouts in a game was 6/26/2001 vs. LA.

I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Schmidt has given them 7 great innings. But he has thrown 107 pitches. Dusty should have someone ready just in case. Dusty has pushed his starters quite a bit this year, but in the playoffs, you have to have all contingencies covered.

David Bell failed to throw out the runner, but his throw was nonetheless impressive for its accuracy. He threw after diving into foul territory.

Rick Aurilia hits his 2nd HR of the game. Again, a low pitch, but that one looked a bit outside.

As you all know, Aurilia went down this year with an elbow injury. Like Glaus in Anaheim, he's underperformed this year. If he's returning to form, that makes the Giants all that much tougher to beat.

Sounds like the Cardinals fans are taunting Lofton. I can't quite make out what they are saying. It would be funny if it were, "Darryl, Darryl!"

I guess Lofton has a better arm than Mickey Rivers. :-)

Williams is looking good pitching to Bonds, getting the rare swinging strikeout for Bonds. Of his 47 K during the regular season, 23 were swinging K's.

Perfect through 2. He's throwing strikes and not too many pitches (16 strikes, 23 pitches).

The Barr-O-Meter is being updated after every AB.

Aurilia's HR was a good example of how it's easy to hit a HR on a low pitch. If you have an uppercut to your swing, a ball going down in the strike zone is going to be in the same plane as the bat being swung. So you get a lot of bat on the ball, and the ball goes a long way. Does anyone remember McGwire ever hitting a high pitch for a HR?

The pitching matchup would appear to favor the Cardinals. Williams has a great home ERA (2.12) while Schmidt has not pitched well on the road this year (5.02, vs. 2.37 at home).

ESPN.com is keeping track of how the Cardinals' pitchers challenge Barry Bonds. It's amusing, and the analysis is excellent. Check it out every day.

Update: Kevin Hood writes me with a different take on the Barr-o-meter:

It's not amusing. It's classless. Questioning the manhood of the Cardinals b/c they aren't pitching to Barry, when every single team in the league has avoided pitching to Barry whenever possible, is punk journalism. Of course, it's not surprising from the goobers at ESPN who can't stop worshipping at the Church of Bonds.

Kevin

Another Update: Jason Grady responds:

I think it is funny. I have no qualms with a pitcher/manager/team doing what is deemed best to win, but these intentional passes are getting ridiculous. So, I have to agree with McCarver (which is not the norm) that if you are not going to give the guy anything close, just throw the four intentional pitches and get the game moving. And don't give me, "But, he might get him fishing." With Bonds? Not a chance.

In addition, these are supposed to be major league pitchers, right? They are the top 1% of talent in the world, but they are afraid to use that talent against Bonds. I have no problem calling the pitchers or LaRussa chicken.

The new Barr-O-Meter is deserved. Kevin's characterization of classless is little extreme. My guess is he's from St. Louis. Classless is considering yourself an ace pitcher in the NLCS opener and throwing four straight fastballs 18" outside. Correction, that's what I would call Gutless, which is why ESPN said Morris had "no balls". To me, that's accurate and funny and I'm not even a Giants fan.

The difference between Bonds' OPS (1.381) and second-place finisher Jim Thome's (1.122) is .259. To go .259 down from Jim Thome is .863. Number 40 is Steve Finley at .869. That's the gap between Bonds and the next best hitter in the majors and why ESPN et al worship at the 'Church of Bonds'.

Many people have grudges against Bonds. They should drop those long enough to enjoy his historical feats and appreciate that they are around to witness them, not complain about the much-deserved coverage he receives. They should also admit to themselves that all these highly talented pitchers are simply afraid, not necessarily pitching smart, so why not call them on it. Barr-O-Meter does.

Jason

Something that wasn't obvious watching the game last night was La Russa's dislike for Lofton. Ray Ratto of the SF Chronicle has the story:

For his part, La Russa tried to link the incident to his Renteria getting hit in the first inning, but soon admitted indirectly to having a history of disapproval for Lofton from their days in the American League.

"It's a trick I've seen him pull before, where you throw the ball inside and he's always reacting like you're trying to hit him," La Russa said. "He's trying to change the way the game is played, and not have anyone pop him inside. It was unnecessary."

He also compares this series to the 1987 series.

A bit of a slugfest, but the Giants get it done. Cardinals fans have to be disappointed in Morris' outing. Giants fans have to be encouraged by Bonds' triple, 2 runs and 2 RBI. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel!

Cardinals coming up in the bottom of the ninth needing four runs to win, three to tie.

Reed did not strike out an Angel tonight. The bullpen struck out 6 in 3 and 2/3 and did not allow a run. It's becoming abundantly clear that if you let the Angels put the ball in play they will beat you.

Percival comes in and strikes out three of the last four Twins. Out to Anaheim with the series tied at 1.

Twins going to the bottom of the ninth needing three.

Worrell strikes out Cairo to end the streak.

Can he keep the hit streak alive?

Scioscia goes to Percival in the 8th with the tieing run at the plate.

Looking at the scrolling play-by-play on my STATS, Inc. account, I see F. Rodriguez is pitching for both the Giants and the Angels. Which one of these will get the nickname, "F-Rod?"

UPI has the story on Trammell becoming Detroit's manager.

I have no idea how he'll do. He was a good hitter and a good shortstop. If he can mold some of the Detroit hitters into his image of getting on base and hitting for power, they'll be okay.

Cairo now has 8 straight hits in the post-season going back to last year. That ties a record set by Reggie Jackson and Billy Hatcher.

Ortiz comes out after 96 pitches. Twins have cut the lead in half.

This is why it's a bad idea to walk Bonds all the time. He's not the only one who can hit home runs. Santiago goes deep to make the score 9-3.

Tim McCarver just said that AL pitchers don't throw at batters as much as NL pitchers do. That seems to go against the conventional wisdom that AL pitchers head hunt more because they don't have to worry about retribution. I just checked hit batter numbers for the two leagues this year, and the AL had 20 fewer hit batters. But there are two fewer teams in the AL. So on a per centage basis, it's 0.99 for the AL, .89 for the NL. So the conventional wisdom seems right, the AL does throw at batters more than the NL.

Looks like it's going to be lopsided wins tonight. Luckily, Lofton started a bench-clearing argument on an inside pitch to make it interesting.

By the way, the Giants pitchers hit the fewest batters in the majors this year, so if a Cardinal gets HBP, you know they meant it.

Miguel Cairo gets another hit. Six for six in the post-season.

He's five-for-five now in the post-season. I wonder how far he'll extend it.

Pitching fine through 4. Averaging 16 pitches per inning, only striking out 2. Minnesota hasn't had an AB yet with men in scoring position.

Now has half a cycle, and has scored half the Giants runs.

The best protection for Bonds is a man on first. He just ripped a hanger into center field to clear the bases with a triple. I think the "Bonds bad in the playoff" meme is dead.

Now La Russa's limited number of pinch hitters can cause problems, because he's going to need to pinch hit for the pitcher each time that position comes to the plate.

Has anyone noticed that Lofton is paying dividends in the post season? The Giants needed a leadoff man, and Lofton did put up a .350 OBA for the Giants, a .416 during the hot streak in September. He had a .391 in the NLDS, and he's been on base in his first two PA tonight, with 2 runs scored. Great trade for the Giants.

Kennedy was picked off, but Spiezio tried to score and knocked the ball out of Pierzynski's glove at the plate. Then Eckstein makes contact and bloops a single. So it goes from an appearent 1 run inning to at least a 3-run inning.

Angels are making contact tonight, and so far it's paying off. Up 2-0 in the 2nd.

Both Rueter and Morris are having trouble finding the plate. Morris threw 26 pitches in the 1st, 18 balls. Reuter threw 20 pitches, 9 balls, neither a good ratio.

If you play for one run, you get one run. Morris was wild, and the Giants giving away an out helped them lose a chance at taking advantage of that wildness. Does Dusty really think that one run is going to win this game?

Note to Dusty Baker: You have 27 outs. Aurilia is one of your better hitters. Why are you using him to bunt? Now you have Lofton at third, and you'll get Bonds walked. C'mon Dusty, go for the big inning!

Has Rick Reed heard of wasting a pitch? Eckstein put the 0-2 in play, and Erstad put the 0-2 pitch out of the park.

The AP reports that Scott Rolen will be on the Cardinals NLCS roster, although he won't be able to play until later in the series. I think this is a risky strategy. The Cardinals are playing with only 24 players, and they will be short a hitter. That may tie La Russa's hands when it comes to pinch hitting in the game. It will be interesting see if Dusty uses his bullpen to take advantage of this weakness.

I wasn't sure who I was going to favor in this series, although I was leaning toward the Cardinals, due to their deeper offense. But I'm going to go with the Giants now. These two teams are very evenly matched, but with a 25-man roster, Dusty has more room to maneuver.

Yogi Berra is quoted as saying, "How can you think and hit at the same time?" Joe Mays seems to have adopted that strategy for pitching, according to this article by Jerry Zgoda.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in the New Yorker a few years ago about choking in sports that talks about thinking too much leading to chocking. So (as he so often is) Yogi was right.

Beautiful curve ball by Guardado freezes Glaus for strike three.

A well pitched game, a except for Guzman's error, well defensed. Mays did not walk a batter, and his defense were able to catch most of what was hit their way. Game 2 tomorrow night.

Why are they worrying about Figgins? Get the batter out!

Ben Weber has a great game face.

It looks like the Twins are planning on bringing in Guardado in the 9th. Mays has thrown 100 pitches but still looks effective. Tough call for Gardenhire, but it looks like he's going with the move that will be least 2nd guessed.

Scioscia goes to the bullpen for his designated, "I can only get one lefty out" pitcher. Schoeneweis is in to face Koskie.

Good to see this. He only threw 8 pitches in the 6th. If he's pitching well, there's no reason to go to anyone else.

Donnelly is in for Appier. The problem with going to the pen early is that manager don't bring in a pitcher to finish out the game. They bring in a pitcher for maybe an inning. The more pitchers you bring in, in my opinion, the more likely you are to find one who's not throwing well. In a tight game like this, that's all you need to lose.

The last play of the top of the 6th shows the difference between the Twins and Yankees defense. Rivas ranges to his left, dives, comes up with the ball and makes a strong throw. I doubt Soriano makes that play.

through 5 innings for Appier. He's been lucky that the Twins are only 1 for 6 with runners in scoring position. Appier has struggled through these five, and again, I don't think he'll be out for the sixth.

Love the name of this one: Ducksnorts.

That was a seven pitch inning for Mays. He's thrown 59 pitches through 5. Appier has improved, but has still thrown 68 pitches through 4. He's gotten his strikes ahead of his balls thrown, however.

That was incredibly bad. Given what the Angels did to the Yankees, you don't want to give Anaheim any extra chances.

Appier has thrown 41 pitches in the first two innings. At this rate, the Angels will be in the bullpen in the 6th.

Appier is not getting his pitches over. Pierzynski was able to get a good pitch to drive for a sac fly. If the Twins can be patient with Appier, they'll have good hitting counts.

If Tori Spelling married Torii Hunter, would their first child be named Toriii?

Good first inning for Mays. A flair hit was erased by a GDP from Salmon. Mays only threw nine pitches to get the three outs.

By the way, do you think Mientkiewicz was a cheer leader in a former life? He certainly has the split down.

In every way, the Angels are the better team, so even without home field I think they should be the favorite. I'm not that happy with a Twins rotation that only give Radke one start, although I suppose you could bring him back for game seven. However, starting Mays in game one may not be that bad an idea. He's the wildest of the Twins pitchers; maybe he can get the Angels to swing at some bad pitches. And the Angels are starting mostly righties, which plays to the Twins strength.

I'm interested in seeing how the Twins defense does against the Angels, since they put a lot of balls in play. The Angels wound up with the best defensive efficiency record (DER) in the league, and the Twins were 4th, so we should see much better defense against the Angels. It will be interesting, when the series is over, to compare DER's of the Twins and Yankees against the Angels.

Still, the only thing the Twins do better than the Angels is hit for power, and that's not by much, and could be attributed to the ballparks. Given the stats, I have to give the Angels the nod in this series.

An excellent column by Rob Neyer today, pointing out that the Braves lack of offense (he faults Cox) has led to their demise in the playoffs over the years. I'm in full agreement. Also, he points out that the underdogs didn't really win all the series.

It's 1987 all over again. Three of the four LCS teams are the same as in 1987. And on CNBC's Squawk Box this morning, they noted that the Twins winning the World Series marked the last two big market bottoms. Go Twins!

I wonder if Bonds will run the bases with "one flap down" if he hits a HR?

Things have changed a bit for the Cardinals. In 1987, the LCS starting outfield of McGee, Colemand and Curt Ford combined for 17 regular season HR. All three outfielder for the Cardinals this year had more than that individually (Pujols 34, Edmonds 28, Drew 18).

Jones hits into a double play, Snow to Aurilia. Bonds finally wins a post-season series. The Giants are moving on to the NLCS.

Yankees and Braves, the perenials, both eliminated from the LCS. Giants at Cardinals starts Wednesday. This is going to be a really fun LCS week.

Nen K's Sheffield swinging.

First and third, no outs. Sheffield up. In the words of Charlie Brown, he can be the hero, or he can be the goat.

Smoltz keeps the Giants relatively quiet, still 3-1. Nen coming in to face the top of the order for the Giants.

Braves are using Smoltz vs. the heart of the SF order in the 8th. Good to see the closer brought into a situation where the best reliever should be pitching.

Pitchers on both sides have been tough tonight. Both teams through 7 innings are one for seven with runners in scoring position. The difference is a sac fly and and a HR for the Giants.

Aurilia strikes out to end the inning. Great pitching by Holmes to keep the game close.

That's sac fly. I know you know he plays for the Giants. :-)

I love it.

Holmes pitches Goodwin perfectly.

Remlinger does not get the job done. He leaves the game with the bases loaded and no outs. This is going to be the inning that makes or breaks the Braves season. Darren Holmes is in to shut the door.

On the other hand, it's the bottom of the sixth, and Cox has gone through most of his pinch hitters. Maybe we'll see Maddux or Glavine swinging the bat later.

I really don't like this strategy. You go with Fultz, who was your worst regular reliever, with 2 on and 1 out, to get one batter. Why? Now they are going to Rodriguez, who is their 2nd worst relief pitcher. C'mon, Dusty. This is the situation where you have to close the door. Bring in someone who can get three or four outs.

Two on, one out in the 6th. Ortiz was a little wild, walking 4 and giving up 4 hits, 2 this inning. He was always able to get out of trouble, however. A real good effort.

Chipper hits it up the middle, but Aurilia grabs it (even with a bad bounce) and forces the runner at 2nd. Still 2-0.

By the way, I miss Ted, Jane, Jimmy and Rosalyn doing the Tomahawk Chop together. First, because a bunch of PC liberals were being disrespectful to Native Americans, and second, because you knew Jimmy was lusting after Jane in his heart. :-)

And Chipper Jones up. Atlanta has to like this situation.

Kevin Millwood pitched five good innings, but he's been lifted for a pinch hitter, Bragg, who reaches first on an error. Atlanta is going to depend on their bullpen the rest of the game. Millwood threw 79 pitches.

I like this. The Giants are winning, and Bonds is at the center of the offense. He just hit his third HR of the series, to the opposite field. I know he's not a likeable character, but I'm happy he's having a good game. This could put a lot of demons to rest.

The two hitters who have been most disappointing in the post season over the years, Bonds and Sanders, combine to put the Giants ahead in the 2nd. Sanders at least has had a couple of good series, even though his post-season BA was under .200 coming into the game.

Andruw Jones just pulled a Jim Rice. The two people in front of him walked. Ortiz was wild. And Andruw swings at the first pitch and pops it up (Rice would have hit into a DP). If the pitcher is wild, give him a chance to continue to be wild. Unless he grooves one down the middle, let him get behind in the count. I think this was bad judgement on Andruw's part.

: I meant to link to this site a while ago, and it just slipped my mind. With the Twins in the LCS, this is a must see site.

ESPN.com has an excellent summary of pitchers going on three days rest in the playoffs.

Steve Bonner writes:

David, I'm bitter about the Yankees getting eliminated in the first round. I think it's obvious that the Yanks ran into a red hot Angels team that had momentum from the opening pitch. But I think what I realized is that although a lot of people like to downplay the intangibles...intangibles are important. Raul Mondesi is grossly overpayed and while his rocket arm may have prevented the Halos from taking a few bases...his lazy pursuit of the fly ball in Game 4 was a huge non-play in my mind.Paul O'Neill would have broken his neck to get to that ball. As good as Soriano is someone needs to tell him that his sloppy defense won't be tolerated. I finally realized that Rob Neyer is right about Jeter being limited defensively, there were two ground balls I think he should have made plays on that went under his glove. I think I can forgive Bernie Williams for letting the ball drop between Soriano and he; because I think he normally makes that play. But the other guys are obviously "hit first" kind of guys. It's obvious to me that the pitching is getting old and maybe a bit predictable but they got zero pick up from the defense. Torre said that Garret Anderson's double took a funny hop on Giambi but I still think Tino would have at least knocked it down. The Yankees, for the first time in recent memory, looked clumsy in the field and their pitching couldn't save them.

All this is to say that I don't care what your payroll is, if you don't have cool collected professionals you won't win in the playoffs. And I also think that the series with Anaheim proves my point about the overstated importance of Rivera. We didn't even see the guy because the starters, middle relievers and defense couldn't hold a lead to save their lives.

What the Yankees did over the last several years was truly special becuase it wasn't about payroll, it was about a team playing all facets of the game extremely well for 5 years straight. I think to blame it on Steinbrenner outspending everyone cheapens tthe unbeliveably consistently excellent play of the team.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go root for Tino Martinez for the rest of the playoffs.

Steve

One common thread that keeps popping up in writings about this Yankee team is Paul O'Neill. I wrote this about the Red Sox needing a Paul O'Neill type. Maybe the Yankees do, too.

Also, this hasn't been said yet, but the Yankees lack of defense has became appearent as the season progressed. I think the Yankees coaching staff needs to be held accountable for this. They let a problem get out of hand, instead of addressing it and making it a point of improvement. At some point, Torre should have realized that they were bad defensively, and started kicking some behinds to get them to improve. He has Willie Randolph there; would it really kill anyone if he made Jeter and Soriano come in an hour early everyday and take ground balls while Randolph coached them? Torre's been a great leader for this team since he took over, but I wonder if he's just getting tired of it, and if some new blood (Paul O'Neill, anyone?) would make a difference.

Jim Caple of ESPN.com write an excellent piece on the Twins victory, and how contraction pulled the team together:

"I didn't want to be split up," said Gold Glove outfielder Torii Hunter, holding a victory champagne bottle as securely as any flyball. "I didn't want to look at all these guys on other teams. I didn't want to see Cristian Guzman on the other team or Doug Mientkiewicz with another team. We all came up together and stuck together.

"During the minors, we lost a lot and learned a lot. We struggled a lot. But everything we went through, we went through together."

In doing so the Twins became such a unified team, Mientkiewicz said they couldn't be any closer "if we were inside the same pair of pants."

Read the whole piece.

Last night I commented to a fellow baseball researcher that "Bud Selig was the evil step-mother, and the Twins were Cinderella." She replied that I was being too kind to Bud. I guess, after reading Jim's article, I should amend that with, "Carl Pohlad is the ugly step-sister."

Glavine walks Santiago with the bases loaded. Glavine has not walked a batter all year with the bases loaded. Santiago walked only 27 times in the regular season, but twice with the bases loaded this year (in about 15 PA). Still I would not have bet that would have been the outcome.

For the second week in a row, the unique hits to this site have gone up by nearly 500. Thanks to everyone who is reading. I'll continue to try to bring you good information.

and Hernandez gets out of the jam.

Hernandez hasn't given up a hit, but he's walked two and hit a batter in the 2nd to load the bases. Glavine is up, a decent hitter for a pitcher.

Bonds came up in the first with the bases loaded. He gave the ball a ride and got a SF to drive in a run.

The Twins not walking batters won't work as well vs. the Angels. The Angels have a much higher batting average than the A's, so if you put the ball over the plate, they'll hit it. Just ask the Yankees pitchers. Luckily for the Twins, Washburn won't be able to start 3 times against them, so they will see 5 games started by right-handed pitchers. The Angels have the third best record in the majors vs. LHSP, so look for Milton and Guardado to have some problems.

Correction: I corrected this to say 3 times above. Sorry about that.

Hocking battles the sun, but catches a foul pop to end the game. Twins vs. the Angles in the LCS! Who would have thunk it?

Twins did not walk a batter today. In the games they won, they walked 3, 1 and 0. In the two games they lost, they walked 4. I'm always glad when a post works out. :-)

With two out, Velarde singles to keep things alive. It's up to Durham now to keep things going.

Guardado has not been effective. He just gave up a three-run HR to Mark Ellis. It's 5-4 with one out in the bottom of the ninth. What a great game this has been.

Guardado coming in to try to take the Twins from contracted to LCS competitors. I'd love to see Bud have to hand the WS throphy to the Twins.

Pierzynski homers off the right-hander. He's had a great series, hitting .438. Score now 4-1 Twins.

That was the most important batter Hawkins ever faced. Nice to see him come through.

ESPN just did a graphic showing that lefties don't have a hit vs. Mulder in this series. Given that, you have to wonder if Gardenhire shouldn't have put all his righties together, rather than breaking them up almost every other hitter with a lefty. It's as if he's put holes all over his lineup, which is one reason that although they have threatened, the Twins haven't scored much.

Radke still hasn't walked a batter.

Update: Sorry, I misheard. The graphic showed stats in this game, not the series. Mulder however, only allowed 1 hit to a lefty in his first start.

Twins had 2nd and 3rd again with less than 2 outs and failed to score. Mulder is bending but not breaking. He's thrown 70 pitches on short rest. My guess is he goes one more inning. I'm not sure how long Howe should play with fire.

I think Cirgarette Smoking Man put something in Mulder's coffee.

I think it's really sad that there are empty seats in Oakland today. I don't know why, but that doesn't stop me from speculating wildly. I wonder if the first round of the playoff is becoming not that big a deal. If you win, you get to play for the pennant. That matters, so why not save your money until then? A's fans have been disappointed in the first round two years in a row. Maybe they're just waiting until the games are meaningful.

Update: Mike Hansen sends this link.

Denny Hocking delivers a single to drive in a run. Hocking is in the lineup because Rivas is hurt, but also because he hits lefties and Mulder well. The move pays off.

Pierzynski pops out to shortstop in shallow left. The runner on third is not able to score.

Howe going for the intentional walk in the 2nd with one out to try to prevent the big inning. Pierzynski up, they are hoping for a DP, but that's tough, even with a slow lefty.

We're in the bottom of the first, and the contrast between both these teams and the Yankees play in the Angels series is amazing. Oakland hit the cutoff man in the first, and prevented a double from becoming a triple. In the bottom of the first, Hocking ranged far to his right to keep a single in the infield, and Hunter made a good running catch on a ball to shallow center.

Jon Miller just said, "There is no tomorrow!" I should count how many times I hear that.

Miguel Cairo's four for four represents the most hits for someone with a 1.000 BA in Division Series play. In fact, it's the best of any post-season series. Ken Boswell in the 1973 WS was 3 for 3, Bobby Brown in 1947 was 3 for 3, and Orel Hershiser in 1988 was 3 for 3.

Pedro Gomez of the Arizona Republic sees the Diamondbacks making moves to become a younger team next year:

Kiss the Diamondbacks as you know them goodbye.

The face of the Diamondbacks will remain intact as long as Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and Luis Gonzalez remain, just like Atlanta is viewed as unchanged because Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Greg Maddux remain.

The Diamondbacks' Big Three are all under contract for next season, and there is no reason to believe any of them will be traded.

It's the peripheral players who are likely to change in a big way during the winter months, when general manager Joe Garagiola Jr. will slide under the microscope for close inspection.

Change is inevitable for this franchise, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Diamondbacks need to get younger if they are going to remain a consistent contender.

I've thought that the Diamondbacks have been old for a while. Still they've come a long way with their veterans. The question is when do you jettison for youth? In the case of the DBacks, it's after you lose.

I thought the NY Post wouldn't pull any punches. Here's George King's article on game 4:

The latest Yankee dynasty is 3-D, as in definitely done dancing. For an organization that admits anything short of a World Series title is a failure, this season was a baseball disaster.
Playing very uninspired in front of a jazzed Edison Field crowd yesterday, the Yankees stunk. They didn't pitch, field or hit in the clutch and were deservedly ousted from the ALDS by the Angels in a shocking four games thanks to a 9-5 beating that was witnessed by a delirious gathering of 45,067 that serenaded The Bombers with "Go Home, Yankees" late in the game.

"Looking back on the whole series, they wanted it more than we did," Jorge Posada said.

So, after winning the World Series in four of the previous six years and reaching the Fall Classic five times, the Yankees' season is over long before they believed it would be. It's the first time since 1997 the Yankees were booted in the first round.

And they had nobody to blame but themselves. Not only were the Angels better, the AL East champions - how hollow is that? - were putrid.

Most of the articles on the web are about the Yankees losing. The Orange County Register's Cheryl Rosenberg Neubert writes about the Angels winning:

The Angels simply found the best way to defeat a dynasty is to chip away at it with singles and more singles and an occasional blast to the outfield seats. Foul off pitch after pitch. Throw out anything that moves.

That is how New York has won its bucketful of rings. The Angels talked about modeling themselves after the Yankees during spring training. They didn't talk about how to beat them, just how to be like them.

And in the end, they defeated the Yankees at their own game.

I'd say, given how invincible Johnson and Schilling appear, this is quite a shock. For the first time since 1998, two totally different teams will be in the World Series. The Cardinals shut down the 1-4 hitters of the DBacks. They were a combined 6 for 45 with 0 HR, 1 RBI and 3 runs scored. Both the starters and relievers were excellent for the Cardinals; staters had a 2.00 ERA, while the relievers only gave up 1 unearned run. And now the Cardinals have 3 days to rest and recover before the start of the LCS.

Johnson pops out to finish the game. Congrats to the Angels, they played the Yankees perfectly. They put the ball in play against a bad defense, and demolished a good pitching staff. An impressive series.

I like the way the AL is proving that money doesn't always buy championships. Based on opening day, the Angels were 15th in the majors in payroll, the Twins 27th, and the A's 28th. All these teams should be congratulated for showing how to win on a budget, and that the poor cry is really just ineptitude on the part of the management of those teams.

Williams scores, tying run on deck.

1st and 3rd, 2 out. Isn't this what happened in the 1986 World Series?

Bernie singles with 2 out in the 9th.

Yankees need 5 runs with 2 outs.

HR by players with .282 OBA's and .331 slugging percentages just kill you. Lockhart had not homered since July, but he gave the Braves a big lead today with a 3-run HR. I sure Bonds would trade his two solo shots for one of those.

Notice, please, that the Twins only walked one batter in today's game. Even without the error in the 4th that led to 7 team unearned runs, the Twins still win that game on good pitching. Keep the A's off base, and you can beat them. Back to Oakland for game 5.

I think you can sum up today's Yankees-Angels games on two plays in the 5th that went to left field. In the top of the 5th, with men on 2nd and 3rd, Jeter hit a shot to left that Anderson got a good jump on and made a great catch, making a full extension to get the ball. Instead of a big inning, the Yankees had a one-run inning. In the bottom of the inning, Molina hit a ball to left. Rivera turned the wrong way, and by the time he corrected himself, he had no shot at the double.

The Yankees defense has been horrible. It's been getting weaker all season, and as I far as I can see, the Yankees did nothing to address it. Jeter, Soriano and Williams have been especially bad in this series. It's a problem the Yankees are going to have to address. They were able to get away with it to a certain extent because their pitchers struck out a lot of batters, but the Angels don't strike out. It just shows you what putting the ball in play against a poor defense will do for you.

Nick Peters of the Sacremento Bee talks about how the loss Thursday bothered Bonds:

The frustration showed then when he admitted his failure, and he had the same anguished expression around midnight Thursday shortly after he sent a mid-90s John Smoltz heater soaring on a majestic arc into the right-field seats.

The towering drive off the league's best closer elicited gasps of admiration, but Bonds wasn't impressed. A 7-3 loss to the Braves ended the Giants' winning streak and squared the series entering Game 3 today at Pacific Bell Park.

"I don't look for splits; I look for wins," said Bonds, unable to mask his disappointment. His body language suggested defeat, perhaps even a realization the Braves snatched momentum with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Kevin Millwood next in line.

Peters also points out that both starters have something to prove:

And it's a daunting task today with Greg Maddux bringing 29 games of postseason experience and 15 consecutive years of at least 15 victories into a start against Jason Schmidt, making his playoff debut.

Both have a score to settle. The last time the Giants faced Maddux in October, he was hammered in two 1989 NLCS starts with the Cubs, yielding a grand slam to Will Clark. With Atlanta, however, he's 10-10 with a 2.79 postseason ERA.

Schmidt once was a prime prospect with the Braves but went 5-6 with a 6.45 ERA combined in 1995 and 1996, and wasn't deemed worthy to remain in the varsity rotation. He has blossomed with the Giants, going 20-11 in 40 starts the last two years, including 7-3 the last two months.

This AP article brings up the possibility of Johnson pitching on short rest, which Brenly rejects:

After losing the first two games of their best-of-five series with World Series co-MVPs Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling pitching, the Diamondbacks send out Miguel Batista to start Game 3 against the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday night.

"We're not stupid, we understand what we're up against," manager Bob Brenly said Friday. "But we also understand there's nothing more you can do than give your best effort."

Brenly said he didn't consider using Johnson, who was shelled in Game 1, on three days' rest in Game 3. He expressed confidence in Batista, 8-9 with a 4.26 ERA in the regular season.

"Our feeling over the last couple of years is that Randy is much more effective when he's able to maintain his regular routine," Brenly said. "We also feel Curt Schilling is the guy who is best-suited to handle short rest if we do need to bring somebody back to pitch a potential Game 5.

I have to agree with Brenly here. No matter what, you're going to have to pitch Batista in one of the games, so you may as well do it now, and have Johnson and Schilling strong for games 4 and 5 if you win.

Mark Emmert of the Duluth News Tribune compares the current Twins dilemma to the contraction threat:

The good news for the Twins is that, unlike their offseason battle to stave off contraction, this time their fate is in their hands. The bad news is that those hands haven't been nearly as steady as they were during the regular season, when strong defense was a given.

Emmert also points out how good the A's have been in tough environments:

The Twins are facing a 2-1 deficit in the American League Division Series after losing Game 3 6-3 to the Athletics on Friday, despite the spirited backing of 55,932 vocal fans, a Metrodome record for a baseball game.

Much was made of the unique advantage the Twins gain from their loud fans and quirky stadium. But in the past two postseasons, Oakland has played five games in venerable Yankee Stadium -- whose fans have been "Ruthless" since 1933 but ruthless since it opened in 1921. The A's won three of those five playoff games, dodging foreign objects all the while.

So coming into the Metrodome on Friday -- where Twins fans put the din in dingy -- wasn't as daunting as one might have imagined.

I like the Twins chances against Hudson today, they play well against right-handers. The A's are good vs. lefties, but not as good as the Twins vs. righties.

This New York Times article by Tyler Kepner pulls no punches (link requires registration):

The Yankees are having to contend with an Angels team of playoff neophytes who have played the series on their terms.

The Yankees scored six runs in the first three innings, a welcome gift from the rattled Angels starter, Ramon Ortiz, who walked four. The Yankees' offense went dormant after that, and their pitchers were hopeless. They let the lead slip away again.

That is nothing new in this series. The Yankees lost three leads in Game 1 before coming back to win. They blew an eighth-inning lead in their Game 2 loss. Tonight's 6-1 lead in the third inning was gone by the seventh.

The Yankees' vaunted pitching staff is crumbling against an opponent much tougher than people believed.

"Everybody's saying they're scrappy," the Yankees' Robin Ventura said. "They're not scrappy. They're good. They have good at-bats and they just played a great game. They came back and turned it around."

In 26 innings in this series, the Angels have gone down in order just five times, including three against Orlando Hernández in Game 2. They then hit two homers off him. Angels batters flick away so many two-strike pitches, each fan must expect to catch a foul ball.

The Yankees' hallmark is pitching, and the Angels have scoffed at it. Yankee starters have an earned run average of 8.53 in the three games, and none has lasted through the sixth.

Of course, the Angels have been here before. George Vecsey has this take (again, link requires registration):

Every year a segment of the baseball-loving world seeks a new contender, a team that will stand up to the Yankees and all their money.

Despite the morbid history of their own franchise, the Anaheim Angels became the great red hope of this round of the playoffs. They carry the underdog aspirations of all the cities that dare not dream of ever getting into the World Series under baseball's current state of skewed finances.

...

For all their dash, the Angels are a strange team to be carrying so much responsibility. They have a background of raffish inconsistency and abject collapse.

This has nothing to do with the current players, who don't want to hear about the awful events of 1982 and 1986. They are innocent. But the franchise itself has never been able to get to the World Series in its first 41 seasons.

"The Angels are not the Red Sox or the Cubs," said Reginald Martinez Jackson, the noted baseball historian who has been in a lot of places, including Anaheim.

Well, the 1982 Angels weren't the Red Sox, but they had Lynn, Burleson and Baylor, three players who were involved in Red Sox collaspes.

And the Yankees have been here,too:

As Jeter solidified his place in Yankees' lore, the three-time defending World Series champions became the first team ever to win a best-of-five series after losing the first two games at home.

Will history repeat, or are the Angels and Yankees about to write a new chapter?

Yankees pitching is simply bad. During the season they were good at not giving up HR and not walking people. They have only given up 7 BB, but 8 HR have flown out of the park against them. It's up to Wells now, and I have to believe he's going to relish the chance to save the day.

Stanton faced 10 batters tonight, which ties the most he's faced in a game this year. This is the first of those outings, however, in which he pitched badly. Joe Morgan agrees with this post.

Francisco Rodriguez (dare I say, F-Rod?) pitches two perfect innings. No baserunners, and six strikeouts. He looks pretty unhittable. He had 421 K in 317.2 career minor league innings, and only 268 hits allowed.

The Angels come back and tie the game on a Spiezio single. Soriano almost got, but it was just over his glove. The Angels are playing like the Yankees usually do in the playoffs. They don't seem to be intimidated by the Yankee bullpen.

John Lackey pitches three shutout innings, which makes him a better Lackey than anyone ever used by Frank Gorshen or Ceasar Romero in the Batman series. :-)

Jon Miller just reported that Mussina left the game with tightness in his groin. It's a good thing the Yankees have six starting pitchers on their staff.

It's quarter after ten here in the East, 2 hours into the game, and we're in the bottom of the 5th. Just checking, but since 1996, the average time for a playoff game involving the Yankees is 3:27, while for all non-Yankees games is 3:11. They should make the Yankees games start at 7:30.

Adam Kennedy had a big (well, for him) HR surge late in the year. He two in May, but finished with five in August and September combined.

Mike Lee writes to clarify this post:

Mr. Pinto,

My name is Michael Lee and I've been a regular reader of your blog for the past couple of months. As for the comment about Ricardo Rincon and his high ERA - Baseball Prospectus ranks him 4th in "Received Least Help: 10 ML Relievers least bailed out by others (Ranked by Bequeathed Runs Saved)." The link is:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/current/rrereport02.html#leech

That's probably the main culprit for his ERA not being below 3.50. Just to let you know in case you can't sleep at night thinking about it - I know he does. Have a good weekend and continue to write your informative and entertaining blog.

- Mike Lee

Thanks, Mike!

Troy Glaus has 3 HR in this division series, which led me to ask, "Who has the most post-season HRs in Angels history?" I figure Grich or Baylor had 3 or 4. But I was wrong. In two games, Glaus has become the Angel post-season home run king. His three are more than Baylor, Dan Ford and Bob Boone who all had 2 for the Angels.

I don't quite understand why Rincon had a 4.18 ERA this year. All his other stats are really good. He did give up a higher BA with men in scoring position, but it wasn't that bad (.286). I wonder if the people who came on in relief of him did a poor job with inherited runners.

Three of the four A's HR today have come while I was in the bathroom. Coincidence?

I'm listening to the Twins broadcast over the internet, and the fans are so loud you can hardly hear the announcers, and you can tell they are shouting. I have to wonder if the error on the collision by Ellis and Hatteberg was caused by them not being able to hear each other call for the ball.

That's what I get for going to the bathroom. Durham leads off with an inside-the-park home run, followed by an outside-the-park HR by Hatteberg. At least Reed hasn't walked anyone yet. :-)

I didn't think anyone listened to Reggie Jackson anymore, but ESPN.com has an AP article in which Mr. October comments on GM's. He's right on about Willie Randolph. I wonder if he reads this blog?

I had the honor of participating in a Baseball Tonight meeting that Mr. Jackson attended. Let me just say that all those negative things you've heard about Reggie over the years are more true than you could imagine. And finding that out was very disappointing for me. I really liked Reggie as a player, but I have no respect left for the man after that meeting.

This article from the AP via the Topkea-Capital Journal has two important stories; Rolen looks to be seriously hurt, and some radio station in Phoenix called Kile's widow and asked if she had a date for Thursday's playoff game.

Flynn Kile hung up the phone after KUPD-FM radio personality Beau Duran asked her the question in a call to her Phoenix hotel room, The Arizona Republic reported on its Web site Thursday night. It was not immediately clear if the call was broadcast on the station.

If you listen to Beau Duran, stop.

The injury to Rolen is a tough blow to the Cardinals. However, they still have an excellent hitter in Pujols, so I don't think losing Rolen hurts the Cardinals as much as losing Gonzalez hurt the DBacks.

Another defection story. We should offer to move the Expos to Havana in exchage for overthrowing Castro. :-)

Smoltz gave up a HR to Bonds, then struck out the side in the 9th.

All the road teams have to be pretty happy, all returning having temporarily secured home-field advantage. Back to the AL tomorrow, all on ABC family.

Millwood out after 6 innings, 72 pitches. I have to assume Cox is trying to save him for pitching on short rest in game 5.

Through 5 innings, Millwood has 6 strikeouts, no walks, and is averaging 12 pitches per inning. Out of 62 pitches, only 16 have been called balls.

So far, the second base platoon is working for the Braves. Lockhart had 2 walks yesterday, and DeRosa has 2 hits and 2 RBI tonight.

Benito Santiago made a great play on the bunt by Millwood. He waited until the last second to see if the ball would roll foul, then picked it up and made a perfect, extremely strong throw to first. I remember when Santiago first came up, he would pick-off runners at 2nd from his knees. He still has a gun for an arm.

Lopez and Castilla go back-to-back in the 2nd. For a matchup between two teams with excellent pitching staffs, this series is turning out to be a slugfest.

For some reason, I though I had this one in the list. Check out David Levens' blog for info on the A's.

Does it bother anyone else that David Bell is batting 8th? He's a better hitter than both Snow and Santiago. At least if you bat Benito 8th, he'll occasionally get on with an intentional walk. I suppose it might be based on career numbers, but I still think he should be batting higher in the order.

They've won against the two best pitchers in the NL. It's now up to Batista to keep hope alive in Phoenix. The good news is, if Batista can win, the Cards have to face Johnson and Schilling again.

Vina is now 17 for 43 career in the division series after his 4 for 5 today. That .395 average would be 2nd among players with 40 career Division Series AB. Mike Stanley is first at .400, 22 for 55.

La Russa waited for Donnels to be announced as a pinch hitter, then wen to the pen for Isringhausen. Jason has gone the whole year without allowing a HR.

I know it's 407 FT to centerfield at BankOne Ballpark, but for some reason, that outfield looks huge to me. Maybe it's the high centerfield wall.

Update: La Russa tried to get Brenly to use his lefty, but Brenly didn't fall for it. I forgot that Donnels was a lefty.

DBacks need a run or two. They'll have the pitcher's spot, then Womack and Spivey. Womack has a way of being involved in these close games.

Miguel Cairo may get a pyramid erected in his memory after driving in Renteria with the go-ahead run. Cairo had come in to play third in the previous inning on a triple switch when Fassero came in to pitch.

Don't you just hate it when you move your left fielder to third base and he makes an error that leads to an unearned run? Okay, I was eating dinner, and I didn't see the reason for pinch hitting for Rolen. I know he was hit earlier in the game, so I'm assuming his hand was injured.

Update: Rolen was injured on a fielding play in the 7th. I haven't seen an update on his condition.

Great job by Schilling pitching out of a bases loaded jam. Got Edmonds on a wicked splitter. Sutcliffe doesn't think Finley should come out for the 7th. He's thrown 98 pitches and just had to run around the bases.

For a career AL pitcher, Finley did a great job of running from 1st to 3rd. He avoided being hit by the batted ball, then used those long legs to scoot around real quick. Love to see a multi-dimensional player. :-)

What a great pitching matchup so far. Both are striking people out. Doesn't look like Schilling is tipping his pitches today, although Sutcliffe thought he might have on the Drew HR. This may be the only way to beat Schilling when he's on; shut out the offense and get a solo HR.

My source for stats on this wasn't available this morning, so I just wanted to fill in the pieces:

Twins in Playoffs

1987-2002              Home         Road

ERA                    2.84         4.89

Runs/Game               5.6          4.6

If you believe the noise theory, the opposing batters must have a really hard time concentrating at the plate.

This article by Eric Gilmore is a nice summary of the Giants win yesterday. He points out that the Giants aren't a one-man team. Fair enough. Team have been pitching around Bonds all year, trying to neutralize him, and the Giants still won. Maybe the right way to approach the Giants is not to worry about Bonds. Concentrate on getting everyone else out, and Bonds won't be able to do that much damage. I remember a Celtics playoff against the Bucks in the 70's. Their game plan was to let Jabbar score as much as he wanted, but shut down everyone else. It worked. I believe that strategy would also work here, since the Giants are pretty much a two person offense.

Since moving into the HHH Dome, the Twins are 11-1 at home in the playoffs, 6-8 on the road. I hear that the roof acts like a parabolic microphone, concentrating the noise from the crowd down onto the field. Wonder if the A's will play with ear plugs?

Craig Damon respones to my article on run distrbiutions:

I just read your piece on whether the A's vs. Red Sox difference was luck or run differential. While I think there is some validity in the run differential, it certainly cannot come close to closing the huge difference in expected vs actual performance for these two teams.

Yes the A's are more likely to win games where the team has given up 4 or 5 runs. But that difference is extremely slight. The A's win 1 more game out of every 250 that gives up 4 runs and 1 more game out of 200 that they give up 5 runs. Giving the benefit of the doubt that these two pitching efforts make up 2/3 of the games, the A's would win 1 extra game every 2 years. Offsetting this, the Red Sox would win from 1 in 25 to 1 in 60 more of the other games. If they have even distributions of runs surrendered, the Red Sox would have been expected to win MORE games. Boston surrendered only 11 more runs over the course of the season, so the distributions should be very similar.

Because of the unbalance introduced by capping runs surrendered at the low end, but not at the high end, unbalanced pitching would contribute the exact opposite effect, causing the unbalanced team to win more often than otherwise. I have not looked at the distribution of runs, but with the very successful top end of the rotation and the horrible bottom, I would expect the Sox to be much more skewed. Just like a few very high scoring games don't win as many games as more evenly spreading the runs, a few very poor pitching appearances doesn't lose as many games as more evenly spreading the runs.

Hmmm... I think I need to look at this further.

To expand the table, I re-ran all the numbers using your runs scored figures. I agree with the Red Sox percentages, but get slightly different A's percentages. I may be using a slightly different formula than you are.

runs allowed	Sox WP		A's WP
0                1.000           1.000
1                0.955           0.959
2                0.893           0.854
3                0.741           0.729
4                0.588           0.593
5                0.442           0.448
6                0.331           0.315
7                0.240           0.204
8                0.176           0.132
9                0.140           0.090
10               0.103           0.045
11               0.076           0.037

The Red Sox are more likely to win at almost every level and their advantages are far larger.

I decided to quickly run the runs surrendered. I made a slight mistake (the red sox only have 161 games)

runs allowed	Sox distrib	A's distrib
0               17               19
1               16               16
2               23               25
3               26               21
4               18               17
5               16               13
6               10               17
7               11               12
8                9               8
9               11               4
10               2               4
11               0               4
12+              3               2

Combining the two charts gives expected wins (EW)

runs allowed   Sox EW           A's EW

0              17/17            19/19

1              15/16            15/16

2              21/23            21/25

3              19/26            15/21

4              11/18            10/17

5               7/16             6/13

6               3/10              5/17

7               3/11             2/12

8               2/9              1/8

9               2/11             0/4

10              0/2              0/4

11              0/0              0/4

12+             0/3              0/2


total         100/162           94/162

Tthe run distribution based expected record is slightly more realistic than the pythagorean expected record. But only slightly. (If I carried half games in my rounding, it would close up by about another game.) The difference in actual records vs. expected records is still massive and still unaccounted for. Someone else can argue luck vs. choke. It just isn't based on scoring distribution.

I love your blog. You got me sufficiently excited tonight to avoid the work I really need to be doing.

Thanks (I guess :) )

--
Craig A. Damon

Craig is a PHD in computer science. And he's right, the distribution doesn't account for the entire difference. I still think, however, that taking the distribution into account is important, and that win shares use of actual wins as opposed to projected wins is an indirect way of doing that.

I should probably run some random simulations and see how the normal team does against the convex team, and see how the A's do against the Red Sox.

Went to the Aimee Mann concert tonight. She puts on an excellent show. She's been described as Janeane Garafalo in Daryl Hannah's body. If you have a chance to see her, you won't be disappointed.

In the two innings I've seen of the Yankees game, Jeter keeps being less impressive with his defense. Seems if he has to move more than three or four steps to either side, he can't get to a ball. His defensive game is really deteriorating.

Also, the Yankees had the bases loaded in the 8th with 2 out, and Jeter K'd. Not a good night for Derek.

With a 2 RBI single, Glavine is now 6 for 16 in Division Series play, a .375 BA.

Of course, as soon as Russ and I point out the poor firstbasemen playing, Snow doubles in two runs. Then Bell singles him in. 3-0 Giants. Glavine is having 2nd inning, rather than first inning trouble.

Russ Queen writes:

After I finally figured out which Fox affiliate was telecasting the games yesterday (and wasn't that ESPN's crew? Boy, am I baffled), I had a few observations I would like to share with you.

1) "Closer" madness. Once again, an example of a Manager (Scioscia) refusing to use his Closer in the highest of high leverage situations (and if two on and Giambi up isn't a high leverage situation, I don't know what is). Why in the world do Managers refuse to use their best pitchers when it counts the most? If Percival gets out of it and Scisocia doesn't want to use him in the ninth, at least Donnelly or whoever will be facing the relatively easier part of the Yankee lineup in the 9th.

2) Has there ever been a more pathetic (offensive) group of starting first baseman on day one of the expanded playoffs? Velarde for Oakland, Ortiz for Minnesota, Tino for St. Louis, Grace for Arizona (where is Durazo?), Spezio for Anaheim. Only Jason Giambi fits the preferred
mold. I don't know what any of it means except, just maybe, that the
Yankees aren't going to lose.

3) Did Art Howe err in starting Tim Hudson against the Twins in game one, given the Twins record against right-handed starters versus left?

4) Boy, did Walt Jocketty do a great job of building the Cards without having to give up too much? That lineup is just awesome.

Russ Queen

Thanks, Russ, good points all.
1) I think Schoenweiss was there specifically for Giambi. But once Giambi reaches base, however, Pericval should be in.
2) See this post from earlier this year.
3) Yes. Twins are pretty poor vs. LHP. He should have used Hudson once. See my thought here.
4) Yes. Rolen was a huge pickup.

Russ also sent me an addendum:

Hey, and I just thought, as an addendum to the 1st base comment...

Atlanta: Franco?
San Francisco: JT Snow?

Wow.

Correction: Hatteberg actually started for the A's at first yesterday, as Zachary D Manprin points out. Velarde came in after Saenz was injured pinch hitting.

A reader writes:

Every time I see things like "That puts [Bernie Williams] one behind Mantle for the Yankee record." I get frustrated. I think that by including Division Series statistics, we are doing a great disservice to the ballplayers who never got to play in additional postseason series. I think that all postseason statistics should be presented for what they are. How many hits does Derek Jeter have in postseason play if you only include LCS & WS games? How many HRs does Bernie have if you remove the Division Series games? Batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage... all these are relevant comparisons, perhaps even slanted in favor of the old-time ballplayers. Accumulated statistics lose relevance when the number of postseason chances is greater now than ever before. It's like comparing football statistics from the era of 12-game seasons vs. 16-game seasons. Of course you'll get more hits, runs, RBIs, HRs if you play an extra 5 games every year.

-- Barron Sopchak

This is a legitimate argument. My reply to Brarron:

Barron,

Thanks for reading. What you say is very true. Mantle hit his HR in many fewer games. But I'm not trying to decieve anyone. I trust that my readers are as smart as you, and realize the difference between eras.

Take care,

David

I suppose when we do counting stats in the future, it would be helpful to put in an average stat to go with it. For example, if you look at post-season AB/HR, Ruth is best all time at 8.6, while Mantle ranks 13th at 12.78 and Williams isn't in the top 25.

Pujols triples to center, Rolen homers to center. Johnson has only 1 K pitching in the 4th, where's he's now faced 3 batters without getting an out.

This was a typical Yankees post-season win. The starters pitched evenly, but the Yankees bullpen dominated.

Bernie Williams follows up Giambi's single with a three-run HR. It's his 17th post-season HR. That puts him one behind Mantle for the Yankee record.

Giambi pulls the ball against the shift, and gets a hit off Spiezio's glove. Game tied.

Giambi is up with 2 on and 2 out in the bottom of the 8th, trailing by one run.

I'm now listening to the Angels-Yankees and watching the Cardinals-Diamondbacks. So far against Johnson, 4 balls in plays, two runs scored, including an error and a two-run HR by Jim Edmonds.

Maybe this prediction will be true in the post-season. :-)

The shift worked against Giambi this time. He hit the ball to Spiezio, who turned the 353 DP. How rare is this? I looked back to 1987 in the stats database, and found no 353 DP's in the regular season.

I'm not sure who is calling these pitches, but Clemens is throwing pitches in the dirt to a selective hitter like Salmon, and putting pitches up to a hacker like Anderson. Should the "out" pitches to those two have been reversed? If Anderson will swing at almost anything, isn't he the one you want to throw the splitter to?

Anaheim is doing a great job of wearing Clemens down. He's at 93 pitches through 5 innings.

I like David Eckstein. We share the same first name and the same height. He just executed a perfect hit and run, and is two for three tonight. Only a great play by Ventura on a bunt kept him from being perfect.

The Angels had an extreme shift vs. Giambi. Glaus was almost behind 2nd base. Meanwhile, in the outfield, Anderson was over near the line in left, while Erstad was shading toward right. Giambi screwed them up, however, by hitting the ball out of the park. 3-1 Yankees.

