A Little Kick In The Kotchman

Just when I start to get used to rays of sunshine illuminating the world of baseball reporting, the rain clouds of ignorance move in to remind me that while we've made some progress, we still live in a cumulus of journalistic daftness when it comes to sports reporting.

It's a small and silly thing really, a report this week from the Associated Press, that staunch defender of the 1901 reporting methods. It mentioned that the Tampa Bay Rays had signed first baseman Casey Kotchman to a contract, noting that in seven years he has hit .259 with 49 homers and 284 RBIs.

If you didn't know Mr. Kotchman or his St. Petersburg clan you'd have gained rather little insight into his career from those stats. He doesn't seem to be Stan Musial. Beyond that, though, you don't have much information.

After all, Casey might have kicked around for a few years, making cameo MLB appearances, busted out with a couple of 24 homer, 100 RBI years before a string of injuries put him on the shelf. In that case, bad luck might be winning the tug of war with good skills and the Rays are hoping for a good roll of the dice in 2011.

Or he might have plodded along through seven lackluster seasons, dinking seven homers and 40 RBIs a year. That's not even take-a-flyer material, especially at the least important defensive postion.

Maybe, in fact, Kotchman is a walk machine with after-burners who'll reliably bat leadoff for Tampa, get on base 250 times, swipe 40 of 45 bases and score 120 times while displaying a sizzling glove. In that case, the batting line presented not only matters less than his cup size, it summarily fails to measure anything relevant.

In fact, Kotchman is none of the above. A part-time player his whole career, he's accumulated even 300 plate appearances just four times. His .259/.326/.392 lifetime stat line show he's a hair above replacement level at the plate, unless he repeats last year's putridity. The less reliable defensive stats suggest he's a decent defensive backup.

The point isn't what Casey Kotchman is or isn't -- in fact, this is a throwaway item of little note that simply fills space in the newspaper. But as long as AP was going to fill that space, why couldn't they have filled it with information that told us something, anything? What they gave the baseball public instead was simply an empty bucket that was 30 years ago thought to have held something useful.

There is work yet to be done...

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Shopping In the Bargain Bin for Tampa

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." --Walt Whitman

Before you coronate the Red Sox in the AL East and pencil in the Yankees for Wild Card in 2011, allow me to introduce the Tampa Bay Rays. Thanks to a paired signing of post-expiration-date former Red Sox, the Rays may have postponed their departure from contention.

No one could be faulted for proposing that they wouldn't sign Manny Ramirez with Bernie Madoff's money. I personally swore him off with an eleven-foot pole. Still, getting him and a possible handler for .35 Jeters might be worth the plunge.

Here's how it's going down: the Rays inked Ramirez, 38, for meal money and matched him with fellow cast-off Johnny Damon, 37, whose deal cost $5.25 mil. Ramirez can stomach the pay cut because he won't endure one; the Dodgers must still pay $15 million for their post-playoffs indiscretion over the next two-and-a-half years. With former fellow Idiot by his side, perhaps Manny can find his happy -- and more importantly his motivated -- place.

Ramirez will DH if he can stay healthy, whose odds skyrocket as long as he DHs. In the last two years, Ramirez has managed to stay upright, or sufficiently interested, to accumulate a year's worth of at bats (631 PA). He has been a shadow of the Manny who terrorized AL pitching in the 90s and early 00s, posting  284/.399/.476. Compare that to Rays DHs last year though, .238/.322/.391, and suddenly a little brooding is a fun quirk. The difference is about two wins on the season, generally thought to be worth roughly $9-$10 million in baseball's trading stalls. The Rays got that for $2 million. And if Manny reprises his late-2010 White Sox debacle, .261/.420/.319, which was apparently hernia-induced, Tampa just flips him to a hopeful contender for some jetsam on the flotsam pile.

