A Fly On the Wall in Cleveland

Cleveland Indians closer, Chris Perez: Um, Mr. Shapiro, you wanted to see me?

Cleveland Indians GM Mark Shapiro: Hey Chris, thanks for stopping by. Have a seat.

Perez: Did you want to congratulate me for striking out the side Saturday?

Shapiro: Uh, no, though that was great. 

Perez: Are you pissed about the walk and hit I gave up on Thursday?

Shapiro: No, no. We won anyway, so that's good.

Perez: We're in first place, though you'd hardly know it from the attendance.

Shapiro: Yeah, that's what I want to discuss. Um, Chris? The thing is, see, uh, shut the fuck up.

Perez: What?

Shapiro: Look, I appreciate that we're 24-18 and in first place, yet we're last in baseball in attendance.

Perez: See what I'm saying?

Shapiro: Sure, and I appreciate that you're 14 for 15 in save opportunities.

Perez: And no one's coming out to see them.

Shapiro: Right, and I'm sure that's frustrating. But see Chris, here's the thing. We're the freakin' Indians. Okay? We haven't delivered on a promise since Carlos Baerga turned to lard in 1996. So it's not like the fans owe us anything. It's their money and they get to decide what to do with it, particularly when it costs 200 bucks to take the family to 1/162nd of the season. Besides that, we play in Cleveland, which means that our fans have to be residents of Cleveland. You see what I'm saying? They've pretty much pinned the suffering meter over the years, particularly with the whole LeBron thing.

Perez: Now that was funny. At least we're not Detroit.

Shapiro: Right, who'd want to be Detroit? Detroit made the World Series a few years ago and won our division last year. And remember, we were 31-16 on May 23 last season and had a seven game lead.

Perez: And we still didn't draw two million people.

Shapiro: ...because we went 49-66 the rest of the way and finished 15 games out. We drew 1.8 million from a city full of people who are in school through June and then leave this godforsaken place during the summer.

Perez: But what about all those years that we sold out?

Shapiro: We didn't suck then! We went 100-44. We made the World Series twice. The fans are smarting from all our late season bed-wetting and waiting for us to prove that we're real before they pour back into the Jake.

Perez: You mean Progressive Field?

Shapiro: Didn't I tell you to shut the fuck up?

Perez: But we are for real. 

Shapiro: Yeah, as real as Kim Kardashian. We've been outscored in our first 45 games. We've played 15 games against the White Sox and Royals, and just three against the Rangers, Yankees and Rays. We've played six more games at home than on the road. We've won nine of 11 one-run games, in part thanks to you and in part because we've been lucky.

Perez: But we're 24-18...

Shapiro: ...and Justin freakin' Masterson is our #2 starter. Casey Kotchman is the best we can do at first base. You know what a slugger he is? He's pounded 62 home runs in his nine year career. That's almost as many as our DH hit in two years ... back when he could hit.

Perez: So you want me to apologize to the fans for dissing them for not showing up?

Shapiro: Hell no. We want you to stand by your comments unapologetically.

Perez: I don't get it.

Shapiro: ...so we can throw you under the bus. The team is going to run from your comments like Wilma Rudolph. We're going to suck up to our potential customers like a nerd to the prom queen. And then, if Derek Lowe keeps pitching out of his mind, and if Jack Hanrahan remains blissfully unaware that he's Jack Hanrahan, and if the Tigers continue to play with holes in their mitts, and if we continue to play teams just as they go cold, well, maybe we'll last through the All-Star break and the fans will peak in, at least out of curiosity.

Perez: And maybe we can win the division!

Shapiro: Sure Chris. And maybe Democrats can balance budgets.

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Houston: We Don't Have a Problem

"Low expectations are the key to happiness."

-- A wise man

The New York Yankees are two games over .500 and Big Apple sports talk airwaves are atwitter -- as is Twitter itself -- with doomsday rhetoric. Manager Joe Girardi has to keep his resume fresh.

In their final season in the National League, the Houston Astros are 18-22 and inducing -- if not glee, then at least gratification. Manager Brad Mills may soon find himself being fitted for a bronze likeness. Thank goodness for low expectations.