Salmon singles past Jeter to tie the game. I think that play is an example of Jeter's lack of range. I think most SS would have had that ball.

An unusual left-field HR for Jeter at Yankee Stadium in the first. Most of his HR at home go the other way; most on the road are pulled. He now has 10 post-season HR in 307 AB, or an AB/HR of 30.7. That's better than his regular season career of 37.5.

Yesterday I suggested you could beat the DBacks by putting the ball in play. A reader writes:

Hey Dave,

You don't beat the D-Backs by not striking out… you beat them by not facing Schilling and RJ (it's one of those lies, damn lies, and statistics things… your causality is off). Unfortunately, not facing Schilling and RJ in the playoffs isn't possible. :-)

Todd Morgan

Okay, I'll buy that argument. Let's see if it's true. The five teams that kept DBacks pitchers K per 9 below 7.0 were the Giants, Dodgers, Mets, Yankees and Indians. How did these five teams do against Schilling and Johnson?

Schilling and Johnson        Vs. 5 Low K        Vs. Others

Games Started                     19               51

Record                          11-4             36-8

Winning Percentage              .733             .818

K per 9                         9.13            12.04

I'll stand by my previous comments.

The Twins came back and won. After traveling home and having dinner, I was listening to Joe Morgran talk about how the Twins were being effective against the A's by throwing strikes. At that point, they had only walked two A's. Joe commented how this was how the Yankees beat the A's, by throwing strikes. The Twins threw 68% of their pitches for strikes. See this post for my take on this.

Koskie hits a 2-run HR to bring the Twins back within 2. Koskie launched one to the wall in the first. Hudson is giving up a lot of hits. With good fielding, the Twins would be winning this game.

Twins let a pop-up drop on the infield, and a run scores from 2nd. Very unlike the Twins defensively in this game.

A's aggressive baserunning leads to the second error of the inning for Minnesota, and two runs for the A's. The Twins had the best fielding percentage in the AL this year.

The mangers keep dropping. Bobby Valentine just got fired. I have mixed feelings about this. When I was in 6th grade, Bobby came to our middle school to be the speaker at father-son night. He seemed like a real nice guy, and that image has always stuck with me. I also think that deep down, he's a real good manager, but his ego gets in the way. It's too bad. With the right attitude, he could have owned NY, much like Torre does now.

The article mentions Chris Chambliss is up for the position. I'd like to see both Chambliss and his former teammate Willie Randolph get a shot at a job. Willie especially has always struck me as a smart ballplayer, and I think he'll be a smart manager.

Sean MacLeod questions whether win shares really show that the A's staff looks more formidable than the Red Sox. I've thought about this, and wrote a piece on the subject of how run distributions might be the cause of the Pythagorean estimate being off.

The short answer is, don't strike out. The DBacks faced five teams this year that struck out less than 7 times per nine innings against Arizona pitching. The results:

Team K/9            Record vs. Ariz.

Less than 7.0           26-25

Greater than 7.0        38-73

The five teams with K success were the Mets, Giants, Dodgers, Yankees and Indians. The Cardinals struck out 8.36 times per 9 innings against the DBacks this year, and had a winning record against them, a bit on the high side (DBacks average was 8.11). If the Cardinals can put the ball in play, they have a shot at winning this series.

Here's the final list for 2002:

Player                   WS

Barry Bonds             48.6

Alex Rodriguez          38.9

Brian Giles             37.7

Jim Thome               35.9

Lance Berkman           34.8

Todd Helton             34.8

Jason Giambi            33.9

Miguel Tejada           33.9

Chipper Jones           33.6

Vladimir Guerrero       32.4

Albert Pujols           32.2

Larry Walker            31.4

Luis Gonzalez           30.8

Bobby Abreu             30.5

Jose Vidro              30.4

Alfonso Soriano         30.2

Manny Ramirez           29.8

Bernie Williams         29.6

Randy Johnson           28.4

Sammy Sosa              28.4

Magglio Ordonez         28.2

Thanks to STATS, Inc. for letting me figure these all year. And let's put in a good word for Brian Giles. He finishes the season with a .298 BA, a .450 OBA and a .622 slugging percentage. Now the Pirates just have to take their revenue sharing money and put a decent team around him, and they'll be a contender. Here are just the pitchers:

Player                   WS

Randy Johnson           28.4

Eric Gagne              27.9

John Smoltz             25.2

Barry Zito              25.1

Tim Hudson              24.0

Billy Koch              23.2

Eddie Guardado          22.4

Robb Nen                22.4

Byung-Hyun Kim          22.3

Roy Halladay            22.3

Derek Lowe              21.8

Jose Mesa               21.7

Pedro Martinez          21.6

Bartolo Colon           21.0

Mike Williams           21.0

Curt Schilling          19.7

Greg Maddux             19.7

Troy Percival           19.5

Tom Glavine             19.2

Jamie Moyer             19.0

Odalis Perez            18.7

Billy Wagner            18.7

Based on this, by the way, the A's staff looks more formidable than the Red Sox. Notice, also, that there are no Yankees in the top list here.

Kim does the job, striking out the last two batters. Game 1 will be in Arizona, late night Tuesday.

Colorado refuses to lay down and die. They've cut the lead to 11-8 in the 9th, and with one out Brenly has had to go to Kim. And of course, Kim never gives up a game tying HR. :-)

Curt Schilling came in to pitch the 8th inning today. I don't quite understand this. What does he get from coming into the game that he doesn't get throwing on the sidelines? He didn't look sharp, giving up 2 singles and a three run homer. And on top of it all, Rick Sutcliffe explains to everyone how Schilling may be tipping his pitches! I'm sure the Cardinals appreciate that. :-)

But what if Schilling got hurt? Is it really worth getting him live game action when you are risking an injury. Sometimes I think Schilling is more in charge of that team than Brenly.

Home field is settled in the AL. Yankees finish first, Oakland 2nd. Still waiting for the outcomes of the Cardinals and Diamondbacks games.

Soriano struck out in the ninth, as did Jeter. Barring a big comeback by the Orioles, Soriano falls 1 HR short of 40-40.

I actually think this is a good thing. If Soriano had gotten the 40-40, it would have been difficult to have an objective discussion about his season. Someone would always throw the 40-40 in your face as if that's all that mattered. Soriano is a good player; he's not a leadoff man, however. Nick Johnson will finish with an OBA 15 points higher than Soriano. He's more valuable at the top of the lineup than Soriano. Alfonso would be a great #5 hitter, but unless he learns to get on base, his talents are wasted in the leadoff spot.

Jeter finishes with 730 PA without a triple, 2nd highest total of all time.

Rolen broke it up as I wrote the last post. :(

Wayne Franklin of the Brewers has a no-hitter through 5. Cardinals need to win this game to have a hope at home field in the first round.

Jeter now has 729 plate appearances this year without a triple, win the possibility of one more if Torre doesn't pull him. If he doesn't get a triple in that PA, it will be the 2nd most PA in a season without a triple. Biggo had 754 in 1999, and Bagwell, also in 1999, had 729. So the top of the ninth should be interesting for the Yankees. Soriano's last chance for 40-40, and Jeter's last chance for a triple.

Sammy Sosa has hit #49. They are through 4, so he should have two more PA for a crack at 50. It would be reminisent of Cecil Fielder in 1990 needing one HR for 50 on the last day of the season, and hitting two. There was no TV broadcast for that game, so ESPN sent a camera crew to record his AB. 50 HR was a very big deal a decade ago.

Detroit-Toronto took 2:12 today. It was a 1-0 game. Hinske drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 8th to keep the game short.

Mateo gets a hit. Maybe Vlad will hit his 40th.

Tim Drew has a no-hitter going through 5. Stay tuned.

From 1996 on, the Yankees have an unbelievable record in the post-season. This article examines why.

I was just looking at the Braves win shares, and noticed Vinny Castilla at 3.2 by the short form, and I thought, what's the lowest win shares by a player with 502 PA (qualifies for the batting title). Sure enough, it's Vinny. Here's the bottom of the list:

Player                    WS

Aramis Ramirez           7.5

Jeromy Burnitz           7.2

Deivi Cruz               7.0

Neifi Perez              4.4

Vinny Castilla           3.2

It's not the worst of all time. Just last year, Michael Barrett of the Expos put up a 2. Ted Simmons, in 1984, actually posted a 1, and he was mostly a DH! Still, given this, I don't know if the move of Chipper from third was such a good idea. It strikes me that it would have been easier to find a left fielder capable of putting up 5 or 6 win shares.

Earlier in the year I cited an article about keeping ball at the proper humidity at Coors Field. It seems to have paid off. The Rockies only have 150 HR this year, their lowest total since 1994 and third lowest total in franchise history. They've put up their third lowest home slugging percentage (.496) and their fourth lowest home slugging percentage allowed (.497). I'd say the experiment was a success.

Looks like the Arizona-Cardinals series will get the extra day off this year. That means that only Schilling would have to go on short rest if the series goes five. Randy Johnson would still get 4 days off between starts.

The A's and Twins have set their rotations for the Division Series. The A's are going with a 3-man rotation, where lefties Mulder and Zito will get three starts, and Tim Hudson will get two. Looking at the Twins vs. lefties and righties, the A's may want to start Hudson in one game instead of two. The Twins are 70-38 (.648) when the opposition starts a RHP, best in the majors, but only 22-29 (.431) whe the opposition starts a LHP.

A story here from SFGate.com on Jackie Autry, and how happy she thinks Gene would be with this team.

One of the reasons the Angels never won under Gene Autry was that he always wanted stars on his team to compete with the Dodgers. However, rather than grow his own, he went for other teams stars, and unfortunately, when he got them, they were usually on the downside of their careers. This is a very different team than one Gene Autry would have built, and probably has a better chance of winning than any team Gene ever built.

Congrats to these two teams. I'd like to see Barry Bonds do well in the post-season this year. It would be a shame if he ended a Hall of Fame career without one decent post-season.

This looks like a really evenly matched series. My thoughts are here.

Rey Ordonez wants out of New York, according to this story on ESPN.com.

"The fans here are too stupid," Ordonez told The Post. "You have to play perfect every game. You can't make an error. You can't go 0-for-4. Are we like (expletive) machines?"

Since 1996, Ordonez has gone 0 for at least 4 one hundred seven times out of 386 games in which he got at least 4 AB. That's 27.7% of games. Not the worst in the league, but in the top 30. His .245 BA is fifth lowest in the majors over that time. His .290 OBA is the 2nd lowest (2000 PA). And his .304 slugging average is the lowest by 26 points! To put it another way, there are 30 hitters in that time frame whose batting averages are higher than Rey's slugging average. But NYfans are stupid to boo a poor hitter.

"I want something more relaxed," Ordonez told The Post. "I'll probably play two or three more years (after next season), then I'm gone. After next year, I'm looking for something else. Maybe close to Florida."

Rey, Florida is a great place for retirees. You'll have plenty of time to catch the early bird dinner specials, because it's likely you won't be playing baseball.

Update: Ordonez doesn't think all fans are stupid.

Sorinao has now gone 9 games trying to hit his 40th HR. He has 5 two-hit games in this stretch, but with his 0 for 5 tonight, he's hitting .263 over these games. When I've seen him, he's really just swinging for the fences, rather than just letting it happen. I think Michael Kay of the Yankees is going to be very disappointed if Sorinao does not reach the milestone.

Al Bethke makes a good point about the Twins attendance. Here it is by month:

Month        Att
------     -------       
4    20727       
5    19894       
6    23146       
7    26648       
8    29998       
9    20339

It's too bad. The Twins were saved from extinction, they are winning the central by a mile, and it was time for the fans to come out. Let's hope they show up for the playoffs.

Reader Brad Harris asked for a list of top win share leaders. Here is the top of the overall list:

Player               Win Shares

Barry Bonds             48.1

Alex Rodriguez          38.6

Lance Berkman           35.5

Brian Giles             35.2

Todd Helton             34.7

Jim Thome               33.4

Chipper Jones           32.5

Jason Giambi            32.4

Miguel Tejada           31.8

Albert Pujols           31.7

Larry Walker            31.3

Vladimir Guerrero       30.9

Luis Gonzalez           30.9

Alfonso Soriano         30.5

Bobby Abreu             29.7

Manny Ramirez           29.3

Bernie Williams         28.7

Jose Vidro              28.6

Randy Johnson           28.5

Magglio Ordonez         28.1

Sammy Sosa              27.9

And here is the list of just pitchers:

Player               Win Shares

Randy Johnson           28.5

Eric Gagne              27.9

Barry Zito              24.0

Billy Koch              23.9

Tim Hudson              23.8

John Smoltz             23.8

Derek Lowe              21.9

Jose Mesa               21.7

Pedro Martinez          21.7

Eddie Guardado          21.5

Robb Nen                21.3

Byung-Hyun Kim          21.2

Mike Williams           21.1

Curt Schilling          20.6

Bartolo Colon           20.6

Roy Halladay            20.5

Troy Percival           19.5

Greg Maddux             19.2

Jamie Moyer             19.1

Odalis Perez            19.0

Tom Glavine             18.9

Billy Wagner            18.7

Now remember, these are short form win shares, so the final totals will probably be a bit different. However, it's pretty clear that Johnson deserves the Cy Young award more than Schilling this year.

The Giants won the season series vs. the Diamondbacks, so they hold the advantage in case of a tie. The also have a game in hand, as their game with the Atlanta Braves on 8/15 ended in a tie. If the Giants finish 1/2 game behind Arizona after Sunday's games, they would fly to Atlanta to make up the game on Monday. If they lose the game, they stay in Atlanta and open up as the wild card against the Braves. If they win the game, they would play St. Louis, either in St. Louis or SF depending on how the season ends. Giants do not have the tiebreaker vs. St. Louis. If the Giants are 1/2 games up on the DBacks after Sunday, no make up is needed to decide the wild card, but if both the Giants and Cardinals have 95 wins, I would think the game would be necessary to decide first round home field. Inerestingly, Cardinals (3.01) and Giants (3.03) have the best ERA's in the NL in September. If a series between those two comes about, I wonder is Bonds will run the bases with "one flap down" if he hits a HR?

Prime California real estate, walk to Disneyland. Twenty-five strong men to patrol the lawn. Great for parties, can hold 50,000. 30 Bathrooms, kitchen and house cleaning staff included. Waterfall on property. Big screen TV in backyard included. Gene Autry lived here!

Sounds good to me, I'll start the bidding at $1 million dollars.

Think that will be the best offer they get? :-)

Congrats to the Angels for winning at least the wild card. The AL teams are now set, for the most part, and I don't know who to root for. They're all good teams. You can go for the Cinderella Twins; you can go for the scrappy and low paid A's; you can go for the surprise Angels; and there's always the cream of the crop Yankees. I'll try to write some previews over the weekend now that we have a better handle on the matchups.

Garrett Anderson hits a 3 run HR! Angels up 6-2, looking to clinch this afternoon.

I see the Angels are losing 1-0 so far today. It struck me that Texas pitching has been much better lately. They have a 4.46 ERA for the month of September, their best monthly ERA this year. Don't know what they are doing right, but Rangers fans have to hope it carries over to next year.

Mike Wechsler points out this article about Dr. Carl Morris, a Harvard statistics professor who has come up with a new run formula that is non-heuristic. He's going to post a calculator for figuring it out on his web site. I hope he publishes a more complete explanation of the formula.

I am listening to "Mike & the Mad Dog" on the radio, and I just heard the following (somewhat paraphrased) gem from Mike regarding Soriano's season:

"Joe Morgan never had a season like this one, with 40 homers. No second baseman has ever had a season like this one."

AAAGHHH!!!

Mike is supposed to be the knowledgeable one. It's true that Joe Morgan never hit more than 27 homers in a season. But Morgan had several seasons that were much better than Soriano's 2002 season. That's not a slur on Soriano - his season is great, but keep in mind that Morgan:

1) Played in an environment where runs were much scarcer (although Riverfront in the 1970s may have been slightly better for the hitters than Yankee Stadium is today), so each run created by Morgan was more valuable than one created by Soriano;
2) Walked about 5,000 times more often than Soriano;
3) Was a much better defensive second baseman; and
4) Was an even better base-stealer.

I don't have my reference materials at work with me to get more specific (and the specific item I'm looking for, the database of Bill James' "Win Shares," isn't available online), but Morgan probably had at least 5 seasons that were better than Soriano's 2002 season.

And even if the discussion is restricted to raw power numbers, without adjusting for context, hasn't Mike ever heard of Rogers Hornsby? I can't tell you how outraged I get when I hear blithering idiocy like that from people who should no better, and not just because the person said so - it's because they don't get corrected, and because the assumption is that people don't know better. I find that very condescending and depressing.

Jeremy Senderowicz

Through yesterday, Soriano had 30 win shares. From 1972 to 1976, Morgan had 39, 40, 37, 44 and 37.

David Eckstein won't have the chance to playBucky Dent.

I made a mistake with this post about the most pitches thrown in a 1-2-3 inning. I only did the AL. Here's the correct leaders for this year:

Pitcher                   Date    Pitches

Trachsel, Steve           6-25       25

Linebrink, Scott          6-23       25

Beverlin, Jason           9-21       24

Moss, Damian              5-28       24

It's taking too much time to go back very far, but I did find a 28 pitch 1-2-3 inning by Bartolo Colon in 1998.

Well, it will be true when the game is over. Ordonez just hit his 37th to put the pale hose up 7-2. Looks like the Red Sox are likely to be eliminated tonight, which means Pedro can start his vacation early.

Here's a plan to move the Expos to San Juan, Puerto Rico. If the Cubans could just get rid of Castro, they could move the team to Havana, and probably draw 4 million a year!

I think it's a great idea to expand to the Caribbean. The area has been a major source of players for years, and an MLB team would probably be immensely popular.

Melissa Trujillo of the AP has the story.

Attorney Ulice Payne, a former state securities commissioner, takes over for Selig-Prieb as team president. Doug Melvin, a former general manager with the Texas Rangers, will be the new general manager.

Selig-Prieb, daughter of commissioner Bud Selig, remains with the team in a newly created post as board chairman, but Payne will make day to day decisions.

The team said Selig-Prieb wished to resign from her day to day duties with the Brewers.

"I want to personally apologize to our fans for the failings of this season," Selig-Prieb said at the news conference.

I wonder who "the team" is? Maybe Wendy got tired of taking orders from her father. :-)

I'm also wondering how independent Payne will be. Here's his biography, rather impressive.

Melvin did a good job with the Rangers, although he could never get them over the Yankees hump. Then again, in that time period, few could.

Despite pitching a 6 hit, 1 BB, 12 K game, Curt Schilling got beat 6-1. He gave up two three run homers to Drew and Rolen. He had only given up two 3+ run HR all year! Cardinals have to feel pretty confident right now. They are in the drivers seat for home field, they have beaten Schilling, and the Diamondbacks are hurting. Of course, at this rate, the Giants may catch Arizona, and then SF would face the Cardinals.

I finally found one in the Boston Herald. (Via Bambino's Curse.)

Only Baseball Matters takes my post on the Twins and A's a step further, and looks at how the Giants, a team whose OBA is dependent on their hits, do against pitchers that don't walk a lot of batters. Thanks, John.

ESPN.com is reporting that Scott Rolen has signed an 8 year, $90 million deal with the Cardinals. This, after rejecting the same money over 7 years from the Phillies.

Do you think the Phillies really hate the Cardinals? They take Drew, now they take Rolen. Or is there a real problem in Philadelphia that makes athletes not want to play there? I thought Ed Wade was doing a job of building toward a winner last year. It's too bad they don't have others in the front office and on the bench who realize the importance of having a player of Rolen's ability. Keeping Rolen happy and signed would have made rebuilding the Phillies a lot easier.

I've been watching both the Angels and Mariners games tonight, and the Fox broadcasters seem to think if the Mariners lose tonight the Angels are in the playoffs. But the Red Sox can still tie, if I'm reading the standings correctly. Maybe they don't realize that tie-break games are considered regular season games.

Benito Santiago drives in two with a triple to give the Giants a 4-0 lead. It was the 5th triple of the season for Benito, and it gives him 38 for his career, which I would think is pretty good for a catcher. His season high was 6 in 1993.

The Red Sox win. The Angels lose. It's not over. Come on, Pedro, come back and pitch!

Spiezio just got thrown out on a busted hit and run with Palmeiro at the plate. That's seems to be a very risky strategy, especially with Pudge's arm.

St. Louis uses the 1-run strategy of a stolen base to set up Edgar Renteria with a man in scoring position. Renteria was hitting .359 in that situation coming into the game, and delivered a single to beat the DBacks. Cardinals now trail AZ by 1-game for home field, and a win tomorrow gives them the tie-breaker. It also keeps the Giant's hopes alive of actually winning the west. This is turning out to be a much more interesting end of the season than I thought it would be. You never know.

The Red Sox are winning, and the Angels are losing. If the Red Sox are still in the race on Thursday, doesn't Pedro have to pitch?

Given the history of these two teams, it would be appropriate for the Angels to blow the lead, end up in a tie with the Red Sox, then have the Red Sox lose the playoff game on a David Eckstein HR. :(

That Diamondbacks magic may still be at work. Down two runs in the 9th, Isringhausen gives up two. Two outs and two on for the DBacks.

The A's dominated the season series 6-3, outscoring the Twins 34-26 over the 9 games. I do see hope for the Twins, however.

The Twins have the higher batting average, .273 to .261. The A's have the higher OBA, .338 to .333. Basically the A's are more dependent on walks for their offense than the Twins. The interesting thing is that the Twins pitchers don't walk batters:

Fewest Walks Allowed, AL


Team          BB Allowed

Yankees           395

Red Sox           416

Twins             419

Mariners          422

Now, if you don't walk, what's your OBA? It's your batting average. And that's the problem with an Earl Weaver team. It was the problem with the Orioles in the 1970's, and it was the problem with the A's in the late 1980's. If you have a team whose OBA is too dependent on walks, a team that doesn't give up walks can shut you down. It's what the Mets did to Baltimore in 1969. It's what LA and Cincinnati did to the A's in 1988 and 1990. They were teams that were hard to hit and didn't give up many walks. And as good as those offenses were, they weren't great average hitters. They got guys on and hit HR. When the opposition didn't let the runners on, the HR didn't do much damage.

The Twins, being less patient, are less likely to wait around to get behind in the counts. A couple of good guessses on first pitches from an A's staff that's around the plate could be enough to give them the series. Radke and Reed have been very good down the stretch for Minnesota, and neither walks many. I think this will be a very interesting series.

Things just keep getting worse for the Mets. :-)

Luis Gonzalez has a separated shoulder. The DBacks don't know how serious it is yet, but he'll probably be out at least a week. He's the DBacks biggest win share contributor this year. If the Cardinals can sweep the DBacks, they will be tied with Arizona for the 2nd home field spot in the NL playoffs, and the Cards will have the tie-breaker with the season series in their favor. Neither finishes against a strong opponent, although I'd rather be the Cardinals going against the Brewers than the DBacks going against the Rockies.

Given that the chances of St. Louis gaining homefield were not remote, I don't understand this article from the 22nd where La Russa says:

"Four games, that's a lot of games,'' La Russa said. "I think you want to take what you've got, which is a division championship, and know you're going to play Tuesday against Arizona.

"I don't want to jeopardize our pitching, with the problems we've got, and do something crazy.''

But isn't the point of home field advantage to make this series interesting? The Cards are a better home team. La Russa should go for it.

Update: Here's the Arizona Republic's take on the Gonzalez injury, by Mark Gonzales.

Mariano came in, threw 10 pitches, gave up a hit, got a DP and broke three bats.

Tino Martinez just dropped a pop-up down the left field line for a double. Womack, Gonzalez and Cintron all went for the ball, and Womack and Gonzalez collided. Gonzalez got hit in his shoulder, and has left the game. If Gonzalez has a serious shoulder injury, it would help the Cardinals in the playoffs greatly. Tino and Luis are old friends (I heard they grew up together), so Tino has to be feeling bad about this.

My old friend Don Zminda points out the lack of outrage about Jerry Royster sitting down Jose Hernandez against the Giants. Last I looked, the Giants were still in a pennant race. What ever happened to the idea that a team out of it still tried to play their best against the contending teams? And with Hernandez having the 2nd highest win share total on the team, I'd say the Brewers have a much better chance of winning with him than without him.

Manager Jerry Royster saw to it last week that Hernandez wouldn't touch the record in Miller Park, sitting him all four games of a series against the San Francisco Giants in Milwaukee

Royster said his decision had everything to do with the way the home fans reacted last week as Hernandez approached the record against Houston. Fans cheered Hernandez's two strikeouts and booed the plate appearances when he walked or put the ball in play. Friday night, fans in the right-field stands in Miller Park assembled what looked like 188 "K" placards, which were removed at an usher's request.

"I don't want to subject him to what our fans did to him," Royster told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel last week. "I don't think he deserves any treatment like that. What he deserves, if he gets it, is the strikeout record. But people who try to humiliate him -- I don't get that."

Oh, please. If Hernandez is embarassed by his strikeouts, maybe he should choke up on the bat! And this is a team that is owned by the commissioner. Another disgrace next to his name.

If I were on the Dodgers, I'd be pretty upset by this.

Wearing Out Pitchers, Part II: It was Jason Beverlin of the Tigers in the first inning of Saturday's game. He threw 24 pitches, which is the most thrown in a 1-2-3 inning this year:

Pitcher                   Date   Pitches

Beverlin, Jason           9-21     24

Lowe, Derek               5-4      23

Rhodes, Arthur            8-21     23

7 with 22

I'll see how far back I can go with this.

Bill Grewe of the US Army writes:

David,
Enjoy your musings. In the first inning of the NY/Det game on Saturday the Yankees were retired in order, but it took 26 pitches (ten pitches to the first two batters and a 16 pitch battle with Jeter before he grounded out to first). After Jeter's 5th foul ball the fans got a smile from Derek when they started yelling for him to "hit the ball." While the Detroit pitcher still had his perfect game it was clear he wasn't going to finish it (he got a quick hook after giving up on run in the 4th). The announcer's commented on how the Yankee's make pitchers throw a lot of pitches. So I was wondering if records are kept/available on how many pitches are thrown to each team and if retiring the side (three up and three down) on 26 pitches was some kind of record.

This reminds me of a game at Fenway in the 1980's. Wade Boggs was having a long at bat where he kept fouling off pitches. The amazing thing was, he kept fouling them off to the same spot down the left-field line. After about 5 in a row, the fans in that section all stood up, and put up their hands as if to say, "Hit one to me!"

The Yankees do make pitchers throw a lot of pitches. Here's the list of team batters seeing the most pitches per inning:

Team                     PPI

Athletics              17.29

Yankees                17.04

Diamondbacks           16.74

White Sox              16.71

Phillies               16.68

Phillies, A's, Yankees and DBacks are all in the top 6 in walks. As for the 26 pitches in a 1-2-3 inning being a record, that's going to take some time to figure out. STATS has pitch counts complete going back a number of years. I'll see what I can find.

I found this story on ESPN.com disturbing. Pedro Martinez says he's done for the year:

"This is it," Martinez told reporters after Sunday's game. "I'm done. To ask for a little more would be greedy. I'm going to let (prospect Josh) Hancock show what he has, to see if he can be of any help to us next year. I don't have anything else to prove."

Red Sox manager Grady Little tentatively has scheduled Hancock to pitch Thursday in Chicago. Whether Martinez makes one final start would not prevent Hancock from making an appearance before the season's out.

"We'll sleep on it and let (Martinez) sleep on it," Little told the Hartford Courant. "If I had to guess, I would think he would want to make that start. But we'll make that decision."

Now, the last I looked, the Red Sox have not been eliminated from playoff contention. A loss tonight, or any Anaheim win will do it, but they are not there yet. Shouldn't Pedro be saying that until they have been eliminated, he'll do everything he can to help the team win?

In this post about Nomar being run out of town, a similar thought is discussed. Do the Red Sox have the desire to win? And if not, why not? As Rob Neyer points out in this column, the Red Sox have underperformed by 8 wins based on their runs scored and runs allowed. That tells me they win big, but lose close. Sure enough, they are 33-18 in games decided by 5 runs or more, but 12-22 in games decided by 1 run. Now, do those 1-run losses bother the Red Sox players? Do they slam gloves and yell at each other? Do individuals get mad at themselves if they feel responsible for such a loss. My guess is Pedro and Nomar don't and they set the example for everyone else.

The Red Sox need a Paul O'Neill type. Someone who beats himself up over a swing and a miss. In fact, maybe they should hire Paul as their manager. I think you'd see a quick attitude change. Until that happens, until the Red Sox want to win as much as the Yankees or A's or DBacks (you think Schilling doesn't want another start?) they will continue to suffer from a supposed curse.

I'm back from my charity bike ride. Three days on Cape Cod, 160 miles of cycling, all to raise money for the American Lung Association. No TV or radio, I was able to look at scores with my cell phone. (Isn't technology wonderful?) As things are starting to settle out, I hope to be doing some playoff previews this week. Looks like it will be Yankees vs. Angels, A's vs. Twins, Cardinals vs. DBacks and Atlanta vs. LA or SF. Not set in stone, of course, but the probabilities look good for those series.

I'm away for the weekend and will be blogging again Sunday night.

The Angels-A's game tonight will go a long way toward determining the AL West victor. If the A's win tonight, their magic number will go down by three, since they will win the season series against the Angels, which will give them the tie breaker in case they finish in a dead heat with Anaheim. A victory by the Angels leaves the season series in a tie, and gives the Angels a 2 game lead in the 2nd tie breaker, record in the division. All remaining games are against the west, and the A's should have an eaiser schedule, as they play 6 against Texas and 3 against Seattle (Anaheim has the same opponents, opposite numbers). The six Oakland-Texas games could also help decide the MVP. If A-Rod has two big series and helps spoil the A's bid to win the west, and outshines Tejada head-to-head, that will work in his favor. Likewise, if Tejada shines in head-to-head play against A-Rod, his supporters will have another argument for him. You can read my thoughts on the AL MVP here and here.

Update: I guess tonight is a relative term. The game is starting 3:35 EDT. I'm sure it's night in most of Europe. :-)

Jeff Weaver allowed 1 ER in 7.2 IP tonight, and now has a 2.20 ERA since Aug. 1, most of that in relief. But he now has 3 good starts since rejoining the rotation. And Mussina is having one of the strange seasons of all time. Through 8/23, he was 15-7 with a 4.48 ERA, but in his last 4 starts, he's only allowed 1 HR, K'd 31 in 30.2 IP and has a 2.05 ERA,but is 1-3. Luck does even out. Still, if I were the Yankees, I'd much rather have Mussina pitching like this going into the playoffs.

I found this blog through Travis Nelson's Boy of Summer blog. Edward Cossette has a good article on the Boston Sports Media trying to run Nomar out of town, and how players wanting to leave Boston isn't a new phenomena. And he's not necessarily criticizing the media here:

I'm trying to not get caught up in the headhunting rhythm, but I must admit I've had a sour feeling about Nomar all season. The whole who cares about losing one game out of 162 it's early yet record Nomar kept playing in July and August really is coming back to haunt us all now (as we feared it would).

Maybe that's the difference between Nomar and Jeter. Desire.

Travis Nelson of Boy of Summer writes:

Hi David,

I saw the play Rivera made too, pretty cool. (Did you mean to write "stretching a double into a double"? -it was funny either way, although I had just chalked it up to Toby Hall not running well) Do you realize that the Yankees could run out an all-homegrown lineup next year, except DH? And they'd probably be top five in the league in runs scored:

1 Jeter, SS

2 Williams, LF

3 Soriano, 2B

4 Giambi, DH

5 Posada, C

6 Johnson, 1B

7 Spencer, RF

8 Rivera, CF

9 Henson, 3B

Of course they're unlikely to do this, as Henson's not ready and they still have Mondesi and Rondell under contract, but they could...

Also, not to insult your intelligence by pointing out the obvious, but if a team could find four pitchers like Jarrod Washburn and Mark Mulder, it wouldn't matter if you did use a five man rotation, would it? (I know, your comment had more to do with efficiency and throwing strikes than talent, but I couldn't help it.)

Keep up the good work.

Travis Nelson
BoyofSummer.blogspot.com

Yes, I did mean to say "double into a double," but it's not original. I think I first read it in a Bill James abstract. Thanks for pointing that out about the Yankees, Travis. It would be very nice to see that lineup next year, and see it win. And with the salary cap, they may have to get rid of White and Modesi.

Watching the Yankees game, and Juan Rivera has made two good plays. He threw a runner out by a mile trying to stretch a double into a double, and just executed a great hook slide to score a run.

His minor league numbers are very good; if you can come up with someone like this every couple of years (Williams, Pettitte, Rivera, Jeter, Posda, Soriano) you'll stay competitive. And without free agents.

I came home from work, found this week's copy of the New Yorker on table, and saw on "The Financial Page" a story about the GM of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane. James Surowiecki gets it absolutely right. I especially like his comments about the future:

But can it last? In baseball, conventional wisdom may still rule, but Oakland, like any successful business, has begun to attract imitators, which will presumably make it harder for Beane to find his diamonds in the rough. Even so, Oakland has one great competitive advantage: the entire organization has been built, from the bottom up, around Beane's ideas. In this respect, Oakland resembles companies like Dell Computer and Southwest Airlines, which have structured their business around a coherent strategy. Dell's rivals have tried for years to emulate its made-to-order, just-in-time model. But the copycats, because their businesses were initially built around different models, couldn't compete. The major airlines haven't had any better luck trying to copy Southwest.

Now, teams are always recreating themselves in baseball, so I think teams will successfully emulate Beane's model. It's too bad it didn't happen sooner, or we all could have avoided the labor hassels of the past few years.

Of course, there is a downside to A's baseball. :-)

ESPN.com has an article on Fay Vincent's new book, "The Last Commissioner." In it, he tries to give us a closer look at the mind of Bud Selig. George W. Bush wanted to be commissioner:

"Fay, what do you think about me becoming commissioner?" Bush asked Vincent several months after Vincent was forced out as commissioner in September 1992. Bush owned the Texas Rangers at the time.

"I think it's a great idea," Vincent said.

"Do you think I'd make a good commissioner?" Bush asked Vincent.

"Absolutely," Vincent answered. "You're smart. You love baseball. Is it something you want?"

Replied Bush: "Well, I've been thinking about it. (Bud) Selig tells me that he would love to have me be commissioner and he tells me that he can deliver it."

This is the first time I've seen Bush refered to as smart by somebody who had no reason to say otherwise. To get back to the point, however:

According to the Journal Sentinal story, Vincent once talked with Major League Baseball labor lawyer Chuck O'Connor about Vincent's relationship with Selig. O'Connor, he wrote, "had warned me to look out for Selig, that Selig wanted to be commissioner and that he would try to knock me off. I didn't believe him. Selig was my friend, I thought."

Vincent quoted O'Connor: "Selig thinks being called commissioner is one of the important titles in American life. He thinks it would make him a great American, a historic figure. He wants your job. Watch out for him."

Vincent said he told Bush that Selig wanted to be the commissioner. Bush said that Selig had told him he wasn't interested.

"George, I'm worried. I think Selig wants the job for himself," Vincent wrote.

Bush: "He told me that I'm still his man but that it will take some time to work out."

Vincent: "George, he can't tell you the truth because the truth is painful and telling painful truths is not his strength. He has never been able to tell people what they don't want to hear."

So Selig is a megalomanica who doesn't want to hurt people's feelings? That has to be a rare combination.

Jarrod Washburn may have made a great case last night for going back to a four-man rotation. What strikes me about both Washburn and Mulder last night was efficeincy. Washburn average 13 pitches per inning (against a selective team), Mulder a little under 13. And Mulder's rate is even more impressive given that he struck out 12. Both were throwing strikes (31 B, 76 S for Washburn, 32 B , 83 S for Mulder). Pitching is simple, just throw strikes! :-)

If you could find four pitchers like that, a four man rotation would work well.

Jarrod Washburn will start on three days rest according to ESPN.com. I don't like this strategy of suddenly starting a guy on short rest, especially when he hasn't done it in a long time. I'd love to see teams go back to four man rotations, but not as much as I used to. I'm not sure that four man rotations don't contribute to injuries.

Scioscia seems to be trying to set the rotation to give the Angels the best chance of winning the division and having Washburn start the first game of the playoffs. He gets points for going outside the box.

Good picture here of Grissom's catch to rob Rich Aurilia of a HR and give LA a 7-6 victory. According to Jim Tracy:

''I would beg to differ if you could find me a better catch in a more critical situation than was made by Marquis Grissom to start the ninth inning,'' Dodgers manager Jim Tracy said. ''That was as good a major league game as you would ever want to witness.''

Gagne then struck out Kent, intentionall walked Bonds with the bases empty, then K'd Santiago. Bonds continues to be the most feared hitter in baseball. He broke his own single season walk record last night, and now has 60 IBB.

Miguel Tejada had a game winning single in the ninth, and the A's picked up their 30th one-run victory. Remember the old game winning RBI stat? Tejada is among the leaders:

Sheffield, Gary        21

Glaus, Troy            19

Tejada, Miguel         17

Kent, Jeff             17

Walker, Larry          16

Jones, Andruw          16

Giambi, Jason          16

And despite an overall poor season, Glaus seems to be putting his team ahead to stay.

LA up 4-3, Angels up 3-1. I'll see how the games turned out tomorrow morning.

I hit the post button, and Jordan hit the next pitch into the left-center field stands for a grand slam. Vin called it a grand slam home run, which would upset ESPN researcher Jeff Bennett greatly.

Schmidt walks Green with men on 1st and 2nd to load the bases. Vin Scully is suggesting Schmidt would rather pitch to Jordan. I'd rather not have the bases loaded with a 3 run lead.

Lidle gets him on a low strike to end the HR streak.

Glaus has homered in 4 straight AB. He's up and going for a record 5.

Nomo has thrown 70 pitches through 3 innings. He's gone 122 and 132 in his last two outings. I don't expect him to last too long in this game. He's already down 3-0.

Giants are up 2-0 after one inning. Jeff Kent hit a solo HR in the first.

Today's Red Sox game 2 starting lineup really defines second string.

Bill Murray (no, I don't think it's that Bill Murray) has a web site that breaks players into generations. Check it out, his groupings are pretty neat. The whole site seems to be concerned with timelines, which are always fun.

Brian Hudgins writes:

I read your take on the empty seats at Pac Bell and have some comments you might find pertinent. I'm a season ticket holder at Pac Bell, and while there is a bit of truth to the cellphone-toting-designer-beer-swilling-yuppie Pac Bell crowd image, in truth the stereotype's very overdone, not in the least by resentful East Bay types. I'm not sure about the beginning of games; what with public transportation, the usual downtown traffic crawl (esp on weekends), and the sheer amount of things to do around the ballpark, people tend to filter in as the game starts. In no way is it as bad as at Dodger Stadium. Most of the empty seats you see late in the game are due to late inning migrations to the arcade (the right field wall), where by game's end the crowd is something like 5 or 6 people deep, all the way across, more if Barry is due to bat in the 8th or 9th. Not to mention the lure of the fan lot, where people take their cotton candy frenzied children to blow off some steam before the long ride home. Also, the way the park is situated, during day games the sun generally stops shining on the seats along the first base line around the 5th or 6th inning, so sun lovers tend to hoof it to sunnier parts of the park (most likely the aforementioned RF wall). But I think the real reason for the empty seats on that particular Saturday (as well as the following day) was that the games were rescheduled from a series a few months earlier, with highly irregular (by Giants practice) starting times, so I'll bet a lot of people had planned other things to do that day.

Anyway, enjoy your site. Keep up the good work.

Brian Hudgins

Troy Glaus just hit an opposite field 3-run HR, his fourth in 2 games. I speculated that a hot Glaus could make the difference for the Angels.

Sorry, it's Schmidt, not Rueter tonight. I think that makes the game a toss-up.

I was looking for a preview of the Giants-Dodgers in the SF Examiner when I found this article by Mike Krukow. It's by a 43 year-old woman who has discoverd the joys of baseball by buying at glove at the Giants broadcasters suggestion.

Often I hear how baseball doesn't appeal to young children. They like the action of basketball or soccer. Fair enough. Baseball is a conservative sport, and the older you get, the more conservative you tend to become. And the more you come to appreciate the nuancesof baseball. And once you're hooked, you're hooked for the rest of your life.

The other day I commented on empty seats at Pac Bell. Zachary Manprin follows up for me:

Hey David;

I was reading through your Blog and you mentioned something about the attendance at the Giants game being low.

Part of the reason was the A's were in town. Another is that Cal was playing. Former Stanford coach, now Notre Dame coach Ty Willingham had the Irish against Michigan.

So, there might have been a lot of people in the bar and crowding around the TV's at the ballpark. Plus, San Francisco is home to the wine and cheese crowd. It was rather hot on Saturday so I'm sure many of those who weren't in their seats were petitioning the city council to move the sun.

Seriously, you are required by law to have a cell phone to your head 12 hours a day in the BayArea.

A few people at the A's game Saturday were trying to make both, the A's in the afternoon and the Giants in the early evening.

The attendance for the Giants and A's combined on Saturday was 81,000+ and 80,000+ on Sunday. Evening with the 49ers and Raiders playing on Sunday, albeit the Raiders on ESPN's night game. Still, getting 40,000 at a Giants game with a 49ers game the same day is a real eye opener.

Still, that's a lot of fan activity for a 'small market'.

Zachary D Manprin

Thanks, Zachary.

All the action is on the West Coast tonight, as Anaheim visits Oakland and the Giants travel south to Dodger Stadium. Reuter has been pitching well since the start of July, putting up a 2.90 ERA in that period. His start vs. LA last week was the worst in this time frame, giving up 5 ER in 4 IP. Nomo isn't the pitcher he was in 1995, but he's still close. He's been able to keep the ball in the park with men on base; 18 of the 22 HR he has allowed have been solo shots, so the extra walks haven't hurt him as much as they might. The Dodgers hit lefties really well. Their .297 BA vs. lefties leads the NL and is 20 points higher than the 2nd place Giants (.275). And this has translated into the best record against lefties in the NL, 24-13. Advantage, Dodgers.

It's the battle of the L's in Oakland, Lackey vs. Lidle. While Cory was untouchable in August, 5-0, 0.20 ERA, he's gotten pounded by playoff contenters Anaheim and Minnesota in September. Lackey has had a nice rookie season, and no team is hotter than the Angels. Lackey is interesting, in that he's a righty who has pitched better against lefties (.210 BA, .265 OBA, .246 Slug) than righties. (.310, .360, .482). Anaheim has the advantage here, I believe. Enjoy!

Congrats to the Minnesota Twins on clinching a playoff berth and making Bud look like a fool. If the Twins make it to the World Series, they'll have the home field advantage, which has given them the championship in their last two World Series. With their pitching getting healthy, they shouldn't be big underdogs.

I'm watching the Indians for the first time in a while, and discovered they have brought up a centerfielder named Coco Crisp to replace Milton Bradley. If that's not funny enough, every time I hear the announcer say his name, I want to go upstairs and get a bowl of cereal. Looking at his minor league numbers, he may have some potential as a leadoff man. Given that he's 22, he still has a lot of upside.

This is the Cocoa Krispies box I remember from my youth. They were using Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters on some of the Kellog's boxes at the time. I remember Quick Draw McGraw on Sugar Smacks, but I thought I remembered Baba Looie on Sugar Pops, but it was look-a-like Sugar Pops Pete.

An interesting event could happen this year. The Angels and A's have split 16 games in 2002, and have four left head-to-head. Which means they could tie for the division lead and tie in the season series. The head-to-head record is used as the tie-breaker if teams are tied for the division lead and either would be the wild card. What's the 2nd tie-breaker? Looks like it's division record. (I'm having trouble finding official information on this. This page is supposed to be a copy of the rules, and they look right to me.) Right now, that would be the Angels, with a 24-20 record, compared to the A's 22-22.

Soriano has fallen off his record double pace, but the Angels have tied their single season franchise record of 314. A big reason for this is Garret Anderson, who is leading the majors with 55 doubles. He's the fifth person since 1999 to reach 55 doubles in a season. Helton fell one short of 60 in 2000, and with luck, Anderson has a chance to reach that goal. (There had only been one 55 double season between 1938 and 1998.)

Anderson has the most doubles since 1997, 247, two ahead of Jeff Kent. Anderson had a block-buster start to his career, putting up a .321 BA, .352 OBA and .505 slugging percentage in 1995 at the age of 23. But until this year, he hasn't come close to equalling it. He's been a consistent hitter, getting over 180 hits almost every year, but with so few walks, his OBA is mediorce, and is the main reason he's never scored 100 runs in a season. Given the way he started off, I'd have to say his career has been somewhat of a disappointment. Good, but it could have been great.

I'm watching the Giants game, and there appear to be a number of empty seats there. I would think, with the Giants leading the Dodgers by one game, there would be a lot of interest. Maybe they just show up late in San Francisco.

Jamie Moyer must be a little upset. He pitches a brilliant game and loses on an unearned run, on errors by Olerud and Guillen. Seattle has been outscored 32-15 over the six game losing streak.

There should be a rule that would prevent someone as good as Johnson from pitching against the Brewers. It's just not fair. Randy put up a game score of 96 today, his third 90+ performace of the year. Cory Lidle and Odalis Perez each have two. With Schilling putting up the best of the year with his seventeen K one hitter (game score, 100), the DBacks have the top three game scores this year (Johnson had a 97 on 4/21). A couple of weeks ago I thought they might be tiring. I guess not.

Just to let you know, the little box you see at the right with a blue ball is my new tracker. The old counter is fine, it just doesn't give very much information. I'll leave it there to give me an idea of it's particular measurement. But the eXTReMe tracker gives a lot more interesting information, like time of day usage, unique visitors and where people come from. Check it out for fun.

LA is up 15-2 in the 6th inning at Coors. I guess the air is only thin for the visitors today. Jim Tracy has already pulled his 1-5 hitters for scrubs. I guess he doesn't think the Rockies can score 13 runs in four innings at Coors. It would be a real embarassment if they did, not to mention putting the playoffs in jeopardy.

I was listening to the end of the Astros game on the internet. Astros had the bases loaded with two outs, down one run, and Greg Zaun popped out.

The Astros announcers thought that this was a must win game for Houston, and I have to agree. Cardinals magic number is 7, which means if they play .500 ball the rest of the way they win the division. It looks like the one sure matchup right now is a rematch of last year's NL Division Series, Cardinals and DBacks. It was a very tight series last year, with Schilling pitching complete games in the first and fifth game, winning 1-0 and 2-1.

The Cards and DBacks have only played 3 times this year, with the Cardinals losing 2 of 3. The DBacks hit .308 against the Cardinals and scored 23 runs. They had 32 hits, 12 walks and only 13 K. Arizona will likely have home field advantage, and the DBacks offense is suited for their ballpark, while their pitchers are not bothered by it as much. The pitchers have a 3.92 ERA at home, 3.55 on the road, while the offense scores nearly a run less on the road (5.4 runs per game at home, 4.5 on the road).

Offensively, the teams are pretty evenly matched. Looking at strength up the middle, I get 66.5 win shares for Matheny-Vina-Renteria-Edmonds vs. 68.0 for Miller-Spivey-Womack-Finley. The difference, of course, is the pitching. Johnson and Schilling have combined for 47 win shares this year, while Morris and Williams only have 26. Kim is a bit better than Isringhausen this year, although Isringhausen still hasn't allowed a HR this year. (Something that has bothered Kim from time to time.) One positive here, however, is that the Cardinals batters have the fewest strikeouts in the NL. I still feel the way to have a chance against Johnson and Schilling is to put the ball in play. The Cardinals are good at doing that.

I give the advantage to the DBacks at this point. Maybe La Russa can use a good, "Win one for the Gipper!" speech to inspire his team to victory.

The first inning isn't over in Colorado, and the Dodgers are already 5 for 7 with runners in scoring position.

Clemens gave up 7 earned runs today for the 4th time this season. Back in 1987 and 1988, he gave up that many three times. His strikeout and walks are still really good, but these bad outings are becoming more frequent. It makes me wonder how much longer he'll last.

I recently discovered this site through Andrew Sullivan. It's baseball and politics, and I think Dan McLaughlin is very good at both. He also points out and criticizes this article by Bill James on the AL MVP race. I'm going to give him a link to the right.

Here's a link to the first use of the smiley emoticon ( :-) ). Thanks to Instapundit for pointing this out.

I wonder, however, if this is really true. In all the years we had typewriters, had someone used this before?

Okay, now I've read the column. Good for Jayson, he doesn't really use any of the pat arguments himself. But, one GM chimes in:

Indians GM Mark Shapiro called A-Rod's season "inspiring -- and among the elite historic performances in the game." But when you look for an MVP, Shapiro said, you start with one question: "Whose team could not have attained a championship caliber of play without his performance? Tejada has to get the edge, using this criteria, for me."

As the analysis below points out, the A's would still be playoff contenders, even replacing Tejada with a bad shortstop.

To me, the best player is always the MVP, unless there stats are really close. Tejada's not close.

Also, as a side bar to the Stark column, there's the instructions writers get on how to vote. It's the first time I've seen that.

Jayson Stark has a commentary on ESPN.com about the MVP race with the title Tejada for MVP. I'm really loathe to read it. I think every year some editor must assign the following piece: make a case for someone who's really good but nowhere near the best player for MVP. The arguments are always the same, "this guy plays for a winner," or "he's done more with no one around him," and my favorite, "he has more RBI!" And there's the variation on the first one of these, "Where would his team be without him." I don't know what Jayson has written in this column, but I know it's wrong. A-Rod deserves the MVP.

Let's look at the, "Where would his team be without him?" argument. Alex Rodriguez has 37.1 winshares this year, tops in the AL, and 2nd only to Barry Bonds at 44.1. Tejada is at 30.4 win shares, 4th in the AL, which certainly makes him an MVP candidate. Now, one argument is to say that if you switch A-Rod and Tejada, the A's would only have about 2 more wins. Well, at the moment, that's pretty significant, given that the A's are tied for the AL West lead, and one game behind the Yankees for best record in the AL. But that's not the right way to look at it.

Bill James always talks about comparing a player to replacement level. I'm not sure what the replacement level in the AL really is this year, but I can make a good guess by looking at the worst everyday shortstop in the AL. That's right, Neifi Perez. Perez has 4.4 win shares this year despite having over 500 AB. So now, let's look at the differences. If the A's had Perez at short, they would have have 26 fewer win shares. since 3 win shares = 1 team win, they would have about 9 fewer wins. They would be 83 and 64, nine game behind Anaheim, but only 1 game out of the wild card! (Seattle would be leading.) In fact, instead of having a meaningless AL West race, you'd have a pretty exciting AL Wild card race between the Red Sox, Mariners and A's.