The Damon signing is a bit more of a commitment, but Johnny's got a couple of feathers in his cap: 1. He can play the field. 2. He's not crazy. 3. He's shown that his decline will be gradual. Damon batted .271/.355/.401 last year in Detroit's Hitting Suppressant Park. With average defense, which he's certainly capable of, he can replace Carl Crawford in a corner outfield spot and forestall most of the lost production. That's worth another $10 million, which the Rays got at half-off.

You may be remembering the Tampa Bay franchise that won the East and jettisoned key elements of its roster, but flipping Crawford, Matt Garza and what was left of Carlos Pena (OBP last four years -- .411, .377, .356, .325) for the two old guys, plus heralded rookie Jeremy Hellickson, could grade out as a wash. If any of the menagerie of farm acts contribute in The Show for Tampa, they might have even come out ahead.

The Rays still need relief help, and with their Calvin Griffith budgeting system they'll need more of this kind of creativity to land anything useful. If they can get improved production from the stable of young players -- Brignac, Upton, Jaso, Joyce -- they can challenge the Yankees for the Wild Card. This signing shows that considering the team's thin wallet, GM Andrew Friedman is worth a bunch of wins against a replacement GM, and that might be just enough to write off writing them off.

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Retiring A Terrible Idea

There's a political ad running on TV in my town in which a 59-year-old librarian with a torn rotator cuff admonishes our Senator for supporting an increase in the Social Security retirement age. She complains that the constant pain she endures in the hopes of retiring at 62 will be for naught if our Senator is successful.

I am very moved by this ad. I want to find this poor woman. And shoot her.

What is absent from their argument is the cost of allowing people like this apocryphal woman to retire at 62. The cost is that Social Security won't function in 15 years. This ad argues for a handful of people to get all their money right away at the expense of our children and grandchildren ever collecting theirs at all. 

This is the rationale currently being pursued by Bud Selig and MLB power brokers with respect to the playoffs. They have embarked on a short-term money-grab that will drag the sport further down the entertainment food chain. It appears likely that, because of the added revenue it will produce, owners and players will approve an expanded playoff structure starting in 2012. They want to add two more teams, and a wild-card round, to the current format.

Apparently Commissioner Bud hasn't noticed that the public is losing interest in baseball's post-season for the following reasons:

1. The team with the fourth (or worse) best record has nearly as much chance of winning the pennant as the team with the best.

2. Too many series = increased chance best teams get knocked off = less compelling championship.

3. Snow showers, sleet, parkas and baseball don't mix. Hello?

4. October belongs to pro and college football. November? Fuhgedaboutit!

More importantly, all the arguments in favor of expanding playoffs -- more teams in the race, more excitement for a larger number of fan bases, blah blah blah -- amount to a smorgasbord of irrelevance in the absence of an accounting of its many costs. 

The NBA Effect is this: more teams in the playoffs yield a less meaningful regular season. Under the proposed format, the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays no longer have to worry about winning their division; they can all come to the party! People generally fail to understand that regular season drama is about that last playoff slot. Adding more slots doesn't heighten drama; it reduces its intensity as the best outfits cruise home and weaker teams battle for less significant positions. 

The current proposal -- two wild cards play for a berth in the next round -- promises every bit the bone-chilling anticipation of the NCAA hoops play-in game. While the idea correctly tips the scales against division runners-up, it dilutes the accomplishment of getting in.

Worse yet: human beings do not play baseball in Minneapolis (or most of America), at night, in March and November. My yearly Opening Day pilgrimages to Cooperstown were met with closed shops because of the cold. One year it snowed on us. That was when Opening Day was in April. Another round of playoffs? Where you gonna put it? The season needs to be shortened, not lengthened.

All this is irrelevant considering the decision is about legal tender and nothing else. So let's talk cash. Selig is proposing 4-6 extra post-season games -- two best-of-three series. That's 4-6 extra sellouts, 4-6 more televised properties. But again, there's a cost.