Following a dismal 56-106 season in which they finally converted high-priced veterans into batches of prospects, the 'Stros were tabbed for a 2012 as ugly as diaper rash. Las Vegas put the over-under on 98.5 losses. Baseball Prospectus's million pre-season simulations averaged 100 losses for Houston.

Having clung for half-a-decade to a mediocrity-or-bust philosophy featuring aging veterans far beyond their expiration dates, it finally all went sour for the Houston franchise last year. A new owner dismissed baseball's worst general manager and began disassembling the roster in full rebuild mode. In 2011 alone, Houston flipped its remaining veteran assets, Jeff Keppinger, Hunter Pence and Michael Bourne, for 10 potential future stars.

Entering this season, fans at Minute Maid Park were slated to be treated to little more than a minor league club. Besides slugger Carlos Lee, no Astro batter had accumulated more than 20 career homers or 120 lifetime RBIs. Not withstanding starters Wandy Rodriguez and Bud Norris, and closer Brett Meyers,there might not have been a pitcher on their roster whom a contending team would employ.*

*Okay, almost any team would love to pay 28-year-old righty reliever Wilton Lopez $442K to bring his sub-three ERA and nearly 5-1 K/BB ratio to a mound near them. But since you've never heard of Wilton Lopez, I thought I could get away with ignoring him.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the basement. The Astros are tied for fifth in the league in scoring with such a balanced attack that no one sports an OPS over .806 (near-rookie second baseman Jose Altuve), no one has bopped more than five home runs (Red Sox castoff shortstop Jed Lowrie), and only two regulars have reached safely even 35% of the time (Lowrie and Lee). Paradoxically, this bodes well: it's hard to see where the expected regression is going to come from.

The pitching has also pleasantly surprised, with a middle-of-the-league performance featuring veterans Rodriguez and Bud Norris, and rejuvenated relievers Meyers and Brandon Lyon. 

Still, the Astros no longer value a .501 record. Everything they do in 2012 under new GM Jeff Luhnow is a long-term investment. Lee, Meyers, Lyon and Rodriguez, all 30-somethings with swollen price tags, could be gone by year's end in favor of promising farm stock. Already, young pitchers Paul Clemens, Aneury Rodriguez and Jordan Lyles, and first base blue-chipper Brett Wallace are slated for action with the big club. Management is not particularly concerned with whether this team finishes above the Cubs and Pirates in the standings, as long as they make progress towards winning the city's first baseball championship.

All of which provides a foundation of low expectations on which to build a record. 70-92 would look awfully good.

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Another Time Around the Wheel in Baltimore

Break up the Orioles! As of last night, the Baltimorons owned the best record in the American League at 25-14. In the upside-down AL East, they trump Tampa, Toronto, the Yankees and the Red Sox.

If you hear Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young singing "we have all been here before," it's because Deja Vu isn't just a song*, it's the yellow birds' modus operandi. Check out this cheeky blog from April about hot starts at Camden Yards.

*The song came up on my mp3 player earlier this week -- and then it mysteriously played again. No kidding.

In summary, the "Sorryels" have scratched out roughly as many wins as losses in the first half of the season since 2001, and fallen apart thereafter. This very team went 34-20 under Buck Showalter to end the 2010 campaign, then stumbled through most of last season until a 22-16 finish. Counting that, they've Dr. Jekylled their last 77 games with a 47-30 record. But in a decade of futility, what goes up comes down.

Still, the current squad has a pack of underachievers who might finally be delivering. Outfielder Adam Jones and backstop Matt Wieters have lived up to potential so far with OPS of .931 and .851 respectively. A starting staff of four-star prospects has performed at a middling level, a dramatic improvement over previous years. That Brian Matusz has limited opponents to 11.5 hits and one home run per nine innings, for a 3-4, 5.71 record, is a moral victory ranking with Gettysburg compared to last year's combustion of 1-9, 10.69, allowing 14.7 hits and 3.3 big flies per nine.

So go ahead, believe in the Orioles at your own risk. Mostly, I believe in the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays and Blue Jays.

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Prior and Wood, If Only They Could

In 1998, "Kerry Wood" was an exclamation. After retiring today, "Kerry Wood" is a warning.