Texas, despite being last in the wild west, is still the 8th best team in the league. Without A-Rod, they would be 11 games worse, 58-89, and down with the dregs of KC, Detroit and Tampa Bay. With A-Rod they have a draw, and they have a reason to thing they are on the edge of good. Look at the average attendace of these teams:

Team         Avg. Attendace

Texas              29422

Detroit            18811

KC                 17633

TB                 12956

Do you think anyone would be showing up in Texas if they were as bad as these three other teams?

So to sum up, you have two very good players. The playoff contender would still be a playoff contender without theirs. The mediocre team would be among the worst in the league without theirs. And the playoff contender would be in much better shape if they switched players. A-Rod gets it in my book.

AL is pretty much set at this point. The only question is who will play the Yankees in the first round. I was impressed with the Angels taking 3 of 4 from the A's. Should be fun down the stretch.

Rodrigo Lopez won his fourth game against Boston this year. He's 4-0 and has put up a 2.48 ERA in 29 innings, with no HR allowed. Not bad against a good offensive team.

Rob Neyer touts Jason Jennings for rookie of the year over Moss. Looking at winshares, Moss has Jennings beat, 11.9 to 7.7. However, I sort of agree with Rob's premise, that pitching in Colorado has to be taken into account. I've felt since 1993 that any Rockies pitcher who can post a 4.00 ERA or lower should automatically get the Cy Young award.

Of course, Austin Kearns has them both beat by a lot, putting up 18.4 win shares. Reds fans have to be real happy with Kearns and Dunn so young and so good. A great pair to build a contender around.

Texas has just finished a sweep of the Seattle Mariners. Since the start of the month, they are 9-3, scoring 6.7 runs per game with a 3.91 ERA. Using the Pythaorgean formula, I figure Texas has to lower it's opponent's runs by .9 runs per game to become a .575 team, which most years mean you're in contention. They currently have a 5.12 ERA; getting it down around 4.00 puts them in contention. This little stretch, although it contains 7 games against TB and Baltimore, has to make Texas fans a little hopeful. They are not among the dregs of the AL; I believe they have the 8th best record in the AL. They need to come up with two good starters. If they can find a couple of people to get on base in front of A-Rod, they'll score a lot of runs. I've never been overly impressed with Hart's ability to judge pitching talent, but they're not that far away from being a good team.

He has another HR tonight to bring his season total to 54 and his career total to 295. I happen to like using season age to measure records, rather than birthdate. If you look at it that way, the most HR through age 27 is 302 by Foxx. Eddie Mathews had 299, then A-Rod at 295 and Griffey at 294. A-Rod has to be happy to pass Griffey. I understand they didn't get along too well in Seattle.

Seattle may end producing more 700 HR hitters than any other club! Too bad they won't be hit for them.

Mariners are losing again. They had a chance to catch up in the west if they were able to sweep Texas, but it hasn't happened. They may get swept. Part of it seems to be Ichiro slumping. Since 8/6, he's hitting .246 in 31 games. The Mariners are 15-17 over that time. He was hitting .350 before that, and the Mariners had a 69-43 record.

Through 3 innings tonight, Orlando Hernandez has not walked a man. As you probably know, no Yankee pitcher has walked a man in the last 6 games. None. They have 3 HBP coming into tonight, and El Duque plunked the leadoff batter. But no opponent has seen ball four. Now it is Detroit and Baltimore they've been playing, but not all the players are Randall Simon.

Mike Williams picked up his 41st save today. He pitched a perfect 9th, striking out the side. He has shattered the Pirates save record of 34 set by Jim Gott in 1988. He's saved nearly two-thirds of the team's wins. He's had a decent but not outstanding career; his best year was 1998 when he had a 1.98 ERA in a reliever role, but not as a closer. I don't know what he's doing differently; there's nothing really that different in his stats. He hasn't given up a HR with a man on base this year, but HR in general haven't been his problem. Still, along with Giles, he gives the long suffering Pittsburgh fans something to cheer about.

I was just looking at the Twins boxscore, and I couldn't help notice that Christian Guzman has the following stats: .276 BA, .293 OBA, .390 slugging percentage. And this is the everyday #2 hitter. So I thought, maybe he has speed. He's 11 for 24 in SB attempts, a pitiful 45.8 percentage. The Twins #2 hitters overall have a .291 OBA, the lowest in the AL. Why not bat Koskie there? Guzman should be batting 9th. I see not excuse for a team like the Twins giving first inning plate appearances to an unproductive hitter.

Here's where we were when the world stopped:

Standings through games of 9/10/2001.




AL Central                   W    L   PCT    GB

===============================================

Cleveland Indians           82   62  .569    --

Minnesota Twins             76   68  .528   6.0

Chicago White Sox           74   70  .514   8.0

Detroit Tigers              57   86  .399  24.5

Kansas City Royals          57   86  .399  24.5



AL East                      W    L   PCT    GB

===============================================

New York Yankees            86   57  .601    --

Boston Red Sox              72   69  .511  13.0

Toronto Blue Jays           70   73  .490  16.0

Baltimore Orioles           55   87  .387  30.5

Tampa Bay Devil Rays        50   93  .350  36.0



AL West                      W    L   PCT    GB

===============================================

Seattle Mariners           104   40  .722    --

Oakland Athletics           87   57  .604  17.0

Anaheim Angels              73   71  .507  31.0

Texas Rangers               66   78  .458  38.0



NL Central                   W    L   PCT    GB

===============================================

Houston Astros              84   59  .587    --

St. Louis Cardinals         79   64  .552   5.0

Chicago Cubs                78   65  .545   6.0

Milwaukee Brewers           63   81  .438  21.5

Cincinnati Reds             58   86  .403  26.5

Pittsburgh Pirates          55   88  .385  29.0



NL East                      W    L   PCT    GB

===============================================

Atlanta Braves              78   64  .549    --

Philadelphia Phillies       75   68  .524   3.5

New York Mets               71   73  .493   8.0

Florida Marlins             66   77  .462  12.5

Montreal Expos              61   82  .427  17.5

NL West                      W    L   PCT    GB

===============================================

Arizona Diamondbacks        81   62  .566    --

San Francisco Giants        80   64  .556   1.5

Los Angeles Dodgers         78   65  .545   3.0

San Diego Padres            70   73  .490  11.0

Colorado Rockies            62   80  .437  18.5

(Standings courtesy of STATS, Inc.)

The A's got another 1-run win last night. That makes them 28-9 on the year, a .757 winning percentage. That's the highest of any team in a single season in the AL-NL era (1901 on). The 1981 Orioles (in a strike shortened season) had put up a .750 winning percentage.

This brings up an important point; the A's have been somewhat lucky this year. There's no reason they can't continue to be lucky, but these things do have a tendancy to even out. The Angels have better overall stats, and at this point may actually be the favorites going into the AL playoffs.

Alex Rodriguez broke his own SS HR record last night. He's now played 33 games against the Mariners since he left, and has 12 HR and 33 RBI in those games. That would project out to 59 HR and 162 RBI over a full season. On stats, he's clearly the MVP of the AL, but that's been true a few times and he hasn't won it.

Looks like a great start of the week. We'll have the A's at the Angels for 4, the two hottest teams in baseball, battling for the AL West title. We have the Dodgers traveling to SF for 3, including a Wednesday matinee. Of course, the real battle in the AL West is for home field advantage (although Seattle is lurking in the background), and to see who gets to play the Yankees in the first round. I'm hoping for four great games here. It's a chance for the Angels to shed their image as the Red Sox of the West.

Kevin Millwood has lowered his ERA in every month this year (includes tonight's game):

                ERA  W  L

April          4.50  2  3  

May            4.29  1  2  

June           2.75  2  0  

July           2.43  5  1  

August         2.18  4  0  

September      1.22  2  0  

If Atlanta ends up facing Arizona at some point in the playoffs, we may see nothing up 1-0 games.

AL Leaders in Leadoff OBA show Soriano third to last. You can follow this link, and the link in that story to see how I have felt about Soriano as a leadoff man throughout the year.

Soriano ranks 8th in slugging percentage. He shouldn't be leading off. He should be batting 4th or 5th.

Brad Radke shuts out the A's and wins his 100th game of his career. Twins magic number down to 8.

I'm now #1 when you type David Pinto for a google search! Also, check out David Pinto of the Killer Dana Surf Team. I like to tell people that's me hanging ten. :-)

The Angels have the best run differential in the league, despite an off year from Troy Glaus. It looks like he's going to put up his lowest slugging percentage since his rookie year of 1998, and it doesn't look like he'll put up a third consecutive year of 40 HR. But his OBA remains good, and with the improvement from his teammates, he'll probably score and drive in 100 runs. He can play better, and a hot Glaus down the stretch could put the Angels over the top.

Tim Wakefield has done an excellent job this year for the Red Sox as a starter. With his game tonight, he is 7-3 with a 2.51 ERA as a starter. He's only walked 14 in 68 innings as a starter, less than 2 per 9. Not bad for a knuckleballer.

Just in case you were wondering (as of 10:17 EDT):

Team             Magic #

Yankees             13

Twins               10

A's                 21

Angels (WC)         20

Braves               4

Cardinals           19

DBacks              18

Dodgers (WC)        21

The West is where the races are, and in many ways the best teams. Hope all the people on the East coast are willing to stay up late down the stretch!

Mike's Baseball Rant has a well researched article on where the Expos should move. I thought when the Red Sox deal fell through for cable TV guy (can't remember his name), that he should have bought the Expos and moved them to Brooklyn, and broadcast their games on MSG. Would have saved him about$500 million in purchase price, and with all that extra money he could have bought a team to equal the Yankees. Of course, the Yankees and Mets probably wouldn't let that happen, but it would be fun to see a team in Brooklyn again.

Update: Dan Branda points out that it was Charles Dolan who wanted to buy the Red Sox. Thanks, Dan!

Michael Henson sends me this link to an article that shows how bad the Marlins ownership is. You need to be a member of baseballamerica.com, however to be able to read the article.

Below, in the post on run differential I point out that the Red Sox do not have the largest difference. The team that does, somewhat surprisingly, is the Angels. And the Angels are extending that lead tonight, leading 10-1 at the moment. The top teams are (entering today):

Team          Run Diff.

Angels            167

Yankees           164

Red Sox           163

DBacks            144

Braves            134

I think the Angels are the real sleeper in the upcoming playoffs. Since the 1998, there is only one team that has a winning record vs. the Yankees, and that's the Angels. They are 24-21 over that time period vs. the New Yorkers. The next closest team in terms of winning percentage (regular season only) is the Atlanta Braves, who are 6-7, .461. And the way the playoffs are stacking up, the Angels could play the Yankees in the first round.

If theTwins play the A's in the first round, a low payroll team with win a series, breaking the streak of low payroll teams not winning a post-season series.

I've always felt the best way to bring fans into the park is to win games. Here's some results for this year (average attendance by month):

For the Twins:

   Month     Att

       4    20727

       5    19894

       6    23146

       7    26648

       8    29998

For the A's:

   Month     Att

       4    23881

       5    20444

       6    28227

       7    27074

       8    26687

       9    39843

For the Angels:

   Month     Att

       4    22692

       5    22458

       6    26804

       7    30109

       8    32244

       9    24592

That's only 1 game in Sept. for the Angels. Just win, baby!

AP reports on A-Rod's 2 HR game, which gives him 50 on the year. Of course, they fail to mention that he is now tied with Jimmy Wynn at 291 for 100th on the all-time list.

Two of my readers who are Red Sox fans wrote today with a question. (Actually, neither of them knew the other was going to ask me; they each thought they had their own stat person! :-)) The basic question is, how often does a team that leads the league in run differential (runs-opponents runs) not make the playoffs? I looked from 1901 to 2001 at the two leagues (202 seasons), and found that it happened in 44 of those league seasons. Here's the list of who didn't make it:

Team                 Year  Place

Indians              1904    4

White Sox            1905    2

Indians              1906    3

Indians              1908    2

Giants               1908    2

Athletics            1909    2

White Sox            1915    3

White Sox            1916    2

Giants               1920    2

Browns              1922    2

Athletics            1928    2

Senators                1930    2

Yankees              1931    2

Giants               1934    2

Cubs                 1936    2

Yankees              1945    4

Cardinals            1947    2

Red Sox              1949    2

Red Sox              1950    3

Dodgers              1950    2

Dodgers              1951    2

Yankees              1954    2

Braves               1956    2

Indians              1959    2

Braves               1959    2

White Sox            1960    3

Giants               1961    3

Cardinals            1963    2

Reds                 1964    2

Reds                 1965    4

Pirates              1966    3

Cubs                 1969    2

Cubs                 1970    2

Brewers              1978    3

Orioles              1980    2

Yankees              1981    3

Dodgers              1981    2

Expos                1982    3

Braves               1983    2

Yankees              1985    2

Blue Jays            1987    2

Mets                 1987    2

Mets                 1990    2

Brewers              1992    2

So it hasn't happened since the move to three divisions, which makes sense. The Red Sox are not leading in run differential this year, but they are real close. They are also 2nd in if ranked by the Pythagorean method (a different way of measuring the same thing).

Dan Bickley thinks the Arizona slide will toughen them up for the playoffs. He points out that after this weekend against the Giants, they have a pretty easy schedule. Apart from 3 against St. Louis, they don't play a team with a winning record. Still, there are some older players on this team, and I've been wondering for two years if they were going to break down.

The one person I can't figure out is Steve Finley. He's old (38), and he wasn't that good before he came to Arizona. If you look at his four years with San Diego, and compare them with his four years in Arizona, something interesting comes through:

Home          SD        AZ

BA          .260      .292

OBA         .325      .369

Slug%       .418      .521


Road

BA          .291      .256

OBA         .342      .328

Slug%       .494      .475

He's been helped tremendously by the BOB, while his road number show an overall decline (he's somewhat made up for this with more walks and more power). I have to wonder, when will he reach the point where he fades enough that the ballpark no longer helps him? Coming into tonight, over his last 10 games, he was hitting .229 with 0 HR and 1 RBI. Of course, the whole team is hitting only .202 over that time period (11 games) so he's actually doing well relative to his teammates.

Things went much better tonight. Johnson pitched a gem, took 107 pitches for a complete game 7-1 victory, the only run being Green's 40th HR. Finley went 2 for 4 with a HR and an RBI. The lead is back to 5.

Only Baseball Matters suggests we should define a new triple crown to better recognize outstanding seasons: batting average, OBA and slugging percentage. I don't think we should replace the TC, just add this to the triple crown universe. I actually used this TC back in 1990 when Mariano Duncan was leading the league in all 3 after a great start for the Reds. And make sure you take a look at Hornsby's number in the 20's. It strikes me that he was the only NL players in the 1920's to adjust to the new power game.

Correction: If you read this piece last night, you saw Mariano Rivera instead of Mariano Duncan. Brain freeze on my part. Thanks to Chad Huberty for pointing this out.

Down 5-0, after a poor perfromance by Barry Zito, the A's came back to take a 6-5 lead. The Royals tied it a 6, and in the bottom of the 9th, Long tripled to start the inning. I think a triple was generous, since the left fielder had a real hard time picking up the ball. Pena then walks the next two batters intentionally. Hatteberg grounded out into a fielder's choice at the plate, but Tejada singled in the winning run (to listen to the A's announcers, you'd think Tejada was the only AL player deserving of the MVP).

The double IBB was used against me in strat-o-matic once. I was playing my roommate David Aceto at his ballpark, 1979 card set. We were in extra innings, and I had used all my pitchers, so Dave Frost was in to stay and had to bat (we did not use the DH). With two outs, Bill Madlock, my #6 hitter doubled. Aceto then brilliantly walked Munson and Burleson to face Frost. Joaquin Andujar was on the mound. Frost was a 1 hitter in strat-o, meaning the only positive offense on his card was a 2-10 walk. I rolled the dice. A 4-9, which was a walk on Andujar's card. I started jumping up and down yelling, "He walked, he walked!" at which point the card table came flying across the room at me, and Aceto uttered that timeless phrase, "I hate happy people."

MSNBC has a report on MLB cracking down on baseball web sites. Of course, this story has been out there for a month.

Copyright and trademark law is trying to be subverted to prevent people on the web from easily sharing information. If you are interested in this subject, and how big entertainment is trying write the laws to their advantage, check out Instapundit and Amiee Deep.

Bill James has pointed out numerous times that great teams don't necessarily win close games, but they do win big. The dominate their opponents by big scores. You can see this in the two most recent 18 game winning streak, by this year's A's and by the 1953 Yankees. The A's have outscored their opponents 122-48; that's an average score of 6.7-2.7. The 1953 Yankees were similar, outscoring their opponents 129-44 during their streak (average: 7.2-2.4).

The A's are now in first place in the race for home field advantage. And I thought they were giving up when they traded away Jeremy Giambi. This is an amazing team, and should be the model for all the small market clubs.

I went upstairs to have dinner with my family, with the A's leading 4-2 in the middle of the 8th. I missed a fantastic finish to the game, where the A's blew the lead up rallied with three runs of their own in the bottom of the ninth.

I'm watching the Giants at DBacks right now, and the first 5 men in the Giants order have reached, and it's 4-0 Giants. NL West is getting interesting.

Al Bethke doesn't like my take on electing a new commissioner. He also criticizes my idea of a super minor league. Here's a quote:

It's funny, those most critical of Bud can't even put forth anything more than a random, "no chance in hell" alternative.

What does this mean? I don't know. I'm just trying to be constructive, and spread competitive baseball to more cities. And what is Al's creative alternative to me?

How about we have Mr. Selig keep the job through the end of his term, 2006, and then see who'll take it?

Good, let's keep the guy who cares about his pocket book more than he cares about the fans.

There was so much strike talk, and probably so much uncertainty, that there were no major waiver deals made before the Aug. 31th deadline for adding players eligible for the post-season. Either that, or all the moves were blocked.

It's been a good couple of weeks for people living in the SF Bay area. Since 8/19, the Giants are 11-2, and the A's are 12-0 (A's, of course, are 17-0 over the course of their winning streak). Pretty soon, this is going to be like Pleasantville, with everyone debating the veracity of the statement, "You can't win them all." :-)

Peter Gammons has an excellent article on how the fans have to be brought back into the game. Some salient paragraphs:

What was striking about the press conference is that not once did Selig mention the word "fans." To many fans, this could be taken as Selig essentially saying, "We've been telling you the players are greedy, mercenary and overrated for two years, and now we're putting millions more into the pockets of certain billionaires without asking them to invest in the game, but owners and players alike expect you to come back, bring your family of four to our games and spend the expected $150. I am the owners' commissioner and you're lucky."

There has been a lot that the Selig administration has accomplished, from the wild card to the forms of revenue sharing. But Cal Ripken, Joe Torre, Mark McGwire and Sosa had a lot to do with making all that successful, and as the sport has eroded in the last four years, the fundamental failure of post-Fay Vincent leadership has been that it was always about beating Donald Fehr. They couldn't do it with collusion, they couldn't do it in 1994, and that is what became the principle goal of the people who run baseball, egged on by a chorus of Jesse Helms wannabes who hate baseball and were willing to strip mine it just to be able to sell for a higher price.

And:

To those of us who love the game and hold deep respect for the skill and character of those who play it, the restoration is the single most important urgent task facing the people who claim the sport's power and authority, and it is far more complex and deep-rooted than a couple of quickie promos. Selig won his campaign against the players, at a cost, and what he needs to remember is that leaders who worry about their own perception rather than their actions are not leaders at all, just followers.

On Wednesday night, Pedro Martinez was facing the Yankees at Fenway, a pleasant, 70ish night. As the game began, out on Yawkey Way tickets were being given away, because the scalpers got no action and were giving them away to the best-looking women they could find.

Pedro vs. Mussina, Red Sox vs. Yankees, Fenway, 300,000 college students back in town ... and they were giving away tickets. That is a cloud that signifies a storm that a cash agreement between billionaires and millionaires won't divert.

It will only be diverted when Selig and the owners realize that what is important is (1) the public -- the fans -- and their relationship with the players and 2) the owners' and players' responsibility to their fans and their communities. If our lives were on videotape, Selig could go back and re-open that press conference. In the absence of videotape, he can begin tomorrow refocusing baseball away from the lunatic fringe owners and to its audience.

Selig has now done what he's wanted to do for 30 years. It's time for him to resign and go back to running the Brewers. Let's get a commissioner that is elected by the owners, players and fans, and is paid by the owners and players. Here's how I'd like to see the commissioner elected:

• The owners submit 2 names as candidates.


• The players sumbit 2 names as candidates.


• Each owner ranks the candidates 1-4.


• Each team has a vote, where each player ranks the candidates 1-4. The results are tallied similar to an MVP ballot. First place gets 4 points, 2nd place gets 3 points, 3rd place 2 points, fourth place 1 point. Based on these results, the players submit 1 ballot for the team, with the candidates ranked 1-4.


• The fans, as a whole, get to vote like the players. Fans rank candidates 1-4, the fan vote is tallied like the players, and one ballot is cast for the fans.


• That gives you 61 ballots, with 4 candidates ranked 1-4. Add the scores up as above, and the person with the most points is commissioner.

I suppose you could give the fans more say, buy making a fan identify him or herself with a team, and have 30 different fan ballots, one for each team. One of the nice things about this type of voting is that you tend to get a consensus 2nd choice, especially when two distinct groups have different preferences. That's why I like the idea of one final fan ballot. It acts as the tie breaker.

Update, 12/18/2003: I just noticed I had All-Star ballot. I meant MVP ballot. I'm made the correction above.

I was just looking at NL team stolen base numbers, and I noticed the Padres were really bad. They have a 58.7 stolen base percentage. The rule of thumb is that you need to steal at a 66.7% clip to just break even in run scoring. I'd thought I'd look at the number of times the Padres were caught on pitch outs (maybe someone has stolen the steal sign), but they've only been caught twice. The eams that have been caught the most on pitchouts are the Royals (6) and the Devil Rays(5). No other team has been caught more than 3 times.

It looks like the Padres problems with steals are caused by running guys who shouldn't be running anymore; Ron Gant, Ray Lankford, Mark Kotsay, Bubba Trammell, Trent Hubbard. These guys are 25 for 49, a miserable 51.0 They should have 9 opportunities, not 49.

I was surprised to see Randy Johnson pitch last night. Johnson pitched last Sunday, and the Diamondbacks had a day off this week (Thursday), so I expected Brenly to give him an extra day of rest, especially with a large division lead. But there he was last night, getting shelled by the Giants. It was the third time this year Johnson has had a game score below 50 (it was a 27; he's also put up a 26 and a 22). I looked at Johnson's game log, and he hasn't pitched on 5 days rest since June, including the All-Star break. He's thrown almost 400 more pitches than anyone else in the NL (thanks to STATS, Inc.):

NL Leaders in Pitches Thrown (Thru games of AUG-30-2002)

Just fooling around with win shares tonight, and I was looking at the AL contenders up the middle (C, 2B, SS, CF). The Yankees have a big advantage:

Team      WS

NYY     92.2

Oak     60.2

Sea     52.9

Ana     49.7

Min     47.9

It's one of the reasons the Yankees have been strong for so long. Look at that team up the middle since 1998, and it's hard to find a better one. The win shares above represent the totals of the regular starters at those positions (for example, Posada, Soriano, Jeter and Williams).

Both Jones and Durham have hit leadoff HRs in the Min-Oak game. Jones now has 10 HR leading off a game, two short of Brady Anderson's single season record of 12.

Tim Keown has the first insightful article I've read on the process post settlement:

The direction of public opinion is mystifying, really. Everyone seems to understand and accept Bud Selig's epic incompetence and seemingly bottomless capacity for -- to be highly generous -- twisting the truth. Just to pick something at random, Selig can't even embrace the game's best stories -- the allegedly impossible small-payroll successes in Minnesota and Oakland. Those two franchises are models, and Bud calls them aberrations. They should be honored, instead they are belittled. Has there ever been a worse spokesman for the game than Selig?

Doesn't matter. You say it was the players' fault, so it was the players' fault. Since everyone seems fixated on Alex Rodriguez's oft-cited $252 million contract, let's shift the argument from Rodriguez to Rangers owner Tom Hicks. This utter incompetent gave A-Rod nearly $100 million more than the next offer, and then he stood around begging for money and bemoaning the system. He deserves some of George Steinbrenner's money? Why, exactly? So his next ridiculous move doesn't hurt as much? These are the same scions and heirs ("Lucky Sperm Club") whose blue blood curdles every time they're asked to pay sales tax on a yacht, and yet they're lining up to push a luxury tax, which is nothing more than a subsidy for the incompetent.

What this contract does is shift the burden of blame from the players to the owners. The owners can't cry about the Yankees having all this money anymore. They can't claim they're not good because they are in a small market. The emperor's new clothes are gone.

Not having to read "Ninth work stoppage since 1972" ever again.

Don Fehr made me look good (from FoxSports):

"We believe this is an agreement we can live with," Fehr said. "Otherwise we wouldn't have made it."

Similar to what I thought would happen yesterday. I just had it happening a little earlier. Well, it was the wee hours in Hawaii. :-)

ESPN is reporting there is a deal. I'm glad my optimism was rewarded. Let's get back to the games now.

I just heard the Red Sox are on their way to the airport. That's the best sign I've seen all day.

There is a report that three teams have told the union they won't walk. Marvin Miller has called the news organization that reported this and says it's not true. If it is true, it's really significant. It would be the first visible lack of solidarity that I've ever seen in the MLBPA. It also shows that the players may have more sense than the men who are leading them in the union. It's Fehr's job to get the best deal, but at this point the differences don't seem to be worth a strike.

Also, contraction is reported to be off the table. I guess it was just a bargaining chip all along. Maybe now people can think about it and do it right. For your review, here are my ideas.

I was just listening to Ron Shapiro being interviewed. He made a point that I've been making for some time, that a partnership has to be formed between the owners and players to avoid this happening again. That's the best way to remove the distrust between the two sides, and build the game back up.

but no strike either. People are paying attention to the Red Sox right now, since they are supposed to have an 8:30 charter. Of course, the game isn't until this evening, so I would guess they could push the charter back to 2 PM and still get to Cleveland in plenty of time for a game.

The real question is when is the latest you can call the Cubs game. There's no rain in the forecast, so I have to think you need to make a decision by noon, otherwise you'll have really angry fans going to the game.

I still think something is going to get done. We may lose today's games, but Saturday/Sunday double headers are fun! Stay tuned.

Fans are throwing things on the field. They threw about 25 beach balls earlier, and someone just threw a baseball. It would be ironic if the last game ended in a forfeit because the fans couldn't be controled.

Just heard while watching the Angels game that the 11:00 PM Eastern conference call between the union and the players has been delayed because Fehr and Selig have been meeting face to face since 9:30 PM Eastern.

I'm sitting here waiting to hear something. I'm watching the Blue Jays pound the Yankees (Phelps has two HR off Clemens), and then I'll watch the Angels, maybe the last game for a while. I keep hoping someone will cut in with news of a deal.

Interestingly, ESPN.com has become more pessimistic, while FoxSports.com has become more optimistic, just the opposite of this morning.

Just looked at the Mariners-Twins box. 0-0 in the 5th, with both Moyer and Reed pitching gems. 7 hits, 0 walks combined.

If the Twins win today, you have to start liking their chances in the post-season. They would have outpitched a fine staff, and shut down a good offensive team. Maybe the Yankees would be better off playing the west wild card. :-)

I guess a few hours can make a big difference. Foxsports.com has this report by Dave Van Dyck from about 7 PM last night that is extremely pessimistic. Jayson Stark, updating this story at 3 AM is much more optimistic.

I love this quote from a management source:

"It's hard to believe we can get it done in 30 hours," said one high-ranking management source after four separate meetings with union officials. "Realistically, I don’t know if we can."

I don't know how many of you get all your work done two weeks ahead of deadline, but I'm usually pushed to the limit. They get it done by one side or the other saying, "I can live with that." My guess is that will happen in the wee hours of tomorrow.

If the A's hold on for the win tonight, it will be their 100th win over the last 3 years after Aug. 1. Here's a list of the best winning percentages, Aug 1st on, 2000-2002 combined:

Team                     W     L    Pct.

Athletics               99    38   0.723

Cardinals               90    51   0.638

Giants                  86    52   0.623

Astros                  83    55   0.601

Mariners                82    55   0.599

Diamondbacks            78    60   0.565

Indians                 79    63   0.556

Yankees                 77    62   0.554

Mets                    74    63   0.540

That winning percentage would give them 117 wins over a full season.

Steve Beers wrote me today:

Dave,

Just read your entry on the Yankees from 8/27. The issue many have with the Yankees is not that they scout, draft, and develop players. It is that they can keep all of the talent they want. The Expos for years have scout, draft and developed players they just could not keep them because they could not afford to. That is where the disparity is.

Steve Beers

Steve makes a great point, but again, the Oakland A's fly in the face of this. They lost Giambi and Damon. They traded away a great OBA guy in Jeremy Giambi. And they are still winning big. The reason is, if you develop good young players, players who get on base, pitchers who throw strikes, you'll always be decent. And if you let the 30 year-olds go and aren't afraid to replace them with young talent, you'll save money. Every team should take a good, hard look at what the A's are doing and try to emulate them. That would do a lot more to even things out in baseball than a luxury tax.

Just when you thought the Yankees pitching might be vulnerable, Mussina and Wells put together back-to-back impressive starts. After 8 tonight, Yankee starters have not allowed a run. Mussina has only thrown 89 pitches tonight, so the Yankees may get back-to-back complete games, giving the Rivera-less bullpen a needed break. Mussina has had great command tonight; I can't say I've seen him throw a hanging pitch tonight. His follow through seems much better. What ever change he's made, it's working.

Another thing the Yankees did well tonight is wear out Martinez. He'd pitched a great game, but got up to 127 pitches before he was taken out. His previous high was 117 on 7/1. Pedro didn't have it in the 7th, left with 2 on, and Bernie Williams took Embree deep.

It's too bad. The Red Sox did a lot of things right this year. They still may make the wild card, but they are not looking like a very good team right now.

Correction: Sorry, should have read the box more carefully. Wells did not pitch a complete game on Tuesday.

Joe Crede hit the 8th walk-off grand slam of the season last night, probably extending the record.

Castro broke it up with 1 out in the 6th.

Finley is now perfect through 5. He threw 8 pitches in the 5th, getting two pop ups and a K. He has thrown 56 pitches through 5. If he keeps this up, he may end up with a complete game with less than 100 pitches thrown. That's been done 11 times this year.

It appears that Chuck Finley has a perfect game through 4 innings. Stay tuned!

Check out Travis Nelson's baseball blog. He has a nice article on why Gossage isn't in the Hall of Fame.

Pierzynski just hit his 5th triple of the year to give the Twins the lead. It will be interesting to see if he goes past 6 triples this year. No one who has caught 100 games in a season has done that since Darrell Porter hit 10 in 1979. Of course, he was playing in KC then, which was a great triples park.

Neither Andruw Jones nor Derek Jeter has a triple this year.

Junior has been playing very well since the all-star break:

               Avg   G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS TBB HBP SO  OBP  SLG

Pre-All Star  .243  26  74   6  18  4  0  2   4  0  1  10  2  13 .345 .378

Post-All Star .324  25  74   9  24  2  0  5  17  1  1  13  1  17 .418 .554

His post-all star numbers are much more in line with his career. Maybe he's finally healed from his injury.

The Reds offense is better also, scoring 4.92 runs per game since the break, as opposed to 4.33 before. Unfortunately, the pitching has gotten worse, leading to a 18-24 record since the break (all stats coming into tonight).

Reds won game 1 of a double header with St. Louis, but are losing big in the early innings of game 2. The Reds really need a sweep here to get themselves back in the pennant race.

Bob Klapisch has an article on ESPN.com that I agree with. I especially like this passage:

If money really ruled, we'd like to know why the Twins -- who were on the verge of being vaporized by Bud Selig -- are crushing the White Sox and the Indians in the AL Central Division. And why, if cash is king, are the Rangers dead last in the West with a $100 million payroll?

Oakland's success in particular proves that it's aggressive scouting and smart trades that lift franchises, not just money. True, the Yankees had the resources to sign expensive free agents like Jason Giambi and Mike Mussina in the last two years -- and Steinbrenner didn't blink in adding Jeff Weaver and Raul Mondesi in a five-day span -- but the Yankees' core is the product of old-fashioned hard work by their scouts and minor-league managers.

Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Bernie Williams were scouted, drafted and developed by the Yankees themselves. They weren't bought or bartered or acquired in any high-priced trade.

And he gets a good shot in at Selig and the rest of the owners:

Yet, the Yankees suffer the slings and arrows of league-wide outrage, and the club's hierarchy is united in the belief that Selig and his top lieutenant Sandy Alderson are out to get them. Perhaps Steinbrenner would be more popular if he behaved like Rangers' owner Tom Hicks, a buffoon who signed Alex Rodriguez to a $252 million contract, then has the audacity to call for economic reform.

Hard-liners nod in agreement with Hicks, yet enjoy an enduring private laugh at how fast A-Rod's money took the Rangers to the cellar. Nothing bothers Selig more than watching the Yankees win the pennant every year, and for this, Steinbrenner has been banished from the community of owners during the recent labor negotiation.

But, really, what law have the Yankees broken? Steinbrenner is merely repairing the damage the organization suffered between 1982-1995 -- a 14-year dark age during which his team failed to make it to the World Series once.

Strangely, no one had a problem with the Yankees then. And all the while in the '90s, no one seemed to mind the Braves' mastery of the National League.

There's good reason for that, since the Braves prevailed with hard work and intelligent planning. The Yankees spend more than the Braves, but these two organizations operate on a common, iron-credo: players, not money, deliver you into October's embrace.

If you don't believe that, ask the A's.

Better yet, ask the Rangers.

Klapisch does write for a northern NJ paper, so take what he says with a grain of salt, but I like his arguments. I've thought since the 1994 strike that lower payroll teams would eventually find a way to win in this environment. Yes, it takes more work, but it can be done. Revenue sharing, or (as I like to think of it) paying for an opponent to play, will help even things out. But you still have to have the smarts to draft the right players, sign the right free agents, and make deals that help your team.

My friend Andres took some digital photos of the game last night. Here are some that he thought were the best.

My family walking to Fenway. My wife is in the pink shirt, I'm in the blue Oxford, and my daughter is holding my hand.

A view of the Green Moster. Notice they have added advertising to the net above it.

My wife, daughter and nephew in the stands.

A view of the field as we left in the 8th.

I went with friends and family to the Red Sox game last night. My first time at Fenway this year (although I tried to see two other games and failed). The game had everything; two homers by Manny Ramirez, great defense (Floyd and Palmeiro), bad defense (four errors by the Red Sox) some clutch and not-so clutch pitching. I'm afraid John Burkett may be done. I didn't see a pitch over 85 MPH, and the Angels just kept laying the bat on the ball and dropping singles into the outfield. We didn't stay to the end; it takes a while to get home from Fenway, so we left after the Angels scored 4 in the 8th. Of course, we missed the big comeback.

The Red Sox are now 3 games behind Seattle for the wild card, and an interesting scenario has developed, which is one of the negatives about the wild card race. At this point, the wild card will come from the East or the West in the AL. If the wild card is from the west, the Yankees will likely play that team. If it's the Red Sox, the Yankees would probably play the Twins. Now, Minnesota fans may disagree with me, but I'd rather play the Twins in the first round than any of the Western teams that might make the playoffs. So there is a small incentive for the Yankees to lose to the Red Sox. Yankees have a 7 game lead. They could lose 4 out of 5 to the Red Sox, and with their easy schedule the rest of the way and still coast to the AL East crown. This would help the Red Sox win the WC, as the Western teams get to beat each other up down the stretch.

I don't think the Yankees would do this, but the fact that we might even talk about this shows a big weakness of the wild card.

MLB is broadcasting live video of the Rangers-Yankees game today at 1 PM. It's free, and if it works, I assume someday soon you'll be able to see any game in the country over the internet, just as you can listen to any game now. It's good to see MLB embracing the internet. Maybe they learned from their mistakes of avoiding regular radio and television broadcasts when those technologies were new.

but I thought I'd log in to see what was happening in the baseball world. A three way tie in the AL West makes that look like the most exciting race out there. Mets have lost 10 in a row, 6 by 2 runs or less. The DBacks just keep getting better. And the owners and players keep talking. It'll go down to the wire, but the fact that the two sides continue to talk continues to be encouraging to me.

Back next week.

I'm off for a week, so blogging will most likely be non-existent. Check out the other blogs linked on the right for some good commentary. Let's hope for labor progress.

Robin Ventura just hit his 18th road HR off John Halama. That ties him with Giambi for most road HR in the AL. Soriano is third with17.

Ichiro just robbed Jeter of an opposite field HR. Great catch.

The Pirates have now lost 7 in a row, and have been outscored 60-29 in that span. Ten of the runs allowed have been unearned. The DBacks, on the other hand, have only allowed 2 unearned runs in the month of August.

It's the bottom of the 9th, the Mets are down 1 run, Gagne's on the mound, and Alomar and Piazza are on the bench. Valentine lets Ordonez bat. What is he thinking? The announcers are speculating that it's because Rey has two hits tonight. Well, he just weakly tapped back to Gagne, who threw him out. Bad move, Bobby.

Torii Hunter scores in the 5th on a failed DP attempt by the Red Sox. Pedro's streak ends at 35 innings.

Pedro Martinez has not allowed a run in 31 consecutive innings entering tonight. Here's a few stats for him during the streak:

Pitcher                  IP  Op. BA   AB    H   BB    K

Martinez, Pedro        31.0   0.110  100   11    3   38

Not bad. He's throwing a 1 hitter through 4 tonight without a run, and now has struck out 7 in a row.

Of course, Joe Mays has not allowed a hit through 4. Great pitcher's duel.

What an impressive season. 250 K, 19 walks. 19 HR allowed, but 13 of them are solo. A 2.69 ERA, and his home field is a pitcher's park. Schilling and Johnson may be the greatest old duo of all time.

Schilling and Johnson have combined to strike out 501 batters this year. If you look at the top two K pitchers on all clubs, the next closest combination is the Cubs with 307 by Clement and Wood. The best combinations since 1900:

Team            Year    K     Pitchers

Diamondbacks    2001  665     Johnson & Schilling

Angels          1973  624     Ryan & Singer

Dodgers         1965  592     Koufax & Drysdale

Angels          1976  588     Ryan & Tanana

Dodgers         1963  557     Koufax & Drysdale

I don't think they'll pass last year's mark, but they should move well into the top 5. Koufax was 29 and Drysdale 28 in 1965. Johnson is 38, Schilling 35.

This is an exchange I had with David Schoenfield of ESPN.com about the front page graphic announcing the strike:

From: David F. Pinto
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 2:20 PM
To: Schoenfield, David
Subject: Baseball Bomb

David,

Sorry to have to say this, but I think the picture of the baseball bomb on the front page of ESPN.com is in really poor taste, and I've said so in my blog.

David

From: Schoenfield, David
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 2:48 PM
To: David F. Pinto
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

I would ask, however, what is in poor taste about it? Because of 9/11? The feeling here is it presents a powerful and accurate statement about a potential strike -- which has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11

From: David F. Pinto
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 2:53 PM
To: Schoenfield, David
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

Yes, because of 9/11 and because of all the terrorist bombings that have been taking place. Baseball players are not terrorists. There are a lot of negative things you can say about the owners and players (and ESPN has), but putting them in the same class as bomb wielding terrorists is not appropriate or fair.

David

From: Schoenfield, David
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:00 PM
To: David F. Pinto
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

You're reading too much into the graphic ... baseball has nothing to do with war or terrorists or 9/11 ... but a strike that could blow up the season is a possibility, thus a powerful and accurate graphic

From: David F. Pinto
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:04 PM
To: Schoenfield, David
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

Normally I would agree with you, but these are not normal times. An empty stadium shrouded in black might be more appropriate. Besides, a strike destroying baseball is not a forgone conclusion. It's survived 8 other work stoppages. I seem to remember during most of those people saying the fans will never come back.

What killed baseball for a lot of people in 1994 was the loss of the World Series, not the loss of some games during the season. A short strike will do little to hurt the game in my opinion. Baseball does not end if the players walk out on Aug. 30. It will end if they are not back in time for the playoffs.

David

From: Schoenfield, David
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:08 PM
To: David F. Pinto
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

well, in the graphic, the baseball isn't lit yet, so it's not really saying the season will be destroyed (but has the potential, which is obviously true)

as a colleage of mine writes:

It's a media-blamed 'negative' spin, because a strike date has been set and the two sides are WAY apart on the central issue? Hardly. And notice, the fuse isn't lit on the picture. If Aug. 30 comes and goes and they find a way to keep playing, the FAKE BASEBALL won't blow up.

Comparing the fake baseball to exploding humans is quite a leap.

No matter how much one loves baseball, if this season isn't completed, believe me, it's no spin to make things negative.

(me)

Anyway, I appreciate the email. We had a discussion here and everyone is in agreement to stick with it.

From: David F. Pinto
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:14 PM
To: Schoenfield, David
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

Okay, thanks for listening.

Sides are not that far apart on the central issues, as Jayson Stark and Dave Campbell point out. Most of the articles that I have read on ESPN.com in the last couple of weeks were good news with negative headlines. (You can look through my blogs for the comments.)

Take care,

David

P.S. Do you mind if I publish this exchange?

From: Schoenfield, David
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:18 PM
To: David F. Pinto
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

sure, go ahead and publish the exchange

not sure how much good news there has been ... good news is coming to a deal and they've had two years to make one (the original CBA ran out last year) and have failed to do so ...

From: David F. Pinto
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2002 3:23 PM
To: 'Schoenfield, David'
Subject: RE: Baseball Bomb

Thanks. I thought the movement on drug testing was good news. I thought the movement on the luxury tax, world wide draft and other small issues were good things. And the fact that neither side was calling the other a liar was very good news. Compared to previous years, this is a lovefest. :-)

Negotiations tend to go down to the wire, so each side can try to get its best deal. Up to now, there hasn't been a wire. Putting up one is good news. It means we'll know in two weeks if owners are serious about getting a deal.

David

I enjoyed working for David Schoenfield last year, and I enjoy his columns on ESPN. Although I wouldn't have used that graphic, I'm glad ESPN.com has discussed its merits, and were happy to explain their views on the subject.

Jayson Stark has a good Q & A on the strike issues. As he presents it, the likelihood of a strike is lower than the headlines would have you believe. I like this summary:

In the end, the man who will most determine the fate of this dispute is (who else?) the commish. It's up to Bud Selig to step up, quiet the hawks, come to the table personally and make a compromise deal that gives his side at least some of everything it wanted -- a tax, historic levels of revenue sharing and steroid-testing.

This is no time to get greedy and push for a deal that can't be made. This is a time for baseball to get its act together, prove it can address its problems without a war and get to work on selling its beauty instead of bemoaning its warts. Let's hope that between now and Aug. 30, everybody sees it that way.

I sometimes get the feeling that Bud doesn't want a deal. He really wants an impasse so that he can impose his own system. I think the next two weeks will tell us if that is really true.

ESPN.com is reporting a strike date has been set (but not announced) with a very poor front page graphic. We're at war, and they're drawing a baseball as a bomb being lit by a hand. Please.

In the actual article, there is an interesting sidebar, detailing the previous work stoppages. I handn't realized that only three of them resulted in lost games. Seems like 1/2 of the stoppages occured during spring training, and we still got a full season in. One mid-season strike was 2 days and resulted in no games lost. Just goes to show how things in baseball are spun as negatively as possible by the media.

I think the strike deadline is a good thing. Now we'll know who's really serious about getting a deal done.

I'm old enough to remember when Doonesbury was actually funny. I followed a link to its web site today, and saw they had a search function that allows you look for old strips. I typed in "funny strips," and this is what I found. It's worse than I thought.

My post on the batting out of order problem on the 14th in Anaheim was not correct. It's a confusing situation, but I believe now that Mike's Baseball Rant gets it right, and that the protest would have been upheld if the Angels had lost. However, I don't understand why Inge was announced in the third. Truby should have led off the third.

Michael Jordan writes (no, not that Michael Jordan):

I have to admit that I do not side with either the owners or the players in the current debates. Not because I see either as foes, but because I dont know enough about the situation to create any strong opinion (other than a strike would be worse than a nuisance). Besides, Im awfully young for that kind of presumption.

Recently, though, I have come to find myself falling more often on the side of the players (which, believe it or not, has little to do with the feirce reign of heir Selig). My reasoning is, basically, legal transgressions, and Steroid accusations asside, aren't the players the real asset? Aside from the fans and 5 dollar hotdogs, it's the players that make the game. ARod is being payed an outrageous amount, but would I feel like watching Bud Selig play shortstop for Milwaukee as Rodriguez does in Texas?

It seems to me that most people who are "outraged" by the players pay are mostly jealous. It seems like they want to whine like first graders, "it's not fair". Well, it's not fair that a lot of the richest people in the world get paid to delegate responsibilities, and at least the players have to do something relatively physical (although David Wells still pisses me off for some reason). I wonder how many antiplayer times claim to believe in free market economy.

Besides, if more team executives were smarter about running they're franchises, they wouldn't have to cough up that kind of money (cough, let Eruebial Durazo play, cough, don't pay for 800 year old Mark Grace). There is a lot more I could say, but it's late, and Im tired, and Im sure you don't have a lot of interest in the rantings of crazy college students on the email rampage.

Thanks
Michael C "Yes That's My Real Name" Jordan

I'm interested in rantings of anybody. I like this particular one. As I believe I've written here before, there are lots of ways to compete. The Twins and A's have shown how you can do it while keeping payrolls low. Now, neither of those teams are likely to establish dynasties, but you only have to be real good every few years to keep the fans interested. And if you draft the right kind of players (batters who get on base and pitchers who strike out a lot of batters), you'll probably never be really bad. So I'm really tired of the argument that "we can't compete without more money." Sure there should be more revenue sharing, because it's fair. But it shouldn't be punititive.

There's another point here that addresses the Yankees specifically. I think a lot of the jealousy comes from the Yankees success over the last few years. But I believe that it helps more than hurts MLB to have a strong franchise in at least one big market. The Yankees being good help generate revenue for all teams; national television contracts are worth more if the Yankees are good, because the Yankees bring in larger television audiences. Secondly, it's good because non-Yankee fans love it when the Yankees get beat. You would have thought the Red Sox won the WS last year given the celebrations that went on here at UMass. So constraining teams like the Yankees (or the Dodgers or the Red Sox or the Braves) may hurt in the long run.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall of the conference call today.

With his HR today, Sosa has tied McGwire for the most HR over a five season span. McGwire had 284 between 1995 and 1999. Sosa has that total since 1998, with a month and a half to go. Looks like he'll shatter that record.

Now that the Mets have lost 5 in a row and traded Estes, it looks like they've given up. Which of course means they'll go on a 10 game winning streak, get back in the wild card race, and have to trade for a starter at the waiver deadline. :-)

Jayson Stark characterizes yesterday's labor talks as more than a bump in the road.

But no matter how philosophical the owners' lead negotiator, Rob Manfred, tried to be afterward, this sure felt like more than a "bump in the road" on the way to peace, tranquility and a world without work stoppages. If this was a bump, Mount Kilimanjaro is just another mound of dirt.

The problem with this article is that it seems to be a lot of conjecture. He's reading things into the look on people's faces without getting a quote from any of them. Maybe he has some sources talking on background, but I don't see that indicated. In other words, this isn't a news story. It's Jayson doing drawing conclusions based on his experience.

ESPN's headlines on these negotiations have been much more negative than the articles themselves. It almost seems they want a strike, so they can write stories about the evil owners and players. Setting a strike date isn't a negative, and never has been a negative. If the owners are really serious about getting a deal, a strike date will force them to show that. This will be an interesting 24 hours.

I posted, but didn't know they weren't going through. My ISP is putting in new hardware. Posts should be fine from now on.

As much as I criticized the Royals for laziness on Tuesday, Sweeney was right on the ball last night. Pettitte was not paying attention to him on third (rightly so, I might add), and the big slugger took off for home and was successful. I love it when players size up a situation, notice they can exploit the unexpected, and execute. I remember a game in the late 80's when the Red Sox backup catcher was up in extra innings with two out and the bases loaded. The infield was back, and he dropped a bunt for a base hit that drove in the winning run. We need to see more exciting baseball like that.

Interesting story in the Tigers-Angels game last night. Detroit batted out of order, in fact, they skipped the #9 hitter in the second inning. Because of that, Higginson batted third instead of 4th and hit a HR. The Angels didn't say anything about it until the inning was over. Scioscia protested because the umpires told Pujols who should bat next when he discovered the problem.

The rules on batting out of order are very clear. I had to program this into STATS data collection system. You can read them on this page at MLB.com. Scroll down to rule 6.07. I think Scioscia's protest came from the following:

The umpire shall not direct the attention of any person to the presence in the batter's box of an improper batter. This rule is designed to require constant vigilance by the players and managers of both teams.

But that's not what the umpire did, I believe. I believe the umpire clarified the rule for Pujols. Maybe they shouldn't have done that, but it's probably okay. My guess is Scioscia knew right away that someone had batted out of order. At that point, he had the choice of pointing out the error, which would bring the #9 hitter to the plate, or igorning it unless the improper batter did something good. Scioscia opted for the latter, but it backfired. Lucky for him, the Angels came back and won the game.

Update: I read the article on this incorrectly. Go here for my correction.

Livan Hernandez just got the first triple of his career. That gives him more this season than Andruw Jones. :-)

I think this gets it right. :-)

I just saw Bernie Williams hit a ball over the head of Carlos Beltran of the Royals. What was interesting was Beltran's reaction to the ball. He started back slowly, then just gave up and played the carom. Ken Singleton doesn't think he could have caught it, but I thought if he had broken fast when the ball hit the bat and ran all out he might have made a fantastic play. Certainly, it seems worth a try.

The KC fans picked up on that, I think. They were booing. The Royals are a bad team. Nothing wrong with that, it happens. But if you're bad, you at least have to try hard, and the Royals in that inning didn't look like they trying.

Another positive story with a negative spin at the end, of course. The players made an offer, and the union countered. I take it that means that the union asked for something much less than 50%, or much higher than $98 million, and instead of the owners telling them to get lost, they made a counter offer. Which means the owners have probably come off their original proposal on the tax. This is big and positive, much more so than the story lets on. I'm starting to get optimistic that a deal will be worked out by the end of the week.

I wonder if there is any political pressure on both sides? Bush was an owner, and with Sept. 11 coming up, he (or his political advisers) won't want a lot of negatives things happening at that time. A baseball strike would be a huge negative. I haven't heard anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if some phone calls have been made to Fehr and Selig.

Once again, the news gets more encouraging. The players did not set a strike date today, but will talk again on Friday, at which time I think we'll either have an agreement or a strike date will be set.