Before wild card expansion, the World Series drew 30 million TV viewers in the US. Today, 14 million. There are many reasons, but sucking the life out of the Series is transparently (to me) the most determinative. (The NHL sends its regards.) Offering up a cadaver as your sport's championship does nothing for your sport's overall popularity, as is evidenced by the microscopic TV ratings for baseball's regular season.

MLB's rulers have to look beyond short-term revenue enhancement and focus on the long-term health of the sport. Quick fixes and Band-Aid approaches have slowly degraded the game. A little sacrifice by everyone today might be all it takes to improve the sport's prognosis over time.

Wait, am I talking baseball or Social Security?

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Margaritaville in Orange County

This week, Toronto GM Alex Antholopolous channeled his inner PT Barnum and picked up two very useful things from the Anaheim Angels in addition to fourth outfielder Juan Rivera: slugging catcher Mike Napoli and the GDP of Lady Gaga.

It's hard to imagine how drunk Anthopolous had to get Angels owner Arte Moreno and GM Tony Reagins to bamboozle a deal for Vernon Wells that actually netted the Jays anything other than cost relief. Two-point-oh on the breathalyzer strikes me as the floor.

What Antholopous unloaded was such a staggeringly horrible contract (for which he was not responsible) that it actually stymied any serious roster repair north of the border. For a non-contender in the toughest division in baseball, that put the playoffs farther away than Cabo San Lucas. Wells' sub-Brad Hawpe production (.328/.470 three-year average) and lengthening teeth (he's 33) somehow command $86 million over the next four years. (Regards from Gary Matthews Jr. and Barry Zito!) They are going to be the longest four years of Moreno's life because, though the contract won't choke the Angels financially, it will limit their flexibility, particularly once moving Wells to a corner outfield spot becomes unavoidable. That well may be June of this year.

If nothing had gone to Ontario in return, Blue Jay brass would be doing Braylon Edwards imitations. It gets even better though, because they coaxed Napoli and Rivera into the deal. Revised estimate: two-point-five on the breathalyzer.

Napoli, a 29-year-old backstop who'll make a quarter of Wells' salary this season, actually outhits Wells (346/.485 lifetime). He also outhits everyone in the Blue Jays lineup not named Jose Bautista, which offsets his less-than-stellar skills inside the tools of ignorance. Conversely, Rivera is a garden-variety defensive replacement/fourth outfielder making $5.25 million in 2011. Then he's off the books and the Jays can collect a draft pick when someone else signs him.

Bottom line: the Angels improved in the outfield, lost a solid bat behind the plate and hardened their financial arteries for the next four years. Viewer discretion is advised this year in Orange County. The Blue Jays got the most valuable player in the deal and saved $12 million this year and $10-$13 million a year for each of the next three. (Napoli can become a free agent in 2012; his current market value is roughly $7.5-$8 million, compared to Wells' $21 million salary each year from 2012-2014.)

What can Toronto do with its $51 million saved? Well, the Jays could add four years of a spicy young starter like Ervin Santana (signed in Anaheim for $31 million), two years of outfield proficiency like Andre Ethier ($16 million by the Dodgers) and a season of solid middle-relief action like Frank Francisco ($3.625 million in Arlington). Back of the envelope, that's eight more wins next year, the difference between middle of the pack (84 wins) and playoff team (92 wins), and that assumes the unlikely -- that Wells for Napoli & Rivera is a wash.

By now, Moreno and Reagins should have awoken from their stupor to a new mermaid tattoo, an empty wallet and Vernon Wells standing in front of Mike Napoli's locker. And the worst part is, their heads won't stop pounding for four years.

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Scribes Know Best (Really!)

There remain only four career-long relievers in the Hall of Fame -- Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Bruce Sutter and Rich Gossage -- while one-time saves leader Lee Smith languishes on the HOF ballot. (Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera seem destined to join the first group.) This may be a case of baseball writers understanding something about the game that managers don't.