The first-round pick with the big body and the triple-digit heater led Chicago to the playoffs with a 13-6, 3.40, 233-strikeout, Rookie of the Year performance in '98. In his fifth start, he electrified the baseball world with a one-hit, no-walk, 20-strikeout shutout of the Astros, perhaps the greatest pitching effort ever. (The one safety was an infield dribbler by Craig Biggio.)

Before the season ended, Wood was cooling his sore elbow. One playoff start later his ulnar collateral ligament was toast and Tommy John surgery awaited, shelving him for the '99 season. It foreshadowed his entire, snakebit, career

The Cubs rushed him back 12 months later and Wood scuffled in 2000, but regained form in 2001 with 174 innings of 12-6, 3.36 and 217 strikeouts. He whiffed 217 more in '02 and 266 in '03, topping 200 innings each season. At that point, Wood had compiled an impressive 59-41, 3.62 record with 1065 Ks in 903 frames of work.

Then, Wood turned to balsa. He frayed his rotator cuff and missed significant time over the next three seasons, including all but four starts in '06. By '07 Wood was a reliever, and not the kind who wakes the echoes of Wilhelm, Fingers or Rivera. An exceptional '08 gave way to mundanity out of the pen and yesterday, having returned to the Cubs for his valedictory, he gave way after delivering the lineup card and facing one batter -- striking out Dayan Viciedo of the White Sox.

Wood departs at age 35 with an 86-75, 3.67 record and 63 saves. He made two All-Star games and never led the league in anything after age 26, certainly not the resume that Cubs fans dreamed about 14 years ago when he was baffling NL batters.

Although they enjoyed rather little overlap, Wood will forever be paired with fellow flameout Mark Prior. Also a top-five draft pick, Prior exploded on the scene in '02 and dominated in '03, with an 18-6, 2.43 line and 245 strikeouts in the near-pennant season, a performance that earned him a third-place finish in the Cy Young voting. But the wheels came off in '04, as injuries put Prior and Wood in pitching limbo simultaneously.

Prior threw just 229 more Major League innings in his career, which ended* at age 26 with a 42-29, 3.51 tally. There is no doubt that had Prior been able to stay healthy, he could have been one of the greats. (Extrapolate his truncated performance over 15 full seasons and you get a 200-win pitcher with an ERA 24% better than average in a hitters' park and more strikeouts than innings.) But as they say, if the queen had testicles, she'd be king.

*Prior attempted a reboot in 2010 and has tossed around the minors since. He is currently in extended Spring Training for the Red Sox. This requiem may be premature, but that's not the way to bet. More likely, Prior and Wood are memories, a cautionary tale for all those who would project past performance into the future. Dwight Gooden, Dontrelle Willis, Mark Fidrych and a long parade of others send their regards.

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Slash Stats and Triple Crowns

Babe Ruth never did it. Barry Bonds never did it. Neither did Stan Musial or Willie Mays or Honus Wagner. Josh Hamilton might do it -- at least he's on track to.

It's winning the Triple Crown, of course. Hamilton has been AL pitching's daddy over the first 31 games, pacing the circuit in batting average, HR and RBI (and total bases and on base and slugging and OPS.) In fact, he's on pace* to hit .402 with 94 homers and 214 RBI. I'm thinking that will get it done at season's end. And here's the thing: even though Triple Crown stats have been debunked of their mystical powers, every Triple Crown winner has stood tallest against his peers.

Should Hamilton maintain his torrid pace, the story wouldn't be the Triple Crown, it would be the greatest batting season in MLB history. .402 BA, 84 HR and 214 RBI is so awesomely awesome that nobody needs your fancy stathead equations or VORP readings to cast an MVP vote.

Even sporting more pedestrian Triple Crown lines, every single player who's lead his circuit in those three categories has also led his league in OPS. Without debunking the popular version, the more significant (though easier) achievement is the slash stats Triple Crown of OBP/SLG/OPS. It's more significant because it more often identifies the league's best hitter.