It's clear that the players know setting a strike date will be perceived as a big negative, even though it's not. What they are basically doing, I believe, is making the setting of the strike date the deadline for negotiations. That could be dangerous, since management might not look upon it that way, but it's the right PR move to make. I hope this progress keeps up, and that the media stops spinning these talks so negatively.

Scott Rolen is finally having a big game for the Cardinals. He has a single, triple and HR now. They are in the sixth and winning, so we'll see if he gets a chance to hit for the cycle. John Mabry was the last Cardinal to hit for the cycle, on May 18, 1996. Ray Lankford was the last Cardinal to do it at home, on Sept. 15, 1991.

Jarrod Washburn is another pitcher whose great season is being overshadowed by Pedro Martinez. Pedro and Lowe at this time are so far ahead of everyone else, it's hard to see another getting the Cy Young award. But there is the possibility that the Red Sox fail to make the playoffs, while the Angels gain the division or the Wild Card. I personally think that winning the division shouldn't count, but the voters might give an edge to Washburn in that case. Maybe Washburn will match up against Pedro when the teams meet at Fenway in a couple of weeks.

Has McGriff helped Sosa? Crime Dog has had a pretty typical McGriff year; he's slugging .500, hitting for a decent average and getting on-base. Despite all this protection, Sosa's averages are down from last year. Sosa's having a great year, but last year Cubs fans talked a lot about how Sosa deserved the MVP because he didn't have a good team around him. Well, he has a really lousy team around him this year, but he has a great hitter behind him now. It just keeps making me think that the person behind you doesn't make all that much difference. It's much more important to have people on-base in front of you.

I'm not a big fan of the wild card. I understand that as you expand the league, you need to bring more teams into the playoffs to keep fans interested. But I have a hard time getting excited about 2nd rate teams competeing for the playoffs. I really liked it better when two great teams would face off in a division, winner take all. Now if the Yankees and Red Sox are great, or the Dodgers and Giants are great, or the Cubs and Cardinals are great, they both simply make the playoffs. We're never going to have 1978 or 1993 again. I wish there was a way to go to eight divisions, so you have to win a division to make the playoffs. Then, you can still have the tragedy of a great team losing.

If last night were any indication, the playoffs this year should be pretty exciting. Oakland, Minnesota, Atlanta and Arizona all beat playoff hopefuls in 1-run games. Bonds hit #600. And the Expos are now 4-0 vs. the Brewers this year, with a 1.71 ERA against them. Too bad Bud's crew can't beat a team that's going to disappear. :-)

Just looking at the starting lineup for the Padres. The starting CF and catcher both have lower BA's than the pitcher (Tomko).

And the CF is leading off.

Harbor Yard in Bridgeport is a nice ballpark. Hasn't quite revitalized downtown Bridgeport yet, but it's nice to see the city doing something right for a change.

The game was okay. These teams have a lot of cast offs; players who made it to the high minors, but never advanced beyond that. They are not talented, but they played hard. The Metro-North and Amtrak trains rolled by beyond the outfield wall, and the Port Jefferson Ferry sailed in and out of the harbor. The weather was perfect. If you are in the area, I'd recommed a visit to the park. (They also play major league lacrosse there.)

Defensive Efficiency is my favorite team defensive stat. The Yankees have been getting progressively worse as the year has gone on:

Month       DER

April      .726

May        .710

June       .669

July       .647

Aug.       .698

There was an article recently in the NY Times touting Jeter for the Gold Glove. Rob Neyer does a good job of debunking this column, but I think the above numbers help. If Jeter is getting better, and the shortstop contributes a lot to defense, why are the Yankees getting worse.

Over the last couple of years, there have been times where I thought the Yankees were very lackluster on defense; times they looked asleep, or just weren't concentrating. An example of this was Rivera complaining that Brosius didn't make a double play in the 9th inning of game 7 on the 2nd bunt of the inning. Jeter's defense may not be very good, but the rest of the team isn't stellar, either. Luckily, they make up for it with pitchers who strikeout batters and the best offense in baseball. If one of those should falter (as Mussina's K's have done this year), the defense could cost them.

I'm off to see the Bridgeport Bluefish game. They are an independent minor league team. I hope to write about the experience tomorrow.

Kerry Wood just put on a clinic on how to pitch to Bonds. Throw some heat, then break a curve ball over the outside corner to strike him out.

Tony Womack just broke up Maddux's no-hitter with a bunt single to lead off the fourth. Do you think Brenly will chew Womack out and complain to the press about it?

I have Atlanta-Arizona on the TV with the sound turned down, and the Cubs-Giants on the internet broadcast. Maddux has a no-hitter, and Bonds is going for 600. Could be a repeat of Henderson setting the steal record and Ryan throwing a no-hitter. I hope ESPN has the split screen ready if Maddux is going for the last out while Bonds is up. :-)

On 7/20, the Red Sox had a 1 1/2 game lead on the Angels and the A's for the wild card. With the loss to the A's tonight, they are now in third place in the wild card race. Last year they fell from a much higher perch, but they were racked by injuries. This year they don't have an excuse. They are 8-10 from 7/20 on, and have given up 9 or more runs 6 times. They are 2-5 vs. NY, Anaheim and Oakland in that stretch.

This AP story on ESPN.com continues the good news in the labor negotiations. The players have put forth a proposal for drug testing. Owners will counter, but Rob Manfred thought the proposal was "significant."

Progress continues to be made, however slowly. But that's okay. The sides are drawing closer. And the more things they settle, the harder it will be to walk away from a deal when there is one thing (like the luxury tax) left on the table. I get more hopeful everyday.

Just ran wins shares. Tejada is now 2nd in the AL, trailing only A-Rod 23.0 to 26.6. Garciaparra is at 19.1 and Jeter at 18.6. However, I wonder how many people would guess that Vizquel is ahead of both Jeter and Garciaparra, at 19.9! So the Jeter detractors have something to hang their hats on, although I would point out that Jeter is better than any shortstop in the NL.

Neil Hayes on MSNBC thinks Bonds' durability will be his greatest leagacy. I don't know, I think Aaron's durability was as good as Bonds, and we remember Aaron for the great all-around player he was. I think Bonds' ability to get on base, hit with power, speed and defense are all more important than his durability. The durability doesn't make him great, it just let's him set records. He was a great player and sure Hall of Famer before any of us thought he had a real shot at the HR record.

What's really interesting in that article are the sidebars MSNBC inserted showing Babe Ruth with 715 HR. It's there twice; once in the poll, and once in a graphic on "Next Milestones." I'm going to write them and tell them, but that's something that's hard to get wrong.

I'm trying to decide if we are making a big enough deal about Bonds' 600th HR, or not a big enough deal. For example, I don't remember a big media push when Mays or Aaron hit number 600, but there was a big media push when Aaron broke the ML record. In that B.E. time (Before ESPN), NBC cut into every AB until Aaron hit the record breaker. I'm sure ESPN will do that tonight for Bonds.

However, why should they be cutting in? Why not bring the game to the whole country? They have Atlanta-Arizona scheduled as the national game. While that game involves two better teams, it's not all that meaningful in terms of the pennant races, since both have large division leads. The Giants are in a much tighter race for the wild card. And I, for one, would like to see the game unfold, rather than just cut in whenever Bonds comes to bat. I think in this situation, ESPN should ask SF and Chicago to waive their local rights, and bring that game to the whole country.

This is the third time in my lifetime that someone has hit 600 HR. Let's make a big deal about it. Let's see the greatest player of his generation, possibly ever, do it. And let's see all the drama and excitement that goes with it, not just 4 or 5 AB.

I'm watching Mussina get hit hard again. Ibanez just got his 4th hit off Mike, 3 singles and a triple. When Ibanez got his 4th hit, Jim Kaat commented that Mussina threw a good pitch, but Ibanez looked like he knew what was coming. Kaat didn't follow up on that, but I wonder if Mussina is tipping his pitches? His walk total is very low. Has anyone noticed Mussina doing anything that would tip off batters?

News on the labor front continues to be encouraging. I particularly like this bit of lawyer speak:

Owners want to increase the percentage of shared locally generated revenue from 20 to 50 percent. The sides differ on both dollars and structure.

"We have gone days where we have not moved in the wrong direction in this topic. I really do believe this topic is resolvable," Manfred said, adding that there was plenty of "middle ground."

This is great. Instead of saying, "There have been days where we moved in the wrong direction on this topic," he puts a positive spin on it by framing it in the negative. If the owners really wanted an impasse, I don't think you'd be hearing the above from their lawyers.

Aaron's Baseball Blog does a good job of bashing Bud over his remarks about the Twins still being a candidate for contraction. I saw that yesterday and started laughing. But I couldn't bring myself to write another entry about how Bud has:

1. No credibility.


2. No clue.

But that's the nice thing about the blogsphere, there's always someone to pick up the slack.

Lots of blog entries about Prior going 135 pitches. Al's Ramblings has a take, as does baseballjunkie.net. Mangers should really know better by now. Looking at his game log, Prior didn't even have an extra-day of rest. He threw that many after throwing 115 pitches in his previous start, and had 4 days of rest.

Update: Blue Jays Baseballalso has comments on Prior.

Only Baseball Matters has a number of good takes on JT Snow's offense. There do seem to be a lot of poor hitting first basemen around the game the last couple of years.

Starting Tuesday night in Phoenix, the Braves meet the Diamondbacks in what could be a preview of the NLCS. Since the all-star break, the DBacks have won 18 (18-7), the Braves 17 (17-6), the most wins in the NL over that time.

The Braves pitching is probably the best it's been since they've started their winning run in 1991. Coming into today, they had a .85 lead in ERA (2.90 to the Giants 3.75). That would be the largest major league lead in the modern era (1901-on).

The Braves starters are once again leading the majors in ERA. This would be the 11th consecutive year that they've done that. I could check this back to 1980, and obviously no one is close. As in 1993, they are leading the majors in both starters and relief ERA. Again, since 1980, they are the only team to do that, in 1993. In the past, the bullpen has been considered a weak point, but with Smoltz anchoring the bullpen, they've been very tough. Smoltz is ahead of Thigpen in terms of saves and save percentage at the same point in the season.

Offensively, the Braves are middle of the pack (8th in runs/game). This is actually impressive, since Chipper is having a bit of an off year with his power (although I'd take his season anytime). But when you are great at one thing (pitching in this case), being mediocre at the other is good enough to win. Too often in the last few years the Braves offense was bad, and that cost them in the playoffs.

The Diamondbacks have the best offense in the league (1st in runs/game). Well, overall they do. They are 4th in runs/game on the road, so I'm not sure they are really the best, but they are very good. (Braves lead in ERA both at home and on the road). So it's a nice matchup; good hitting vs. good pitching. Looks like the Braves have an advantage in the head-to-head in this series; Schilling goes against Millwood on Tuesday, but Maddux vs. Helling on Wednesday and Glavine vs. Anderson on Thursday. Not too many teams have started lefties against the Braves. Last I looked, the Braves had only seen 16 left-handed starters this year, the lowest in the majors. Should be an exciting series. October in August.

Dan Lewis points out that Alfonso Soriano may have a chance at the doubles record. I think it's a little early to be making this call, but it's something we can watch.

Perez lined out, so 6 K in a row for Johnson.

People new to baseball don't distinguish a hit ball from a base hit. So they think a no-hitter is one in which no batter puts the bat on the ball. Johnson still has his no-hitter, but someone has indeed hit the ball. :-)

Duckworth also struck out the first six batters today, but the 7th got a hit. Big Unit just got the first hit of the day in his game.

Johnson has now struck out the first six batters. If you'd like to see consecutive strikeout records, you can find them here. Interestingly, Tom Seaver also holds the consecutive K record, when he K'd 10 in a row on 4/22/1970. Maybe Johnson will pass two Seaver records today!

Do you think Randy Johnson wants to pass Tom Seaver in Shea Stadium today? So far, he's K'd the first 5 batters. He needs 14 to pass Seaver today for 5th on the all-time strikeout list.

With his 30th HR yesterday, Bonds has 11 straight seasons of 30 HR. Only Jimmy Foxx had more consecutive seasons, with 12. Gehrig, Mathews and Schmidt each had 9 straight seasons. The most Ruth had was 8, and the most Aaron had was 7.

Yankees at Angels, tied 5-5 in the top of the 12th. Bases loaded, 2 out. Soriano hits a slow roller to 2nd, Kennedy scoops to Spiezio, but Soriano beats it out. Spiezio can't believe it, and is lying on the ground arguing with the ump while Posada comes around from 2nd with a 2nd run on the play. The replay shows Soriano was safe. Big mistake by Spiezio.

Ray Anselmo has done the Favorite Toy doubles research:

I've been reading with interest the current discussion regarding doubles, and you mentioned that "when I get a chance, I'll have to use the Favorite Toy to see who has a shot at the record." Well, maybe I can save you some time - a few weeks ago, I worked up Favorite Toy percentages for several categories, including doubles. Here's what I came up with - the percentage chances are as of the beginning of the 2002 season ...

Chances at 500 doubles:

Roberto Alomar - 97.0% (highest possible % in the FT system)

Barry Bonds - 97.0%

Rafael Palmeiro - 97.0%

Jeff Bagwell - 84.7%

Todd Helton - 73.9%

Craig Biggio - 68.7%

Frank Thomas - 55.4%

Alex Rodriguez - 50.4%

Carlos Delgado - 46.5%

Shawn Green - 45.2%

Chipper Jones - 32.1%

Derek Jeter - 28.5%

Jason Giambi - 27.8%

Ken Griffey Jr. - 25.4%

Larry Walker - 16.5%

Sammy Sosa - 13.7%

Jim Thome - 9.2%


Chances at 600 doubles:

Todd Helton - 43.5%

Roberto Alomar - 36.5%

Alex Rodriguez - 23.2%

Jeff Bagwell - 19.3%

Carlos Delgado - 19.3%

Shawn Green - 18.9%

Frank Thomas - 10.8%

Chipper Jones - 9.5%

Derek Jeter - 9.4%

Jason Giambi - 6.9%

Rafael Palmeiro - 0.1%

Chances at 700 doubles:

Todd Helton - 25.2%

Alex Rodriguez - 7.8%

Carlos Delgado - 4.1%

Shawn Green - 3.9%

Roberto Alomar - 2.4%

Chances at 793 doubles:

Todd Helton - 13.6%

I will admit, I didn't include Nomar Garciaparra's numbers, as I figured his 2001 season (or lack thereof) would skew the numbers too drastically downward. If you rate him on his 1998-2000 totals instead of 1999-2001, he has a 3.5% shot at 793, 13.1% at 700, 28.1% at 600 and 52.4% at 500. But other than Nomah, Helton is the only one with a real chance at Speaker's record. It makes sense, since with the possible exception of Fenway, no other park today is so built for doubles hitting as the spacious (and elevated) confines of Coors Field.

Thanks very much, Ray. Todd Helton makes a lot of sense.

Digressions on Baseball by Misha Berkowitz is another blog on baseball. I just think this is so great that so many fans are writing down their thoughts on the game. Keep the blogs coming!

Two readers wrote about my post on doubles yesterday. Mike Hansen writes:

One of the larger reasons for the increase in home runs and the decrease in doubles is the change in the design of current ballparks. Most newer parks are smaller, leading to more homeruns. The corollary to that is that there's less space in the outfield, allowing each outfielder to cover more territory and get to ball in the gaps relatively quicker. The other change is the movement away from Astroturf fields, which gives the ball some more speed as it comes off the field and increases the chance that the ball will get by the outfield. Those are the two more reasons that doubles are down and homeruns are up by current ballplayers.

And Dave Wareham concurs:

I think the main reason why there aren't that many doubles is that modern stadia are for the most part smaller than the ones they've replaced. Other possible factors that spring to mind are the come back that natural grass has made in the last few years (less hard grounders shooting though on astro turf) and the fact that modern fielders are stronger and faster than fielders used to be and so they get the ball back into the infield faster than fielders used to do.

Good points. It should be noted, however, that all-times doubles record should be considered soft. As Bill James points out in his 1983 Abstract, in an essay entitled, "Records In Progress," you can tell if a record is soft by looking at current outstanding performace, and asking how many seasons that would take to break the record. If it's less than 18, it's soft. If it's less than 15, it's very soft. ML leaders in doubles have averaged 54 doubles the last 8 full seasons (I throw out 1994 here, but the ML leader had 45 at the strike, so 54 is a reasonable number for the leader that year as well). Fifty-four doubles would break the record in 14.7 seasons. So the record is on the verge of being very soft. I expect players to start moving up the all-time doubles list quickly in the next few years. When I get a chance, I'll have to use the favorite toy to see who has a shot at the record.

Mike Hansen has also started a blog, Blue Jays Baseball. Enjoy.

I was just looking at the top 100 lists for home runs and doubles. There are currently 21 active players in the top 100 all-time, 3 in the top 20, with Barry Bonds heading the list 4th overall. There are only 10 active players in the top 100 in doubles, however. None are in the top 20 (Palmeiro ranks 32nd, the leader among active players). This strikes me as a bit odd, although it probably shouldn't. I would think that with the increase in HR power would come a proportional increase in doubles power. Hitting the ball hard a long way would lead to more long hits in general, in my opinion. I guess the HR hitters tend to hit fly balls instead of line drives, and they are probably a bit slower. I guess Tris Speaker's career record of 792 doubles will be safe for a while.

Despite the negative spin I've seen in a lot of stories about the labor negotiations, each piece I read tends to reinforce my belief that there will not be a strike. This article is especially bright, although I tend not to trust unnamed sources. Remember, however, that setting a strike date is not always a negative thing. Deadlines often force both sides to get things done.

We have another entry to the baseball blogsphere. Aaron Gleeman is writing Aaron's Baseball Blog. Check it out.

Reader Erik Siegrist takes me to task for not taking another reader to task:

I'm surprised you didn't take that Steve Salhany letter apart; the Yankees gave up some significant players in the Weaver deal (arguably their two best prospects in Griffin and Arnold, plus a talented young lefty starter), and neither Mondesi nor Weaver is a big upgrade, or in Mondy's case any upgrade, statistically over the players they replace (the Vander Wal/Spenser platoon, or Lilly/El Duque). And wasn't some guy named Bonds a free agent last year too?

If someone wants to hate the Yankees, more power to them, but there's plenty to dislike about them without plucking made-up facts out of thin air. Sigh- 'objectivity and reasonable thought' are so hard to find these days.

Erik Siegrist
Rotowire.com Beat Writer

Erik points out in a subsequent letter that he should not have used the word statistically, since he didn't actually do statistical research. That's okay, we get the point.

I feel I had made my points on this subject clear before, so I really didn't feel like I had to take the letter apart, it was a legitimate rant. And the nice thing about a blog like this where I get so many reposnses, is that someone else (like Erik here) will keep the discussion going.

Erik also points to this column by Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus, that come to the same conclusion that Rob Neyer, Michael Kay and myself came to; something is fishy here. I especially like Joe's look at attendance:

It's as if Selig didn't realize what might happen if he allowed Minaya to make the deals. Since the acquisitions of Floyd and Colon, the Expos had broken 10,000 in attendance in 11 of 13 home games, something they'd done just eight times all season before the trades. Oh, hell, let's run a chart:

                     Average Att.      Median Att.

Expos, Not Trying        8,429            6,091

Expos, Trying           14,064           13,402

The trades seemed to prove what we've been saying all along, that fans will come see a team--in any market, in any stadium--that has success, and more importantly, that shows a commitment to winning. On a typical July night, twice as many people came to see the Expos as did before the team made a significant move that signaled that the team was trying to win.

It's like Selig said, "OK, you can do this so I can say that Montreal is a dead issue," and when it wasn't a dead issue, made sure that he stopped the momentum.

Please read Look for the Union Label by Dan Lewis on National Review Online. I agree with every iota of this article. Here are the first two paragraphs:

The Major League Baseball players union began in 1966 when their first executive director, Marvin Miller, was recruited by pitcher (and now Hall of Famer) Robin Roberts. In his book, A Whole Different Ball Game, Miller recounts an early admission by Roberts: the idea of a union wasn't a very popular one, even among the players, for political reasons. Writes Miller, quoting Roberts, "Most players are conservative. They don't know anything about unions. In fact, to many, especially guys from small towns down south, 'union' is a dirty word."

And yes, baseball's union battles look like many others: the big, fat-cat bosses versus the union on which their trade relies. In just about any other case, you'd be able to side "living wage" activists and liberals with the union, and conservatives and free marketeers with the owners in their fight against overpaying for labor. But baseball's union isn't like most others. Regardless of reflexive ideological corners, in baseball, the players — and the union — are the allies of capitalism.

I think all labor unions should be like the MLBPA. Negotiate benefits, set general salary rules, but otherwise let workers salary and tenure be determined by their productivity, rather than salary rules that reward longevity and maintaining the status quo. Be free market.

Texas has scored 18 runs in 5 innings against the Red Sox tonight, after their 17 run outburst vs. the Yankees last night. Carl Everett has 2 HR and 7 RBI tonight. I don't suppose he's gloating. :-)

Schilling lost to the Expos 2-1 tonight. He gave up the winning run with 1 out in the 9th. That pretty much finishes his chances of winning 30.

Zachary D Manprin has started a blog blog on the Oakland Athletics. This is the fourth or fifth blog that a reader has started. It's lots of fun, a great way to vent your feeling about baseball, or any subject of interest. Give it a try.

A reader points out the problem with the Michael Kay column I cited last night:

I would imagine that you would know that columns by people that write for the YES network, like Michael Kay, are not to be trusted when looking for objectivity and reasonable thought. The Yankees are pissed that the Expos traded Floyd to the Sox? Good. The Yankees have already made out like bandits in their acquisitions of Jeff Weaver and Mondesi, giving up pretty much nothing in return (OK, Ted Lilly, but the upgrade the Yankees got is significant). The Yankees also signed THE premier available free agent last winter. How much is enough for these people?

The arrogance of the Yankees and their owner/narcissist and his sycophantic lackies in the media knows no bounds.

Steve Salhany

Steve, the fact that they are never satisfied is why they win all the time. If more owners were like that, baseball would be a lot more competitive. You have a good point about the Yankees complaining about this deal, but it's still fishy.

Frank Mannino sent me this e-mail today:

I was recently thinking that people are often criticizing teams like the Yankees for their outreagous payrolls, however, I have never heard (and this doesn't mean its never been said before) that New York has a much higher cost of living than the rest of the country. A team like Texas or Atlanta doesn't seem to have that high of a payroll, but a million dollars there is worth more than in New York or Boston. I found the team salaries from ESPN's website and a cost of living calculator from :
http://www.datamasters.com/

I then did some quick calculations and re-ranked the salaries (rounded to the nearest million)
Texas - 144
Arizona - 134
Atlanta - 119
Yankees - 109
Boston - 108
St Louis - 99
Seatlle - 95
Cleveland - 95
Cubs - 90
Houston - 86
Mets - 82
Baltimore - 81
Los Angelos - 78
Colorado - 71
White Sox - 68
Detroit - 65
Philadelphia - 64
Kansas City - 62
Milwaukee - 60
Cincinnati - 60
San Francisco - 59
Florida - 53
Anaheim - 51
Pittsburgh - 50
Minnesota - 49
Tampa Bay - 45
San Diego - 35
Oakland - 30

I know these numbers aren't going to be exact, but why isn't this done more often?
By the way, the website had no data on toronto or montreal. And I averaged New York's value between Westchester, Manhattan and Long Island, since the value for just Manhattan is so extreme.
What do you think?

Thanks, Frank that's an interesting analysis. Sometimes you hear about a player being bid on by two teams, and he goes for the lower figure, because due to taxes and other costs, he actually makes more money. One problem with this analysis is that ballplayers don't always live where they play, and when they are on the road, they are taken care of pretty well. But it's true in general that the same job in NY pays more money than other places, because it does cost a lot more to live there.

The other interesting thing is that it sort of blows away the idea that the low payroll teams can't compete. There are three teams in the bottom six on this list that are in contention for the playoffs.

I've had a couple of people point out to me that Pedro Martinez should be pitcher of the month.

                ERA  W  L Sv SvOp  G GS CG    IP   H   R  ER HR TBB IBB SO

April          3.38  3  0  0    0  5  5  0  29.1  17  14  11  0   7  0  32

May            2.58  4  0  0    0  6  6  0  38.1  34  15  11  3  10  0  48

June           3.34  2  2  0    0  5  5  1  35.0  29  13  13  6   4  1  39

July           0.64  5  0  0    0  6  6  0  42.1  22   5   3  0   9  0  59

I didn't look at anyone else last night, sorry. Makes you feel bad for Rodrigo Lopez, however. He puts up a great month, but Pedro's out there looking ten times better.

Rob Neyer points out this column by Michael Kay on why he thinks this deal might raise some eyebrows.

With 15 K tonight, Randy Johnson is only 13 behind Seaver for 15th on the all-time K list. He's also now within 1900 of Ryan. He'll be 40 in September, but his K per 9 remains very high at 11.2. Given he keeps this up for the rest of the year. He'll be within 1700 of Ryan at the end of the season. So he'll need to average a little less than 300 K a year for 6 years to pass Ryan. Here's Ryan from the age of 40 on (seasonal age):

Age   K           K/9

---  ----         ---

 40   270        11.48

 41   228         9.33

 42   301        11.32

 43   232        10.24

 44   203        10.56

 45   157         8.98

 46    46         6.24

That's a total of 1437 K. So even if Johnson matches the greatest pitching performance by anyone over 40, he'll still fall short. But let's say Johnson has two more 350 K seasons left in him. That would leave him about 1000 short of Ryan, and from age 42 on, Ryan had 939 K's.

Ryan's record looked insurmountable when it was set. It still may be, but until Johnson actually slows down, I wouldn't bet against him reaching that mark.

With his win today, Rodrigo Lopez probably should be pitcher of the month. He went 6-0 in July with a 2.57 ERA. All that despite allowing 7 HR, accounting for 9 of his 13 runs allowed (12 earned). With low strikeouts and a good number of HR allowed, I don't know if he's going to go far, but he's a bright spot in a season that turning out to be better than I would have expected.

Mussina had another bad outing tonight. He's not allowing that many men on base, but when batters do get on, he gets hit hard (entering tonight):

               Avg   G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS TBB HBP SO  OBP  SLG

None on       .222 --- 333 ---  74 11  1 10  10  0  0  17  1  77 .262 .351

Runners on    .290 --- 186 ---  54 11  3  9  53  5  3  12  2  30 .333 .527

Mussina's ERA is now 4.83. That's more than 1.30 higher than his career average. Is he hurt? Or at age 33, has he lost something off his fastball, and hasn't made the adjustment?

Rob Neyer also senses something fishy in the Expos-Red Sox deal:

In case you didn't follow the story last winter, it's commonly believed that Commissioner Bud fixed the sale of the Red Sox, approving the purchase by a group that promised to support Selig's plans for revenue sharing and a luxury tax.

And of course, Selig is the de facto owner of the Montreal franchise. So when the Expos deal with the Red Sox, it's not unreasonable to assume the doings are shady in some sense.

And they probably are. However, if Selig fixed the sale of the Red Sox, wouldn't it be the Sox who owe Selig a favor, rather than the other way around?

Sure the Red Sox owe Selig a favor, and now they owe him two. Bud needs big market teams like the Yankees and Red Sox to support his revenue sharing and salary tax schemes. The Sox owners are now doubly indebted to him. He has the Yankees, since as commissioner, he allowed George Steinbrenner back into the game. Believe me, Bud will call in his favors.

Jordan Ellel writes:

In addition, I saw a piece briefly mentioned on the Sports Reporters about how Joe Torre spoke to Mondesi after he hit a home run against the D-Rays and took a little too long watching it (not to mention running with his bat still - reminds me of George Carlin's complaint about how unfair baseball is...you get this great weapon, and the first thing they make you do is throw it away). It just re-emphasizes something that has been apparent to most of the world for a long time - love the Yanks, or hate them - how great a manager is Joe Torre? I remember an article on Page 2 at the beginning of last season (or maybe this year) about how significant the little things Torre does that other managers don't make such a huge difference (not criticizing players in the media, being upfront with players about their roles, etc.) He's been perhaps the largest factor in the Yankees streak the past 6 years, and while he certainly gets credit, he doesn't get nearly enough talk for Manager of the Year and such. I know there is money and the Yanks are supposed to win, but he does so much to bring that team together and makes many ingenious moves that may be luck, but there are too many of them. Not to mention the fact that he's not only survived 6 years with Herr Steinbrenner as owner, but thrived is a testament unto itself.

I agree that Grady Little has done a tremendous job with Boston this year (although the changes up top helped too), but with Boston falling back in the standings, and the Yanks moving to the top, I hope Torre doesn't get overlooked again just because of the money. Sure the Yanks are supposed to win, but the money was there in the 80's and early 90's and plenty of managers couldn't win with it. Torre deserves to at least be talked about in those discussions and should be a shoo-in for the HoF when he hangs up his managerial spikes.

When Torre was still managing the Cardinals, Bill James wrote a piece on managers, in which he basically said that Torre was a good manager of people, but wasn't good at strategy. I still think that's true.

Two or three years ago I asked someone I met who seemed to like baseball who the best manager was. His answer was Joe Torre. I asked him if he thought that before Torre took over the Yankees. The reply was no. Did anyone think Torre was a great manager when he was with the Mets, Braves or Cardinals? Probably not, because he didn't win. Does Torre manage differently now? I don't think so. I think the difference comes from having a great team, and having bench coaches who are better at strategy than he is.

Torre is the exact opposite of Buck Showalter. Buck can position outfielders perfectly, construct a logical lineup, move people in and out of the game at just the right time, but he can't manage people. With the Yankees, Torre has had intelligent players with a lot of talent. He's very good at keeping them happy; he's very good at keeping Steinbrenner at a distance; he's great with the media. He's just what the Yankees need. But he needs Zimmer sitting there on the bench, or someone like that, making sure his game strategy doesn't get out of line. (I think that would be the perfect job for Buck Showalter, being the bench coach for a great people manager.)

So yes, every year for the last 7 Torre has deserved consideration for manager of the year. Hall of Fame? If he can stay with the Yankees for five more years, he'll be every bit as good as Casey or McCarthy and he'll go in easily. But it's important to realize what makes Torre a good manager, and what his weaknesses are.

Here's the story.

I don't get it. Montreal was 6 games out of the wild card when they got Floyd. They are 6 out now. And Floyd's been in a slump, so they haven't had a chance to feel an effect from his hitting. Yes, it's harder to make up 6 games now than it was 3 weeks ago, but much bigger leads have been overcome this late. And the Expos traded for prospects! Does this mean they expect to be around next year? Or do they have another deal in the works? And for you conspiracy theory mavens out there, the whole Boston-Montreal-Flordia axis is a little fishy. Was this the intention all along, to get Floyd to the Red Sox, and appease critics by making it look like the Expos were trying to win? Maybe we need an expose on the whole matter. :-)

Alex Rodriguez hit his 35th HR of the season tonight off David Wells. If he ends up with 50 for the season, he'll tie Jimmy Wynn for 100th on the all-time list with 291.

Kim K's Wilkerson. Going to the tenth in Montreal.

Tie game, the Expos have the bases loaded with two out in the bottom of the ninth. Wilkerson is up, and Brenly just went to the pen to bring in Kim to replace Fetters. Can't wait to see if we get the 8th walk-off slam of the season.

Bret Boone is still batting in the third slot, despite more than half a season of mediocrity. Last year, Boone went into the third slot when Martinez was hurt, and I said on BBTN Online at the time that I hoped Piniella didn't fall in love with this move; that half a good season didn't make Boone a #3 hitter. I caught a lot of flak from Mariners fans over this, and Boone proved me wrong over the course of the 2001 season. But how long is Lou going to stick with him now? He's returned to his low BA, low OBA days. Olerud and Martinez are much better choices. Come on, Lou, get your act together!

Kenny Lofton got off to a good start with SF, hitting a double, triple and drawing a walk and scoring two runs as the Giants win 10-3.

Rolen went 2 for 4 with a triple, an rbi and a run scored in the Cardinals 5-0 victory.

Correction: That should have been a home run, not a double for Lofton. I must have misread the boxscore.

I saw on Instapundit that MLB is trying to close down Mets Online. They have issued a Cease and Desist Order, and the web site is supposed to come down by five PM today.

The Mets have nothing to do with this. According to Mets Online, the Mets like their fan sites"

"We really appreciate our fan sites, because they promote the game and our product. We hope you'll be able to keep on doing what you've been doing, and that's creating a great resource for Mets fans."

This is baseball trying to control intellectual property rights. Baseball resisted radio, even though radio ended up making the game more popular. Baseball resisted television, even though TV made the game more popular. Fans sites will do nothing but make the game more popular. Someone should teach the hammer-heads at MLB some history. I hope Bryan Hoch fights them on this and wins.

Actually, I think MLB has been Ruthless since the middle of the 1935 season. :-)

Todd's Place has this thoughts on how a baseball strike might affect the mid-term elections.

I have to disagree with Todd here. I once asked Bill James why, during the 60's, especially the late 60's, no black baseball players converted to Islam. You certainly had basketball, boxing and football athletes do that. Even in the summer of 1968, I never remember stories of black ballplayers protesting. Bill told me that baseball is a conservative sport (I believe he used the word Republican). So I don't think a strike is going to drive basebal fans to the Democrats. However, I do see this as a reason for Bud Selig's unpopularity. Bud acts like a socialist. He wants revenue sharing and taxation of the rich. Those things go against the grain of conservatives in general, and most Republicans.

However, if you believe the strike would hurt Republicans, then the House should move immediately at the start of a strike to strip baseball of it's remaining anti-trust exemption. That should exempt Republicans from the political fallout.

The stand look mostly empty tonight, but at least the fans are cheering for the Devil Rays! :-) (See yesterday's story)

Al Bethke makes a good point about Trammell vs. Ozzie Smith in this post. In the 80's, Bill James wrote that the greatest shortstop since Honus Wagner was playing, and he didn't know who he was. Trammell was very good; unlike Ozzie and Cal and Robin, however, he played in a park that helped his offense. Plus, he never won an MVP like his AL counterparts. However, I still tend to agree with AL, and Trammell probably should be in there with the other three (this assumes, of course, that Cal is going in).

Jayson Stark writes a good column on the fans booing Bud Selig at the Hall of Fame ceremony. Can anyone remember the last time Bud showed up for something where he wasn't booed? At least some people in baseball still have some class:

Even George Grande -- normally the perfect, smiling, apolitical master of ceremonies on these normally joyous occasions -- seemed to sense the message these lovers of the game were sending.

So, during a brief intermission that preceded the induction of Ozzie Smith, Grande looked over his shoulder at Selig, then glanced out into the crowd at union chief Donald Fehr.

"They both care about this game," Grande said. "They both love this game. . . . So remember what Ted Williams told us long ago -- that this game is bigger than any one of us.

"Through compromise," Grande concluded, "Bud and Don -- with your love for this game -- let's get a settlement and let's keep baseball playing."

And with that, 19,000 people clapped as loudly as they clapped all day. Selig and Fehr were among them. Out there on the hillside, fans chanted: "No strike, no strike."

The trades are coming fast and furious, and the NL West seems to be the buyers. The White Sox seem to be Indian givers, dropping the two Indians they've picked up over the last couple of seasons, Alomar and Lofton. Lofton should be a big help to the Giants; their lead off men have a .314 OBA. And while Kenny is not what he once was at the plate, he's still a lot better than that. And the more men you put on in front of Bonds, the harder it becomes to pitch around him. Not sure why the Rockies wanted Alomar; granted, their catchers are hitting miserably, especially for Coors field, but I don't think Alomar is a long term solution with his history of injuries, and I don't think the Rockies will make a comeback this season. They are 11 games out of the wild card at this point, with 8 teams ahead of them.

Of course, the big trade is the much anticipated move of Rolen to St. Louis. Huge trade for the Cardinals, and as my good friend Jim "3rd Ball" Storer (it's a pinball reference, for all of you with dirty minds) said, "The Cardinals didn't have to give up a major league player." :-) Actually, I'm sure the Phillies like Bud Smith a lot. He's had an excellent minor league career, but trouble in the bigs this season, and has been on the DL with shoulder trouble. Still Rolen is the kind of player you should want on your team, and the failure of the Phillies to keep him has to be laid at the feet of Larry Bowa and Dallas Green. I think Bowa should be very worried about his job. He strikes me as a Billy Martin type. He can fire up a team at first, but then he wears on you quickly.

Update: Mike's Baseball Rant agrees with me about Alomar.

Johan Santana turned it around after his poor outing against the White Sox on July 23rd (3.2 IP, 8 ER). He pitched 8 shutout innings today against the Blue Jays, striking out 13. He's only had a couple of bad outings, otherwise he'd have an even more impressive ERA. His K per 9 is nonetheless quite good, having struck out 76 men in 59 2/3 innings (11.5 per 9). As a point of reference, Schilling is leading the majors with 11.25 K per 9. Keep your eye on this youngster.

I often wonder, with the very good farm system the Twins have, if contracting them wasn't more about raiding their system? If the players had to be drafted, the Brewers would have gotten low picks, after all.

Did you see the White Sox lineup today? They only had 2 players hitting over .260. Frank Thomas is now at .244. This team should have been competeing.

Jim Thome hit his 2nd walk off grand slam of the season today. That make 7 in the majors this year, which looks like a record. Dave Vincent of SABR can't find any more than 6 in a season, although he admits that the farther you go back in time, the less information they have on walk off HR. I talked about this earlier this morning.

I'm watching the Yankees at Tampa Bay. Jeter gets a single, Nick Johnson hustles to third, and the crowd goes wild! The Devil Rays are averaging about 20,700 before today with the Yankees, 12,800 otherwise. I guess all of Steinbrenners old friends are there.

And Robin Ventura hits a grand-slam, and the crowd is giving him a standing ovation!

This actually brings up something I've been thinking about for revenue sharing. One reason some teams don't like an unbalanced schedule is that they don't get to bring in the big draws as often. In my mind, the reason to share revenue is to pay your opponents for playing you, since without an opponent, you don't have a game. So why not bid to bring opponents into your ball park?

You could set up some rules, so each team would have to play a minimum number of opponents, and would be limited in the number of times a team could visit their stadium in a season. Teams like the Royals and DRays could bid to bring in draws like the Yankees 8 times a year. But teams like the Devil Rays and Royals would also try to develop players that would draw crowds, so other teams would bid for them.

As an example, the Royals with a Bo Jackson. Bo wasn't a great player, but he was an exciting player. I remember saying (before his injury), that he's one player I'd go out of my way to see play, because you never know what amazing thing he's going to do.

It's just a thought. It's a free market solution that just doesn't blindly transfer money from rich teams to poor teams, and encourages all teams to develop a product people want to see. I know it would never be implemented, but I can dream. :-)

Looks like George's foot is inserted tightly in his mouth. In an otherwise encouraging story about Clemen's rehab, Steinbrenner finds a way to criticize female umpires:

Steinbrenner also thought Clemens had a few things going against him, including female plate umpire Ria Cortesia.

''It was tough, you had a second-string catcher, which was a mistake, a kid that didn't belong catching him. Our regular catcher is hurt,'' Steinbrenner said. ''And you've got a female umpire, that's a tough thing to cover. Nothing against females, but I mean for Roger, I think she was probably as excited as anybody in the stands.''

Cortesia said she umpired Clemens' kids in Little League in Texas a few years ago.

''Is that right? Well that's good, I guess she'll go back there,'' Steinbrenner said. ''She wasn't that good, she wasn't bad, but she wasn't that good.''

Can't wait to see what Maureen Dowd and Molly Ivins have to say about this. Yankee PR department must be scrambling. Clemens, as it turns out, thought she was fine:

''She was pretty good, she was great,'' he said. ''I told her before the last inning that this was probably it for me and that I enjoyed it, and she said, 'Thank you.' It was a great time.''

I think that's the difference between being born in the 30's and born in the 60's. Those of us born in the 60's have grown up with the women's movement, we've gone to co-ed schools, worked and competed with women all our lives. Why not women referees and umpires? But George is real old school and still thinks surface differences are a sign of something deeper. I think he's going to catch a lot of flack about this.

I believe A-Rod's walk-off slam last night was the 6th in the majors this season. That's very good. Even in the home run rich environment of the last few years, that's a lot. The last time there were six in a season was 1995, which was also a short season (144 games). Since 1987 (inclusive), we've only had three other seasons with as many as 5; 1991, 1992 and 2001 (1991-1992 were before the big HR barrage). I'll have to check with David Vincent to see if he can get a record for this.

With Curt Schilling picking up his 18th win last night, 30 wins becomes a legitimate question. He needs to win 12 games over the last two months of the season for this to happen. No one has done that since Saberhagen in 1989, when he went 13-1. Saberhagen pitched a lot down that stretch. He started 14 games, five on 3-days rest. His last start on 5 days rest was August 1. The Royals were in a pennant race with Oakland that year; Royals won 92 games but finished 7 games back. John Wathan was managing, and looks like he was trying to give the most starts to what he thought were his best pitchers. It worked with Saberhagen, but backfired with Tom Gordon. Gordon got 6 great starts in August, and was given 7 in Sept, which were a disaster, as he went 1-4 with a 7.20 ERA. Gordon also made five starts on 3-days rest, and all but one were a disaster. This stretch may have cost Saberhagen a Hall of Fame career, as he didn't start in 30 games again until 1998, when he started 31 for the Red Sox.

What Wathan was doing was trying to maximize the starts by his best pitchers. Brenly and Cox have been doing the same thing this year, using the schedule to get more starts for their best pitchers. Look at the list of most starts on 4-days rest:

Most Starts, 4 Days Rest, 2002


Pitcher         Starts

R. Johnson          20

T. Glavine          20

Burnett             18

Schilling           17

G. Maddux           17

Milton              17

I believe what's happening is that these managers are skipping a starter when the schedule gives them a day off. LaRussa did this effectively in 1990, and it's one of the reasons Welch won 27 that year.

Back to the point at hand. The DBacks have 58 games left, which in a full five-man rotation would give Schilling 12 starts, meaning he'd have to win all of them. However, with the skipping of 5th starters that Brenly does, Schilling should get 1 extra-start, or 13 remaining. Still not much of a margin of error. However, looking at the schedule, it doesn't work out right for 13 starts for Schilling, due to the number of days off and Randy Johnson being on the same schedule. Although you never know. If the race is tight down the stretch, I could see Brenly going to 3-days rest for Schilling and Johnson. At their ages, the probability of real damage isn't any higher than it would otherwise be, especially if pitch counts are kept low.

Schilling is going to have to be perfect down the stretch to have a shot at 30. One no-decision pretty much kills it for him. If the races stay really tight, however, I think that favors his getting more starts and more of a chance to reach 30.

Jeff Weaver got pounded again today. He's given up 9 HR in four starts for the Yankees, after having given up none early on in the season. When the trade was made, I was concerned the power would come back to haunt him.

Still he's pitching for a team with a great offense, so maybe he can get away with a high ERA.

Through 6 innings tonight, the Texas Rangers have turned 4 double plays, including a 3-6-3 started by Palmeiro (who also hit his 27th HR). Bell has allowed 7 hits and 3 BB through 6, but the DP's effectively drop his base runners per 9 to 1 for the game.

One more HR for Palmeiro and he'll tie Stargell and Musial at 475 for 20th on the all-time list.

The game's not over yet, but the Detroit 3-4-5 hitters are each 4 for 5 with 2 rbi each tonight. And Higginson scored 4 runs. It's an unusual night for them, as coming into today, only Tampa Bay's 3-4-5 had driven in fewer runs in the AL. (Detroit, 153. TB, 137)

Brian Giles has the third most HR as an outfielder this year, 28, only behind Sosa and Berkman who are tied at 31. (This is batting as an outfielder, only.) This is Giles 4th season with the Pirates. He's a player you should build a franchise around, but he's 31 years old and his best years are probably behind him. It took a long time for the Pirates to replace Bonds, but once they did, the intelligent management wasn't there to take advantage of this star.

Players seem to be extending their productivity later into their careers. Maybe it's not too late for Giles to lead this team to a championship.

On July 2nd I wondered if Biggio and Bagwell were in decline. Guess who had the two highest BA for the Astros in the month of July:

Batting in July

Statistics through JUL-25-2002


               Avg   G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI  SB CS TBB HBP SO GDP OBP  SLG

Biggio,C.     .355  19  76  19  27 10  1  1  11   2  0   4  2  13  1 .402 .553

Bagwell,J.    .352  21  71  11  25  4  0  5  21   2  0  17  1  12  3 .478 .620

I have to say most of the news I've been reading about labor talks makes me feel positive about things. At the moment, there is no grand-standing, no invective, no calling the other side a liar. Right now, there are two positions, with a reasonable splitting of the differences leading to a good increase in revenue sharing. I'm very encouraged by five straight sessions planned for next week. Let's hope they keep making progress.

Pedro Martinez pitched another gem tonight. He K'd 11 and walked 1. He also hit a batter. It's not unusual for Pedro to have at least as many HBP in a game as BB. In his starts since 1992, Pedro has done it 36 times. Greg Maddux has done it 45 times, and Kevin Brown 42 times. Pedro has started a lot less, due to his early years being spent as a reliever. (Pedro 250 starts, Maddux 349, Brown 316). These pitchers aren't wild. If they hit you, they probably meant to hit you, or at least scare you.

Are the A's looking to become thieves? They have the fewest SB attempts in the majors this year, 33. Next closest is Toronto with 58. Ray Durham has 25 all by himself!

I like this deal. Durham is an A's kind of player. He gets on base and has decent pop for a second baseman. And he plays almost everyday. He's also the favorite player of the former president of STATS, Inc., John Dewan.

Hard throwing left-hander gets traded away from Yankees and gets hurt. Remember the deal that sent Al Leiter to the Jays for Jesse Barfield? I thought that it was a terrible deal at the time. Then he got hurt (some wondered if he was hurt when he was traded). It took Leiter a long time to come back, not pitching regularly until 1993, but the wait was worth it. I certainly hope this doesn't happen to Lilly, and it's just a minor injury.

Jay Jaffe has a very nice site on baseball. You can find it here. It's called FutilityInfielder.com

Royals at Tigers went 1:41 tonight. Byrd pitched an 8 inning complete game and threw 83 pitches. Lima went 7 innings with 78 pitches, and the relievers threw 21 over two innings to finish the 3-0 shutout and get the win for Lima. There was only 1 walk in the game, and only 4 three-ball counts in the entire game. Eleven times a PA ended on the first pitch.

I moved to the Boston area in 1978 and enjoyed many broadcasts by Ned Martin and Bob Montgomery. Our favorite Ned-ism was, "Watch out, Monty," everytime a foul ball was hit back to the booth. If I'm at a game with my friends now, and a foul ball goes over our heads, we'll say, almost in unison, "Watch out, Monty!"

A few years ago at ESPN, I was sitting at my desk, and Jeff Bennett was watching a Red Sox game. Jeff's about 15 years younger than me. A foul ball was hit back toward the booth, and he says, "Watch out, Monty!" And I thought we were the only ones.

We'll miss you, Ned.

With the new Austin Power movie coming out this weekend, Vaughn seems to have his Mojo back. He hit his 7th HR of July tonight. Two more this month and he will have doubled his total through June. Good to see Mo hitting again.

In the Red Sox game 1 recap, there is the following:

Garciaparra, 29, became the first major leaguer to have a three home-run game on his birthday, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, baseball's statistician.

Now, Elias replaced STATS in supplying baseball statistics for ESPN in 2000, ending my work at ESPN. But my dislike for Elias goes back to the 80's, when I twice picked up their Analyst book because Bill James was late with his, only to put it down after the first two articles. This is a really good piece of trivia. But it's also an obvious piece of trivia. It's a question that would have been asked of me before the third HR landed in the stands. And it's a question that is answerable without Elias. I have the HR encyclopedia, which lists all dates of 3-HR games. David Vincent, who is the keeper of the HR database for SABR, has a mandate to answer any question posed by the media about HR. In other words, there are multiple sources for this answer. If I had slogged through the data and found this fact, you can bet the ESPN recap would not have said, "according to STATS, Inc." But Elias is very good at making themselves look like the only people who can come up with this stuff.

And they do come up with trivia. But sometimes I think that's all they are interested in. Who's the last guy to do this? What was the last team to do that? Partially, it's what their customers want. But they never challenge, never try to educate fans or media clients about the game. I've heard Steve Hirdt is a smart guy, but I'd like to see some evidence of that in their customers' broadcasts. For example, last year, there were 22 three-homer games, or one every 110.4 games. Nomar's was the 5th this year, 1 every 295.8 games. So three-run homer games are way down this year. Do you think the people at Elias are pointing this out to the press? Do you think they'll put it in their game notes? No, it's not trivia, it's just interesting.

Or how about since the offensive explosion in 1993, only the Rockies (9) and the Indians (8) have more individual 3-HR games than the Red Sox (7)? The Mariners, Blue Jays and Cubs also have 7. Or over that same period, Sammy Sosa leads the majors with 5? See, so many interesting things. We'll see how many end up on BBTN.

I'm back from vacation. Mike Carminati has a useful blog entry on the technology behind the umpire evaluations.

Update: Sorry, the link didn't work. Should work now. You'll have to scroll down to read the article.

Al Bethke, a loyal reader writes:

David,

Either take that stupid comment off of your blog or explain why. The whole contraction issue is about getting rid of teams with low revenue, which is exactly what MON and MIN are saddled with.

Until MIN catches the Brewers in attendance and/or builds a state of the art ballpark, the thought of contracting the Crew is hilarious.

That was what I'd expect from an idiot on talk radio. Very unintelligent remark.

Al

And:

Paying a guy $18 million to help a 60 win team win 65 games has to be the silliest thing I've ever read. If possible, it's dumber than paying Giambi that much when he's old and ineffective.

Al

Al is refering to this post, where I berate Bud Selig for making a profit but not doing anything with it to improve the team. His first point, that this is about getting rid of teams with low revenue may be MLB's line, but what it's really about is:

1. Punishing cities that won't build new stadiums.


2. Giving Bud Selig and the Brewers a bigger piece of the national TV pie.

As for the Twins catching the Brewers in attendance, take a closer look, Al. The Twins are currently ranked 23rd in average home attendance at 21,668, while those big draw Brewers are 19th at 23,923. And the Twins are gaining:

Average Home

Attendance          Twins         Brewers

April-May          20,246          23,401

June-July          23,208          24,679

Twins are actually ahead in July, but it's a small sample size at this point. The Twins are a slightly better draw on the road than the Brewers. (See this page on espn.com for the numbers.) So the Brewers held up the people of Milwaukee for a new ballpark, and in it's second year, their not exactly selling out. Meanwhile, a team that was supposed to be gone, playing in a horrible facility, is about even with the Brewers. Why? Because they are trying to win. Because the people running the baseball side of things have a clue, and know that in this environment, to be successful with a small payroll, you have to develop young talent and try to win with it while their young. And if you can, sign players to long term contracts to keep salary inflation from killing your franchise.