Ever since Tony LaRussa designated the ninth inning Dennis Eckerley's (Eck is in the Hall, but like John Smoltz, he's a starter-reliever hybrid), teams have wrapped usage of their best relief pitcher around the save statistic, like a pig in a blanket. For the last decade we have known that this is sub-optimal use of said hurler, who would have much greater impact pitching in higher-leverage situations. 

The game totters in the balance for the Mudville Nine down by a run in the seventh with the bases juiced and the heart of the enemy's lineup due. That's the time to bring in hard-tossing Billy Ballslinger. Saving him to "protect" a three-run cushion in the opponent's last at-bat is a waste of resources and, in Mudville's case, futile. After all, leaving in middling Wendell Whiplash so as not to "waste" the closer obviates the need to "protect" anything at game's end besides the clubhouse spread.

Great new research from Baseball Prospectus demonstrates vividly how little "closing" has meant to team success. Over the last half-century, the number of one-run leads lost by teams in the ninth inning has declined microscopically -- about once every two years per team. Add in two- and three- run leads no longer being squandered and use of the closer may be worth a win a year. (This research comes with a slew of caveats, but the principles are sound.)

Except there's a cost to defending the closer's game-virginity until the final frame. It's all those leads Mudville might have established had optimal bullpen use squashed opponent rallies in previous innings. The difference there, according to BP's research, is twice as great since '88. Since they're most often much higher leverage situations than two run leads with three outs to induce, they wipe out all of the gains, and a whole lot more.

Given that, how much is a great closer worth to his team? There's been scads of research on the subject with varying results, but it all has this in common: even a guy who regularly flays batters from the closer role has less value than a mid-line third starter, because he's only out there for 65 innings in a season, many of them with a three-run lead. Baseball Reference, employing the model that snuggles up most to relievers, pegs Trevor Hoffman's 18-year career at 31 wins over replacement value, miles short of the Hall of Fame average for pitchers. By way of comparison, that's 2.7 wins fewer than Jamie Moyer accumulated...in the 18 years before he turned 40. In just 10 seasons, the punchline that sounds like this -- Carlos Zambrano -- has bequeathed 31 1/2 victories on the good denizens of our Second City.

One more: Pedro Martinez earned four more wins against replacement level in just his four best seasons than Hoffman did in all 18. And Hoffman's the second best ninth-inning specialist of all time. (Please feel free to ignore along with me that they've only existed since 1988.)

So give the writers their props for recognizing intuitively that closing is a bad investment and leaving most of the best relievers out of the Hall. So, managers, when are you going to figure it out and help your teams win more games?

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I Have A Dream

On the day we celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday, it's appropriate to explore the issue of race in baseball. MLK and I are happy to observe that there doesn't seem to be much of one.

Oh sure, black Americans comprise just nine percent of MLB players, but...so what? Professional sports are as close to a pure meritocracy as any activity in life. If more black athletes were choosing to play baseball, or more great baseball players were black, that percentage would be higher.

MLB has its RBI program that is designed to increase interest in baseball among denizens of this country's inner cities. This of course, is little more than a PR stunt. What does it matter if black Americans choose to play football and basketball instead? In fact, the hell with all that: promoting education in America's inner cities benefit their inhabitants and society in general far more.

Diversity is hardly an issue in MLB. Latinos fill more than a quarter of roster spots. A handful of ballplayers from the Far East join them. Minorities ride the pine just as white players do, demonstrating that front offices aren't employing minorities only when they're indispensable.

MLB received an A for race and a B for gender hiring in the annual study by the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports. Twenty-eight percent of employees at baseball's central offices were nonwhite, including 20 percent among senior executives. Women were 42 percent of employees, and 26 percent of the senior executives. That's pretty laudable considering the longstanding link between playing the game and working in it.

Minorities have always had the most difficulty breaking into the old-boy club of on-field management. Yet nine of the 32 manager jobs are held today by non-whites, roughly representative of the dugout. Four of those managers are black, four Latino and one Asian. 