The Brewers have no idea how to run a baseball club. They have no idea of the value of a player getting on base. They have a lousy front office, they started the year with a lousy manager, and they have an owner who is only interested in lining his own pockets at the expense of the rich clubs. If the Brewers were to take that $18 million in profit and buy some good players and start winning, Bud's whole theory would go out the window. The A's winning, the Twins winning and the Expos winning has to make Bud seethe. At some point, the fans of the Brewers have to ask themselves, "When are we going to get something back from Bud making money." Yankee fans spend tons on tickets and merchandise, and in return get winners. Fans in Milwaukee get a richer owner, and a team only slighty better than Tampa Bay.

Al, the revenue stream won't last. People don't come out for last place clubs, especially last place clubs that are really bad. I have no doubt that by the end of the year, the Brewers will have a lower average attendance than the Twins.

Okay, you got me on Giambi. He only has 7 more win shares than Sexson. But Giambi is just an example. He could have given it to Bonds. The Brewers would have about 8 more wins (about 23 more win shares) with Bonds instead of Jenkins at this point in the season. And Miller park would be filling with fans to see Bonds sock the ball out. Bonds might start rubbing off on other players, that they should walk more.

Or don't spend the money on free agents. Spend the money on a GM and a farm system that encourages players to get on base. Hire Billy Beane away from Oakland, or Cashman away from the Yankees. Get a manager who knows what he's doing. Hire Duquette as a talent evaluator. He's great at coming up with ballplayers whose skills are undervalued. But put the damn money intelligently back into the team. Don't keep them losing just to prove that you can't win without revenue sharing.

Don't sit there and tell me an organization like the Twins is more deserving of contraction than the Brewers. The Twins are building to a sustainable model of winning at a lower level of payroll, just as the A's have, and just as the Indians did a decade ago. I have no doubt, that if they survive, the Twins will have a better baseball decade than the Brewers.

The Brewers lost their 62nd game today. This is the team that is making more money than any other franchise. Why didn't Selig (sorry, I mean, "Wendy") take the profit and give it to Giambi? Here Jason, here's 18 million a year, come play in Miller park and hit 80 HR a year. We'll fill the stands, and maybe win some games. No, Bud has to prove that small market teams can't win in this environment. Meanwhile, the A's, Twins and Expos are showing how you can do it.

The Brewers organization is a sham, and they should be the team to go.

Colon beat the Mets 2-1 today, a complete game 13-hitter. Not the best pitching performance; he bent but he did not break. Mets were 3 for 11 with runners in scoring position, but only got 1 run out of the 3 hits. Expos were 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position, but had 2 HR. Expos are now 6 games behind the Dodgers for the Wild Card.

Paul Byrd picked up his 13th win today, nearly 1/3 of the Royals total. His 3 complete games are among the league leaders. Seems there is a little bit of luck here. The Royals have scored about a run more per game when Byrd pitches.

After a poor start by Rincon today, the Twins bullpen posted 6 scoreless innings to let the offense come back and beat the Indians. The Twins pen was 3rd in the AL in ERA coming into today. Guardado is getting the pub for the saves, but Hawkins and Romero are a combined 9-1 with a 1.72 ERA, 98 K and 27 walks in 109 2/3 innings including today's game.

I'd love to see the Twins win this year, just so we don't have to hear how teams with low payrolls can't compete, but overall I don't think the offense is good enough. Mientkiewicz has a higher OBA than slugging percentage (.375 OBA, .351 Slugging). You need power from first base. The Twins have a big guy named Todd Sears at Edmonton who is hitting .350 with power. Twins might want to think of trading Mientkiewicz to a team with a really poor first baseman and bringing up Sears. How about Doug to the Red Sox for Rickey Henderson? They you could DH Henderson at leadoff, increase power at first with Sears, and likely increase the team's scoring. And Mientkiewicz would be a big improvement offensively over Clark and defensively over Offerman.

Just as I was writing that last piece, Stanton blows the save, but the offense comes back, ties the game in the 7th and takes the lead in the 8th. It's like the 1998 team; the offense picks up the pitchers, and the pitchers pick up the offense.

I met a friendly Red Sox fan on the plane back today, so this entry is for Amy.

One reason Red Sox fans like Nomar is he has the best career BA vs. the Yankees among active players (entering today):

Best BA vs. Yankees, Active Players

150 PA


Batter           BA

Garciaparra    .354 (80/226)

Knoblauch      .336 (97/289)

A. Rodriguez   .333 (90/270)

B. Higginson   .327 (82/251)

Higginson is 1 for 4 today, but the game's not over. Red Sox are 7-4 vs. the Yankees this year. Tomorrow's night pitching matchup looks like the best one of the weekend, Martinez vs. Mussina. Despite a 2.66 ERA, Pedro is only 7-6 vs. the Yankees in his career in 18 regular season starts. Mussina is 15-9 career vs. the Red Sox, with a 4 to 1 K to BB ratio. However, Mussina has not pitched well this year, but he has the 4th highest run support per 9 innings in the AL, 6.99 (David Wells is 2nd at 7.35). But don't feel sorry for Pedro in this category, he's 7th at 6.66.

Think the Sox missed Ramirez? With him they are 34-19, without him they're at 21-18. They've scored 5.55 runs per game with him, only 4.82 without.

The Red Sox will also be facing a Yankee bullpen that has been battered lately. Since 6/20 (20 games with a bullpen apperance), the pen is 3-4 with a 6.49 ERA. Worst of all, 6 blown saves, 2 each by Rivera and Mendoza. Still, with the great offense NY has, they are 14-9 over that period. Enjoy the series, everyone!

Just got back from a business trip. Thought I would have internet access at the hotel, but it didn't work. I did get to see the Portland Beavers play on Monday night against the Edmonton Trappers. (Could you ask for a better matchup? Beavers vs. Trappers!) Wonderful ballpark in Portland, PGE Field, recently remodeled. It was a well played game; the pitcher threw strikes and kept things moving. We had home runs, lead changes, and a ninth inning two run rally to win the game by the Beavers. Sadly, not many people were at the game. Come on, Portland, you have a great facility and a fun team. Go out and watch!

I'll be going away again for a few days, so blogging will continue to be spotty.

With 2 HR tonight, Alfonso Soriano now has 56 extra-base hits on the year. At this pace, he could reach 100 for the season. The only other regular second baseman (100 games at 2nd) to have 100 extra-base hits in a season was Rogers Hornsby in 1922, when he had 102. Only 8 times has a second baseman had over 80 EXBH in a season, the last being Jeff Kent with 81 in 2000.

Cubs just beat the Marlins 5-4 in 16 innings, managing not to use up all their pitchers. Extremely impressive bullpen performances from both teams. The Cubs pen threw a complete game shutout, going 9 innings, only 5 hits, including 4 innings from Borowski. The Marlins pen lost the game, going 9 2/3 innings before surrendering the winning run. They only allowed 7 hits. Looks like it was a fun game if, like me, you like good pitching.

Update: I just saw the replay of the finish. Long fly ball to centerfield by Echevarria, Wilson went straight back looked like he made a basket catch with his back to the ball, but he hit the wall and the ball popped out. Tough loss.

The Taste page of the Wall Street Journal (link may require subscription) has has this article painting Donald Fehr as an obstructionist, standing in the way of baseball solving its problems.

So it's easy to dump on Mr. Selig. But amid the clamor for his head someone should point out that the commissioner does not control baseball. Donald Fehr and his Major League Baseball Players Association do. And today they're blocking the kind of reforms that have helped restore the NFL and NBA to competitive health.

Specifically, the union opposes a proposed luxury tax on teams that spend more than $98 million in salaries. Players also reject a bid to up from 20% to 50% the portion of their revenue that teams would have to share. Oh, yes, the union also opposes drug testing, this at a time when steroids are in the headlines and we all see once-skinny guys now belting out 50, 60, 70 home runs a year.

I agree that Don Fehr has a lot to say about whether there is a strike or not, and how much money the clubs end up sharing. I would even agree that he has too much power. But, the power has been given to him by Selig and his cronies' ineptitude and dishonesty over the years.

If you've seen the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life," there is a scene where Mr. Potter calls George Bailey into his office to offer him a position with his company. Potter has decided that he can't beat George, so he's going to try to get George to join him. Potter fails, because he's really trying to pull a scam, but the idea was a good one that MLB should think about. The owners can't beat the players, because the players are on higher ground than the owners. So why not form a partnership! This has been Bud's failing an owner/commissioner. He has done nothing in the past 7 years to bring the two sides into a partnership. Fehr is a smart man, an asset to have on your side. If you got Fehr and Orza and Beeston and Alderson working together, none of these problems would exist. Instead, we have a used car salesmen trying to sell us a Cadillac as if it were a lemon. We need more Don Fehrs in baseball, and less Bud Lights.

Jorden Ellel has an interesting idea: Bud protests at games.

With all of the attention being put on Bud, all of the bad media he creates, all of the fans coming out (many many many fans) saying he must go, how long until he does. Rather than schedule a fan protest where fans don't go to games, we need to schedule a Bud protest...where as many fans as possible go to the games, but we arrange to have people with Bud Must Go or other similar signs waiting to distribute them to all fans outside the stadium. I'll go to Kinko's and make my 10,000 fliers and stand outside the Vet distributing them...find me 30 people and we'll rock the world.

It's not a bad idea. E-Mail me with your thoughts.

There was supposed to be a fan strike yesterday. It didn't work. Average attendance for a Thursday this year (including yesterday) is 24,921. Yesterday's average attendance was 25,728.

College roommate Dan Wechsler pointed me to this very funny commentary by Andy Borowitz.

Jeff Cooper has a blog entry on competitive balance, where he takes issue with an entry by Charles Kuffner. It strikes me that their definition of competitive balance (how often do different teams win) is different than the one Bill James uses in his revised Historical Abstract (I don't have the book with me, so I'll have to check later). I think Bill bases it on how far apart the best and worst teams were in the decade. According to Bill, the 1990's as a whole was the most competitive decade ever.

Jeff also thinks the competitive balance is due to the salary cap:

Even a quick glance will show that the results are very different in the NFL. In both eastern divisions and the NFC West, each of the five teams won at least one division title between 1995 and 2001. In the AFC West, four of the five teams won divisions; San Diego was shut out, but the Chargers had won the division and played in the Super Bowl in 1994, and they were the top AFC wild card team in 1995. In the NFC Central, only the Detroit Lions didn't win a title (and while they were never the top wild card, they did make the playoffs in 1995, 1997, and 1999). Only in the AFC Central was there more than one team that did not win a division title, and even this is a bit deceptive, as the Baltimore Ravens won a Super Bowl after finishing the 2000 season as the top wild card team. Only three teams—the expansion Browns, the hapless Bengals, and the three-time wild card Lions—are absent from the chart. And six different teams won championships in the seven-year period; ten different teams filled the fourteen Super Bowl slots.

We're operating from something of a limited data set here, but it sure looks like there's greater competitive balance in the NFL, operating under a salary cap, than there is in Major League Baseball, which lacks a cap. You can, I suppose, argue about whether competitive balance is a good or necessary thing. But as for whether it exists, I reach a different conclusion from Charles: in the recent past, football has had it, and baseball has not.

Now, the NFL does a number of things to promote competitive balance. It has a draft, so poor teams can get the best talent (you don't see free agent football players coming from Japan or Cuba). It makes it's schedule based on how well you did the previous year. So if you have a lousy record, you play other teams with lousy records when you are outside of your division. So a down year that's a fluke can give an NFL team a big advantage in the next season. And they have revenue sharing, which makes it difficult for one team to outspend another, even if there was no salary cap.

From 1978 through 1992, baseball had a different team win the world series every year. Why? Because it had revenue sharing. The revenue shared was from national TV contracts that were large enough to swamp local revenue advantages. (The other reason for this competitive balance was that Steinbrenner was stupid back then. He had Henderson, Mattingly and Winfield, but couldn't put a decent team around them, even though he had the money.) Teams had enough money from National TV to buy multiple superstars. Now they can barely afford 1 from the money they get from Fox.

The money is in the local markets right now. Sharing this will help. A cap will just make the owners richer.

Milton just struck out the side on 11 pitches, and has struck out 6 batters in a row on 20 pitches, two over the minimum. Unfortunately, he threw 51 pitches in the first two innings, so he's already up to 71 for the game.

Eric Milton just struck out 4 batters in a row on 12 pitches.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Eckstein and Jeter being a lot closer in wins shares than I thought they would be. Since then, however, Jeter has been much better:

Jeter 6/25 on:

Totals

  AVG    G    AB   R   H    2B  3B  HR   RBI   TBB   SO  SB  CS   ERR     PA

 .410   10    39  14  16     2   0   3     6     6    2   2   0     1     45

Eckstein 6/25 on:

Totals

  AVG    G    AB   R   H    2B  3B  HR   RBI   TBB   SO  SB  CS   ERR     PA

 .205   11    44   8   9     0   0   0     2     4    5   1   2     1     50

Jeter's win shares are now up to 15.9. Eckstein has fallen to 11.3. Half a season does not a star make!

Marlins finally traded Cliff Floyd to Montreal. It's sort of a three-way deal, since Wilton Guerrero goes from the Reds to the Marlins to the Expos. Maybe Montreal just should have kept those two in the first place. :-) However, if Montreal can't find a way to beat Atlanta, I don't think they will be good enough to take the wild card. However, all this may be generating some interest. There were over 11,000 fans at a Thursday afternoon game today, up from their usual 8,000.

As for the Reds, Dempster should help, but I don't see him being great. His K per 9, 7.4, is good, but he walks a lot and gives up HR, and Pro Player is a good pitcher's park.

I leave work, have dinner, sit down at the computer and two big stories. The first is Charlie Manuel being fired. I don't know much about Manuel, but it seems he was on the DL more often than some of his players, and he never struck me as the brightest bulb. I wonder if they miss Mike Hargrove. The players didn't like him, but he won, and he's doing a good job with a lousy Orioles team. Joel Skinner is younger than I am. I'm sure he's not the first manager to be younger than me, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

The Indians are 2nd to last in average road attendance. I was surprised by this until I realized the Indians play most of their games in the AL Central, and nobody goes to White Sox, Royals, Tigers or Twins games. Take those 4 teams, the Brewers and the Blue Jays, and make a nice regional super minor league.

Yesterday, Selig said two teams were in trouble, and one may not be able to make its payroll. Now DuPuy says it's okay for the moment. What I don't understand is why these teams can't finish the season due to financial difficulties. Haven't these teams heard of bankruptcy? Isn't the whole point of bankruptcy to let corporations operate until they can settle their debts one way or another? The Orioles went bankrupt in the late 80's and they didn't disappear. I'm afraid this smacks of another Selig scare tactic.

John Geer sends this link to an article about Bud Selig blowing off Fox after the all-star game. Ed Goren is very upset. That's good. The article also points out that Fox treated baseball's problems with kid gloves during the all-star game. It will be intereseting to see how much the Fox broadcasters talk about baseball's problems on Saturday's games.

Just noticed this. Leave it to the Saints.

I heard the All-Star game ended in a tie last night. I heard it, because the game started so late that those of us on the east coast who work for a living can't stay up and watch.

Full disclosure here, I do consulting work for STATS, Inc, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fox Sports. I don't know who planned the schedule last night. But scheduling games so the west coast can see the whole thing has gone too far. In general, given the choice, I'd rather see the end of the game than the beginning of the game. If something interesting happens at the begining of the game, it will be shown to me in replays at least five times during the last four innings, and then again on SportsCenter, or that show with Mr. Roseanne Barr. But if I'm asleep, I miss a game ending HR, or a game saving catch, or Bud getting booed by his own fans.

Let's face it, people in southern California always get to see the end of the game. They get to get out of bed on Sunday morning, watch six hours of football, and still have time to go to the beach. If I want to watch Barry Bonds hit, I have to stay up until 1 in the morning. Start the game at 7:30 EDT. Or at least start the pregame show at 7:30, and get it over by 8:15. People on the west coast can have an excuse to leave work early; or they can listen to the game while stuck in traffic. Start the All-Star game, playoffs and World Series games so the people in the East (and there's a lot of us) can watch the whole game.

On to the tie. Jim Caple and Jayson Stark sum it up well. I don't have much to add, except that Bud, the man who's responsibility it is to lead baseball out of it's trouble, could not come up with an imaginative solution for the problem! Why not take the next three hitters and have their pitcher (Garcia for the AL, Padillia for the NL) throw batting practice to them, and see who hits the most HR? Five swings each hitter. If it's a tie, the next hitter in the lineup gets five swings. Garcia and Padilla don't need to worry about getting hurt. You could even put the screen in front of them. But Bud has no imagination. Also, this bothers me (from an AP story on ESPN.com):

Fans knew something was up in the middle of the 11th, when Chuck Torres of the commissioner's office brought American League manager manager Joe Torre across the field to Selig's box. Selig huddled for about five minutes with Torre, National League manager Bob Brenly, baseball executive vice president Sandy Alderson and Fox Sports president Ed Goren.

I'm curious to know Ed Goren's role. I hope he just sat there and said, "Whatever baseball wants to do is fine with us." I hope he didn't say, "We don't make any money on commerials during extra-innings, so you better get off the air." I'm very curious as to what Buck and McCarver said after the annoucement. If any one saw it and would write me, I'd appreciate it.

The fans at the game had it right last night. Bud must go!

Seems like both sides really don't want a strike. That's very good news. This article on ESPN.com gives some details. Fehr talks about the main issues to resolve:

Fehr said he thinks the sides could agree to a worldwide draft that covers all amateur players, an expansion of the current draft, which applies primarily to those in the United States and Canada.

He detailed the difference the sides have on revenue sharing, saying that using 2001 figures the clubs would like to increase the total from $167 million to $300 million and that the union would like it to be at about $230 million.

He also detailed the union's distaste for a luxury tax, which even teams readily admit would cause teams not to sign players they would without the limitation.

"A luxury tax is a significant penalty, because somebody hired someone,'' he said. "If you think about it that way, that's a pretty strange thing to do in the United States of America.''

The owners want 50% local revenue sharing and a 50% tax on payrolls above $98 million. Right now, the players and owners are $70 million apart on revenue sharing. My guess is the owners will get the 50% local revenue sharing, a 25% luxury tax at a higher level, and some payroll minimum.

That was fun, but too long. They need to do something to get these hitters to take less pitches. Highlight of the night was Curt Schilling mentioning Bill James, after Piazza used the term "cube root." It's been a long, slow journey, but sabremetrics has really changed the way we talk about baseball, even the players.

I was just looking at the top 100 home run list, and noticed Rickey Henderson still in the top 100 at 293. With all his other accomplishments, people don't realize that he was a good HR hitter. When he retires, he won't stay in the top 100 long (he's ranked 96th right now), but it shouldn't be overlooked that he was a decent power hitter. Other things from the list:

• Bagwell and Thomas, born on the same day, are only separated by 2 HR (364 for Bagwell, 362 for Thomas). Of players born on the exact same day, they have the most HR of any pair.


• Sosa is in 19th place, 12 away from 500 HR, and could easily end up ahead of McCovey and Williams by the end of the year, in 12th place.


• ESPN is bound to go live to every AB when Bonds gets 599. Wonder how many IBB they'll cut to? :)


• Fred McGriff, at 465 HR (tied with Winfield for 23rd) may be even a bigger Hall of Fame problem than Canseco. It's easy not to vote for Jose because he didn't care about winning. But McGriff has always been a team player, he's a great guy, never a bit of trouble, and has had a very good career. But I don't think many people think Fred McGriff and Hall of Fame at the same time.


• With Chuck Klein 94th at 300 HR, it won't be long until you have to have 300 HR to be in the top 100.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:24 PM
Maddux and 300 Wins:
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Greg Maddux got his 8th win of the season today, and 265th of his career. He's having on the surface a very good season; 8-2 with a 2.81 ERA. But I'm starting to wonder if he'll make it to 300 wins.

Bill James is a believer in pitcher's strikeouts being a great gauge of pitching ability. Maddux's K per 9 is down this year, hovering around 4.8. He's never been below 5.5 in a season before, and spent much of the 1990's well above 6.0. Maddux is surviving this year because he still doesn't walk anyone, doesn't give up HR, has a great defense behind him, and the Braves aren't leaving him in very long. But at some point hitters are going to realize that Maddux just can't sneak pitches by them anymore, and they are going to start hitting him harder. I like to think his hip is still healing, but it's something we should watch.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:03 PM
I really like Ralph Wiley's
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I really like Ralph Wiley's columns, especially this one on Sosa and Rick Reilly. Of course, I have to include this paragraph:



Why wouldn't we? We're funny that way. It's a great, ongoing responsibility we have. We're the last line of defense, the keepers of the flame of humanitarians such as Granny Rice and D.W. (Doctor) Griff, and the great traditions of American life. We're like, I dunno, maybe the Spanish Inquisition, without the robes and the guillotines and gallows. We use ink and laser photos, cathode ray tubes and rear projection units. Few can handle being us. Fewer still want to try.



I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition!
Posted by StatsGuru at 01:25 PM
July 06, 2002
Bonds vs. Lefties:
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Bonds hit a HR off Randy Johnson today. Eleven of Bonds 26 HR have now come off lefties, despite the fact that he has had only 62 AB vs. LHP (vs. 167 vs. RHP). In fact, 17 of Bonds 22 hits vs. LHP have been for extra bases! Despite all of those extra-base hits vs. lefties, Bonds has only 20 RBI vs. lefties. It appears they only pitch to him with no one on base. Seven of his 11 HR vs. LHP have been with the bases empty.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:56 PM
Expos Bunting:
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I was just looking at something for the Diamondbacks, and noticed that the Expos have 42 sac bunts by non-pitchers, the most in baseball by 12! (The Reds have 30.) Does this mean that Frank Robinson thinks his offense is only good for one run at a time? It's not like he's been using it only in the late innings of close games. He's had non-pitchers sacrifice 14 times in the first 3 innings! And I'm only counting successes here. I don't even want to think about how many times he's tried and failed. You would think he played more for Gene Mauch than Earl Weaver.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:12 PM
Lilly-Weaver-Pena Trade:
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David Schoenfield has a good analysis of the trade. My main problem is that the Yankees should try to keep as many lefties in their rotation as possible. Lilly is a young lefty who strikes out a lot of batters. He seems to have learned to control the walks and HR this year. Looks like the Yankees gave up two more good prospects, that will help Oakland down the road. The other thing that doesn't make me like this deal from the Yankees point of view is that Weaver gets pounded by lefties for power, and now he's going to pitch half his games in a stadium that favors lefties.

Amazing how fast Carlos Pena's stock fell. Remember how the A's weren't going to miss Giambi because of Pena? Tigers, despite losing Tony Clark, have been terrible at first base. Tigers better be right about this, however, since a pitching ace is much harder to come by than a first baseman.

Overall, I'd have to chalk one up for Beane here. Dombrowsky usually makes good deals, but I'm skeptical here. I think Cashman has a lot to lose if Weaver doesn't pitch well.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:25 PM
Baylor Bounced:
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Don Baylor was fired yesterday. Cubs had a lot of promise coming into the season, and they have been dismal. The only two productive offensive positions are 1B and RF. The starters haven't been bad, but the bullpen is terrible. I'm not a big Baylor fan, but it strikes me that this is more of a front office screw up, not finding talent to put on the field.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:09 PM
Ted Williams:
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Go away for a couple of days and big things happen. The saddest, of course, is the death of Ted Williams.
It's interesting to see how the perception of people change over time. Joe DiMaggio was considered the greatest living player from the late 60's on, even though there was ample evidence that he wasn't. DiMaggio did a very good job of managing his public image. He was a beloved player, and stayed beloved through the rest of his life. Williams, on the other hand, had a poor relationship with the fans and the press during his career, and was not well liked at all. Yet, the people I've come across who have met DiMaggio have nothing good to say about him, and the people who have met Williams have nothing but good to say about him. We'll miss you, Ted.

As to who is the greatest living players, I have to go with Mays. He has one fewer win share than Aaron, and Mays missed time in the military. I give it to Mays on defense. Jayson Stark has thoughts about this here.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:59 PM
July 04, 2002
Thome's HR Streak
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Looks like the year of big streaks. First Castillo, now Thome. One thing that makes the streak remarkable is that Thome plays for a poor offense (tied for 2nd lowest runs scored in the AL, and 4th worst in the ML), so he seldom gets to the plate more than 4 times in a game. He's only had 2 games in the streak where he came to the plate 5 times. Here's the odds of him tying the record based on his career and 2002 HR/PA:


Thome Odds

Based On                  Career           2002

HR/PA                     .0565           .0767

4 PA                        .21             .27

5 PA                        .25             .33

6 PA                        .29             .38


So he has roughly a 1 in 4 chance of tying the record.

When Griffey was on his HR streak, a Seattle newspaper got hold of me and asked what the odds would be of a 9 game streak for Griffey. Using Griffey's career to that point, I figured the odds would be about the same as Joe DiMaggio hitting in 56 games, given DiMaggio's stats at the start of 1941. (I don't remember the exact numbers, sorry.) A few days later I got a piece of hate mail, saying how dare I compare Griffey to DiMaggio. This guy had seen DiMaggio play, blah, blah blah. Of course, all I was talking about was probability of streaks, not comparison of abilities, so I don't know what the problem was. But you know you've arrived when people send you hate mail. :-)

For the record, DiMaggio had 387 win shares, Griffey has 313 coming into this year. If you give DiMaggio the benefit of the doubt for the war, he'd probably be around 470. While I do think Griffey will pass 387, with the injuries he's had, I'm not sure he'll reach the high 400's. One place where DiMaggio clearly outshnes Griffey is in defense. DiMaggio averaged 4.65 defensive win shares per season, while Griffey has averaged 3.93. Griffey could still turn out a great career total of win shares. He's extremely talented, but he just doesn't seem motivated anymore.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:05 AM
July 03, 2002
B-Boys Browse Blogs?
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Bagwell and Biggio both have homers against Cincy tonight. I wonder if they read last night's entry? :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:30 PM
Park Distortions:
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The big story last night was the HR barrage, but a story lost was LA's shutting down the Diamondbacks in Arizona two straight nights. Overall, the DBacks have the 2nd best offense in the NL (2nd in runs per game). The Dodgers are 8th. This is why it's important to look at teams in the context of their parks. One easy way to do this is to simply look at road stats. When you do that, the Dodgers are 2nd in runs per game, and the DBacks are 8th! The Dodgers actually have a much better offense than the DBacks. The Dodgers, with their deeper pitching staff, can shut down the DBacks. This Dodger team is not a fluke, it would appear.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:27 PM
July 02, 2002
Welcome to Coors:
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Giants scored 8 runs in the first inning tonight. Reggie Sanders was the only player not to earn his way on base. Giants had 7 hits, 2 doubles, 2 HR and 3 walks. Aurilia and Kent each reached base twice. I guess they stopped keeping balls in the humidor. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:39 PM
B-Boys Getting Old?
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Seems like yesterday they were up-and-coming superstars. But Craig Biggio at 36 and Jeff Bagwell at 34 are starting to show their age. Biggio isn't getting on base like he used to, and Bagwell's power has fallen off. If this continues for Biggio, it will be 2 out of 3 years where his offense has been off. Bagwell's not hitting for power in a hitters park. You have to wonder if he rushed back from the shoulder surgery, or it that in combination with his age has robbed him of his power. Two great players, I hope this isn't the signal of the end for both of them.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:33 PM
What a relief:
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The Red Sox used two reliever today as starters; Wakefield got just his third start of the year, while Kim got his first in the nightcap. Each pitched 6 innings and combined for 3 runs. Kim went into the 6th but didn't get a batter and was charged with all 3 runs.

Through this afternoon's game, the Red Sox were 26-8, 3.45 ERA vs. the AL East, 22-23 with a 3.73 ERA vs. everyone else. They've scored 5.59 runs a game vs. the AL East, but only 4.82 vs. everyone else. Seems they've been very unlucky outside of their division.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:26 PM
July 01, 2002
Mondesi Trade:
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Here's an article on the Yankees trade for Raul Mondesi. I was going to talk about this, but the sidebar by David Schoenfield says it all.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:05 PM
Pay For What You Get?
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I found this site while I was looking up Bret Boone's contract, and thought the Boone fans might enjoy it.

Boone got over $8 million a year for 3 years. There was really no competitive bidding for him. There are a few possible reasons for this:




1. Other teams thought his year was a fluke.


2. Teams didn't want to spend money on free agents without a new CBA.


3. Teams colluded again.



I think it was mostly 2, but 1 might have had something to do with it. Anyway, I think it's safe to say that in most years since free agency came into being, Boone would have gotten a much more generous contract. Which brings me to the point of this essay: if you underpay a player, does he under perform?

There have been studies (see Baseball and Billions by Andrew Zimbalist) that point to declining performance when free agents sign big contracts. But what I think those studies haven't done well is analyze what really should be expected of those players. They look at year-to-year performance, and a player with a great option year is likely to get a big contract, but also likely to fall off since that option year may represent his best performance.

Let's take a look at two recent refugees from the Seattle Mariners, Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez. Griffey left, and made it clear that he just wanted out of Seattle. He signed way below his market value, and has been disappointing at best for the Reds. A-Rod, on the other hand, went the free agent route and got, what many believe, to be way too much money. He's been absolutely fabulous (thanks Eddie and Patsy). Boone signs below market value and he's been disappointing.

Now, let's think about how one might view his work. Let's say you think you are underpayed, and the situation isn't going to change any time soon. Are you going to do your best? Why work hard? You're not getting paid for it. Especially if someone else who's not as good as you is being paid much more.

Let's say you are overpayed. You might work a lot harder, because you feel guilt about being overpaid. You may feel you have to contribute a lot to justify your salary. Do you agree?

See, I think the fall off after signing a contract is that lots of baseball people don't know how to evaluate talent. They get a free agent who's 30 years old, who has had a couple of good years, give him a lot of money, and are surprised when he declines. But when you do it right, signing a 26 year-old like Alomar or Rodriguez, it's worth every penny. But signing a superstart like Griffey at bargain prices also seems to be a mistake, because there is really no motivation there for the player to perform well.

I'm going to try to come up with a way of studying this, to see if we can really find some objective evidence to support these claims.

Posted by StatsGuru at 12:47 PM
June 30, 2002
Win Share All-Star Team
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Here's how win shares sees the all-star team:


AL                NL

Posada C          Lo Duca C

Thome 1B          Helton 1B

Soriano 2B        Vidro 2B

Chavez 3B         Lowell 3B

A Rod SS          Hernandez SS

M. Ordonez OF     Bonds OF

J. Jones OF       Dunn OF

Suzuki OF         Sosa OF


This is based on their first half stats. Both agree at 4 positions. Not bad.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:22 PM
Evenly Matched?
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Here's how the starting lineups matchup in win shares (short form, 1st half of the season):


AL Player          Win Shares            NL Player         Win Shares

Posasa                  10.5             Piazza                 11.6

Giambi                  15.6             Helton                 19.7

Soriano                 15.3             Vidro                  17.0

Hillenbrand             10.9             Rolen                   7.8

A Rod                   20.0             Rollins                 9.1

Ramirez                 10.3             Bonds                  25.0

Hunter                  10.6             Guerrero               13.5

Suzuki                  15.7             Sosa                   18.0

Total                  108.9                                   121.7


Looks like the NL has the advantage.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:37 PM
Thome vs. Giambi:
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Just in case you are wondering, Thome has 17.9 win shares, Giambi 15.6.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:19 PM
Hunter In:
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Torii Hunter got elected. So we got one Twin, two Expos, and no Brewers. Way to go!

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:13 PM
Who's in Center?
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The BBTN crew is wondering who will be the CF for the NL. Isn't it obvious it should be Vlad? He's the youngest and fastest.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:10 PM
Rollins at Short?
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This was the biggest surprise to me. I thought there would be a number of shortstops with better numbers. But when I really look at it, Jose Hernandez of the Brewers is the only one I might pick over him. Too bad the Milwaukee fans didn't come out in stronger numbers for Hernandez. Maybe they were all voting for the Expos. :-)

Update: By the way, why are all the good SS in the AL?

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:09 PM
Vidro's In:
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Well, it looks like the push for the Expos brought Jose Vidro into the starting lineup. Way to go, computer voters!

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:03 PM
How are the Braves Winning?
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I was just looking at the Braves boxscore from today and noticed Vinny Castilla batting 6th. His numbers: .247 BA, .275 OBA, .397 slugging. You want him for defense, fine, but don't bat him 6th. Plus, you have Javy Lopez who isn't much better at .239, .286, .368. Once again, they are all pitching. Chipper and Sheffield should be having better years, and luckily Andruw Jones is finally living up to expectations. Every year, though, the Braves go into the post-season with great pitching and minimal offense, and get shut down by teams with good pitching and great offense. Looks like it may happen again.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:01 PM
June 28, 2002
Still Looks Like a Fluke:
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He'll probably go 5 for 5 with 2 HR tonight, but Bret Boone continues to show that last year was a fluke. He's probably having the worst year of his career, yet is still driving in a lot of runs due to the team around him. It was speculated last year that Boone used steriods. If he did, the effect doesn't seem to last very long. Which makes me wonder if using steroids is really worth it.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:37 PM
Mo Vs. Moose:
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Mo Vaughn just hit his 5th career HR off Mussina. He's 23 for 70 off Mussina through his first two AB tonight. Half of Mussina's runs allowed now (28 of 56) have come on HR.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:25 PM
Colon Trade, Part II:
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As a rule, I dislike talking about intangibles, but something to think about here. The players on the Expos now know that someone wants them to win. I think that would be a big deal to players. It also might be a boost to the fans. For the first time in a long time, the Expos are trading to win, not trading to dump salary. I wonder if this will cause more fans to come out to the ballpark?

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:22 PM
Posada, Whoa-Ho:
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Jorge Posada just hit a three-run HR to give the Yankees a 6-1 lead. Nine of his 12 HR have come with men on base this year.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:18 PM
Paul Konerko had quite a
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Paul Konerko had quite a line today:


4 4 4 4 


Has anyone noticed he's turned into Frank Thomas without the walks? And big hurt still hasn't gotten his season together.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:00 PM
Colon Trade:
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I love this trade. The Expos may never have another chance at winning, and they are going for it. They pick up a good pitcher having his best season. Colon has 14.6 win shares this year; the most an Expo starts has is Ohka with 7.6. The four pitchers who have been used in the 5th slot have 1.9 win shares (that's overall, they probably have less just as starters). This now gives the Expos a rotation that looks like:


Pitcher      WS

Colon      14.6

Ohka        7.6

Vazquez     6.8

Armas       4.0


Pavano, who had been used most as a fourth stater only had .3 win shares, and had fallen out of the rotation. What is really interesting is that Robinson appears to have gone to the La Russa 1990 strategy of not using the fifth starter when days off allow it. He's only used 4 starters the last two times through the rotation. Expos need to make up 5 games to get the wild card, and this deal should be good to make them 3 or 4 games better over the 2nd half of the season. That includes losing Lee Stevens, who's 4.5 win shares at first base was nothing special.

This is the sort of deal Cleveland should have made last year. Those of you who logged into BBTN on-line last year may remember be saying the Indians should trade Thome for a front line starter, either with the Angels or Marlins. Cleveland was clearly reaching the end of the run, and Hart, while producing a very good team, did not give Cleveland the championship they had long sought. They had plenty of offense, (and the Angels needed some power at first), and a deal could have given them enough to face the Mariners and Yankees. But they couldn't or wouldn't pull the trigger. Now Indians fans are going to wait a few more years as the team rebuilds. The Expos realize they can't wait any longer and are going for it. I'd love to see it work out for them. By the way, Expos attendance is about where it was last year through 39 games. In 2001, they were averaging 8500, this year 8427.

Posted by StatsGuru at 12:21 PM
June 26, 2002
Let's Get Ready to Rumble!
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Bonds and Kent had a shoving match, but have put the situation behind them. Sure. This reminds me of Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson. They hated each other. And with good reason, since both seemed to be loathsome individuals. Munson got better press, however, and was well liked by the manager. And the Yankees won.

You seem to have some elements of this here. Bonds is a jerk, but the manager likes him. Kent is a jerk, but got mostly good press until he allegedly lied about his motorcyle injury. They are both loathsome individuals, jealous of each other's success and extremely competitive. I love it. I hope it lights a fire under the team. Maybe it will teach Dusty Baker that it's a team, and you should treat all your players the same. Maybe it will get this team to play the way it should be, and take the NL West.

Give me the A's and Yankees of the 1970's. Never a dull moment. They didn't care about team chemistry. They just cared about winning.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:47 PM
Baseball WorldCom?
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This otherwise unreadable article in the Boston Globe Magazine did give me one thing to think about:



In April, Forbes magazine published a series in which it claimed that Major League Baseball had made $75 million last year. Of course, the commissioner of baseball responded to this particular outburst of optimism - with which he had a difference of opinion of a mere $307 million - by dismissing the reporting of the staid old financial publication, comparing it to a "supermarket tabloid."

...

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, asked him a question that nobody likes to hear in any formal proceeding, and she asked it three times: ``Are you aware, sir, that you're under oath?''
Selig was testifying about his stated plan to eliminate two Major League teams in response to what he maintains is a looming fiscal catastrophe, while the committee wanted to talk about the antitrust exemption. The commissioner claimed, once again, that the 30 baseball owners lost a combined $232 million last year. Asked for specifics, Selig hedged. The committee members looked at him as if he were a space alien. ``He completely stupefied people,'' recalls one committee staffer.



WorldCom, Enron, Tyco and other coporate frauds have made publice investors very wary of the numbers being touted by all corporations. I don't know what the fallout will be, but my guess is that companies that want to keep their stock prices above $1 will become more and more transparent as to where money is coming and going. This will be especially true if executives start going to jail. I have no doubt that someone at WorldCom will be tried for fraud. Which brings us to Bud.

Selig has testified that baseball lost $232 million in 2001. Baseball's not a public company, so he really doesn't have to make the finances public. But he's testified under oath before Congress as to baseball's losses. What if he's cooking the books, as Forbes seems to be implying? If that's true, did Bud commit perjury? That seems to be what Rep. Waters' question was getting at. Maybe this is the way to get rid of Selig. Like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Maybe, in the wake of Enron and WorldCom we should write our Congressmen and ask them to see if Selig committed perjury. Get them to supeona MLB records. (I wonder if Andersen was their accountant?) Then maybe they could work a deal where Selig leaves baseball or goes to jail. That would be a just reward.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:31 PM
June 25, 2002
Eckstein vs. Jeter
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As I mentioned in an earlier post, Brian Kenny on the SportsCenter re-airs this morning mentioned how close offensively Jeter and Eckstein are this year. They are pretty even in runs scored and RBI, but Derek does have better BA, OBA and slugging averages. Jeter is clearly better, but how much?

Luckily, we have Bill James and win shares. Tonight I wrote a program to figure short form win shares. Wins shares through Monday assigns Jeter 13.9, Eckstein 11.6. That's pretty close, and closer than I thought it would be. It should also be pointed out that Eckstein's 11.6 is he highest on the Angels. Jeter ranks third behind Soriano (14.8) and Giambi (14.2). Good job by Brian Kenny and the research staff at ESPN.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:30 PM
New Baseball Blogs:
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A couple of my readers have started their own blogs on baseball. John J Perricone has started Only Baseball Matters. His writings are about the SF Giants, although he was originally a Yankees fan. Chris Hartjes is writing At the Ballpark. It's new, but he seems to like simulation games a lot. Hope you all enjoy these web logs. Maybe you'll get inspired to start your own.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:20 PM
Coming Back:
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I've been away on business. I'll be back writing tonight. I heard Brian Kenny compare David Eckstein favorably to Derek Jeter this morning. I love Eckstein, but I don't think he's Jeter. I'll try to explain why tonight.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:54 PM
June 22, 2002
In Season Deaths:
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This is the first since Munson's plane crashed in 1979. Happend two years in a row, with Bostock being killed by a gunman at the end of 1978. Most deaths seem to happen in the off-season to active players.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:19 PM
It's Over:
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Raines hit a sac fly. Marlins win. Castillo left on deck without his fifth chance for a hit. It was a good run.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:07 PM
More Castillo:
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Fox ended up on third after a wild pitch. Any hit by Raines will end the game and kill the streak. Even a sac fly will do it. Strike out, Timmy! (Just kidding of course. The win is more important than the streak.)

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:05 PM
Castillo Streak in Danger:
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I come down to look at the boxscore and Castillo is 0-4. It's the bottom of the ninth and the 4th hitter is leading off. The Marlins are down 4-1, which means they have to get 4 men on base and not score 4 runs to give Castillo a fifth chance to hit. Floyd makes the first out, but Lee triples, Wilson walks, goes to 2nd on a wild pitch, and C. Johnson doubles them in. Bush is running for Johnson, and and Andy Fox has a full count. Now Detroit has made an error and the game is tied. Raines pinch hitting, Castillo has to hope for anything but a long hit.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:03 PM
Ted Lilly's Gem:
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Bill James came up with the concept of the game score a long time ago to put a point value on a start, so you could compare how good one start is to another. You get points for IP, pitching deep into the game and strikeouts. You lose points for hits, walks and runs. It's set up so that most scores will be between 1 and 100, with anything over 90 being an excellent start. Lilly put up a 90 today, the 9th time this season a pitcher had a 90. The top scores so far:


Pitcher                Date     IP  H  R ER BB  K   GS  W  L

Schilling, Curt       4/07/02  9.0  1  0  0  2 17  100  1  0

Johnson, Randy        4/21/02  9.0  2  1  0  1 17   97  1  0

Weaver, Jeff          5/22/02  9.0  1  0  0  2 11   94  1  0

Lowe, Derek           4/27/02  9.0  0  0  0  1  6   92  1  0

Estes, Shawn          4/26/02  9.0  1  0  0  1  8   92  1  0

Perez, Odalis         4/26/02  9.0  1  0  0  0  6   91  1  0

Lilly, Ted            6/22/02  9.0  3  0  0  2 11   90  1  0

Loaiza, Esteban       5/19/02  9.0  2  0  0  0  7   90  1  0

Astacio, Pedro        5/14/02  9.0  2  0  0  2  9   90  1  0


So Lilly's had the best start by a Yankee this year.
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:24 PM
Remembering Kile:
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Peter Gammons writes about how Kile cared about his teammates first.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:55 PM
Kile Dead:
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Darryl Kile was found dead in his hotel room this afternoon. You can read about it at espn.com, including commentary from Dave Campbell. No word yet on how it happened, but from what La Russa said in an interview with Joe Buck, it looks like he died in his sleep. Today's game was postponed, but they will play tomorrow night. Tough week to be a Cardinals fan, despite the fact that they took a two game lead in the NL Central.

Posted by StatsGuru at 05:13 PM
Orioles Fans:
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If you are an Orioles fan, you may want to check out Birds in the Belfry. Lots of research and articles about the Orioles, and they were nice enough to recommend this site to their readers.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:15 PM
Updated Probabilities:
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Latest numbers on Castillo is that he has crossed the 1 in 100 barrier. I now estimate he has a 1 in 86 chance of breaking the hit streak record (about a 1.2% chance) based on this year's batting stats. Based on his career, he's still over 1 in 1000, at 1 in 1111.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:08 PM
June 21, 2002
Castillo
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just got a hit. Thirty-five and counting. And the ball didn't get out of the infield.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:54 PM
Updated Probabilities:
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The chance of Luis Castillo breaking DiMaggio's record is 1 in 111 based on this season, one in 1430 based on his career. Let me note that the probability of Castillo having 92 hits in 297 plate appearances this year is about .01 (based on his career numbers), which some would call statistically significant (1 in 100 chance of happening). It still could be good luck, but it could also be that his hitting ability has changed.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:26 PM
June 20, 2002
Stark Reality:
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Jayson Stark doesn't think there will be a strike, since few teams can afford it. I hope he's right.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:34 PM
Hit Streak:
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The odds of Castillo getting a 57 game hit streak get better with every game he extends the streak. I now estimate he as about a 1 in 143 chance of breaking the record, based on his batting stats this season. It makes sense. He needs a 24 game hit streak, and those haven't been all that rare lately.

Update: Based on his career batting numbers, the odds of Castillo breaking the record are 1 in about 2080. The question is, which stats do you think represent the real Luis Castillo?

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:46 PM
More on Selig:
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More from Dave Kindred's interview with Bud Selig:

TSN: Do you believe more than eight teams are in trouble? Selig: I'll stand with my six to eight. Maybe people will understand when, God forbid, teams can't make their payrolls. Why in life do you have to wait until something gets that bad before you do something about it?

TSN: Isn't that what revenue sharing is about?
Selig: Do the clubs understand that? Yes. Now, they do. Our first real revenue-sharing meeting was the roughest two or three days any of us had ever gone through.

It was horrible. It was about breaking this chain of no revenue sharing. Think of the wonderful vision of George Halas and the Maras and Bert Bell and Pete Rozelle and the Rooneys. All those NFL pioneers understood that these were your partners. That took a lot of vision. It took an absence of arrogance. It took an absence of selfishness.

It took people who cared about their sport more than they cared about themselves. This is a very rare thing in today's world.

TSN: And baseball lacked that?
Selig: We have people like that. John Fetzer, John Galbreath, Phil Wrigley, Gussie Busch, Tom Yawkey. But as things evolved we were more inclined to let selfishness and myopic views dominate rather than, as Pete Rozelle used to say, "Think league."

What changed for us in the late '80s and early '90s was the stunning difference in revenue because of local broadcast. In the 21st century, when you try to keep franchises in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and New York, L.A. or Chicago, you have this stunning difference.

You can't be healthy, then, without salary restraint and revenue sharing. The Maras, Bell and Rozelle were so smart they created a revenue-sharing structure from the start that saved them all. What's wrong with that?


Where do I start? I have never read anything that would lead me to think that Phil Wrigley and Gussie Busch cared more about the game than the cared about themselves. All they cared about was how much money they could make selling beer and gum. If they're baseball teams won, fine, and if they didn't, as long as people came out to the ball game, they were happy. They were not men of vision.

But the thing I really want to focus on is the last paragraph, where Bud says, "You can't be healthy, then, without salary restraint and revenue sharing." That statement there is the crux of all the problems in baseball. It's the crux of the large-small market battles, as well as the owner-player battles. I don't think anyone objects to revenue sharing. What two of the three groups object to is salary restraint. Players don't want salary restraint. They feel the market should set the salaries, and I agree. Large market owners don't really want salary restraint, because they need to bring in the big name players to draw fans to support the level of revenue they need. The group that wants restraint is Bud Selig's group; owners of small market teams that are too inept to create a winner with a smaller amout of revenue. Bud wants to put enough up enough roadblocks on the big clubs so that it's as easy for his Brewers to win as it is for the Yankees.

The problem is, it will never be easy for the Brewers as long as they are mis-managed. They do a poor job drafting and trading. The get low on-base players who strikeout a lot. If they drafted high on-base guys who put the ball in play, they would probably be an interesting and competitive team. They may not win, but they'd be fun to watch. And if you are competitive, luck will eventually put you over the top. Which brings me to another point:



TSN: Do you think the players association doesn't want to deal with any of what you see as problems?
Selig: Let's be honest about it. The status quo is what they want. From their perspective, I understand. I'm not even critical. But we just can't afford the status quo. The status quo is not producing.

In the last seven World Series, not one game has been won by a team that wasn't in the top quartile of payroll. Not one game. Forget a Series, not one game. We need to deal with this.



Selig is confusing probability with reality. Just because something hasn't happened doesn't mean it can't happen. The last two years, the Yankees were very lucky to get by the A's. The A's had better teams both years. The A's could easily have won the World Series the last two years. The A's were unlucky. But the A's have a lousy fan base, play in a lousy stadium, have another team to compete with across the bay, and manage to win. And they do it, not with tons of money, but with front office smarts. The Brewers have the owner in the commissioner's office manipulating things to make it easier for them to win, and they still are horrible.

Bud Selig is the problem with baseball. He has needed to form a partnership between the individual owners, and between the owners and the players. He's failed at both, because he's not believable. It's time for a new commissioner, payed equally by both the owners and the players, who's job it is to protect the best interests of the game, and to bring all parties together. I know it's not going to happen soon, but maybe when Bud screws this up again, everyone will come to their senses.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:29 AM
Jack Buck Wake:
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I just heard that Jack Buck is going to lie in state at home plate at Busch Stadium today. How wonderful for the people of St. Louis to be able to pay their respects at the place Jack worked for so many years. The Yankees did that for Babe Ruth; I had hoped they would do the same for Mantle and DiMaggio, but it didn't happen. Even though it's a morbid thought, I would hope that players like Ted Williams, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron would think about having this done when they pass away. Fans adore these players and would love to have a chance to bid them farewell.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:33 AM
June 19, 2002
Selig Interview:
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Zachary Manprin sent me this link to a Dave Kindred interview with Selig. To read this, Selig makes you think he's had nothing to do with the labor problems of the last 30 years:



We showed the financial numbers to the clubs again in a meeting recently, left them up on the board, team by team. There wasn't a sound in the room. I said, "Ladies and gentlemen, these are the numbers that I've taken a fearful pounding over, that you submitted, that many bodies have had, that bankers have never raised questions about."

And I said, "Look, it's really competitive balance that we have to talk about. I don't think the average fan gives a damn whether a team has made money or lost money. It's, 'How does that affect the play on the field?' And, unfortunately, it's begun to affect play on the field. We can't ignore that."

So the last thing anybody wants is a work stoppage. But I don't think we have the option to ignore this. If I can fault baseball, I borrow a line my wife used to use. It's Scarlett O'Hara's line from Gone With the Wind -- a perfect repression mechanism: "I'll think about it tomorrow."

That's what we did. We did it in '76, in '80, in '81. Lee MacPhail, a great baseball man, said in '85, "We're fighting for the small markets. You can see the problem coming." We didn't do anything about it. In 1990, the same thing. Had a wonderful opportunity to address the problem. Didn't. In '94, we know what that was -- clubs attempting to change the system. So here we are today.


Now, Dave Kindred doesn't call him on any of this. First of all, plenty of people have questioned the numbers including Forbes. So Bud putting them on a blackboard doesn't add any veritas to them.

As for ignoring the problem in all those other years, there was no problem to ignore. This problem didn't arise until the national TV contract ran out in 1994. Up until that time, all teams shared enough money so everyone could afford 2 or 3 superstars. MacPhail may have seen it coming, but it took another 10 years to happen.

I was just reading Bud's biography on the MLB site, and while it mentions that he was "active in the governance of Major League Baseball during his tenure as President of the Milwaukee Brewers," it doesn't say that that activity was in labor relations. So if baseball was ignoring problems, Selig was right in the middle of it.

I find this interesting also:



TSN: Couldn't you take that local broadcast money and just divide it up among the clubs however you wanted?
Selig: No, revenue sharing is now a subject of bargaining with the players association. Do I agree? No. But we haven't wanted to go to court over that. Everybody keeps saying, "It's your revenue. Why don't you guys just do what you want?"

For years, Marvin Miller and Don Fehr (the players' last two executive directors) have said, "Why are you guys coming to us? Why should the players solve your problems? Do what you want to solve your problems. Share revenue anyway you want." Now things have changed. Now they want to talk about a different plan.

TSN: You mean, if the 30 owners sat down and said, "We've got $2 billion here; we're going to divide it up how we want," the players would have to pass on it?
Selig: Yes.


Well, the reason the players are involved is because the owners wanted revenue sharing to come out of the players' pockets. Remember the idea of a salary cap? Now, the players union is only really interested in protecting the interests of the very rich players, which is why they don't want to see the big market teams losing a lot of money to revenue sharing. But I'm sure they'll accept it as long as a cap isn't put on how much a player can make.

Bud's a great car salesman. You read this interview and think, "Gee, he makes sense." That's why you have to leave the showroom and think about it. Bud would kill free agency if he could. He'd love to go back to the days of the reserve clause forever. That's the only way he'll ever be able to make a winner out of the Brewers.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:15 PM
June 18, 2002
Yankees at Coors:
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This game could be ugly. Yankees are already up 2-0 after the top of the first, with Jeter hitting a solo shot. Mussina is having his worst year giving up HR, and Butler just took him deep to make the score 2-1. A five hour game, anyone?

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:26 PM
Road Warriors:
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The Red Sox are scoring 6.03 runs per game on the road this year. The most any Sox team has ever scored on the road was 5.61, done 3 times (1995, 1939 and 1938). Not only are they hitting well on the road, but they are also pitching well on the road. They have allowed 3.44 runs per game on the road, a difference of 2.59. If that were to hold up, it would be the 2nd highest road difference of all time. The top five teams in run difference on the road each won their league championships:


Team On Road   Runs/Game   Opps. R/Game   Difference

Yankees 1939        7.80           3.93         3.87

Cubs 1906           4.74           2.20         2.54

Yankees 1953        6.14           3.95         2.19

Senators 1933       6.39           4.25         2.14

Giants 1912         5.59           3.45         2.14

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:05 PM
Smooth:
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Johan Santana (sounds like he should be playing classical electric guitar) is having what may be the best start of his career. The top four batters in the Mets order have 9 AB and 6 K through 6.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:53 PM
Expos Defense:
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I was just watching the Royals-Expos game (I thought I'd watch the worst game on TV tonight) and Guerrero dropped a linedrive hit at him. The announcer said it was the 2nd time that happened tonight. Sure enough, I just looked at the defensive efficiency record for the Expos. DER is the percent of time a ball is put into play is turned into an out, taking out HR. Expos are last in the NL.

I wondered if the ballpark had something to do with (outfielders losing balls in the roof or the lights), but the Expos are much better at home. They have a .696 DER at home, only .649 on the road. This makes some sense, since artificial turf usually means cleaner bounces and fewer errors.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:36 PM
Houston in Houston
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A career .268 hitter, Tyler Houston is hitting .311 (14/45) in games played in Houston. That includes a 7/22 at the Astrodome, and 7/23 at whatever they are calling the new park (you know, they should just call it LBJ field). I wonder if he considers it his home town? :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:17 AM
June 17, 2002
All-star Voting Working?
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Vidro only trails Alomar by 11,000 votes. Keep voting for the Twins and the Expos! We can do this! Send the teams Bud wants to contract to his All-star Game! For more information, click here. Remember, you can stuff the ballot box at Subway stores, too. I can fill out half a dozen ballots while I down my 1/2 sub.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:16 PM
June 16, 2002
Mets Revenge:
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After all the hype, I think hitting a HR off Clemens is a much better way of retaliating than hitting him. And to have Estes do it also just put the icing on the cake.

I was a big Graig Nettles fan growing up. I remember a couple of times pitchers knocked Nettles down with a high inside pitch. He didn't charge the mound. He got up and hit a HR. (I was at a double header on July 4th, 1978 where this happened, and I remember watching games on TV where I saw it happen, but sometimes 25 years plays tricks with your memory.) Trying to intimidate a hitter with an inside pitch is part of the game. Showing that the intimidation doesn't work is great revenge.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:46 AM
Burkett Boycott:
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John Burkett of the Boston Red Sox says he'll boycott the all-star game if chosen for the squad in this article on ESPN.com:



Burkett said he won't play in the Midsummer Classic -- played in Milwaukee on July 9 -- largely because of commissioner Bud Selig's connection to the Brewers. Burkett said he has been soured by Selig's handling of the labor situation.

''I don't want to go to Milwaukee and play in an All-Star Game that would benefit him,'' Burkett told The Globe. ''It's something I feel strongly about, and I'm willing to stand up and make that decision.''

Selig was owner of the Brewers before becoming baseball commissioner. His daughter now runs the team.



I think Burkett makes an important point about Selig here. Bud isn't commissioner for the benefit of baseball and baseball fans. He's commissioner for the benefit of the Milwaukee Brewers. That's why he wants a payroll tax instead of real revenue sharing. With a payroll tax, money flows in one direction, from rich clubs to poor clubs, like the Brewers. With real revenue sharing, like taking 50% of all local money and splitting it between all the teams, some money would flow out of the Brewers.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:40 AM
Happy Father's Day
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to all the fathers and fathers-to-be reading this. Share a ballgame with your dad when you get a chance.

Did you notice that the Twins were the only AL team to win a game yesterday? And against none other than the team owned by the man who wanted to get rid of them, Bud Selig. Of course, one could argue that the Brewers aren't really an NL team. Bud probably made the switch so he wouldn't have to pay a DH's salary. Remember, when you're filling out your all-star ballot, vote for all Twins and Expos and send a message to the commissioner.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:19 AM
June 15, 2002
Blown Saves:
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I just noticed this and thought it was interesting. The A's are 7-2 when they blow a save, the Mariners 6-2. I guess those teams are never out of it.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:16 PM
Hit Streak:
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Luis Castillo goes for a 30-game hit streak today. In this AP article on ESPN.com, I found this quote interesting:



The Marlins' leadoff man and second baseman is strictly a singles hitter. His 52 hits during the streak included just four for extra bases. He had walked only four times, partly because pitchers don't want to give the leading base-stealer in the major leagues a free pass.

In other words, he's the kind of scrappy batter likely to put together a hitting streak.



I've had some fun with the probabilities of hit streaks over the years. One thing I've found is that batters who walk a lot are a lot less likely to have hit streaks than batters that don't. Why? Because the probability of a hit streak depends on something I call hit average which I define as Hits/PA (plate appearances). If you have two players with the same batting average, the one with fewer walks will have the higher hit average (but a lower OBA), and will in general be more likely to have a longer hit streak.

For example, take two .300 hitters. One draws 100 walks and gets 165 hits in 550 AB. The other draws 50 walks and gets 180 hits in 600 AB. Both have 650 PA. The first player has a hit average of .254, while the 2nd player has a hit average of .277. The first player, however, has an OBA of .408, while the 2nd player has an OBA of .354. So if you need to get someone on base, send up the first player. If you need a hit, send the 2nd. Right now, Castillo is more like player 2.

The other factor in determining the probability of a long streak is the number of times you come to the plate in a game. The more times you step up to the plate in a game, the more likely you are to get a hit in one of those PA. Let's take our player with the .277 hit average as an example:


                Prob. of at

PA in Game      least 1 Hit

         1          .277

         2          .477

         3          .622

         4          .727

         5          .802


So if you can get 5 PA in a game, you have an 80% chance of getting a hit. Batting leadoff, Castillo is maximizing his chances of getting the extra AB. So things are looking good for a long streak by Castillo. His hit average this year is .302. That gives him an 83% chance of getting a hit in a 5 PA game. He gets 5 PA in roughly 3 out of 5 games he plays. Given those numbers, I give Castillo a little better than 21 in 500 chance of hitting in another 28 straight games. Not outlandish odds. Maybe this will generate some fan interest in the Marlins.
Posted by StatsGuru at 11:59 AM
June 14, 2002
The Retaliation Myth:
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Jordan Ellel points me to this article by Joe Morgan. Toward the end, he makes a comment about intimidators Gibson and Drysdale:



In Baker's estimation, Clemens would be dodging pitches in the National League because he throws at too many hitters. Bonds became the 132nd batter Clemens has hit during his career, ranking him first among active pitchers. But Clemens, in 20 total plate appearances, has never been hit by a major-league pitch.

Like Clemens, Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale were intimidators on the mound. At the same time, they stood at the plate and took their lumps -- and that is the way it should be. Gibson was hit eight times in his career and Drysdale five times.



Bob Gibson hit 102 batters in his career. He was hit 8 times. Where's the retaliation? Where are teammates following the unwritten rule? Drysdale hit 154 batters and he was hit 5 times. That's taking your lumps? That's detering these famous headhunters from throwing at batters?

This whole issue is bogus. I'm going to have to do the research later, but my guess is that with or without the DH, retaliation has never been against the pitcher. It's been against the first guy up in the next inning, or the start slugger if your star slugger got hit. And that's exactly what happened in the game where Piazza got hit. Tino Martinez led off the next inning, and was plunked by Rusch. End of story.

This is all Bobby Valentine, the NY press, and former players who never look at statistics before they shoot their mouths off. If Estes wants to hit Clemens, he should be thrown out of the game. There is no unwritten rule here that requires him to do that. He's just buying into the hate of his manager. Don't give in to the dark side, Shawn!

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:14 PM
Local Rivalries
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The schedule makers did a pretty good job, but you have to wonder about the following matchups:




• Pittsburgh at Cincinnati


• Detroit at Arizona


• Cleveland at Colorado



They could have done Cleveland at Cincy, Detroit at Pittsburgh and had Colorado and Arizona play each other. I'm sure there were other variables that caused this to happen, but they almost had it perfect.
Posted by StatsGuru at 10:34 AM
June 13, 2002
Constructive Contraction:
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Rob Neyer talks about contraction in today's column and about how the Royals have to be on the short list despite denials by Glass. His arguments make sense.

I'm not opposed to contraction in general, but I am opposed to the way Bud Selig tried to pull it off. One reader wrote to tell me that he considers Bud a dictator. I'm not about to disagree with that. What Selig was doing was destroying two franchises. This is both unnecessary and unfair. You can have contraction without hurting any teams, and might even create better jobs for ballplayers at the same time.

I think the best configuration for a league is 12 teams, two 6 team divisions. (The AL 1969-1976 was an example of this, as was the NL from 1969-1992). This way, you play your division foes 18 times each (90 games) and the teams in the other division 12 times each (72 games). None of this interleague stuff. Save that for the World Series. Right now, we have 30 teams, which very nicely form five six-team divisions. All we need are 6 more teams.

I know what you are thinking. He wants another expansion! Nothing of the sort. The problem with MLB right now is that you have at least 6 teams that are not capable of competeing for a championship because of:




• Lack of money.


• Lack of a fan base.


• Incompetence



These teams could survive if they had a $20 million dollar payroll. And a winning team. Because then they could have low ticket prices and be competitive and the fans would come see them. They sound like minor league teams.

So rather than destroying franchises, let's recast them as a super-minor league. We can take 6 top AAA teams (like Buffalo and Louisville) who want to be in the majors and promote them to this super minor league. These teams would not be farm teams; they would compete for players with the major league teams. They would have farm systems. They would just be a smaller (cost wise) league.

Here's how I see it working. There would be one draft. ML teams get the first 24 picks, so you concentrate talent in the majors. The Super Minor (SM for short) would get the next 12, and each round would go on like that. There would be a separate labor agreement with the SM, with a lower base salary, but otherwise the same rules regarding free agency (and maybe they'll be smart and avoid arbitration by having a shorter period before free agency takes hold). They would respect the same commissioner, unless Congress gets smart and overturns the anti-trust exemption. I would expect all 36 clubs to trade with each other, and I would expect the SM clubs to sell players to the majors. National TV revenue would go the ML clubs; the SM would be free to sign it's own TV deals.

The AL and NL would go back to two rounds of playoffs. The SM would have one playoff round to determine it's champion. Every year, the SM champion would be given the option to move up to the majors, replacing the worst team in the majors. This way, if an SM teams decides it wants a piece of the ML television money, if it's stadium is selling out, if it develops a loyal and large TV audience, it can spend a lot of money and make it self into an ML team. This would be a great incentive for teams to be good, rather than trying to get rich putting a lousy, cheap team on the field and pocketing all the money. It also gives a great incentive to ML teams not to be bad. If they start losing, they may lose all that TV money.

I think this solutions helps everybody. It creates more jobs at a higher salary for players than they would get in AAA. It gives some place for veterans to go as their careers decline. It gives the small markets good, independent teams that can be competitive. It makes travel and scheduling much easier for the remaining ML teams, and gives them a financial boost by allowing them to keep a bigger slice of the TV pie. That will lead to higher salaries for stars, which will make the union happy. Andrew Zimbalist, who wrote Baseball and Billions, believes that baseball could easily expand to 40 teams. I don't thing 40 ML teams is feasible, but 24 ML teams and 12 independent minor league teams is.

This isn't that hard a problem to solve. The people running baseball need to show a little creativity, something that has been sorely lacking there.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:50 PM
Padres at the White House:
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Seems Tom Lampkin has some political connections. I had the idea last year to get Bush on BBTN on-line, but I never pushed it. Edward Boyd pointed this out at his blog.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:31 PM
Little Sarge:
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I wonder what it is about Gary Matthews, Jr. that makes teams marginalize him. The Orioles have no one at the top of the order getting on base. Matthews has a .345 OBA, over .390 vs. RHP. Why isn't he at least leading off against righties? Hargrove was a great leadoff hitter, in that he got on base. Why isn't Matthews in there everyday? Why did the Cubs and Pirates give up on him? It's not like any of these clubs are brimming with offensive talent.

Someday he's going to go to a team with a manager that appreciates his strengths, and I think he'll be a good ballplayer.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:08 PM
One Game?
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How unusual. There were no games scheduled for today, and we have one because there is a rain out being made up. Although it makes sense, with teams from different parts of the country playing each other, you want to leave a space for a makeup game, because these teams aren't going to see each other again for a while.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:53 PM
June 12, 2002
Closer in the 8th:
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Good to see Brenly use Kim in the 8th. The heart of the Yankees order was up, and Kim struck out Williams, Giambi and Posada. Most managers would have gone with a setup man because it wasn't the 9th. A closer should be your best relief pitcher, and come in for the tough situation, whether it's the 8th or the 9th, or even earlier if the situation warrants.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:04 PM
Unassisted Triple Play:
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My friend Mike Wechsler has a son Avi that plays little league. With the bases loaded in the 9th yesterday, he caught a line drive at third, stepped on the bag, and tagged the runner coming from 2nd! Congrats, Avi!

I'd publish Mike's letter here, but his writing style is an embarassment to Harvard men everywhere. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:29 AM
June 11, 2002
Against Glavine:
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Here's Tom Glavine's lines vs. lefties and righties this year:


               Avg   G  AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI  SB CS TBB HBP SO GDP OBP  SLG

vs. Left      .279 ---  61 ---  17  5  0  1   4   1  0   4  1   7  0 .333 .410

vs. Right     .206 --- 296 ---  61 14  0  4  15   4  5  20  2  55  7 .259 .294


Notice that despite lefties hitting Glavine much better than righties, very few lefties get to face him. This isn't unusual for Glavine. His career numbers show the same thing:


               Avg    G   AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  SB CS  TBB   SO  OBP  SLG

vs. Left      .259 ---- 2379 ---  616  99 10  37 219  37 21  219  424 .323 .356

vs. Right     .249 ---- 9736 --- 2426 436 35 194 930 146 95  867 1565 .311 .361


His first three years in the majors, this wasn't true. But since that time, he's been one of the top pitchers in the game.

I've asked a number of players, including his former catcher Greg Olson, why Glavine is better against righties. Each told me the same thing. He throws a pitch that runs away from righties but right into a lefties wheelhouse. I've also asked them, since this seems to be well known, why managers don't start lefties against him. The answer from all of them was that managers don't want to be second guessed if they lose. Shouldn't it be the job of a manager to maximize the chance of winning? It seems to me the fear to start lefties vs. Glavine will put Tom in the hall of fame.

Just as an example, the Twins have benched lefties Mientkiewicz, Pierzynski and Ortiz tonight, and are being shutout by Glavine through 6.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:12 PM
Colon's Success:
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Bartolo Colon pitched another great game tonight, giving up 1 run in 8 innings vs. the Phillies. One place Colon has improved is against lefties. Entering today:


Colon BA Allowed       Career      2002

Vs. LHB                  .262      .233

Vs. RHB                  .242      .248


He's also only allowed a .175 BA with runners in scoring position, 4th best in the AL. All this despite his strikeouts being down.
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:48 PM
Reds Relief:
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Coming into today, the Reds relievers have as many strikeouts as their starters do. Both groups have struck out 176, but the starters have taken 330.2 innings, while the relievers have accomplished this in 223.2 innings. Reds relievers have the 4th best ERA in the NL and the ML, 2.98. The starters ERA of 4.33 is 10th in the NL, but they have the fewest innings pitched of any NL team (Reds relievers have the most).

The offense is weak to okay. The starters are weak to okay. The bullpen is very good, but is being overworked. This reminds me of the Phillies of last year. They were able to hang in by bringing in some young arms to start. My feeling is if unless the bullpen can get some rest, the Reds will wear out the only strength they have and fall out of the NL Central race.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:28 PM
Who's on First?
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What has happened to offense at first base? When I look at a team by position, first is where I want to see the highest batting numbers. On-base + slugging by first basemen is way down this year. Five teams have OPS under .700 from the position:


Team           OPS at First Base

Mets                   .579

Giants                 .638

Red Sox                .658

Expos                  .694

Tigers                 .699


During the offensive explosion of 1994-2001, there were only 7 times that team first basemen had OPS below .700. In this time period, ML first baseman OPS averaged .853, while overall OPS was .765. So first basemen were about 90 points higher than the league average. This year, the overall numbers have dropped about 20 points to .743, but OPS at first has dropped 40 points to .812.

Of course, the good news is that if you don't have offense at first, it should be easy to find some. I can't believe every club doesn't have a pure power hitter sitting in the minors that is capable of catching a baseball thrown at his chest. (By the way, it's nice the see the Tigers did such a good job of replacing Tony Clark :-))

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:16 PM
Bad Men of Baseball:
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Daniel Altman sent me the link to this article by Tobias Seamon. I think Tobias gets it exactly right. For more on Hal Chase, read Bill James' Historical Abstract.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:42 PM
Link of the Week
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Rob Neyer has installed me as link of the week. Rob should be a must read for any baseball fan. He thinks clearly on the game and does great research. Thanks, Rob!

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:59 PM
On the Air, II:
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ESPN just finished taping. If they get the cassettes back in time, it will be on the 6 PM (eastern) SportsCenter. Probably toward the end of the show.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:57 PM
On the Air:
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ESPN is coming up to tape me discussing the odds of the Lakers losing the NBA finals at this point. I'll let you know when and if it's going to air.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:27 PM
June 10, 2002
Congress Involved:
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The government is getting involved in investigating steriods. I'm glad they have time for this. They must have tax cuts, social security, education, energy and homeland security all taken care of. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:37 PM
Power Debut:
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Marcus Thames just made his batting debut for the Yankees. On the first pitch from Randy Johnson, he hit a long HR into the Yankees bullpen. He's twenty six, so I don't expect great things from him, but he's in the record book, and not too many players can say that.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:01 PM
This is very funny. Thanks,
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This is very funny. Thanks, Andy Borowitz!

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:18 PM
June 07, 2002
Best in the NL?
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David Schoenfield does his usual good job of breaking down Glavine vs. Schilling. One criticism, however:



It can be argued that since Schilling has relied so much on the strikeout, he hasn't had to rely on his defense as much as Glavine. Glavine has allowed five unearned runs (making his run per game average just over 2.00) and also has a below-average defense behind him, with the exception of the outstanding Andruw Jones in center field (corner outfielders Chipper Jones and Gary Sheffield have poor range, corner infielders Vinny Castilla and Julio Franco are old and middle infielders Rafael Furcal and Marcus Giles are hardly Gold Glove candidates). Glavine has been outstanding despite his defense, not because of it.



Actually, as I've pointed out before, the DBacks defense isn't that good. Per 1000 balls put in play against the defense (non-HR), the Braves turn 15 more into outs than does the DBacks defense. So part of Glavine's success is that he has a good defense behind him. Schilling has to strikeout a lot of batters because of his defense.
Posted by StatsGuru at 11:20 AM
Dollars to Doughnuts:
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Henry Aaron now owns a Krispy Kreme franchise. Maybe he figures if he fattens Bonds up on doughnuts he won't be able to break the HR record. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:28 AM
Morgan on Steroids:
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No, he's not taking them because he wants to be as big as Jon Miller. He's commenting that the burden of this scandal is on the Player's Association, since it is players who are accusing other players. Fair enough. The paragraphs that made me roll my eyes, however, are these two:



On a radio show recently, Bob Costas said he felt the explosion of power since the 1994 strike has been partly attributed to steroid use. He had aired the same opinion at least once before. When Bob and I were broadcasting the 2000 All-Star Game in Atlanta, he said that both the balls and the players were juiced.

The problem is, how does one know who is juiced? I have always maintained that poorer pitching, smaller ballparks and livelier balls have contributed to the increase in home runs. I cannot consider steroids a contributor without proof.



Starting in 1994, Joe would go around spouting about how the ball was juiced (along with a lot of others in the game) with absolutely no proof! He had not seen any tests of baseball. Although I tried to get ESPN to do an indepth piece on the manufacturing of baseball that would have asked for records of manufacturing changes and results of rebound tests, they never did. When a UMass professor finally did the test for MLB a few years ago, he found what I had suspected all along; balls were legal, but they were consistently manufactured at the high end of the legal limit. I believe this wasn't a conspiracy, but a result of better statistical analysis used in the manufacturing of baseballs making them more consistent.

Before the late 1980's, US manufactures would make millions of whatever they were building, then test them to see if they worked. If they didn't work, they threw them out, fixed the process, and started all over again. In the 1980's, Japan was kicking the US economically because they adpoted a statistical method of quality control that would catch manufacturing defects after a few hundred went wrong, not thousands or millions. To keep from going out of business, American manufacturers started adpoting these techniques.

How does this apply to baseball? Okay, you set your machines up and start making baseballs. There is a lot of leeway in the size and weight of a ball, and how far it's allowed to rebound. You set the machines to make a tight ball, and as time goes on, things don't work as efficiently, and you start making looser balls. So you get a distribution of balls across all legal levels. After you notice you've made thousands of bad balls, you go back and fix the machines and start all over. But now with the new technique, you see 100 balls getting out of whack, and even though they are still legal, you go fix the machine! And since fixing means a tight ball, you get so called juiced balls.

The solution, of course, is to set the machines to make balls at the midpoint of the rebound range. We're seeing less offense this year. I don't know how long it takes balls to work their way through the system, but my bet is something like this has happened.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:20 AM
Jose Speaks:
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Jose Canseco is writing a book. Or at least he's talking to a reporter who's going to write a book for him. Jose admits to steriod use. Alert the media! He's going to name names of others who are using steriods. This has to be the biggest news since the good unemployment report at 8:30 this morning. :-)

I'm sort of disappointed that the Wall Street Journal is involved in this. This is a crass story that is being sensationalized. I really don't care about Jose's failed marriages or his relationship with Madonna. Who hasn't had a relationship with Madonna? (Hands please?) :-)

We now have a few people who say they either used steriods illegally, or know of people who used them illegally, or both. People will be calling for baseball to clean up it's act. I disagree. It's time for law enforcement to get involved. Subpoena Canseco and Caminiti and Brian McRae. Start talking to Bonds and Boone and the other people who have doubled their size recently. Make some arrests. I believe it worked in the 1980's in putting the cocaine scandal behind us (although, who really knows if anything changed). A superstar in jail will do a lot more to curb steriod use than any policy the union and management produce.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:59 AM
June 06, 2002
Rob Neyer thinks MLB teams
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Rob Neyer thinks MLB teams should ignore high school players in the draft. He bases this on a study Bill James did on how to best allocate resources for a draft. Read it, and think about it. It makes a lot of sense.

This is actually how I buy cars. I decide what kind of car I want (sedan, wagon), then read a little to get an idea of what the best cars in the class are, then drive 3 or 4 different models. Then I take my time to decide on which of those I want.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:26 PM
Power to All Fields:
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For his career, Derek Jeter's power is fairly evenly divided among all three fields:


Jeter, Career HR

To Field           HR

Left               29

Center             44

RF                 33


Jeter has hit 52 on the road and 54 in home games. The distribution by field shows the effect of Yankee Stadium:


Jeter, Career HR

To Field         Home     Road

Left               12       17

Center             22       22

RF                 20       13


Even as a right-handed batter, Jeter is good at taking advantage of the short right field porch in Yankee Stadium.
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:17 PM
In Play:
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Bill James writing about the relationship between pitchers, hits allowed, defense and strikeouts has had me thinking about baseball statistics in a whole new way. It makes someone like Randall Simon of the Tigers seem a lot more interesting to me. He and Bonds are the only players in the majors with more HR than strikeouts. Simon doesn't take pitches; he has by far the lowest pitches seen per PA average in the AL. He doesn't walk. What he does is see a pitch he thinks he can hit and put it in play. In the past I would be very down on this type of player, but now I'm wondering if this isn't a perfectly good approach. I'll be doing more on this.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:19 AM
June 04, 2002
Lastest All-Star Vote:
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Looks like the vote for the Twins-Expos campaign is having an effect. Twins have a player in the top 5 at each position except catcher. Keep voting! Keep telling your friends! Here's the web site if you'd like to learn more.

Posted by StatsGuru at 05:44 PM
Pirate Pitchers:
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Chuck Finder of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an article on the Pirates poor offense. He thinks the pitchers should pinch-hit:



Entering Monday's date in Montreal, Benson had as many doubles as Benjamin and Osik (one). Dave Williams and Kip Wells had as many homers (two) as Craig Wilson , twice as many homers as Kendall and Brown and Osik, and a shutout going on Jack Wilson, Armando Rios, Reese, Nunez and Benjamin. Combined, the starting pitchers owned a .171 average with eight RBIs and one of the eight triples mustered by the punchless Pirates.

"Pitchers just try to put it in play," said Wells, an All-Star candidate already -- on the mound more so than at the plate. "Sometimes in hitting that's what guys need to do if you're struggling.

"Just try to put it in play and hit it the other way. Generally that's what pitchers try to do. Even though we generally don't do it well."

They do it well enough that Wells offered this thought: Now pinch-hitting for the pitcher ... pitcher Jimmy Anderson.

"Jimmy's probably the best hitter of the pitchers," Wells said of the lefty with the .238 average. "He might get to pinch-hit one of these days. He gets to wear his cleats every other outing. 'Cause you never know."



Putting the ball in play was a strategy I was advocating for trying to beat Johnson and Schilling, so it's good to see others are thinking about it.

Also, given my recent comments about Bonds and Sosa's frustration with their poor offensive teams, Brian Giles is probably feeling the same way. He has 26 extra-base hits, a .444 OBA, but only 32 RBI, despite hitting .314 with men in scoring position. Another player who would be getting lots of MVP consideration on a better team.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:25 PM
Winning 30?
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ESPN.com has an AP article speculating on Schilling winning 30. Thirty wins has become almost impossible to achieve for two reasons:




1. Real five man rotations


2. The disappearance of the complete game



By real five man rotations, I mean what the Red Sox are doing. When the Red Sox have a day off, they don't drop their fifth starter from the rotation. So their best pitchers start every five games instead of every five days. The DBacks, on the other had, seem to have adapted Tony La Russa's strategy of 1990, where he used his fifth starters in only 24 games. That gave each of his big four about two more starts (that was the year Welch won 27 with 35 starts). Schilling is going every 5 days, so he could get up to 37 starts. That gives him a better shot.

The tendancy of managers to go to the bullpen earlier and earlier also hurts starters decisions. There's more of a chance that someone else will blow the game and cost you a win. In the NL, the average starter goes 6 innings. So there is a 1/3 of a game that is out of his control. Schilling is averaging 7 1/3 innings per game, so his relievers only have to get 5 outs on average. That also gives him a better shot.

I don't think Schilling will get 30. I really think pitchers need to get over 40 starts to have a shot at that. But it looks like things are as favorable as can be for him to make a run at it.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:21 AM
June 03, 2002
Passing the Buck:
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I just read that Buck Martinez will be fired today. I have mixed feelings about this. I worked with Buck at ESPN, and it was always a pleasure dealing with him. He was intelligent, well spoken, polite and would remember you even if he hadn't seen you for years. He was one of the few announcers who would use the computer to research statistics, even in the days before the popularity of the internet. This shouldn't happen to nice guys like Buck Martinez.

Unfortunately, he wasn't a good manager. I thought last year's Toronto team was pretty good. When they started failing, Buck wasn't able to revive them. I had a feeling when he took the job he might be in over his head. It's too bad. I hope he returns to the broadcast booth.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:34 PM
I was going to revisit
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I was going to revisit my post of May 2nd about Bret Boone's swoon yesterday, but I'm glad I didn't, as he ended up hitting a grand slam. My even thinking about Bret doing poorly spurs him to action! I remember having the same effect on Todd Benzinger. He was a light hitting first baseman who came up with the Red Sox. Everytime I complained about his lack of power to someone, he'd hit a HR.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:40 AM
June 02, 2002
Personal Best:
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I think the only way to describe Robert Person's day is Ruthian. To start off, here's his batting line:


Philadelphia    ab  r  h bi  w  k  avg

Person, p        3  3  2  7  1  1 .154


Those two hits were both HR. On top of that, he also pitched real well:


Philadelphia                 IP    H  R ER BB  K #Pit   ERA

Person                        5    3  1  0  4  5  86   4.79


The Phillies aren't getting much offense out of CF. Maybe Person can become an outfielder!

Update: It's 17-3 in that game in the 9th. Expos probably wish they had been contracted. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:34 PM
Finley:
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Chuck Finley pitched 7 shutout innings today, throwing only 99 pitches. Of course, that means you have to get him out of the game and go to the setup man and closer. Shuey and Wickman combined for 5 hits and 3 runs in two innings, nearly blowing the game. Finley's not a 20 year-old rookie. He should be able to go past 100 pitches, especially if he's going well. I see Bobby Cox do this with Maddux all the time. If there's nothing wrong, and the pitch count is low, why not leave the veteran in the game?

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:24 PM
Yankees-Red Sox
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Red Sox are now 7-4 vs. the Yankees this year after the win today. With a 2 game lead, these games have made all the difference. They have almost identical runs per game and ERA. Red Sox have done much better in 1-run games, however, going 7-2 vs. the Yankees 6-7. Best sight at today's game, however, was General Tommy Franks swaying to the music between innings. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:20 PM
Bonds and Sosa:
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Do you think these two players are totally frustrated? Bonds has 18 HR and 33 RBI. That means he has driven himself in more (18) than he's driven in other runners(15). Same with Sosa; 19 HR, and 35 RBI (16 not himself). Bonds has only had 96 runners on in front of him (Giambi leads with 183), and he's been intentionally walked 20 times. Sosa has had a few more opportunities, with 126 runners on base and only 8 IBB. But unlike last year, Sosa is not hitting with runners in scoring position, putting up only a .216 BA, while Bonds has made the most of his opportunites with a .316 BA in those situations. Still, neither player has anyone really setting the table, and both have no support batting behind. They are each having MVP seasons again, but their poor teams may cost them each a shot at the title.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:12 PM
Unusual Line:
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From yesterday's White Sox-Indians game:


Chicago                      IP    H  R ER BB  K #Pit   ERA

Ritchie (L,3-7)               5    4  8  0  2  3  89   4.37


Although there were two errors in the inning, the first one caused all the runs to be unearned. Ritchie pitched badly in the inning, giving up 4 hits, 2 walks, and a Thome HR. I've always wondered if pitchers think, "I'm not getting charged with these runs, I don't care if I allow them." I often get that feeling with relievers. "These men on base aren't my responsibility, they aren't going to hurt my ERA." If you've played fantasy baseball and had a relief pitcher allow runners charged to one of your starters score, you know what I mean.
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:48 AM
May 31, 2002
Baseball Finances:
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A real good article here on the chances of individual baseball teams going bankrupt in the next few years. It was written by Doug Pappas, a lawyer and SABR member. Just catching Bud in another falsehood. Please vote for the Twins and Expos on the all-star ballot and send a message to this liar of a commissioner.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:53 AM
May 30, 2002
AZ at SF:
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Did you look at the scores in this series? Giants won the first two games by scores of 7-3 and 1-0. Arizona won the last two games, 7-3 and 1-0. Coincidence? I think so. But still, you have to love when things like this happen. I'm sure Jayson Stark is asking some research to find out the last time this happened in a four games series.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:38 PM
Twins and Expos:
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Hey, come on! The Twins and Expos aren't doing well on the all-star ballots (except for the players who are actually very good). Let's get the vote out. I'm even watching the Twins game, and they show a fan ballot, and it doesn't even have all the Twins on it. To quote Arlo Guthrie, "If you want to end the war, you have to sing loud." Get on the web site. Get out to Subway. Vote, vote, vote.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:05 PM
Steroids:
Permalink

There's been a lot of news about steriods lately. I haven't wanted to comment on this, because I felt the whole story wasn't out yet. Now we get this from Caminiti on ESPN radio:



''It's no secret what's going on in baseball. At least half the guys are using steroids. They talk about it. They joke about it with each other," Caminiti told Sports Illustrated.

However, Caminiti told Patrick on Thursday that he "has no idea what percent is taking it." He said steroids barely even came up in the initial in-depth interview with SI.

"I know a couple of guys who took steroids but it's mostly a clean sport," he told Patrick.

"I didn't mean it to go like this at all. I just want to live my life. All of a sudden I'm just getting bombarded now."

Sports Illustrated spokesman Rick McCabe said the magazine stands by its story, which set off a furor around major league baseball this week.



So what's the truth? There have been a few stories in the media lately that have printed exaggerated claims as if they were the truth (a story on teen drinking sticks in my mind). I think what happened was this:



1. SI did the interview.


2. The editor saw the steriods comment and decided that was the lead.


3. The media has suspected this for years, and now they have an excuse to go full bore on the subject.


4. Old-timers can't stand the fact that hitting records are falling like leaves in November.


5. They get Curt Schilling (who loves to shoot his mouth off) to confirm the abuse.



Now we are getting all these pundits who want to clean up the game. Please.

Sportswriters/broadcasters know nothing about science. In 1999, ESPN was going to do a story about creatine. I was in on the story idea meeting. I didn't know what creatine was, but it was being pitched as a "this is awful, this should be exposed." But the more questions I asked about it, the clearer it was that creatine was simply protein. When ingested, it gets digested just like any protein. I don't know if any of you have ever put protein in pH 0 acid, but when you do that, you destroy the protein. Creatine is food. It's concentrated protein, but it's just food. If you don't drink enough water, you bind up, but that's it. I tried to point this out to them, but they were convinced it was something bad, so they did a story that was wrong. If you work out and take lots of creatine, you get big muscles. If you do that and take steriods, your muscles heal faster, so you can work out more and build more muscle. So don't believe the claims about steroids unless you examine the facts yourself.

For example, I found this on the web (emphasis mine):



Anabolic steroid abuse has been associated with a wide range of adverse side effects ranging from some that are physically unattractive, such as acne and breast development in men, to others that are life threatening, such as heart attacks and liver cancer. Most are reversible if the abuser stops taking the drugs, but some are permanent.

Most data on the long-term effects of anabolic steroids on humans come from case reports rather than formal epidemiological studies. From the case reports, the incidence of life-threatening effects appears to be low, but serious adverse effects may be under-recognized or under-reported. Data from animal studies seem to support this possibility. One study found that exposing male mice for one-fifth of their lifespan to steroid doses comparable to those taken by human athletes caused a high percentage of premature deaths.


In other words, the health effect of long term steroid use hasn't been studied. What if you used them just for a winter to build muscle mass?

There was an article on ESPN.com this morning that I can't find now. I'll paraphrase. The author was noting that players were more concerned with working out than with drinking. I'm sorry, that's a positive. I'm sure alcohol abuse has ruined more careers than steriod use ever will. My mother has been on steriods for a long time, and I've seen what they've done to her. But my guess is, if you use them for the winter, bulk yourself up, you really don't need them that often to maintain your muscle power. In that case, there may be no long term effects. So there may be a silver lining here; players are developing better work habits because they need to train so much.

Also, I'm tired of all these players or ex-players who say steriod use is high, but never name anyone. Okay Curt Schilling, who's using steroids on the DBacks? Brian McRae, you say you know guys who go down to Mexico and get them. Who are they? Or are you just trying to keep your seat on BBTN by being controversial? Benji Gil says players get them while in winter league ball in Mexico. But they don't name names. I hope Canseco does name names. People will say he has not credibility, but if he does this, we'll have a better handle on how many actually use it.

I don't think this is a big deal. Baseball players for years thought that weight lifting hurt their performance. Once is was discovered that you could bulk up and hit a ball farther, everyone was going to do it. Steroids aren't destroying the record book. Better training is. If you want to clean it up, let's have the law enforced. Maybe the FBI can look into this, talk to McRae and Schilling and Canseco and Gil and Caminiti and get names and sources and arrest some people. Wait, they are too busy trying to keep us getting blown up by terrorists.

Never mind.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:59 PM
May 29, 2002
Are RBI Men Bums?
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Don Malcolm has an article in which he purports to find correlations between counting stats and on-base+slugging. When he does the comparison against RBI, here's what he believes he finds:



There are 34 players who’ve averaged 100 RBIs a year over the past three seasons. Amazing to think that Richie Sexson has more RBIs in that span than Barry Bonds, isn’t it? (Keep in mind that Barry missed 60 games in 1999; a better version of this stat would be RBI/G, but that doesn’t get the same knee-jerk reaction from guys who live to gnash their teeth…)

Most astonishing name on this list: Tony Batista. Next most astonishing: Garret Anderson.

In any event, only four of the 34 players on this list have an OPS below .850. That’s a lot better than the hits, doubles, and triples lists, and extremely close to the homer list. The fixation amongst statheads on RBI guys who are bums obscures the fact that very few RBI guys actually are bums.



Now, I'm basically a statshead, so I'll take exception to this.

The basic belief among people who Don refers to as statheads is that RBI are influenced by two things; the power of the batter (usually measured by slugging percentage) and the number of baserunners on in front of him. Now, really good players, those that have high OBA's and high slugging percentages usually bat 3rd or 4th. On a normal team, they are batting behind the leadoff hitters, who usually have the ability to get on base. So you would expect the best hitters to have a lot of RBI, because they are set up to get a lot of rbi!

What we statheads complain about is the beatification of players like Joe Carter, for no other reason than their RBI. Joe was a good player, and he drove in a lot of runs, but he used an awful lot of outs doing that. And Joe always had tons of people on base in front of him. In 1990, he probably could have driven in 100 runs bunting.

We don't think RBI men are bums. We think that players who are low dimensional and drive in runs are bums.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:07 PM
More Walks:
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A researcher has found two more walks for Ted Williams, as Rob Neyer reports. What he doesn't say, is what pitcher gets the two more walks added to his total?

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:56 PM
Pitching Duel:
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I wish I had stayed up to watch the DBacks-Giants game last night. Both starters went 9 shutout innings. I love pitching duels, especially over the last few years when they have become rare.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:33 AM
May 28, 2002
Battle of the Pete's:
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Pete Walker is making his first start tonight. It's against Pedro Martinez, and that's a rough assignment to give anyone the first time as a starter. But so far, Pete is pitching like Pedro. Through the first two innings, Walker has K'd 5 and walked 1, while Pedro gave up 2 runs in the first inning. He only had 4 K in 13.2 IP coming into tonight, so you wonder if he's going to wear himself out quickly.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:45 PM
No Gohpers:
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Jeff Weaver and Derek Lowe are the only two ERA title qualifiers that have not given up a HR. Weaver is pitching against the Indians tonight. This is a real improvement for him. He usually gives up about 1 HR per 9 IP. You can see it in his ERA this year, 2.92 coming into the game. Interestingly, he seems to be a first half pitcher, so this could just be another good start. Maybe with his thin frame, he tires late in the year. Look especially at his IP and HR allowed:


                ERA   W   L  Sv SvOp  G  GS     IP    H    R   ER  HR  TBB   SO

Pre-All Star   3.94  22  25   0   0  61  60  400.0  393  194  175  35  119  264

Post-All Star  5.08  15  23   0   0  43  42  264.0  291  157  149  37   75  177

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:35 PM
Indians Fall:
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Peter Gammons has an article on the fall of the Indians and A's. There are some interesting things in the article:



The Indians, meanwhile, have let it be known they will entertain inquiries on a number of their veterans -- Bartolo Colon, Jim Thome, Ricardo Rincon, Travis Fryman -- as they attempt to restock their franchise with young corner players and hope that they are ready to restore themselves to the top of the AL Central by 2004.



A few paragraphs later:



What it demonstrates should be obvious. In both cases, unless one is in the revenue upper class, it is practically impossible to compete for a prolonged time period (and while the Braves are in the top six or seven in payrolls, it is still remarkable they have maintained their excellence for 12 straight seasons). Oakland is trying to make do with the second smallest payroll in the league, less than one-third that of the Yankees, 37 percent of that of Boston. Cleveland is coping with the evolutionary reality that ballpark revenues alone do not make a rich franchise, and as the Indians -- remember, they haven't won a postseason series since 1998 and with the exception of the 2000 White Sox had been playing in the league's weakest division since they rose to power -- got old, had to be reobstructed and had to downsize and the luster came off The Jake.



Last year, while hosting BBTN Online, I speculated that the Indians should trade Jim Thome for a high quality pitcher. The Indians had plenty of offense, but were thin in the starting corps. I thought a trade with Anaheim would be perfect. The Angels had good starters, but with Vaughn out and Salmon in a slump, they needed an offensive boost. It was a perfect synergy. The Indians hadn't won a World Series since 1948, and with the age of the team, I thought it was incumbent on management to go full out for it. They didn't, and now it looks like they won't win a World Series for a while.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:24 PM
May 27, 2002
Over the Hurdle?
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A good article from the Denver Post about the success of the Rockies under Clint Hurdle. The most impressive thing is that the team seems to be very mature about the whole thing. Here's a quote from Juan Pierre:



"We are heading in the right direction. But we aren't going to get overjoyed," center fielder Juan Pierre said. "Part of winning is knowing how to deal with it. We haven't accomplished anything yet."



Pierre had scored 10 runs in his first 22 games, 26 in 28 games since Hurdle took over.

The Rockies are 20-8 under Hurdle. What's most impressive is that the team has a 2.79 ERA at home since he's taken over. A Rockies team that can pitch is going to be hard to beat. Maybe those properly stored baseballs are working.

Posted by StatsGuru at 11:23 AM
May 26, 2002
Diamondbacks and Dodgers Defense:
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I was just doing some research for my old friends at STATS, and I found this very interesting, so click here to see how fielding percentage doesn't tell you everything.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:44 PM
Take the Sure Out:
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In yesterday's Yankees-Red Sox game, the Sox got the leadoff man on in the 8th, and then bunted. Stanton fielded the ball and threw to second. They probably would of had the runner, but the throw hit Jeter's glove and then the ground. It was like the World Series all over again. Why do pitchers try to make this play? Even if it's a bad bunt, you always rush the throw to 2nd. Take your time, and make the play to first. The runner on second won't score if you get the remaining two batters out.

The only pitcher I can think of who can make this play is Pettitte. Andy never rushes his throws to any base.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:10 AM
Green Machine:
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Shawn Green set a major league record with 7 HR in 3 games. The four HR game was pretty amazing by itself, and the three he's added since are sure to make him player of the week. I was sitting with a Yankee fan when the Green trade to the Dodgers was announced. He was very disappointed the Yankees didn't get Shawn. I'm not sure Dodger fans really appreciated him, but I think from this point forward they will.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:06 AM
May 23, 2002
Giambi Trade:
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I've been busy at a conference the last few days, but I was shocked tonight when I saw on the ESPN bottom line that Jeremy Giambi had been traded for John Mabry. Clearly, this is salary dumping, and unlike last year, the A's look like they are giving up. That's real sad. I still think they have one of the best organizations in baseball. We'll see what happens, but I think there is going to be tension between Beane and ownership over this. Does Beane want to rebuild from scratch again? How fast can he do it? Or will he move on to greener pastures? Stay tuned.

Posted by StatsGuru at 12:59 AM
May 21, 2002
Ballot Box Stuffing:
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Isaac points out to me a web site, urging people to vote an all Twins-Expos all-star team. The author makes a great point:



I realize some of these players are not All-Star caliber,
but the All Star Game is about the fans, NOT the players and owners. This is
the one time of year baseball gives fans a voice. Lets use it!!!!



Normally, I only send in one all-star ballot online, but this is such a good idea, I'm going to fill it out 25 times, and see how many I can get from Subway. I encourage you all to do the same.
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:37 AM
May 20, 2002
I'm away on business, so
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I'm away on business, so won't be blogging for a few days. I can't get over how many HR the Yankees are hitting. They've actually been a good HR team over the last few years, but they seldom had a stand out slugger. Ventura sure likes his new home.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:40 PM
May 17, 2002
What's with the Angels?
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I notice the Angels have a pretty good record, 5th best in the AL entering Friday. They've outscored their opponents 216-161, which seems about right for their .579 winning percentage. But in looking at the overall stats for the team, I don't see what they are doing that well. For example, their Beane Count is 41, third worst in the AL. So what are they doing well? They are hitting with men on base (.305 BA with men on, .306 with them in scoring position). The pitchers, with the third best ERA in the league, despite issuing a lot of walks and allowing a good number of HR, are only allowing a .229 BA with men in scoring position. I don't believe in clutch performance long term, but the Halo's certainly have been a clutch team this year.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:15 PM
It Was Melvin:
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David de la Fuente points out the catcher I was talking about below was Bob Melvin, which is what I sort of remembered but didn't have time to research. Thanks, David. He also comes up with this bit of interest:



This was from a USA Today story in April:

A great sight: Roger Craig is in a big-league dugout.

Roger is one of the gentlemen in the game, also a refreshingly candid
man.

He was a good manager with San Francisco.

Now he is a roving instructor with Arizona, invited by manager Bob
Brenly. Craig, 72, groomed Brenly, his former catcher, to be a manager.
He did the same for yet another Giants catcher, Bob Melvin, now one of
Brenly's coaches. Craig also saw Dusty Baker become a fine manager
after serving as his coach.


Posted by StatsGuru at 08:56 PM
May 15, 2002
Pena To Royals?
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The speculation in this article is that Tony Pena will be the new manager of the Royals.

A couple of years ago, at a SABR meeting in Rhode Island, Ken Ryan was the guest speaker. I asked him something about catchers; I don't remember if it was "Who was your favorite catcher?" or "Did catchers make a difference to you?" but it was something along those lines. He hadn't thought about the question before, but started talking about Tony Pena and the other Sox catcher at that time (his name escapes me). He said that when Pena caught, he would come out to the mound and just tell Ken to throw hard. The other catcher would talk about how to pitch to this batter. By the time he talked it through, Ryan had decided the other guy was the better catcher for him.

So from that monolouge, Pena strikes me as a good cheerleader, but less of a strategist. That's okay, sometimes you need someone to inject a positive attitude. I hope he has a good strategist sitting next to him on the bench, however.

Posted by StatsGuru at 11:03 AM
May 14, 2002
Deep Split:
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Here's the Indians' offense vs. Lefty and and Righty pitchers this year:


               AVG   AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  SB  CS TBB   SO  OBP  SLG

vs. Left      .296  341 ---  101  18  3  17  58   2   4  31   63 .357 .516

vs. Right     .229  866 ---  198  32  6  26  90  15  12 106  162 .319 .370


While it's nice to be good against lefties, you see RHP much more often, and if this keeps up, the Indians might not see a lefty the rest of the year.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:52 PM
Not Tonight:
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Clemens just gave up a hit in the third.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:50 PM
Clemens Watch:
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Clemens is perfect through 3 with 5 K. He's only thrown 33 pitches. Clemens has been averaging about 16 pitches per inning this year, so he's already saved himself an inning's worth of pitches. This game is moving right along. Nice to see.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:38 PM
Sosa for MVP:
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Here's the Cubs lineup by batting slot (through Monday's games):


               AVG   AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  SB  CS TBB   SO  OBP  SLG

Batting #1    .295  149  20   44   6  2   3  12   8   0   9   20 .346 .423

Batting #2    .211  133  17   28   5  2   2  14   7   0  18   25 .309 .323

Batting #3    .346  127  34   44   4  2  15  23   2   0  29   28 .471 .764

Batting #4    .220  132  11   29   6  1   3  21   0   0  19   20 .316 .348

Batting #5    .210  138  12   29   5  0   4  17   1   1   9   28 .264 .333

Batting #6    .181  127  11   23   5  2   1  13   2   2  18   42 .293 .276

Batting #7    .276  127  13   35   7  0   6  19   1   0  13   25 .343 .472

Batting #8    .198  131   8   26   6  0   2   7   2   0   7   21 .245 .290

Batting #9    .172  116  10   20   3  0   0   5   1   0   5   31 .218 .198


The funny thing is that all the arguments made by Chicago fans for Sosa being MVP last year are legitimate this year. This is a terrible offensive team, and despite that Sosa is putting up great numbers. Too bad they didn't save the arguments for when they were true. Now if the Cubs fans start pushing Sosa, it will be like the boy who cried wolf.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:32 PM
Tonight's the Night?
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Clemens is pitching, and has struck out 4 of the first 6 batters. It's cold, and he's pitching against Tampa Bay. This may be the no-hitter night for Clemens.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:27 PM
The Owner's View:
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John Moores of the San Diego Padres pens this piece for the Wall Street Journal (link requires subscription). He's making the case for revenue sharing, but I don't agree with a number of points.

A handful of clubs have adopted a fairly rational approach to deal with their revenue disadvantage. Unable to afford high-priced talent, these clubs have traded their veteran ballplayers away and opted for a "youth movement," hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. This is a risky strategy because it is extraordinarily difficult to determine which young talent will mature into competitive players. Furthermore, it's hard to retain the talent you groom. Just look at Jason Giambi, who moved this season from the small-market Oakland Athletics to the powerhouse Yankees.