Beyond the numbers, it really does appear that we are focused on the content of a player's character (and his on-base percentage) rather than on the color of his skin. A recitation -- not herein forthcoming -- of beloved players of all races and national origin would illuminate that.

Suffice to say that the great man whose birthday we celebrate today would be a fan of America's pastime. In fact, he may even have been dreaming about it.

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Bringing the Mountain To Muhammad

If Andy Pettite's going to take his ball and go home, the Yankee rotation begins the year in shambles. They can't count on successfully ping-ponging Joba Chamberlain back to a starting role or putting all their fifth-starter eggs in Ivan Nova's basket. And relying on AJ Burnett is like trying to drink a glass of juice on a roller coaster.

But if they Bombers struggle to get through the early innings, maybe they've developed a novel approach to pitching that will push their excellence in the waning frames forward. If they can't be great in innings 1-6, isn't it just as effective to be great in innings 4-9?

Which brings us to the signing yesterday of Rafael Soriano, the best reliever on the market. This decision, after striking out on the free agent market earlier this year, indicates one of two things:

1) Brian Cashman doesn't trust Mariano Rivera to remain spectacular in his 40s.

2) Brian Cashman has decided he can win with that lineup if he assembles a bullpen that can shut down teams from the end of the game to the beginning, the reverse of he usual baseball modus operandi.

Option 1 is unthinkable and Option 2 is intriguing, so I'm choosing that as my truth. Add in Joba and former Met Pedro Feliciano and you have a four man -- rotation doesn't suit a bullpen -- relief pitching corps that can rescue the placeholders that follow Sabathia and Hughes in the rotation. Manager Joe Girardi had better exercise his hook muscles during the winter break, because he's going to be flexing them excessively during the season.

The Yankees still have the cash to execute a mid-season deal for a starter if need be, and if they're still hanging around the Boston juggernaut. It's this kind of innovative management that could make them a team worth rescuing.

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Low Heat in Arlington

Nolan Ryan's famous high heat has evidently migrated south to his wallet, where it was burning a hole. The Rangers made the kind of impulse buy on the free agent market this year that I fear they will regret. Worse yet, it could hamstring them mid-summer when they're one trade short of a division lead.

The AL champs aptly rewarded Vlad Guerrero's surprising season with walking papers on the premise that they'd squeezed all the tasty juice from him that was left. But then, after fanning on Cliff Lee, they turned around and dumped the unclaimed Benjamins on the next biggest name on the free agent wire. $96 mil over six years for Adrian Beltre is not only too much for too long, it could really hurt in July.

Why is this a march in reverse? Let me count the ways. 

1. As I've chronicled before, Beltre is a contract phenomenon whose two best seasons -- by a country mile, and I don't mean a pipsqueak country like Belize or Latvia, I'm talking about Sudan before it split, or all the islands of Indonesia -- immediately preceded contract expirations. Texas has now removed that incentive until the star cornerman is 38 and can't take advantage anymore.

2. If Michael Young and his remaining $48 million salary is no longer the Rangers' third baseman, what is he? At 34, he's no more a shortstop than Derek Jeter and no more a second baseman than Mama Cass. Young's bat, .284/.330/.444, does the tango at short, the polka at third and the Macarena at DH. He's clogging up the lineup, but unloading him for a roster spot will cost a Texas-sized eating of salary.

3. The AL West is up for grabs in '11, but the Rangers have holes. Josh Hamilton and the pitching staff are both almost certain to regress and the A's and M's could be more formidable. Come the trading deadline, what's GM Jon Daniels to do? He will have already cashed in the mutual fund for the newly unmotivated Beltre, leaving him cash-strapped when better opportunities present themselves. 

Contrast that with the Yankees, who are relaxing on the dock after failing to land the big free agent fish. If they're still in the thick of it, they'll have plenty of cash to take some richly-compensated starting pitcher off of some rebuilder's hands.

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Patience won't get you 5,000 strikeouts. But when you're the owner of a Major League team it can be a virtue.