This handful of clubs sounds like the Royals. Youth movements do work if you evaluate your talent and sign them to long term contracts. That's why Cleveland was able to dominate, and why Oakland will continue to be successful. I have no doubt it costs less to sign a player who might be good to a long term contract than wait until a player is good and sign him as a free agent. If the young player doesn't pan out, you haven't lost that much. If the free agent doesn't work out, you're stuck.

Unlike professional football and basketball, baseball has to bear the substantial expense of a "farm" system. It cost the Padres $18.4 million in 2001 to develop future players. This figure includes the cost of scouting and signing amateur players, the operation of our academy in the Dominican Republic, and many of the operating costs associated with six minor league affiliates. The total revenue received by Major League Baseball in 2001 from the minor leagues was $4,698,459. The Padres' share of this revenue amounted to $156,615.

Oh, boo-hoo. Clubs have to pay for a farm system because they don't want to compete with independent minor league teams. If Moores thinks this is such a problem, then he should lead a movement to free the minor leagues from MLB control. Then clubs and trade or buy up and coming players, rather than develop them.

When the Padres lose money, I provide the capital to cover the losses through personal funds or commercial borrowing. Like most clubs, there is no entity related to the Padres that covers losses or creates business synergies. The Padres have lost over $100 million during the seven years I have owned the club -- and we're at the middle of the pack, with some clubs losing less and some losing more.

Some pretend that franchise appreciation makes up for operating losses. I purchased the Padres in late 1994 for about $85 million. A former partner and executive, who is considered one of the brightest lights in the game and is no shrinking violet, recently sold his minority interest back to me at a substantial discount from my purchase price. Franchise appreciation is a benefit that is available only to a limited number of high-revenue clubs.


What I find remarkable about this statement is that Moores is implying that the Padres are not worth $85 million right now. I dare anyone out there to offer Moores $85 million for the Padres. He'd laugh you out of his office. Selig would never let a club be sold for that low price right now. If this is true, I'd seriously think of putting together a group to buy this team. They have some good players and they are opening a new stadium. With really good management, $85 million would be a great investment.

Of course, the article ends with a shot at the Yankees:



In 1999, baseball commissioner Bud Selig assembled a blue-ribbon panel of distinguished Americans -- George Mitchell, Paul Volcker, Richard Levin and George Will -- to address the league's problems. After studying the economics of the game, the panel found that increased revenue sharing and a system of payroll regulation are absolutely necessary for the health of the league. Regulation would be in the form of a "payroll zone" with a floor and a ceiling for each ballclub. The payroll zone, which would be enforced by financial disincentives, would deter ballclubs from exorbitant spending to buy a championship but would also increase player payrolls for many ballclubs.

The fans and the media welcomed the recommendations. But the players' union, which must approve any changes to revenue sharing, has refused to sign off. Not surprisingly, the union is opposed to any action that creates even the slightest risk of reducing the rate of inflation in salaries. The union, it seems, prefers to pretend that a ballclub's payroll is not related to on-field success, and that a well-managed but poor ballclub can be quite competitive. Unfortunately, this simply isn't the case. From 1995 to 2001, the league's top payroll teams have won 219 of 224 post-season games; in other words, they're batting nearly 1.000.

There is, of course, some irony in the union's argument about the irrelevance of player salaries and the significance of good management in professional baseball. But pretending that winning in baseball doesn't require great players, and that great players aren't paid more than average ones, is anything but constructive. If that were the case, George Steinbrenner wouldn't be shelling out $120 million to have Mr. Giambi on his team. Mr. Steinbrenner doesn't need to pretend -- he knows the percentages.


50-50 Splits of gates and media money would do the trick just fine. If a team can win and survive with a $20 million dollar payroll, that's fine. But their players will get tired of no fans in the stands. My guess is the players will never accept a cap. So let the teams figure out revenue sharing on their own, then let the players look like bad guys if they don't accept it. The loss of revenue the big clubs will suffer will bring things much more into balance.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:21 PM
May 13, 2002
Red Sox Impressive:
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I was just looking at the Red Sox team stats, trying to figure out why they are so good, and I was really impressed. If you break the lineup down by batting slot, only one position, the 5th slot is below league average in OBA (AL OBA, .331, Sox #5, .329). And those numbers are despite Tony Clark. If your problem is that your 1st baseman can't hit, however, that's an easy one to solve. Even with Manny out, they have plenty of options for DH/1b with Daubach, Henderson and Offerman. Secondly, the starting pitching has a phenomenal ERA of 2.97. The one weak link looks like the bullpen, with its 4.14 ERA, but if your starters are pitching that well, you don't have to use the bullpen much, although the starters are averaging only 6 IP per start. Some of that is coming from babying Pedro; I think that will change as the season progresses.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:45 PM
May 11, 2002
It's Not the Height, It's the Humidity:
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Rob Neyer has a neat article on the balls used at Coors Field. The Rockies have started to keep them in a storage room at a humidity similar to the level the factory uses to store balls. The Rockies noticed that balls were drying out, so by controlling the humidity in the storage area, they are hoping the balls won't be as lively. This makes sense, since Denver is a desert. The Rocky Mountains squeeze most of the moisture out of the air by the time in reaches the city. So far, runs are down a bit at Coors this year, but it's still early, and the real drying out doesn't happen until summer.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:35 PM
May 10, 2002
Sorry I haven't been blogging
Permalink

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. But my mom is home from the hospital now and doing well. Hope to be writing this weekend. Have you noticed how the real problems in baseball are in the AL? The NL looks pretty competitively balanced, except for the Brewers, who are an AL team anyway. I'm not sure why, but there doesn't appear to be many teams in the NL that are really out of it, while there are a number in the AL that are destined to a season of playing out the string.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:05 AM
May 07, 2002
Media Bias?
Permalink

I was surprised by the bent of this article. It pretty much ignored the great perfromance by Josh Fogg. Fogg beats Johnson might have been a better title.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:24 PM
He's Not Whining, Really:
Permalink

Griffey's feelings are hurt again. This is why the Seattle fans were happy to see him go. Griffey strikes me as a very negative person. Any criticism of him is devestating to him and he has to lash out. It's too bad. He has a lot of talent, and people want to root for him, but he makes it difficult. Of course, the biggest insult of all is that the Reds are winning without him. Now, I think the Reds will be a better team with Griffey, but there isn't a lot of evidence for that right now.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:37 AM
May 03, 2002
Olerud's Defense:
Permalink

While I'm on a Mariners' tear here, Alan Schwarz has an excellent article on John Olerud. He's been one of my favorite players for a number of years, and Schwarz takes a well researched look at John's defense.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:06 AM
Cameron Story:
Permalink

A few years ago, BBTN was doing a week from Disney World at the ESPN Club. I had the family down, and my nephew is a big baseball fan, so I got him in to see the show live. I asked the producer where he could sit, and he said, "I thought he could sit with Harold," meaning Harold Reynolds. Well, my nephew was thrilled. Harold took him into the club, talked about playing 2nd and shortstop with him, and sat him down at a table with the guests that night, Greg Vaughn and Mike Cameron, who at the time were with the Cincinnati Reds. They all signed his baseball. In the audience was John Smoltz, who came over to say hi to everyone at the table. He signed the ball also. I said to my nephew afterward, "You have a ball with a 50 HR hitter and a Cy Young winner, that's pretty good." With Cameron's 4 HR last night, I think the ball went way up in value.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:15 AM
Boone Boom:
Permalink

This is why I shouldn't criticize anyone. The second I do they hit 2 HR in an inning. I know anything can happen in 100 AB. Next time I'll wait until the end of May.
Do you think Bret reads this blog?

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:10 AM
May 02, 2002
Busy Bullpens:
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Today's Marlins-Cardinals game strikes me as the kind I don't like to attend. There were 11 pitching changes, 5 for the Marlins, 6 for the Cardinals. At least for Florida, when Penny could only go 2 innings, Torborg brought in a reliever who pitched 3 innings. He then let everyone work 1 innings, and they all pitched well. La Russa pulls his usual over-managing act. Pearce is gone after 4.1, so he brings in Stechschulte to finish the 4th. He gave up a hit but struck one out, so does he come out for the 6th? No, bring in Timlin. He pitches 1 inning, allows 2 baserunners but no runs. Is he strong enough to continue? We'll never know. There's a lefty leading off the 7th, so La Russa has to go to Matthews, to get one out, which he does with a five-pitch K. Righties are 4 for 20 with 4 walks vs. Matthews this year, but he has to come out for Dave Veres. Now Veres has been pitching well, but his ERA looks to me like it should be higher, and he already has 2 losses and a blown save. Veres also gets one out, but gives up 3 runs doing it. Rodriguez gets hammered in his 1/3 of an inning, and finally the ball goes to Hackman, who is allowed to pitch 2 innings trailing (I assume they were out of pitchers at that point).

Now doesn't it make sense, when your starter is knocked out early, to bring in a guy who can pitch a few innings, just in case the guy you want to finish the game stinks today? They had nothing when Veres blew up, because the Cardinals had used their better relievers already. It was easy to manage a bullpen when you had 4 great starters, Honeycutt and Eckersley. La Russa and Duncan were given too much credit for handling that staff.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:18 PM
Boone Swoon:
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Last year, one of the most lively points for discussion on BBTN Online was Bret Boone, and whether his season represented a real improvement in his ability, or if it was a fluke. Supporting the real improvement side, Boone didn't let up. Even got better as the season progressed. Also in support of the real side was Boone's increased bulk. On the fluke side was Boone's career, which was basically unremarkable, and the fact he was in a free agent year. Also, supporting the fluke argument was the lack of interest in him as a free agent, although that may have more to do with baseball economics and the labor situation.

Right now, the flukes are winning. Through last night (May 1) Boone is batting .214, with a .270 OBA and a .357 slugging percentage. I wonder how long Lou will stick with him in the #3 slot. I worried last year when Lou started using Boone batting 3rd, thinking he was going to decline. That never happened, but it is now, and the third slot is a bad place to have an unproductive hitter.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:16 AM
Mike Wechsler writes with this
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Mike Wechsler writes with this bit of trivia:



Manny Ramirez has hit 9 hr's this year, each one in a different inning! In only 24 games. This feat of first 9 hrs in 9 different innings has been accomplished 5 times since 1980, including once by Von Hayes. Wow. When Mac hit 70, none were in 2nd inning.



I haven't checked this out, but I trust Mike.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:01 AM
April 30, 2002
Hot Rod:
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Alex Rodriguez hit his 9th HR of the season tonight, and more importantly, his 250th of his career. Only Foxx got to 250 at a younger age. He'll be 27 in July, and he's already 1/3 of the way to Aaron's record. It's conceivable that he'll have 450 HR by his 30th birthday. Wouldn't it be cool if a shortstop set the all-time HR record?

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:51 PM
Watch Out Monty:
Permalink

Bob Montgomery wrote me about Ichiro's improved selectivity:



I wanted to comment on something you wrote today, specifically: "It seems
plate discipline can be taught. Imagine how good Ichiro will be if he learns
to take pitches in the dirt and over his head."

I think maybe he already has.

Some observations:
Ichiro's walks last year: 30
He is currently on pace to draw 65 this year.
Ichiro's OBP-BA, 2001: .031
This year, so far: .074
He has maintained his .380+ OBP even as his batting average is 40 points
below last year's average.
Ichiro's pitches/PA, 2001: 3.39
in 2002, thus far: 3.73

For a comparison (admittedly a limited one) I looked at pitch/PA for Jason
Giambi.
His lowest number was 3.89 pitches/PA, in 1997, and his highest was 4.19,
last year. That's a difference of .3 pitches/PA, over a span of 5 years.
So far this year, Ichiro has increased his pitches/PA by .34 - which is
quite a difference, I think.

Anyway, the season is young and Ichiro's apparent change might just be
random variation over the first 100 AB of the season - but, as I wrote a
week or so ago
(http://vdub_bobby.blogspot.com/2002_04_01_vdub_bobby_archive.html#75292931)
, through the first five games of the season, Ichiro was hitting .250 with
no walks and no extra-base hits (a .250/.250/.250 line). In the 20 games
since then (he has played in 18 of those), he is hitting .329 with 10 walks
and and 10 extra-base hits (producing a post-first-5 line of
.329/.427/.529). After not drawing a walk in the first five games of the
season, he has not had a similar streak of more than 1 game until the last
four games. :(

I don't know if his new plate discipline will last for the whole season, but
I certainly hope so, being a Ms fan.



Thanks, Bob!
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:39 PM
Hillenbrand's Defense:
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I was just watching the Orioles-Red Sox, and Melvin Mora just laid down a bunt for a base hit. Hillenbrand was playing back of the bag, and didn't try to make a play. NESN then showed a wide angle replay, and it struck me that Hillenbrand should have made a better effort. He never charged the ball. He jogged in a few feet, then gave up. But it's a ball Graig Nettles would have made a play on. He would have charged in, scooped the ball with his bare hand, and made a throw to first. The ball was bunted hard. If Hillenbrand had started charging the second he saw Mora square, he would have had a chance. The Red Sox announcers let him off too easily.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:34 PM
Soriano and Hillenbrand:
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On April 1st, I commented that Soriano was not the Yankees best choice for a leadoff man. However, Soriano has put up a great leadoff OBA of .385. He's walked more, drawing four. That's still not a lot, but he didn't get his fourth walk until June last year. I don't think I was wrong, totally wrong, however. Soriano is great at getting hits, and getting extra bases with those hits. That's a sign of an RBI man, not a leadoff man. I don't think Soriano's BA will stay at these lofty levels, but his power seems to be real. His stats really scream number five hitter at me.

Earlier, I also commented on Shea Hillenbrand being more patient at the plate. This has payed off in 7 walks for Shea, a level he didn't achieve until July last year. Rob Neyer notes in this column that the Expos are walking more. I noted earlier that the Royals are walking more. It seems plate discipline can be taught. Imagine how good Ichiro will be if he learns to take pitches in the dirt and over his head.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:44 PM
Muser Fired:
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Rob Neyer is much closer to this situation, so read his column for a Royals fan's take on the firing. According to ESPN.com, this is the first time 4 managers were fired in April. Of course, it's not really a fair comparison. Baseball seasons, for most of baseball history, didn't start until late April. And without lights, a lot of games got canceled due to inclement weather. So before 1990 or so, it would be hard to play enough games in April to get fired. I'm going to have to look through my Big Mac and see how many managers were let go after less than 30 games in a season. That's probably a better point of comparison.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:23 PM
April 29, 2002
Winning Percentage:
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The distribution of winning percentages looks anything but normal right now. Here's the histogram. The label represents the center point of the values.


.300 XXXXXX

.400 XXXX

.500 XXXXXXX

.600 XXXXXXXXXXX

.700 XX


In other words, there are thirteen teams playing better than .550 ball, and 10 teams playing less than .450 ball. If winning percentages were normally distributed (as they should be), and assumig a standard deviation of .05, there should be 20 teams playing between .450 and .550, and 28 teams between .400 and .600!

I'm sure Bud Selig would point to these numbers as showing the need for better revenue sharing, and to a point he's right. But a number of teams have simply done a poor job of building winning teams. Just look at the difference between Baltimore and Oakland. Detroit, Milwaukee, KC and Baltimore have done poor jobs of developing winning teams, and it turns out that even new stadiums won't bring out fans to watch losing teams. Without better revenue sharing, the poor teams probably won't win a division, but as Pittsburgh, Montreal and Cincinnati are showing, you don't have to be rich to at least be good.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:20 PM
Red Resurgence:
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Sometimes stats don't tell you anything. Sometimes they point right to the answer. The Cincinnati Reds are in first place in the NL Central today, and in fact have the third best record in the NL. And yet, when I look at the hitting and pitching, they look like a .500 team. The pitching has been good; the team ranks 5th in the NL with a 3.53 ERA. The hitting hasn't been great; they are 10th in runs with 101 (they've allowed 99). In general, when I see something like this, I immediately think luck. In the case of the Reds, however, we can isolate the luck exactly.

Reds starters are 8-8. The relievers are 7-1, with 3 blown saves. The relievers do have a much better ERA than the starters, (3.86 for staters, 3.07 for the relievers). On top of this, the Reds are good in one clutch hitting category. Look at the close and late category below:


BATTING SPLITS

 

               AVG   AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  SB  CS TBB   SO  OBP  SLG

Total         .252  798 101  201  34  5  18  98  17  10  83  179 .329 .375

 

None on       .252  444 ---  112  18  3  12  12   0   0  41   99 .325 .387

Runners on    .251  354 ---   89  16  2   6  86  17  10  42   80 .334 .359

 

None on/out   .266  203 ---   54  10  1   5   5   0   0  14   45 .320 .399

Scoring Posn  .215  223 ---   48   8  1   1  71   8   2  28   53 .304 .274

ScPos/2 Out   .208  106 ---   22   4  0   1  31   4   2  21   25 .339 .274

 

Close & Late  .341  123 ---   42   3  1   3  24   4   4  14   25 .423 .455

Bases Loaded  .263   19 ---    5   1  0   0  15   0   0   1    3 .273 .316


So the Reds have been able to win by having the starters keep them in games, having a tough bullpen, and great late clutch hitting. They are 10-4 in games decided by one or two runs.

Of course, the Reds claim that it's all chemistry. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 11:22 AM
April 28, 2002
Family Emergency:
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Sorry I haven't written for a few days. My mother is very sick and I needed to spend time with my family. I should be back to commenting tomorrow.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:05 PM
April 25, 2002
Popping the Cork:
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ESPN reports that Omar vizquel says in his biography that all of Albert Belle's bats were corked. Somehow, this is a big deal. Albert isn't going to be swinging a corked bat anytime soon, and did anyone really think his bats weren't corked? Of course, the sad thing is that Albert was so strong, he probably didn't need any cork.

I wonder, however, if this means we are going to see more tell-all books from ballplayers. It strikes me that a lot of ballplayers don't lead exemplary lives. I wonder if Omar would like it if Albert wrote a book where he talked about bad things that Omar might have done? Albert is an easy target; I doubt there are many people in baseball who like him. I can't wait to hear Belle's reaction, and I wonder if people are going to trust Omar as much in the future.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:54 PM
Tino Walks:
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I know a lot of people who were sorry to see Tino Martinez leave the Yankees. This was, of course, an emotional reaction, not a logical one. Tino peaked for the Yankees in 1997. He set career highs in AB, Runs, Hits, HR, RBI and Walks in 1997. He then started a steady decline, with a rebound last year. I like Tino, but the Yankees had a chance to replace a declining first baseman with one at the top of his offensive game. I would have done the same thing. At this point, I don't think anyone can argue with the move.

Tino's offensive line is very interesting. As of this morning, he's hitting .197, but with a .316 OBA. He's drawn 12 walks which would put him on pace to match his best years reaching by the base on balls. But his selectivity hasn't been getting him better pitches to hit. He's walked 8 times with men in scoring position, 5 times in that situation with 2 outs, suggesting that teams are pitching around him, rather than Tino becoming more selective. He had a good night last night, so maybe his hitting will start turning around. But if Tino's batting has really declined, I would expect more teams to start pitching to him, and his walks to go down.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:46 AM
April 24, 2002
More on Defense and Triples:
Permalink

David de la Fuente has a different take on my triples comment concerning outfield throwing arms:



I enjoyed your Strat-O-Matic post, a game I played for several years in
HS and college. But I, along with most major league scouts (of which I
am not one, just a copy editor for a major metro daily), would disagree
with your assessment that throwing arms are stronger now than ever
before. I think there's only one guy out there, Vlad, who has a cannon;
you go back to past eras and there were always two or three guys like
that around at one time, maybe more. (Ellis Valentine, Dwight Evans,
Dave Parker in the era you mentioned, 1979.) I've heard scouts say that
there's nothing but lollipop arms out there because guys just don't
practice long heaves anymore, in the same way that nobody shoots free
throws either -- just not too interesting. Anyway, as far as a
defensive aspect to the triples trend you mentioned, I'd have to guess
that better scouting and outfield positioning against hitters is a much
bigger factor.



Good points. Thanks, David!
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:09 PM
April 23, 2002
Picking up the Pitching:
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Pirate hitters have responded. They have 6 hits and 6 runs in the second inning to erase a 3 run Dodger lead.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:57 PM
Wild Thing:
Permalink

Jimmy Anderson was a bit wild in the first, walking 2 and hitting 2 batters. He's down 3-0. The Expos just made an error to let two runs in. Maybe these teams can't take the pressure of all the good publicity they've been getting.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:34 PM
Crying Wolf:
Permalink

You have to wonder if Randy Wolf's elbow is okay. He's striking out people, but his ERA is high. In the first inning tonight, he's given up 2 hits and 3 walks, including a grand slam to Deivi Cruz.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:30 PM
Nice Review:
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Eric Olsen of Tres Producers writes this nice review of my blog. Thanks, Eric!

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:41 PM
Team Chemistry:
Permalink

Sometimes Rob Neyer makes me feel redundant. Here's a column about effect of Lofton's leaving on the Cleveland clubhouse. Basically, the Indians say they have better chemistry without Kenny's music blarring. Rob points out, correctly, that the Indians did pretty well with Lofton being a cancer in the clubhouse.

I don't know how many times I've sat in on meetings where some former player talks about the importance of chemistry. Every time I'd point to the A's of the early '70's and the Yankees later in that decade. Both teams had Reggie Jackson. Some of you may have heard that Jackson is not easy to get along with. That is a huge understatement. I've seen Reggie in action, and it's much worse than you've heard. But he was a great ballplayer, and his teams won. If I'm putting together a team, I want a lot of Reggies and Barry Bonds and Rickey Hendersons, who want to win, and don't care if they hurt your feelings in reaching that goal. I don't want them as friends, but I want them on my team.

Posted by StatsGuru at 11:12 AM
Humility:
Permalink

In this game recap of last night's KC win, Paul Byrd shows he's a team player.



"I'd like to take credit and say I've thrown some gems, but our offense has scored early and made it easier for me," said Byrd, who combined a good, hard slider with an assortment of screwballs. "I had good location."



In 28.1 IP, Byrd has not walked a man. His OBA allowed is actually lower than his batting average allowed! (.236 OBA, .238 BA) He's allowed 3 HR, but 2 of them have been solo shots. A ray of hope in KC.
Posted by StatsGuru at 10:17 AM
April 21, 2002
1-7, Triple:
Permalink

When I was in college, I caught the Strat-O-Matic Baseball bug. It's a simulation game, and a lot of fun to play. One year we played with the 1979 cards. I had Bob Watson have a tremendous season for me that year. You would roll three dice, two red and one white. The white die would choose one of 6 columns; the combination of the red die would choose a result in the column. Sometimes, the results would be broken up into two events, and you would pick a card between 1 and 20 to decide. For example, Bob Watson had a 1-6 (column 1, entry 6) with a HR 1-18, double 19-20. When you'd roll this, you'd say, HR 1-18, double the rest. Since triples are rare events, you almost never saw a triple on a straight roll, it was almost always split, and it was almost always on an unlikely roll, like 2 or 3 or 11 or 12. In 1979, my friend Jim Storer had George Brett. George had a 1-7 triple. No split. A straight triple on a probablisticly high roll. When Jim would roll the 1-7 on Brett's card, he'd say, "1-7, triple," and his opponent would ask, "Triple what?" and Jim would reply, "Just a triple. It's like a triple 1-20, but you don't pick a split card!" It was scary facing Brett that year.

Well, Furcal may end up with one this year. He had three triples in one game today, tying an MLB record. As a point of comparison, Willie Mays Aikens had 2 triples for his entire career! Triples have shown a steady decline throughout the 20th century. Every decade, triples were less abundant than the previous 10 year span. My guess is that the more prominent the HR became, the more risky it was to try to take the extra base, stretching a double into a triple. Also, defense has gotten better every decade, and as throwing arms got stronger, the chance of being thrown out at third went up. Triples are one of my favorite hits, so I hope we see a few more from Furcal this year.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:39 PM
Walk this Way:
Permalink

Yankees drew 12 walks today. An even dozen. Can you imagine being a fan watching this game? Even if I were rooting for the Yankees, I'd be screaming at the pitchers to throw the ball over the plate. I hope Buck Martinez sits his staff down and tells them they can't win unless they throw strikes.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:19 PM
April 20, 2002
The Rookie:
Permalink

Just saw this movie tonight. It's the first G-movie I've seen in years that wasn't a children's movie. Good plot, good acting, nothing gratutitous. Makes one wonder why they can't make movies like this all the time. See it if you haven't.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:29 PM
Gammons on Contraction:
Permalink

Peter Gammons has an excellent article on the Twins, Expos and contraction. He brings up important integrity issues; if the Expos are still in the race come summer, will MLB let them expand the payroll and take on a couple of veterans who could help them win? A must read.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:27 PM
Tough Luck for Ted:
Permalink

With 2 out in the 7th, Lilly gave up a solo HR, tieing the game 1-1. Torre pulled him. He can't get the win, but he and the Yankees have to be real happy with that outing.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:35 PM
Expos Win!
Permalink

The Expos beat the Mets 7-5 today. The Buy the Expos group was supposed to be at the game today, and the attendance was over 11,000, so it looks like they swelled the crowd. Expos are now tied with the Mets for first place in the East. A win tomorrow would put them in first alone. If the Twins beat the Indians tonight, they will be in first place also. I hope Bud sees the irony here.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:31 PM
Ted Lilly:
Permalink

I'm watching Ted Lilly pitch for the Yankees today, and I really like what I'm seeing. Last year he would have moments of brillance, but he would always tire around the 4th or 5th, and walks and HR would kill him. Alberto Castillo is catching, and Jim Kaat has lots of praise for Castillo's pitch calling. Castillo and Lilly are keeping things unpredictable. Lilly now has 8 K through 6 innings (he's walked 1 and hit 2), but has only allowed 2 hits. He's thrown 87 pitchers about 15 per inning. That's very efficient.

I like watching Lilly. He's not a big guy, but I love his curve ball. Reminds me of a shorter Bruce Hurst. He's doing a great job filling in for Pettitte today. I should also mention that Roy Halladay is pitching nearly as brilliantly. The difference is a HR pitch to Bernie Williams.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:26 PM
April 19, 2002
Patterson:
Permalink

Remeber what a bust Corey Patterson was in spring training? On the Baseball Direct Scoreboard site, you can get STATS, Inc. listings for players, including News and Notes. This was written about Patterson in March:


3/15/02  3:17 PM CT

Manager Don Baylor has been backing off his early-spring statement that 

Patterson will start in center field for the Cubs. Patterson has been 

slumping, forcing his manager to reconsider his initial decision.

STATS Says:

Patterson probably could use a full season at Triple-A Iowa, and making 

such a scenario more feasible is the success of Roosevelt Brown in the 

Cubs' camp. Brown could be the starting center fielder on Opening Day.  

(TH)

A little over a month later, Patterson is hitting well and Brown looks like he's heading back to the minors. Brown did homer today, but Patterson has a .429 OBA and Brown a .216 (through 6 innings today). Maybe spring training isn't all that meaningful.

Posted by StatsGuru at 05:39 PM
Good Griffey News:
Permalink

Here's a positive report that Griffey will be back by the end of the month. Good news for him and for the Reds. Looks like he'll come back against the Giants, so if Bonds' hamstring holds up, that will be a fun matchup.

Posted by StatsGuru at 12:13 PM
Steve Cox Injured:
Permalink

Wouldn't that be a better title than the one the St. Petersburg Times uses?

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:38 AM
Does the Manager Matter?
Permalink

Ross Newhan reports on the firing of Davey Lopes, a Dodger favorite:



There were no creative options for Lopes, once a catalytic leadoff man with the Dodgers, and no future for either batting coach Rod Carew, replaced by Gary Matthews, or pitching coach Bob Apodaca, replaced by Dave Stewart.

Former Dodger Eric Young was signed as a free agent in the hope he could ignite the top of the lineup, but he has documented that you can't steal first base while batting .140 with a .262 on-base percentage.

The rest of Matthews' hitters are doing what they do best, ranking third in the league in strikeouts and 14th in on-base percentage and batting average. There also have been no miracles under the respected Stewart. Only Colorado has a higher earned-run average than a comparatively no-name staff that was 12th in the league in pitching last year when no starter won more than 11 games.

Lopes could not overcome the burden. He was Dead Man Walking and knew it even before the Pittsburgh series when he reminded reporters that he had told them when hired before the 2000 season that there were no quick fixes, that it was a five- or seven-year program.

"I don't care who you put in this seat," he said. "You can put Joe Torre in this seat, you can put Dusty Baker. It doesn't matter. You're going to get the same results. I have no doubt about it."



I don't agree with Lopes. Baker and Torre would have worked on maximizing the strength of the team, and minimizing the weaknesses. Instead of trying to build a team in a certain image, they would have worked with what they had to put the best team and lineup on the field. If you have a lot of HR hitters, don't try to build a speed team. Instead, try to find people who can get on in front of the home run hitters. Baker has had great teams and mediocre teams, and always seems to do well. Torre has always dealt with his personnel and the media well, and when given a good team, he's been able to take them to the playoffs. Lopes has to learn to work with what he has before he'll become a good manager.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:30 AM
On-base + Slugging:
Permalink

This is a simple stat that gives you a quick one-number comparison of players. Just add on-base and slugging together. Those that do both well rate high, those that do both poorly rate low. It's not perfect, but it does correlate well with measures like runs created.

Everyday I get an E-Mail from STATS, Inc., which among other things lists the trailers in OPS and Rey Ordonez's rank. Here's the list through game of Thursday:


Top 10 Trailers in OBP+SLG, and their king: Rey Ordonez

  1.  .252 Chris Singleton

  2.  .376 Jose Macias

  3.  .408 Jason Tyner

  4.  .409 Greg Vaughn

  5.  .420 Tim Salmon

  6.  .426 Bobby Smith

  7.  .446 Jason Kendall

  8.  .448 Tony Clark

  9.  .462 Eric Young

 10.  .467 Adam Kennedy

 15.  .519 Rey Ordonez


What strikes me about this list is the inclusion of 4 big names: Greg Vaughn, Salmon, Kendall and Clark. Tim Salmon spent most of his career at the other end of the spectrum. Jason Kendall was always known for his ability to get on base; the Pirates sometimes use him as a leadoff hitter. Greg Vaughn is supposed to be the big power hitter for Tampa Bay, and Tony Clark is proving Randy Smith right. It's still early, but at this point, I don't think Salmon's career continuing is very promising, and we may be seeing the last of Clark and Vaughn as well. I don't know about Kendall. Maybe that leg injury took a lot out of him. It's too bad, he's fun to watch.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:15 AM
April 18, 2002
Everyday Eddie:
Permalink

Guardado has settled very nicely into the closer role for Minnesota. He's 7 for 7 with a perfect 9th today (struck out the side). That gives him 13 K in 8 innings, with only 3 hits and 4 BB (I love to see more K than hits + BB). Torii Hunter now has 5 HR, giving the Twins some power in the middle of the lineup they lacked last year.

I was praising the Royals for walking more a few days ago. Today, 0 BB, 7 K.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:50 PM
Lopes Fired:
Permalink

Davey Lopes was fired today after the Brewers reportedly got off to their worst start ever. I wonder how many Brewer managers were saved by April? A few years ago, I looked at the Brewers won-lost record through May 15. For the life of the franchise, they were above .500 through May 15th, but well under .500 after that. I wonder how often the good start made management think they had something good going and that the losing was due more to luck or injury?

That's two managers fired in April. I wonder if that's some kind of record.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:44 PM
April 17, 2002
B&B:
Permalink

Looks like this is going to mean Bonds and Berkman. Both went deep tonight for their MLB leading 8th HR. I'll bet on Barry, but Berkman is hitting these on the road, and Houston is a pretty good HR park.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:37 PM
The Cubs scored 6 runs
Permalink

The Cubs scored 6 runs in the top of the first inning and lost. And it wasn't close. The Expos beat them 15 to 8. The top 5 of the Expos order were 9 for 24 with 8 runs and 10 RBI. And they did it all with just 1 HR. Bruce Chen was the pitching hero. When Ohka couldn't get an out in the first, Chen came in and held Chicago to 1 run over 4 innings, and let the Expos get back into it. Remember to scroll down on the side to the Buy the Expos link!

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:33 PM
Backward Battery:
Permalink

The San Diego Padres can't be happy about the following batting stats:


               AVG   AB   R    H  2B 3B  HR RBI  SB  CS TBB   SO  OBP  SLG

Batting #8    .111   45   2    5   1  0   0   0   0   0   2   12 .149 .133

Batting #9    .114   44   3    5   2  0   1   4   0   0   2    9 .152 .227

 

As p          .148   27   1    4   2  0   0   3   0   0   1    8 .179 .222

As c          .070   43   1    3   0  0   0   0   0   1   5   12 .167 .070

Padre catchers have 1/2 the batting average adn 1/3 the slugging percentage. Tom Lampkin has 1 hit in 25 AB. Gonzalez was 1 for 6 before he went down for 6-8 weeks with a broken wrist.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:33 PM
Pirate Pitchers:
Permalink

The Pittsburgh Pirates with a 3-2 win this afternoon are in first place in the NL Central by a game. Looking at their pitching stats on ESPN.com, I notice that all but 3 of their pitchers have ERA's under 3.00. With a 2.90 ERA, they are more than 2 runs below 2001's ERA of 5.05. Two runs a game, if they could maintain that over a season would be over 300 runs for the season. As a rule of thumb, 10 runs in your favor equals about 1 win, so we're looking at a potential 30 game turnaround based on the pitching. That would give them 92 wins, and certainly keep them in contention in the Central.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:21 PM
April 16, 2002
Tigers Win:
Permalink

Jose Lima pitched 6 shutout innings, and the Tigers offense exploded for 9 runs to get in the win column. The Orioles record for losses at the start of the season is safe for another year. Also of note, Ben Grieve hit his 5th HR. Maybe he's coming out of his 2 year slide.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:13 PM
Giambi batting 4th:
Permalink

I'm watching the bottom of the 9th of the Yankee game, and the top of the order came up with the Yankees down 1 run. Giambi is batting 4th. Now, I believe the general consensus is that you bat your best hitter 3rd. Why? So he gets more AB. Jeter just made the 3rd out, and Giambi never got a chance to win it with one swing. Just a little thing, but over a season, why take plate appearances away from Giambi?

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:09 PM
Barry Berkman?
Permalink

Lance Berkman had 3 HR tonight, giving him 7 on the year, tying him with Barry Bonds for the NL lead. Nine of his 15 hits this year have been for extra bases.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:05 PM
The top five players in
Permalink

The top five players in the Expos lineup tonight all have OBA's over .390. They've scored 5 runs and driven in 7 tonight. Often I see managers break up their OBA's guys in the lineup. By bunching them together, you multiply the effect, since there isn't an out machine to stop the rally. Looks like an Earl Weaver influence on Frank Robinson.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:01 PM
Tim Salmon has not come
Permalink

Tim Salmon has not come out of his slump from last season. Starting today, he was hitting .146, 5th worst in the AL. Two years ago, he slugged over .500, now he can't get his batting average over the Mendoza line. From 1992 to 2000, he was an extremely consistent and effective hitter, getting on base and slugging. Sad to see his career go down so quickly. He's 33, so it's not that unusual, but with so many players doing well into their late 30's these days, you don't expect such a large and quick decline.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:57 PM
Super Hero?
Permalink

The Orioles, with a 5-4 lead in the 9th over the Yankees are bringing in their closer, Jorge Julio. Now, those of you who are fans of DC comics know that super heros always have two first names.


Clark Kent - Superman

Bruce Wayne - Batman (technically, not a superhero, he didn't have superpowers)

Barry Allen - The Flash

Hal Jordan - Green Latern


Anyone have any suggestions as to what Julio's secret identity is?
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:47 PM
Hillenbrand
Permalink

Shea Hillenbrand has a double and a HR tonight, his 5th. He now has a 12 game hitting streak to start the season. Last year he started with a nine-game hitting streak, and batted .343 in April, but with only 2 HR. He fell off to .228 in May and .206 in June. Dwight Evans has been working with him. Evans was a very selective hitter, and Shea claims to be listening to him along those lines. Last year in April he had 1 walk, this year so far 3. But where it seems to be paying off the most is that Shea is looking for his pitch, rather than just swinging at the first thing that comes along. So far, it's working great.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:42 PM
April 15, 2002
Buy the Expos!
Permalink

Click here to go to a site where you can agree to buy a part of the Expos. A group of students from Penn got the idea to solicit pledges to buy the Expos from MLB. Any amount is accepted, and unless they get enough to buy the team, you won't have to actually donate anything. So stick it to Bud and help buy the Expos. They are also trying to get as many people to go to the Expos game in Montreal on Saturday, so if you can make it, go.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:47 PM
April 14, 2002
I can't believe this. I'm
Permalink

I can't believe this. I'm watching the Mariners at Texas. In consecutive half innings, I saw Ichiro strikeout swing, and look bad doing it, then make a terrible throw to the plate as Catalanotto was scoring. You don't see either of hose two often.

Posted by StatsGuru at 05:48 PM
KC Walks:
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One of the big problems with the Royals last year was that they were out walked and out homered, as shown in Roy Neyer's Beane Count. For those of you unfamiliar with it, the Beane count is named after Billy Beane, whose philosophy is to have batters who walk and hit HR, and pitchers who allow neither. The Beane Count is the total of the league rank of those four categories. The Royals had the worst Beane Count in the AL last year, ranking 11 in HR Hit, 14 in walks drawn, 13 in HR allowed and 13 in walks allowed.

This year, they are still being out homered, 14th in hitting them and 13th in allowing them (outhomered 19-3). But the pitchers and batters have improved. The Royals are now 8th in walks drawn, and 2nd in fewest allowed! That's a big improvement for the pitching staff. It hasn't shown up in the ERA yet, but it's the right direction, and Royal fans should appreciate that.

Posted by StatsGuru at 05:09 PM
When will Detroit Win? Part IV:
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I don't think it will be today. David Ortiz hits a triple with the bases loaded. Twins now up 10-7. Matt Anderson comes up 6 outs short of a save, as he fails to retire a batter.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:54 PM
When will Detroit Win? Part III:
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Macias' defense at 2nd is just killing the Tigers in this inning. He just failed to cover 1st on a bunt, putting the go-ahead run at 2nd with 0 out. Tigers lost both of their 2nd basemen in the same game; Easley is expected back next week.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:47 PM
When will Detroit Win? Part II:
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Bobby Kielty hits a pinch hit HR off Matt Anderson to tie the game. No save for Anderson. And Jacque Jones follows up with a single. Not looking good for the Tigers right now.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:45 PM
When will Detroit Win?
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I just turned on the Tigers game to see if they would get their first win. They are ahead 7-5 with the Twins leading in the bottom of the 8th. The leadoff man for the Twins gets on when the emergency starter at 2b, Macias throws the ball into the dugout (I believe it was scored a hit and an error). Pujols is now bringing in his closer to try to get 6 outs.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:41 PM
Burnett shut out the Braves
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Burnett shut out the Braves today. He now has 25 strikeouts in 21.2 IP. This is out of line with previous years of his career, where he averaged 6.6 K per 9. If this strikeout increase is real, look for Burnett to have a good year.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:33 PM
The Brothers Hernandez:
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Livan and Orlando Hernandez both seem to have refound their form. Livan won his third game yesterday, although he has to be a little disappointed he only struck out 2 Brewers. El Duque's neck injury seemed to be minor, as he pitched well in a losing cause against the Red Sox on Friday. If you saw any of the Giants game yesterday, don't you love the way Orlando's uniform hangs on him? Looks like something out of a distant era.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:16 AM
April 13, 2002
Win Shares:
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I've spent most of the day reading win shares. It's a fascinating book. I think I'm going to have to read it a couple of more times to get everything I can out of it. The fielding calculations are complicated but fascinating. There are little things about the system that still bother me, but I don't want to criticize anything until I'm sure I understand what James is doing exactly.

One thing that bothered me on the surface, and something that James goes to great length to convince the reader is true, is that the quality of the team you play for does not affect win shares. For those of you unfamiliar with this new system, James takes the actual number of wins by a team, multiplies by 3, and divides those up among the players based on batting, pitching and fielding. So a team with 60 wins gets to divide 180 win shares; a team with 100 wins gets to divide 300 win shares. James, through example, makes a compelling case that players with similar stats, playing on teams of opposite extremes, get the same number of win shares.

I was still skeptical. I had a hunch that you could put together a really good team, and they'd be shown to win an unusually high number of games. Think of it this way; if you could take a year and have the best players at each position, how many games would the team win?

On page 526 of the Win Shares book, the players who gathered the most win shares in the 80's are listed. I selected the middle year of the decade, 1985, and went down the list filling in a team with the first person I encountered at a position. The team I came up with is:


Gary Cater - C

Eddie Murray - 1B

Lou Whitaker - 2B

Mike Schmidt - 3B

Cal Ripken, Jr. - SS

Rickey Henderson - LF 

Robin Yount - CF

Dale Murphy - RF


Dave Steib - SP

Jack Morris - SP

Bert Blyleven - SP

Fernando Valenzuela - SP

Charlie Hough - SP

Dan Quisenberry - Closer


These players total 352 win shares. That's 117 wins. Sure, the other 11 on the team would contribute, but not much, since these 14 would play most of the time. If you look at the 1998 NY Yankees and take out the top 14, the rest of the team contributes 25 wins, but Torre tended to use the whole roster that year. I don't think with the above team that would happen. But say it did, that tells us this team would win between 117 and 142 games. Now look at that team. Does that sound reasonable? This was 1985. Rickey, Cal, Dale and Robin were all in their primes. Carter was still great, as was Murray. Schmidt was getting old, but an old Schmidt was still very good. The offense alone could probably win 100 games with the current Tiger's pitching staff. This is a much better team than the 1998 Yankees or the 2001 Mariners. I think 117 wins is very conservative.

However, this result was also a pleasant surprise, because I thought if you put this team together, they would total more than 162 wins! That would say to me something was amiss with the system. If the actual number of wins a team has doesn't matter to win shares, then even the best team shouldn't be able to win over 162 games. Now, I haven't tried here to put together the best possible team of 1985, but this is very close, and I don't think those changes are going to add 20 wins.

So I'm impressed. This is going to be a great tool for evaluating teams. And as more people do better research, the system will only get better. Get the book, and take your time reading it. Circle things in pencil and do the math. It will help you understand the game better.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:10 PM
April 12, 2002
Nice to see Kenny Lofton
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Nice to see Kenny Lofton doing well again. With a hit in his first plate appearance today, his OBA is now .410. Indians don't miss him, as their leadoff hitters have gotten on base at a .438 clip. Knoblauch may also be coming around. He has 5 hits in his last 4 games. Two great leadoff men, and I'm rooting for them to bounce back from last year's poor performances.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:52 PM
April 11, 2002
Indian's Pitching:
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The Indians ERA is about 1.50 runs lower than their overall ERA in 2001. Those of you who might have chatted with me on BBTN online last year may remember my suggestion that Cleveland should trade some offense for some pitching. Shapiro has done what Hart was not able to do consistently, balance the staff and the hitters.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:42 PM
Two-Fifths:
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AP has a good story on the DBacks pitching. Schilling and Johnson, as you probably know, have the only wins for the DBacks. Some stats from the article:



This season, Johnson is 2-0 with a 0.56 ERA in 16 innings. Schilling is 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA in 16 innings. They have combined to allow only 18 hits and one run in 32 innings with six walks and 46 strikeouts.

Schilling leads the NL with 26 strikeouts, and Johnson is tied for second with 20.

The other starters — Rick Helling, Brian Anderson and Todd Stottlemyre — are a combined 0-4 with a 6.75 ERA in five starts.



The also point out that the DBacks are only scoring a little over 3 runs a game. If they are going to win with the other pitchers, they are going to need to improve that offense. I thought the offense was better last year than I expected it to be. Maybe age is finally catching up with them.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:37 PM
Behind the Times:
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There was an article on ESPN.com yesterday about Barry Bonds possibly being the greatest ballplayer ever. What got me about the article, is that no matter what you think of Bonds all-time, there seems to be a consensus that he was the greatest player of the decade of the 90's. What gets me about this is that ESPN did a big show about who was he best ballplayer of the nineties two years ago. They picked from four players; Bonds, McGwire, Maddux and someone else, I don't remember. I did research for that show, and I was convinced after that research that the best player was Bonds or Maddux, and they were pretty even. Of course, the award went to McGwire, since he broke the HR record. Bonds didn't even make the all century team! I guess Bonds bad PR has cost him in those types of awards.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:27 PM
Ranger Ace?
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Is Doug Davis for real, or does he just have Oakland's number? He's faced the A's twice this year, and is 2-0, throwing a shutout today.. In 16 innings, he's allowed 2 runs. Whatever he's got, the Rangers have to hope the rest of the staff catches it.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:18 PM
Expos in First Place!
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Don't they know they're not supposed to be doing this? Don't they know if they play exciting baseball and win that fans might start coming out to see them? Don't they know this will ruin their owner's plans to contract them? Way to go, Expos! If you have a friend in Montreal, call them or e-mail them or even write them and urge them to go see the Expos.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:24 AM
April 10, 2002
400 Club:
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Coming into tonight's game, the Expos have five regulars with on-base averages over .400. I don't remember the Expos being like this under Alou. Alou was a fine leader, but I don't think he stressed things like getting on base. He certainly didn't get on much as a hitter, so that doesn't surprise me. Robinson, on the other hand, always had a great OBA; he knew the value of the walk. This seems to have rubbed off quickly on the Expos. Too bad the Expos don't have real ownership. If they did, they might try to get another quality pitcher so they could challenge for the division.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:08 PM
Jones for Jacque:
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Jacque Jones through his first 8 games has 15 hits and 6 BB, including 3 HR. He's got a great name, he's fun to watch, and this is exactly the kind of sparkplug the Twins need. I know he's going to slow down, but I bet he's going to make baseball fun in Minnesota this year, despite all the problems there.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:01 PM
Power Hitting:
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Through 2, the Yankees have 5 hits, 4 doubles and a HR, Giambi's first. Yankees offensive numbers have been pretty scary so far. Coming into tonight, they had a .387 OBA and a .432 slugging percentage. They haven't played a good team yet, but the poor teams don't seem to have a chance against them. Maybe Torre will be nice and start the 2nd string when they play Detroit.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:57 PM
Rocky Pen:,
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Don't look now, but the Colorado Rockies' bullpen is putting up good numbers. They pitched 2 2/3 scoreless today to preserve the win, and have a 3.04 ERA in 26 2/3 innings. They threw strikes today, three pitchers combining for 9 balls and 28 strikes.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:49 PM
Wood Redux:
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For the second straight game, Kerry Wood struck out 10 and walked 4. Last game, however, he used so many pitches to accomplish this that Baylor had to take him out after 5. Today he was much more efficient, using 97 pitches over 7 innings and allowing only 1 run. Unfortunately for the the Cubs, the bullpen blew it. But if Wood can give them 7 innings like that often, the Cubs should win a lot of his games.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:43 PM
Boring Baseball:
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Rob Neyer's column discusses why the Oakland A's are both fascinating and boring. Although not intentionally, he sums up a great truth of baseball; what helps you win is boring. Waiting for pitches, offenses centered around HR, endless pitching changes are probably a good way to build a winner, but it's not exciting. I think this is why the average fan doesn't care about Sabremetrics; they go to a game to be entertained.

I noticed last year that I had to force myself to like Ichiro. He doesn't walk enough, he swings at pitches out of the strike zone, no power, runs too much. That's the Sabrematrician in me talking. But Suzuki is exciting. I should have been embracing that excitement, while keeping his flaws in perspective. I did that with Bo Jackson, before he got hurt. I should have known to do that with Ichiro.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:38 PM
Win Shares:
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I spent the evening reading Win Shares. So far the essays are very good, typical Bill. But the explanation of the system, while complete, is tough reading. I get the feeling Bill rushed the writing of that part of the book. It's a complicated system, and it's a heuristic system, which I believe will lead to a lot of criticism. The work on first basemen fielding, much of which was explained in the Historical Abstract, is worth the price of admission, however. I'm going to have to read through the system two or three times to really understand it, and when I do, I'll try to write an objective review. But so far, the concept is very exciting.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:54 AM
April 09, 2002
Bob Dutton has an article
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Bob Dutton has an article on how Knoblauch is influencing the Royals to be more patient at the plate.



Ritchie sailed into the sixth, with the score tied 1-1, having retired 12 in a row. But his pitch count was climbing, and he soon hit a wall. The Royals scored twice, and Ritchie never made it out of the inning, wearied by 104 pitches.

"Our game plan worked," third baseman Joe Randa said. "We took a lot of pitches and waited Ritchie out."

The Royals then jumped all over Chicago's suspect bullpen, scoring six times in the seventh and turning a close game into a rout.

"The first five games, as a team, we've been much more patient than in the past," first baseman Mike Sweeney said. "Every starting pitcher by the fifth or sixth inning has 80 or 90 pitches. That's something in the past we've not done."



Although they are not hitting yet, they are walking more. Last year, the Royals OBA was 52 points above their BA. This year, it's 81 points higher.
Posted by StatsGuru at 02:50 PM
5-1 Pirates:
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Chuck Finder writes a positive story about the Pirates. Here's how Jason Kendall feels about it:



After eight summers of numbing woefulness, it's nice to finally see encouraging signs, isn't it?

"This is the first time that I've been here in six years when everybody's got everybody's back," said catcher Jason Kendall. "Ah, it's two different worlds. A real positive atmosphere. Winning's a cure-all."

The old heads help. Kendall is the first to credit the GM's wintertime orchestrations. "What Dave did in the off-season, he went out and got six-year free agents, guys who've been there, done that. Guys who can help the young kids come along. To me, that's a big key to the pitching staff. It's fun to catch now."



It's been all pitching so far, but at least Littlefield seems to have a plan, he's sticking to it, and it's working.
Posted by StatsGuru at 01:07 PM
Why Now?
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Jayson Stark has an excellent column on the Detroit firings. He approaches the piece by asking the question, "Does anyone deserve to be fired one week into the season?"

From what I've been reading, people think Randy Smith did a good job with the farm system but a lousy job with the big league club. I think that's being kind. It seems to me that he turned Detroit into a farm system for other teams. Smith made a number of trades with Houston, where his father is an executive. Houston's had a pretty good run during that time, so maybe Randy was being taken by his dad, or maybe Randy and his dad cared more about the Astros doing well than the Tigers doing well. I don't know. But my guess is that Houston won't be getting anymore sweet heart deals from the Tigers.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:17 AM
April 08, 2002
This is where I miss
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This is where I miss being in a research environment. Biggio hit for the cycle today in Colorado. It seems to me that there have been a lot of cycles at Coors, but I don't have the data base to check it out. Seems logical; it's a good triples and HR park. Congrats to Biggio!

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:30 PM
No Mo:
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Mo Vaughn has gone on the DL for the Mets. Piazza is hurt as well. This seems like the nightmare scenario to me. Mets put a good team together, if they stay healthy and play well. As far as I can tell, the team doesn't have a lot of depth. Sure, Alfonzo and Alomar can take them a long way if they play well all season, but that's a lot of pressure for two players. Maybe it's nothing. A wrist or thumb injury takes months to recover from. Maybe Piazza is just bruised. My feeling going into the season was the Mets should win 90 games, but could easily win 70. As the breaks go against them, 70 is going to seem a lot more likely.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:22 PM
Argument Settled:
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I just read the introduction to Win Shares, but haven't gotten into the meat of the book. However, I did look to see if it settled an old argument. Ever since Rickey Henderson won the MVP in 1990, Dan Patrick has been steadfastly pointing out to me that Cecil Fielder deserved the award. His argument was that Cecil improved the Tigers by 20 games, and that the A's would have won without Rickey anyway. I would counter that Rickey created more runs, and that the success of the Tigers had as much to do with the addition of Tony Phillips and the pitching staff lowering it's ERA by a run. I always thought it was close, but Rickey was a little better and deserved the award. Well, I was wrong. It wasn't close. Rickey had 39 win shares that year, while Cecil had only 29. Sorry, Dan. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:12 PM
More on Hillenbrand:
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According to STATS, Inc, Hillenbrand has swung at only 1 of 18 pitches. That percentage is 5th lowest in the AL.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:40 PM
Garner Gone:
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It didn't take long for Dave Dombrowski's axe to fall. Phil Garner and Randy Smith have been fired. Luis Pujols takes over on an interim basis. Dombrowski assumes the GM role. Dave may bring in Felipe Alou to manage.

I've never been impressed with Randy Smith, but I've always been impressed with Dombrowski. He's extremely intelligent, and given an owner who is willing to invest in winning, Dombrowski can turn a team around in a hurry.

Posted by StatsGuru at 05:03 PM
Just want to welcome everyone
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Just want to welcome everyone who is finding this page via STATS Fantasy Advantage (you can sign up here). I hope you enjoy the site!

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:18 PM
Jeff Schinski of STATS, Inc.
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Jeff Schinski of STATS, Inc. tells me that Hillenbrand took 68% of first pitches last year. From what I remember, that would be poor. Hitters like Rickey Henderson and Frank Thomas are usually in the 80's. So this is a big improvement for Hillenbrand, if it lasts.

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:07 PM
Win Shares:
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I just heard that Bill James new book, Win Shares has arrived at my house. Can't wait to sit down and read it. I'm sure I'll have comments about it over the next few days. If you want a copy, click on the link to STATS, Inc.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:51 PM
In today's column, Rob Neyer
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In today's column, Rob Neyer notices that Shea Hillenbrand has not swung at a first pitch this year. I'm trying to find out what his first pitch take % was last year. I'll update if I can find it.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:50 PM
Griffey Hurt:
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Ken Griffey will be out 3 to 6 weeks, and possibly for the year due to a knee injury. For a long time (as early as 1992, I believe), Griffey has been my favorite to break Aaron's career record of 755 HR. Despite the injuries, he has managed to stay ahead of Aaron at the same age. This is important, because Aaron's best five year HR output came at a late age, 35 to 39, when he hit over 200 HR. This is why it's been hard to catch Henry. If you hit age 35 even with him, you have to equal the greatest HR barrage at that age just to fall 40 short of the record. Aaron had 398 HR through the 1965 season, when he was 31. Griffey was at 460 through that age. Aaron hit 44 HR in 1966, which means Griffey will still be ahead, no matter what, but the gap will be significantly narrowed. My feeling going into the year was that if Griffey had a monster season (50+ HR), he was almost sure to do it. Now, I'm starting to have my doubts. Sosa is looking better, but he's a year older than Griffey, and just ahead of Aaron by 8 HR through age 32. Bonds is the real wild card. Another 70+ season puts him around 640 HR through age 37 (that's July 1 age). At that point, it's a matter of staying healthy. McGwire looked really good a couple of years ago, but blew out quickly. The same could easily happen to Bonds. A-Rod is quickly becoming my favorite, for the same reasons Griffey was 10 years ago.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:13 AM
April 07, 2002
Wisconsin Lottery Player of the Game:
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Curt Schilling ended up with 17 K in beating the Brewers 2-0, and winning the Wisconsin Player of the Game Award. You could probably give him the Getty No-Lead Award as well. :-) Brewer batters now have 12 walks and 58 strikeouts. This team has to start putting the bat on the ball.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:36 PM
Ichiro Swinging:
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Bob Finnigan of the Seattle Times has a good take on Ichiro swinging at pitches outside of the strikezone. My good friend Jim Storer and I were discussing this very topic yesterday. My basic feeling is that as long as you have a high on-base average, it doesn't matter how you get on base. My problem with Ichiro swinging at pitches outside of the strikezone is that it hurts his offense. Players have lower batting averages when they swing at outside pitches. They give the pitcher an advantage by giving the pitcher a favorable count. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would guess that most of the hits Ichiro gets on pitches out of the strike zone are singles. If he waited for the fat pitches, he would probably hit more balls into the gaps, and with his speed, they would probably be triples. I'm not complaining about Ichiro; he's a great hitter with possibly better bat control than Gwynn or Boggs. But my gut feeling is that by learning to take balls out of the strike zone, Ichiro could amaze us all. Maybe even hit .400.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:52 PM
Brewer K's:
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Schilling has struck out 8 Brewers through 4 IP. Everyone in the Brewer lineup but Casanova has K'd so far. When is Lopes going to do something about this. They couldn't hit Johnson yesterday, and they can't hit Schilling today. Does anyone else think that Lopes should say to the team, "You aren't making contact with the big swings, so everybody choke up and just try to make contact!" At least they are saving Bud money on the air-conditioning bill. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:21 PM
Clemens Back to Normal:
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Looks like Clemens trouble on Opening Day was just the hand injury. He's pitching magnificently today. He's striking people out, and not thowing too many pitches to accomplish that (9 K, 92 pitches over 7.1 IP). Which leads me to this thought; given what the starters have accomplished over the last 5 games, do the Yankees really need to carry eleven pitchers? If on average, the starters go seven innings, do you really need six people in the bullpen to finish those last two innings? Here's a chance for the Yankees to reverse a trend that's helping to dilute pitching, and at the same time give Torre more offensive and defensive flexibility.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:14 PM
More Tiger Trouble:
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Lynn Henning of The Detroit News has another take on the Tigers problems, this time from a draft perspective. One quote I particularly like has to do with the way the Yankees and other top teams were built:



The Yankees could spend $200 million on free agents and not be as structurally strong as they are because of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, and Alfonso Soriano, all of them up-the-middle players the Yankees drafted.

Atlanta developed Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Javy Lopez, etc. Oakland has become a terrific team, not only because Jason Giambi helped them get there before bolting for New York, but because excellent front-line pitching was developed at the same time the infield's left side was being anchored with tremendous talent in the persons of Eric Chavez and Miguel Tejada.



This has basically been my response whenever someone says, "The Yankees just buy the pennant." In my opinion, the Yankees could have signed four average players at the corners this year and done extremely well because they have this great home grown talent at the important positions. They went overboard to have a great team, but that's the competitiveness of the owner.
Posted by StatsGuru at 03:05 PM
April 06, 2002
Where's Mo? I notice in
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Where's Mo? I notice in the Mets boxscore that Mo Vaughn isn't in the lineup. I looked on the internet for a reason, but since I can't find one I assume he's not playing because the lefty Glavine is pitching. If anyone knows another reason, please let me know. Lefties usually hit Glavine well, and I hadn't heard that Mo was going to be platooned at first.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:47 PM
Randy Johnson is pitching against
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Randy Johnson is pitching against the Brewers. He has 8 K through 4 innings. When Johnson pitches against the Brewers, the over/under on strikeouts has to be at least 16.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:31 PM
The Pirates are off to
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The Pirates are off to a 4-1 start after beating the Cubs 6-1 today. So far, kudos need to go to the pitching staff and Aramis Ramirez. The pitching staff has a 2.45 ERA, and although they have allowed 5 HR, they have all been solo shots. The staff also has an excellent 2.33 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio.

Ramirez has a .409 OBA and a .550 slugging percentage. No HR yet, but he has 3 doubles in his 8 hits. Young and Reese are playing well. If Kendall comes around, the offense could be decent. One wonders how much the departure of Bell improved the whole attitude of the team.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:26 PM
The Detroit Tigers are now
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The Detroit Tigers are now 0-5, after losing 5-3 to the Indians today. They have been outscored 35-12. That means that the average score of a Tigers game is 7-2. Seven to two. The question is, when will heads start to roll. Jerry Green of the Detroit News has a take on that here.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:56 PM
Changes in KC?
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Last year, the Royals batters struckout more than twice as often as they walked (898 K, 406 BB). Last night (Friday) they drew 5 walks and did not strike out at all. Despite being shut out today, they did walk 4 times and K 6, giving them 13 BB and 16 K for the year. It's early, but this is a trend worth watching. If KC has adapted a policy of trying to get on base rather than swinging for the fences, maybe Sweeney won't need to exercise his escape clause.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:45 PM
April 05, 2002
Alou or Ward?
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Last year, hosting Baseball Tonight Online, the question often came up about Astros and what they should do with Alou. My feeling was that they should have traded Alou in the middle of the season. His trade value was never going to be higher, and some team would probably be willing to give up a bunch of prospects to get him. And if they kept him for the playoff run, then I thought they should let him go at the end of the season and go with the younger Ward. That was the choice the Astros made. So far it's been a good one. Alou is on the DL again, and Ward is off to a good start. He's 2 for 3 tonight as I write this, raising his average to .429. Now, I don't think he's that good a hitter, but he'll be 27 this year, which means he has more upside potential than Alou.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:43 PM
Barry, Barry Good: Something is
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Barry, Barry Good: Something is wrong with Bonds. He's only hit 1 HR in his last two games, bringing his projected total down to 203 from 324. :-)

He almost hit another one in the first inning. He smacked the ball 421 feet but it was caught by Kotsay. Jon Miller made a perfect call on the shot. You could tell by the level of his voice when the ball was struck that it had a chance of going out. His level of excitement rose as the ball carried toward the wall. And just as you thought it was going out, "Caught by Kotsay!" He made you feel like you were at the game.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:33 PM
They Never Learn:
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Earlier tonight, I was watching the Expos-Reds game. The announcers started talking about Barry Larkin being with one team for 17 years, and how that was the longest in the majors now that Ripken and Gwynn had retired. And of course, they have to say how these are the last of those players. I remember them saying that when Brett and Yount retired. They probably said it when Puckett and Mattingly and Stargell and Yaz and Mantle and Musial and Williams retired. But then, of course they name four other players who have been with one team for a long career; Edgar Martinez, Craig Biggio, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz. So how rare is it for someone to spend a long career with one team? My guess is that it's no more uncommon than it used to be. Maybe one of my friends at STATS, Inc. can confirm that for me. After all, Ruth, Cobb, Speaker, Aaron, Mays, Cy Young and many other Hall of Famers played for multiple teams. Moving around is the rule. Because of free agency, it seems like players move around more, but with the number of active players mentioned, it doesn't seem unusual for players to stay put, either.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:58 PM
Duck's on the Mound: Duckworth
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Duck's on the Mound: Duckworth has 8 K through 4 innings for the Phillies. And he's averaging 17 pitches per inning, pretty good for that many strikeouts.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:42 PM
Dodger Season Tickets Available
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Last night, as I was watching the start of the SF-LA game, Vin Scully read a promotion for season tickets. If you buy 2 loge seats, you get two free. Vin said this was the first time the Dodgers ever made such an offer. Why has this happened? The Dodgers were at one time the attendance kings. Every year they would nearly sell out every game, when other teams were happy to 20,000. The Dodgers always drew over 2 million. Now they can't give seats away.

I believe the answer is a poor team. Through the 60's, 70's and 80's, the Dodgers put good teams on the field. They made a number of World Series appearances, and won a good number of them. They were a successful, winning franchise, and their fans supported them. Look at the team now, however. They have scored two runs in three games. The team BA, OBA and Slugging Pct. are all under .200. Barry Bonds has out-homered them 4-0.

Instead of trying to build a winner, they took their best offensive player and traded him for Brian Jordan. I've never heard much negative said about Jordan in the media, but he doesn't get on base very well, and he doesn't hit for that much power. Compare him to Sheffield for their careers:

Career Through 4/4/2002         Jordan      Sheffield
BA                                .286           .295
OBA                               .336           .399
Slugging Pct                      .469           .522
Age                                 35             33

Sure, the batting averages are close, but nothing else is. And despite the fact that Sheffield has been around the majors longer, Jordan is two years older! The Dodgers are supposed to be a large market, rich powerhouse. It's about time they started acting like one and hiring people (like Steinbrenner does) who can make the right moves to build a good team and realize the wealth that can create.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:02 AM
April 04, 2002
Just to keep hammering at
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Just to keep hammering at getting on base, in the Brewer's-Astros games, both teams had 10 hits, but the Astros drew 9 walks to Milwaukee's 1, and won 6-3. There are some people who think walks are totally a function of the pitcher, but it's really at least as much a function of the batter. Look at Ichiro. You can throw him balls over his head, down in the dirt, and he'll swing at them. He's tough to walk. He makes up for it by getting on base from his tremendous number of hits, but batters selectivity in not swinging at balls has as much to do with drawing walks as a pitcher's ability to throw strikes. It's something the Brewers need to work on based on last season.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:16 PM
Gary Sheffield hit his 3rd
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Gary Sheffield hit his 3rd HR tonight. A Bonds/Sheffield/Sosa HR race could be a lot of fun (Sosa also went deep tonight). Do you remember that Sheffield's first team was the Milwaukee Brewers? He hated it there, and never performed well. Had 21 HR in 4 seasons with the Brewers, got himself traded to the Padres, and hit 33 HR in 1992. I always wondered why he never got along with Bud's bunch. If you have someone with that talent, shouldn't you try to make him happy? I know he wears out his welcome, but it would really be worth it for someone to find a way to make him comfortable.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:09 PM
Chipper Busy in Left:
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Tim Tucker writes about Chipper Jones' move to left. I don't think I agree with this statement, however:



Generally, left field is less taxing than third base, leading to the theory that Jones, with his fielding burden decreased, will put up even grander offensive numbers this season --- even grander than the numbers that made him the first third baseman in major-league history with six consecutive seasons of 100-plus RBIs.



I was under the impression that Chipper was moved because his defense at third base was poor, not that he needed to increase his offense. As Tucker alludes to in this paragraph, it's hard to improve on the numbers Jones has accumulated in his career.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:52 PM
Doug Davis pitched a good
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Doug Davis pitched a good game for Texas. Rocker did his best to blow it, but the Rangers still won. Davis showed great improvement last year. His career:


 YR TEAM LG   W   L   PCT    G  SV     IP    H    R   ER  TBB   SO HR    ERA

1999 Tex AL   0   0  .000    2   0    2.2   12   10   10    0    3  3  33.75

2000 Tex AL   7   6  .538   30   0   98.2  109   61   59   58   66 14   5.38

2001 Tex AL  11  10  .524   30   0  186.0  220  103   92   69  115 14   4.45

Notice the two big improvements, BB and HR. He nearly brought his ERA down a run. If he can do that again, he'll be the ace of the staff.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:42 PM
Babe Johnson:
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Just saw Nick Johnson come to the plate for the Yankees. I've heard peopel say he looks like Babe Ruth, but I never had a good look at him before. The second he stepped to the plate, I saw it, and thought, "He does look like Ruth." And just to cement it, he hit a HR. Great uppercut swing. I bet he'll do well playing a season in Yankee Stadium.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:31 PM
The Rockies beat the Cardinals
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The Rockies beat the Cardinals 6 to 1 today, despite being out hit 8 to 5. I love linescores like that; it makes me want to examine the boxscore closely. The Rockies had only 5 hits, but they also had 5 walks while St. Louis only had 1. So the Rockies reached base 10 times, while the Cardinals only reached base 9 times. As far as power, the Rockies had 3 extra base hits, while St. Louis had 7 singles. So the Rockies had men on base, and power to drive them in. St. Louis out stole them 2-0, which once again shows the small value of a stolen base if you can't follow it up with hits.

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:32 PM
OBA Debate:
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Some quotes from Baseball Prospectus. The first half is different opinions on getting on base. I think Bonds says it well.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:50 PM
Kudos to the Mets for
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Kudos to the Mets for playing three day games to open the season. The weather is bad enough without making the fans freeze in their seats at night.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:33 PM
Bullpen Strategy:
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Not a good night for the bullpens in the AL West Coast games. Oakland and Texas each took turns blowing the game, while Bob Wickman put up a poor save (allowing 2 runs with a three run lead). The rest of the Cleveland bullpen pitched 2 1/2 no-hit innings, but Wickman gets the credit for a poor performance. It's sad that a stat that was invented to award good late inning performance has changed the way pitchers are used. Why couldn't Riske, who pitched well, pitch 3 innings and finish the game? Why not go back to the strategy that you only bring in a reliever when you need to, and that reliever (especially when you have a lead) should be expected to finish the game? Maybe teams could then cut back to 10 pitchers instead of 12, and we could cut down offense by having less diluted pitching staffs. Same thing happened in the White Sox-Mariners game. Osuna was pitching well, but it's the ninth with a three run lead, so you have to go to Foulke, who blows the game. Stats and contracts should not dictate strategy.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:29 AM
April 03, 2002
Buy Bonds: Bonds goes deep
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Buy Bonds: Bonds goes deep again. Just crushed the ball. Nomo is not fooling anyone.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:17 PM
Don't Go Home Early:
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The Expos scored 5 runs in the last two innings tonight. Not enough to overcome the Marlins' lead, but two exciting nights of baseball in Montreal. Too bad only 4,771 showed up tonight.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:15 PM
Cubs Comebacks:
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I was just looking at the Cubs in-progress boxscore. Sammy got his 1st HR of the year, and so did Todd Hundley. Hundley is off to a hot start. If he can come back to 80% of his best years with the Mets, the Cubs offense will be superb. Kerry Wood had a semi-impressive outing. His line:

5 IP, 3H, 2ER, 4BB,10K, 104 pitches.

Wood was unhittable tonight, but only unhittable for 5 innings, since I assume the Cubs have him on a pitch count. Wood has a great fastball, and it's good that he strikes out a lot of batters. But it would be much better if he could use those 104 pitches over 7 or 8 innings, rather than 5. Whenever you give the game to the bullpen early, there is a higher chance they are going to blow it. It's probably the biggest reason that the percentage of starts ending in decisions keeps going down.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:02 PM
Kent vs. Sabean:
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ESPN.com has the following article about the strain between Jeff Kent and Brian Saben. Here's the gist of the dispute:



Kent is on the disabled list with a fractured left wrist, and is eligible to return on Saturday. However, he says he's fully healed and ready to play right now.

"A player's contract starts Opening Day, and I'm ready to play," Kent told the Contra Costa Times on Tuesday. "That's got nothing to do with how the injury happened -- on the off-field, which is personal. It was up to the organization to put me on the DL, and I respect that. If they want to make further judgment, that's their prerogative."

In his response, Sabean was far from sympathetic.

"He should have thought more about his actions that put him and the club in this position. I didn't break his wrist," Sabean told MLB.com. "What I say is 'tough luck.' We're well within our rights. You can't tell me that ... two exhibition games down in Scottsdale is getting him ready to face Kevin Brown or Hideo Nomo, and I think that's very prudent. So too bad for Jeff. I'm up to here with Jeff."



Last year, Kent made headlines when he accused Bonds of not being a good teammate. His beef, as I remember it, was that Bonds was aloof from his teammates. Now, I don't know how Kent broke his wrist, but if he did it falling off a motorcycle he wasn't supposed to be riding, what kind of teammate is he? He's the 2nd or 3rd best hitter on the team, and he's not available to his teammates to help him win. Kent should think real hard before criticizing teammates in the future.
Posted by StatsGuru at 07:10 PM
Does it bother anyone that
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Does it bother anyone that Steve Trachsel is the Mets #2 starter? It's not like he had a great spring, putting up a 5.47 ERA. Only 3 walks however.

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:20 PM
Looks like Jesse Orosco signed
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Looks like Jesse Orosco signed a major league contract, so he's now the oldest player in the majors. Must be part of the Dodger's youth movement. :-)

I was glad to see David Eckstein get headlines today. Soriano gets the hype, but Eckstein gets on base.

A's keep pitching well. Selig should be holding them up as a model of how to build a good team on a tight budget, rather than destroying teams.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:40 AM
April 02, 2002
The 34,000 in Montreal tonight
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The 34,000 in Montreal tonight certainly got a treat. Down 5 runs, the Expos scored 3 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th to win the game. The crowd was going wild. I'm glad the Expos won, and I'm glad the Twins won yesterday. I hope the fans of both those teams turn out strong for these two teams. It's up to you, people of Minnesota and Montreal to prove Bud wrong. Show him that these two teams shouldn't disappear. Out with a bang, not a whimper!

Posted by StatsGuru at 11:02 PM
Javier Vazquez, the all-time best
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Javier Vazquez, the all-time best scoring Scrabble name in MLB history, gives up a HR to Derrek Lee. I wonder if the Expos fans will show up this year? Will the actions of MLB make them come out and support the team? Or will they stay away even more than last year?

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:02 PM
Ben Grieve just doubled in
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Ben Grieve just doubled in his first AB of the season. I hope Ben turns it around this year. He showed good power when he first came up with Oakland, and he still gets on base fairly well. He's 26 this year; it's time to put up a monster season.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:54 PM
Pat Reusse has a positive
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Pat Reusse has a positive article about Mike Jackson:



"He studies hitters from the first inning," Romero said. "He has a lot of knowledge, and he shares it."

Mike Sweeney greeted Jackson with a single. That brought up Michael Tucker. Jackson's knowledge bank including giving up a home run to Tucker in Houston last year.

"This is a bigger ballpark than [Houston's] Enron Field," Jackson said. "I didn't have to be as concerned about a fly ball."

Tucker flied out to left. Then, Jackson broke Joe Randa's bat with a sinker and those middle-infield magicians -- Cristian Guzman and Luis Rivas -- turned it into a double play.

"The problem, what I had heard, was the Twins' bullpen kind of let them down later on last season," Jackson said. "That's one reason I was interested in coming here.

"I knew the starting pitchers were very good, and that this bullpen had a big opportunity to do well. I'm here to help any way I can."


I find that really interesting. Jackson looked at the Twins and thought he could help. Good starters would make his job easier. Seems like an intelligent guy.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:44 PM
In the Park Formerly Known
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In the Park Formerly Known as Enron, Wade Miller was unusually wild. Not only did he walk 2 in 4 innings, but he hit 2 batters and threw a wild pitch. Ben Sheets, on the other hand, was in control of everything, walking none and striking out 8 in six innings. So far, the Brewers batters have 3 BB and 6 K through 8 innings. Could this be a sign of more selectivity for one of the most free swinging teams in the majors? Two of the K's were by Sheets. I'll try to keep my eye on this as the season progresses.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:32 PM
Barry Bonds picks up where
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Barry Bonds picks up where he left off last year with a two HR game vs. the Dodgers. He hit his last 3 vs. the Dodgers last year according to this article on ESPN.com. Sosa's in a hole already, but we all know June is his best month. :-)

A bigger story might be Livan Hernandez, who went 8 innings and only allowed 4 hits. I'm not sure if this says more about the Dodgers offense or Livan's off-season conditioning. Baker did allow Hernandez to throw 122 pitches, which seems like a lot to me for opening day. But if Hernandez is back to his old form, the Giants rotation should be greatly improved. You also have to love the fact that he added two hits with his bat.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:24 PM
I get an e-mail from
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I get an e-mail from my friends at STATS, Inc. everyday during the baseball season with a lot of esoteric stuff, but one line I like tells me the oldest and youngest active major leaguers. Here's today's:



Youngest Guy in the Majors: Hank Blalock Born: 11/21/80 Age: 21 Oldest Guy in the Majors: Rickey Henderson Born: 12/25/58 Age: 43



What I found interesting is the Blalock is the youngest, and he's 21. I would think there is almost always a 20 year old on some team. Maybe the crack down on lying about one's age has taken it's toll on the supposed youth of players. Anyway, Ricky was in the majors for a year and a half before Blalock was born.

Chan Ho Park did not throw a good game for Texas last night. Critics of Park have pointed to his high road ERA when playing for the Dodgers. Something to watch this year.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:17 AM
April 01, 2002
Hank Blalock sngles in his
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Hank Blalock sngles in his first AB and ties the game with an RBI. Picture perfect swing.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:50 PM
The early story in the
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The early story in the Oakland game is Mulder's efficiency. Twenty-two pitches in the first two innings. Could we have another sub-100 pitch complete game?

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:39 PM
Pedro and Clemens got rocked.
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Pedro and Clemens got rocked. You don't see that too often. Meanwhile, Randy Johnson picked up where he left off last year, pitching a shutout and striking out 8. But 128 pitches on opening day? Colon was very economical in his shutout, throwing less than 100 pitches. I don't know what they are thinking with Johnson. Certainly, Brenly can't be afraid of his bullpen this early.

It was nice to see Jacque Jones of the Twins open the game with a HR. Sort of saying, "In your face, Bud." He added another one later in the game. Radke didn't pitch well, but the bullpen went 4 2/3 scoreless. Knoblauch had a hit and a BB, doing what a leadoff man should do.

The White Sox beat the Mariners, but just barely. Lucky for them, Lou went with the one run strategy in the 9th, giving an out away with a bunt with men on 1st and 2nd. If you are going to bunt, that's the place to do it. Boone was coming up, and Manuel decided to pitch to him, and Boone grounded one back to the pitcher. I guess the White Sox don't believe Boone's season was for real. They did walk Edgar after that to load the bases, and Cameron popped out to end the game.

Tom Glavine pitched a good game. Love to see Tom do well. And the new additions, Sheffield and Castilla both homered for the Braves. Leiter pitched well also, making it a pretty good day for old lefties. Al is a class guy, by the way. He worked with us a couple of post-seasons on BBTN, and was a intelligent, easy-going and generous. Glad to see him do well. Mo Vaughn provided solid 0 for 5 leadership, however.

Todd Walker provided some punch in the Red Victory today. Three for four from the leadoff spot with 2 doubles and a HR. I never understood why he was in Tom Kelly's doghouse, and why Minnesota let him go. A great replacement for Pokey Reese.

The heart of the St. Louis order was beating strong today. Drew, Pujols and Edmonds combined to go 5 for 10 with 6 runs, 4 rbi and 4 doubles. Matt Morris made it look easy with 7 K through 7 innings.

Looking forward to the Texas-Oakland game tonight. We'll see if Chan Ho Park was worth the money.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:50 PM
Just looked at the Yankee
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Just looked at the Yankee lineup. Soriano leading off, Nick Johnson batting ninth. Torre has it backwards. The best OBA guy on the team should bat first, not the worst. At least they have Giambi 3rd instead of 4th. The big guys need to be in a position where they get more AB.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:27 PM
Well, even though I paid,
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Well, even though I paid, I can't get into the MLB game audio section. Figures they would screw it up. I'll have to follow games with the Baseball Direct Scoreboard. Looks like Pedro's spring troubles followed him into the first inning today, allowing 3 runs. Gary Sheffield got his first RBI for Atlanta, and Glavine started, so Maddux must really have a pain in the butt. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 01:43 PM
Greg Maddux may not start
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Greg Maddux may not start today due to a sore buttocks. This has to be an April Fool's joke. If not, Maddux will certainly be the butt of jokes today. :-)

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:41 AM
Due to a family emergency,
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Due to a family emergency, I didn't get to see much of the Indians at Angels last night. The little I saw of the game, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan seem to be speculating that Colon might have turned a corner in his career. They pointed out that he had good movement on his pitches, and they showed replays demonstrating his command of the strike zone both on the inside and outside of the plate. He only threw 98 pitches, allowing himself to complete a start on opening day, and his strike to ball ratio was 2 to 1, which is excellent.

On the other hand, he only struck out 5. Credit the Angels here with getting the bat on the ball (although on replays the Angels seemed to hit a lot of nubbers) and the Indians defense for making a number of tough plays. So now a story line to watch early in the season is Colon. Is this a turning point? Is he going to be less of a strikeout pitcher? If so, is the Indian defense without Lofton and Alomar up to the task?

Games start at 1 EST today. Phillies-Braves, White Sox-Mariners look like the best games. Enjoy!

Posted by StatsGuru at 06:45 AM
March 31, 2002
I was away today, but
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I was away today, but it's always wonderful when the baseball season begins anew. Looks like Colon is pitching a good game, although his strikeouts aren't very high. Real opening day tomorrow! (I don't know why it's not a national holiday!)

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:02 PM
March 30, 2002
Cecilia Tam, who is the
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Cecilia Tam, who is the author of Why I Like Baseball, writes with her opinion on small vs. large market teams:



Hmm, one point, though -- I don't think it will work if the small teams refuse to play the big teams. That wouldn't give them any leverage at all. The big eight to twelve teams would happily form a higher tier league where they just play each other, relegating the small teams to the second division. The Yankees would love to just play the Red Sox, Braves, Dodgers, Giants, Reds, Cardinals, Mets, Mariners, Indians, etc... and forget about Tampa Bay, etc... The other thing being that when a team is winning, they often seem to vault from "small" to "large" and when they are losing the drop from "large" to "small." Why is it that no one seems to remember the days when Cleveland was the laughingstock of the league and considered a small market?

It's a chicken and egg problem, but not an unsolvable problem in theory. Winning brings more fans to the ballpark. More fans = more money, which means better ability to compete. But how do you win without the ability to compete in the first place, if you aren't drawing enough fans? Somehow you have to make it a worthwhile experience for people to go out to the ballpark even if the team isn't in contention. That's an inherent problem in all sports as entertainment--you can't guarantee the audience a happy ending. So you have to make it a worthwhile experience despite what the outcome of the game may be. I think this is why you see some teams in the past decade or so snap their chicken/egg cycle by building a nice, new stadium that people will want to go to, starting an upswing in money nd attendance. But do I think this is going to actually work for the Brewers, for example? Not a chance.



I have to agree with Cecilia here. That's why I think TV rights is the way to bring pressure on the large teams, rather than refusing to play at all. Cecilia is also right when she says that winning is what brings fans to the park. The A's and Indians should be the model franchises here. The Indians in the early 90's insulated themselves from arbitration and free agent costs by signing young players to long term contracts, and for years turned out a resonably priced winning team. The A's, as small a market team as there is, has turned themselves into winners by developing really good young talent; they insist on their minor league hitters getting on base and developing power; they insist on their pitcher striking out batters and not walking them. When they can afford to, they sign players to long term deals. And when they lose someone, they have someone molded in the minors to take their place. Sure, it's easier for the Yankees to win. They can afford great players. But there are other ways to win, and these small market teams have to be creative, as the A's are. There's enough randomness in a baseball season, that if you have put your team in a position to win, they just might. The small market teams need to invest in winning to survive.
Posted by StatsGuru at 02:20 PM
March 29, 2002
Here's a good background article
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Here's a good background article on Hank Blalock. One thing I'd like to comment on:



The Rangers understand it's a gamble to push a 21-year-old player into the big leagues after no more than a half-season at Double A. But in a lineup filled with potential Hall of Famers, Blalock only has to hold his own at the bottom of the order and play solid defense to be successful.



Why is this a gamble? The younger you are when you come up, the more likely you are to have a Hall of Fame career. How old were I-Rod, A-Rod, Juan Gonzalez, Roberto Alomar, Ken Griffey, Jr.? Remember Pujols last year? The Rangers should be very excited to have a 21-year-old who can play major league baseball. It sounds like he'll be a great one.

Speaking of A-Rod and I-Rod, when are the Rangers going to sign E-Rod, O-Rod, U-Rod and Sometimes Y-Rod?

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:58 PM
Joe Sheehan of the Baseball
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Joe Sheehan of the Baseball Prospectus gives a good summary of Selig's cyber town meeting. I don't disagree with anything in the article. Bud is bad for baseball. Selig has been there for every work stoppage. If in 1972, he had said, "Let's avoid war. Let's take the players in as partners and build the sport together," who knows what would have happened. He'd be a hero. But for thirty years he has wanted to put the players back into serfdom. And as far as I can tell, for one reason; he wants the Brewers to win, and he can't do it through intelligent building of a franchise. The only way he can do it is to pull other teams down to his level, where he's able to compete. I don't know how to get the owners to fire him. I suppose we could protest outside the MLB offices everyday. We could write the owner of our favorite team and complain. But Bud owns a lot of owners at this point. He let Steinbrenner back in the league after Vincent had banned him. He got Henry the Red Sox. He got Loria the Marlins. He owns the Brewers and Expos. And no one comes into the league without giving Bud his alligence. It's a bad situation. I wish I had a more constructive suggestion for his removal. Maybe if the game is stopped again by a strike, owners will come to their senses and oust him.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:28 PM
There's a scoop at ESPN.com
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There's a scoop at ESPN.com on Sweeney's new contract. Has to be one of the most complicated contracts I've ever seen. Fifty-five million over five years, but the Royals have to win by 2004. If they don't have a .500 record in either of those years, Sweeney can become a free agent. He also can name eight teams a year where he'll allow himself to be traded, and the trade will lead to a raise and free agency.

My guess is that the Royals are too inept to create a winner by then. Sweeney will be a free agent in for the 2005 season.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:28 PM
This article by Pat Daugherty
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This article by Pat Daugherty is pretty negative, but there was something that caught my eye:



If baseball owners had any guts, they'd cancel the season and do what they could to break the union. They'd sacrifice six months to remake a flawed system.

Barring that, the little teams should refuse to play the big teams. Until the Yankees agree to share equally their obscene local media revenues, the Royals should decline to play them. Because here's something about the rich teams: They're nothing without poor teams to play.



I like the take no prisoners attitude, however I don't think either would work. As shown by Selig starting to enforce the 40% debt rule, teams have a lot of debt, and lenders tend to get upset when you miss interest payments. I like the second idea, however, although teams don't have to go as far as refusing to play. I believe teams have the right to refuse to be broadcast by a competitor. So KC could say to the Yankees, "You can't broadcast this game on YES." No broadcast, no advertisers, no revenue. The big teams could do the same to the little teams, but the little teams get so little in local revenue, they probably wouldn't be hurt that much. I'd love to see some little team try this.

Also, I don't think Cincy will be as bad as Daugherty says. Griffey, Dunn, Casey and Larkin can provide a lot of offense. I'm looking for a surprise here.

Posted by StatsGuru at 12:07 PM
Gordon Edes has a piece
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Gordon Edes has a piece about leadoff men this morning, in which he discusses how the position has changed for the worse. He quotes Frank Robinson in the piece.



''Everybody swings from the end of the bat with two strikes,'' he said. ''Nobody shortens up. Nobody sits back a little bit and be less aggressive. All the time you see guys swinging at pitches with strikes, balls bouncing in the dirt, like the count is 3 and 0. They don't know how to hit in those situations.

''But it's very difficult to teach guys, because they don't have to accept it. You can't tell a hitter, `Do this or else,' because there is no `else.' He's going to be in lineup, anyway. That's the way it is today.''



I've thought this for a few years, but for all hitters in general. I remember watching the Yankees vs. Pedro Martinez a couple of years back. They were striking out left and right. Why didn't Torre say to his hitters, "Guys, swinging for the fences isn't working against this guy. Everyone shorten up and try to make contact. They have a pourous defense. Let's get some balls in play and see what happens?"

I don't agree with one thesis of the article, which is that good leadoff hitters are hard to find. They aren't hard to find, it's that managers don't look for the right things. The only thing you really need is a high OBA. How you get on base doesn't matter; being there doesn't matter. Speed is nice, but I think too many managers sacrifice speed for OBA at the top of the order, especially in this high HR era. So I don't think it's that players are incapable of leading off, it's that managers refuse to see what is really important. Here's a quote in the article from the Reds assistant GM:



''I can tell you this,'' said Gary Hughes, special assistant to Reds GM Jim Bowden. ''In 10 years as a scouting director, I never read a report that ever referred to a potential leadoff hitter. Scouts look at tools, but their reports never get as specific as that.

''There's a lot of emphasis of late on on-base percentage, but I've never made it a priority to talk about it.''



Not a member of the Billy Beane school. As long as people like Hughes are making personnel decisions, it will be hard to find leadoff men.
Posted by StatsGuru at 09:24 AM
March 28, 2002
Mo Vaughn seems to be
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Mo Vaughn seems to be rubbing off on Mike Piazza. He waited on the bench after he was plunked by the Dodger's Mota, then went after Mota.

Looks to me more and more like the Mets are going to implode quickly if they get off to a bad start.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:44 PM
After I read Rob Neyer's
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After I read Rob Neyer's column today, I felt bad for criticizing the Yankees over Soriano leading off. At least the Yankees have a number of excellent on-base average players that it really doesn't matter where Soriano bats. The Dodgers, on the other hand, have nothing but Shawn Green. From Rob's column:



But then I clicked on that link, and as I read the headline -– "Izturis wins shortstop job, could bat leadoff" –- and then got into the story, my eyebrows kept arching higher and higher until they ran into my hairline, where a truce was declared. Because in that story we learned that the Dodgers plan to employ the following combination of players, in some fashion or another, in the top two spots in their batting order:

Career OBP
Cesar Izturis .279
M. Grudzielanek .328
Marquis Grissom .318
Dave Roberts .292


Granted, Izturis is only 22 and that .279 career on-base percentage was compiled in only 46 games. But the fact is that Izturis has done nothing in his minor-league career to make us think that he's capable of doing much better than .279, at least not now. When Izturis was 20 years old, he posted a .253 OBP in Triple-A. When Izturis was 21 years old, he posted a .310 OBP in Triple-A (and that .279 OBP in the majors, with Toronto).

There's little reason to think that Izturis is ready to play in the majors, and there's absolutely no reason at all to think he's ready to be remotely productive with the bat in the majors ... and yet Dodgers manager Jim Tracy is actually thinking about putting Izturis at the top of the batting order.

Failing that, Izturis is slated to bat second, leaving the leadoff slot for ... Marquis Grissom and Dave Roberts, both of whom are horrible miscast as leadoff men because both of them are unlikely to reach base even 30 percent of the time. Well, OK, if strictly platooned they'll do better than that. But not better enough to justify their jobs.

Oh, and it's said that if Izturis doesn't win the leadoff job he'll slide all the way down to the No. 2 slot, where of course he'll do almost exactly as much damage to the Dodgers as if he were batting leadoff.

I've written more than a few times that batting order doesn't matter, and I'm not changing my tune today. Still, all this does say a couple of things about the Dodgers, and neither of them are positive.



It looks like the Dodgers went to the KC Royals baseball academy (for GM's). Dan Evans already made one bad move getting Jordan for Sheffield. I wonder if Evans will take a page out of Billy Bean's book, and start developing OBA in the minors, or if he'll continue to pay a lot of money to poor offensive players.
Posted by StatsGuru at 08:06 PM
March 27, 2002
Click here to read a
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Click here to read a good interview with the Cubs hitting coach, Jeff Petland. He seems to have grasped one of the truths of the game that should be obvious but often isn't:



Q. Everybody thinks a team wins with pitching, but the offense has to do more than it did last season, doesn't it?

A. We have to beat teams that aren't doing well, and that's where offense kicks in. You can't pitch a great game every day. When you run up against teams not doing well, we've got to dominate them better. We lost too many games last year against the struggling teams. We had to grind out too many of the 162. It's a lot easier to win 7-2 than 3-2. (Empahsis mine)



He answers this question just right. He doesn't say to the reporter, "Offense if 50% of the game. People who think you can win with just pitching are idiots!" But he does get across the point that run differential is important.

I also like this bit about Corey Patterson:



Q. What's a realistic expectation for Corey Patterson?

A. Moving closer to the plate has helped him. It's not always seen in production, but his pitch selection has been a lot better since he's done that. He is tracking the ball better and laying off pitches he hadn't in the past. It keeps him from diving out over the plate. Any time your head is moving around, you lose perspective of where the ball is. You create your own holes. Jim Hendry made the perfect comment to Corey: "See the two guys next to you in the outfield [Alou and Sosa]? Let them do the hitting, and you just do whatever you can.''



It's good technical analysis, not the good attitude junk you often get from coaches. Now when I watch Patterson this year, I can watch for how close to the plate he's standing, and see how his eyes track the ball. Thank, Jeff!
Posted by StatsGuru at 10:06 PM
From a reader: "I see
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From a reader:



"I see Jose Canseco was released by the Expos. That has to hurt. You have to
be pretty bad to be released by the Expos"

Which is worse: being release from Expos or the Devil Rays?


That's a tough one. Probably the Devil Rays. Canseco can argue that he can still hit, and he was released because he has to play the field for an NL team. If the Rays release you, you can't be any good.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:59 PM
I'm trying to make up
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I'm trying to make up my mind about the Cubs/Marlins deal, but I don't know enough (or anything) about the minor leaguers involved. If anyone has info, please let me know.

Alfonseca doesn't strike out many for a closer. I read he has a great fastball, but it looks to me like he K's about 6 per 9. Now, as Bill James discussed in his new Historical Abstract, researchers have shown that the fewer you strike out, the more hits you are going to give up. In hitter friendly Wrigley, that could mean trouble for Alfonseca. He does get a lot of ground balls, so the Cubs better have their best infield defense behind him when he takes the mound.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:48 PM
I see Jose Canseco was
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I see Jose Canseco was released by the Expos. That has to hurt. You have to be pretty bad to be released by the Expos.

I wonder if Jose will be voted into the Hall if the gets to 500 HR. It would certainly be a remarkable feat given the way he's thrown his career away. My guess is that he will achieve neither goal. Even if he does get 500 HR, his attitude is likely to keep him out. Remember when he was traded from the A's to Texas, he said that all Oakland wanted to do was win! Why would anyone want this guy.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:46 PM
If you are looking for
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If you are looking for Troy Pericval's response to Mo Vaughn, click here. Percival doesn't need to swear to make his point. Most leaders don't. Of course, I wonder if Disney allows its players to swear?

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:41 AM
Check out the back page
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Check out the back page of the April 1st New Yorker magazine. A very funny baseball cartoon.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:24 AM
March 26, 2002
I noticed Davy Lopes talking
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I noticed Davy Lopes talking about the Brewers being more selective in this article. Surprised me a bit, since Lopes was a player who was never that selective at the plate, and the Brewers were very much like that last year. Here's the quote:



Entering play Tuesday, the Brewers led the National League with a .335 team batting average and an on-base percentage of .396.

"Our hitters have all done a great job this spring in making adjustments at the plate and being selective," Lopes said. " 'Sarge' (hitting coach Gary Matthews) has done an outstanding job with them. Guys are really working the count and giving quality at-bats. The situational hitting has been outstanding.

"I know that people say, 'It's only spring training; don't get too excited.' But right now, that's all we have to measure it on. Is there improvement? Yes, there's improvement. Are there still some old habits there? Sure, but these guys have made an effort to make a change, and that's what you have to do."


Last year the Brewers had a batting average of .251 and an OBA of .319, 68 points higher. Right now, the OBA is 61 points higher. Last year, they drew a walk once every 11.2 AB. This spring, it's every 10.1 AB, so that is a real improvement. Everyone is hitting well in Arizona, so I wouldn't put too much stock in the batting average, but if they can get the walks up, the HR will drive in more runs.

Posted by StatsGuru at 09:29 PM
Here's another article about Soriano
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Here's another article about Soriano leading off. I'm not sure I agree with this quote:



Torre remained non-committal about what his lineup will be Monday in Baltimore, although he has been both intrigued and upbeat about what he has seen in Soriano batting first and Johnson second. The detractors - and there are plenty inside the organization - think Soriano is just not patient enough. And it might turn out he isn't. If Soriano cannot get on base at least 35 percent of the time - and there are serious questions if he can - then his electricity will not be enough to bat him leadoff.



Thirty-five percent of the time translates to a .350 OBA. Last year, a horrible one for leadoff hitters, the AL average among #1 hitters was .330. In the previous 10 years, it was between .344 and .360. So .350 is about average. That's fine if you have no one else on your team that is capable of leading off, but when I think of a leadoff hitter, I want someone who's at least at .380, and the Yankees have that in Jeter.

Sherman had it right when he first thought about the Yankees lineup, although he has Nick Johnson too low:



When spring training began, I was convinced the Yankees would look best with Soriano batting sixth and Nick Johnson ninth. I imagined Soriano ready to step into an RBI spot and figured Johnson would be best served hitting last, just as Jeter and Soriano mostly did in their rookie season to lower-pressure success.

Now I think the best lineup would be: Soriano, Johnson, Derek Jeter, Jason Giambi, Bernie Williams, Rondell White, Jorge Posada, Robin Ventura and Shane Spencer.

Why?

Because if it doesn't work, the Yanks can always change. A month from now, the Yanks can switch to Jeter leading off and Williams second. But if it works, the Yanks are set up for a 900-run season and the blueprint for a long-term lineup.



They also can change if Soriano can put up a .370 OBA from the 8th or ninth spot.

Based on Johnson's minor league record, there was little doubt he'd put up good OBA numbers, so I would never have had him ninth. I was thinking he'd bat 2nd, depending on how his power developed. I'd even consider leading him off and batting Jeter 2nd. In fact, if you take the latter lineup above, move Soriano to 8th and everyone above him up a notch, that's not a bad order at all.

Posted by StatsGuru at 07:09 PM
Selig has pledged not to
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Selig has pledged not to lock out the players this year. Read the article here. So if their is going to be a work stoppage, the players will have to strike. Looks like Selig is trying to make the players look like the bad guys again, instead of trying to build a partnership. I don't understand why baseball continues to have this adversarial relationship with the players. It hasn't worked, and it never will work. They need to take players on as full partners. Only then can there be labor peace.

Posted by StatsGuru at 03:16 PM
This article on Rickey Henderson
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This article on Rickey Henderson was sent to me by a friend, and it's just hilarious. Very different from the Rickey is moody and hard to get along with articles that you usually find.

There are a number of interesting insights.



Rickey on steals: ''Guys stopped stealing when they couldn't get paid for it. It wasn't no money in it. You know what an arbitrator told me one time? He said they let me steal 100 bases. Man! I almost jumped across the table. How did anyone let me steal 100? This game is corporate. Big business. They like home runs, not steals, so you see a lot of guys trying to hit home runs.''

Henderson pauses and says that Roger Cedeno could be a great base-stealer. ''But the last time I saw him on TV, he was pretty bulked up,'' he says. ''So you know what he's going to try to do.''

To a certain extent this is true, but the reality is that when offense is abundant, stolen bases are less important. It's a one run strategy, and when teams are routinely scoring five runs, SB's just aren't worth the risk.

Rickey on Mattingly: ''One year, he drove me in 79 times. Did you hear what I said? Seventy-nine times. He would do anything to get me in. You'd have to throw the ball over Mattingly's head for him not to get Rickey in. Dave Winfield used to get mad at him. He'd say, `Now, you ain't the only one who can drive Rickey in.'''

This is the best part of the show. Henderson grabs a bat and stands in front of his locker. He is demonstrating how to relax oneself at the plate. Players become so tense, he says, that they tense up and violently squeeze the bat.

''That's not how you're supposed to do it,'' he says. ''You're supposed to step out of the box and breathe.''

He clenches his teeth and then exhales.

''It frees up your hands. Once you step back in, you're all freed up. I'm telling you, it works. Mattingly used to do it. That's why I'm not afraid to get two strikes on me. I'm relaxed with two strikes. I'll do anything to keep that third strike from going by me.''

When Rickey was traded back to the A's in the late 80's, the I remember watching a game the Yankees were playing in Oakland. Before the game, Rickey was hitting off the tee, and Mattingly was sitting there setting up the balls for Rickey. Mattingly liked Rickey. This was the moment that I realized that all the negative writing about Henderson was wrong. Don Mattingly was the most respected player in baseball at that time. If Don liked Rickey well enough to sit there and tee up balls for him when he was playing for the opposition, Rickey must be okay.

Rickey suffers from being inarticulate and a lack of education, just as Roger Clemens does. When they speak to the media, they have a hard time expressing themselves clearly, so they come off as jerks. I'm glad this article shows Rickey talking in a comfortable setting. It gives us a new insight into the man.

Posted by StatsGuru at 10:03 AM
March 25, 2002
I was looking at the
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I was looking at the STATS, Inc. web site, and see that Win Shares won't be available until April. It would have been fun March reading.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:36 PM
A really good article here
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A really good article here by Tom Tippett of Diamond Mind Baseball. Tom has a really good baseball simulator, and has used it to see how this season may play out. I thought his Mets simulation was the most interesting. He has the Mets finishing 80-82, in fourth place in the NL East. I'm sure this will upset a lot of Mets fans, but it shouldn't surprise them. There's a lot of variance in this Met's team; I would expect them to win 90 games, but I wouldn't be surprised if they won only 70. Lots could go right, but lots can go wrong, also.

Compare this to the Yankees. I think they'll win 100 games, but I'd be very surprised if they only won 85. We're less sure about how the Mets season will play out.

Posted by StatsGuru at 08:24 PM
A friend sent me this
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A friend sent me this article today on Soriano leading off. What are we, back to the days of Horace Clarke? Soriano's strength as a hitter is his power. He has a poor OBA and has only drawn 1 walk this spring through Sunday the 24th. Despite his ability to steal bases, Soriano will be better at driving in runs than scoring them, so should bat farther down in the order. Ninth seems just right for him. With all the on-base potential on this Yankee team, he'll have lots of RBI opportunities, and when he does get on base, his speed will give the top of the order rbi chances on short hits.


Down's observations really bother me. From the article:

"Soriano had 94 more strikeouts than walks last season. As he improves his knowledge of the strike zone, Down said, he will become a better hitter. Though he has only one walk this spring, Soriano has been more selective. He said batting leadoff would give him a chance to see more pitches.

"'I don't care about the walks,' Down said. 'How many bad pitches has he swung at? If he never walked this season, that would be fine, if he swung at his pitch every at-bat. He's a good hitter, and you go to the plate not to walk or to take strikes, but to get a pitch to hit.'"


Down should care about the walks. Giambi may draw 100 more walks that Soriano this year. There's no reason for that. I think this is a bad move, but the team is so good, it probably won't make a difference. It reminds me of Toronto in 1992 and 1993. Devon White was a poor choice for leadoff on that team, but Cito Gaston wanted to make Devo happy, and the rest were so good it didn't matter.

Posted by StatsGuru at 04:31 PM
March 24, 2002
Hello and welcome to Baseball
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Hello and welcome to Baseball Musings. My name is David Pinto, and for 10 years I was the lead researcher for ESPN's Baseball Tonight. Last year, I hosted Baseball Tonight Online on ESPN.com. ESPN is not bringing the online version back this year, but I enjoyed talking baseball with fans. This web log will be my new outlet. Enjoy!

Posted by StatsGuru at 02:50 PM