Since 1939, the rookie year for the MVP award, there have been 15 seasons in which a batter got aboard safely and hit for power better than everyone else in the league. (Ted Williams did it five times, Barry Bonds and Stan Musial twice each. Babe Ruth achieved the feat nine times, all prior to '39.) Nine of the 15 times the Slash Stat King failed to knock in the most runs. In eight of those 15 seasons the league's best hitter failed to win the MVP. (Two pre-humidor Rockies are included on this list; they didn't deserve the MVP. On the other hand, Williams went 0-for-5 on the MVPs, probably all of which should have been his.)

So what correlates with the MVP? In 12 of the 15 years that a player Triple Slashed, the MVP came from the team that finished first. Twice more the winner's team won the Wild Card.

It's a good reminder of two things:

1. Triple Crown stats are like government communiques: they often suggest something but rarely tell the whole story. In extreme cases, it's pretty obvious what's going on.
2. Want the hardware? Forget the walks. Play with teammates who get on base and make sure you bat behind them.

*giggle
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How Many Benjamins for Hamilton?

That thudding sound you heard when Josh Hamilton deposited his third and fourth line drives into the seats last night was the sound of GM Jon Daniels smacking his forehead.

Daniels has the unenviable task of dealing with Hamilton's 2013 free agency status just as his center fielder is mashing.

What Daniels no doubt knows is that while Hamilton is a great player and a heart-warming tale of redemption, he's also a 31-year-old with an emergency room loyalty card. Despite his .313/.370/.556 stick and defensive prowess in a key position, this is not a man to whom you give a golden parachute.

A batter who hits .250 is a .250 hitter. A pitcher who fans 250 a year is a strikeout pitcher. Likewise, a player who pays rent to the disabled list is injury prone. In his first five seasons, Josh Hamilton has made five DL trips and missed 205 games due to 20 different injuries as varied as broken ribs, a strained hammy, a sore back and patellar tendinitis. That's 40 games a season during which Josh Hamilton had absolutely no value to his team whatsoever.

The fans in Dallas don't care about that. All they see are his Triple-Crown numbers so far this season, his 75 home run pace, his 2010 MVP, his Adonis profile, his devout faith, and of course, the only two AL pennants in team history. They want him back. 

So does Jon Daniels, but he recognizes that Josh Hamilton is only three-quarters of a superstar if he only plays 120 games. While players with his mad skills coax $25 million/year, Hamilton is only worth three-quarters of that --$19 million. While other superstars ink deals that guarantee their income to age 40, the Rangers would be imprudent to commit to their injury-riddled slugger beyond four or five years.

It's going to be interesting to see where this goes. My guess is that Hamilton fractures a pinkie or ruptures a spleen or contracts blue skin disorder before the season ends because, well, that's what Josh Hamilton does. And that will splash a dose of reality on the negotiations.

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From Hoser to Closer

Has a player who's gone oh-for-eight with five strikeouts, a double-play and utterly no defensive value ever been the hero of a game?

It happened Sunday in the 17-inning tilt between Baltimore and Boston. Having burned through his bullpen, Orioles' manager Buck Showalter sent flailing designated hitter Chris Davis to the mound. Davis hurled two scoreless frames, fanning a pair and earning the win as his teammates plated three runs in the 17th.

In other words, Davis was responsible for 15 outs: nine that he hit into and six that he induced.

The 26-year-old right-hander last toed the rubber for Navarro (Texas) Junior College in 2006. It's also the first time in 2012 that he's made eight consecutive outs. Davis was philosophical about the turn of events.

Summoned to pitch, he thought to himself, "Sweet, I get to try something different today, because hitting ain't working." 

By the way, Rube Waddell of the Boston Americans beat the Philadelphia Athletics 4-2 in 20 innings on July 4, 1905 while taking the double-collar.

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Big Donkey Kicking Again

And so, with 27 games in the books, we can conclusively pronounce Adam Dunn's career no longer over.

Dunn, as you may recall, achieved a dubious distinction last year: he had the worst mid-career season any great hitter has ever had. Dunn batted .159, fanned in 36% of his at-bats and swatted just 11 big flies, fewer than a third of his usual output.

This year, he's at an extremely Dunnian .250/.376/.587 with nine homers. He's more than halfway to last year's RBI total and and has already collected nearly 40% of last year's hit total. Enough ballots have been counted for retirement to concede. The Big Donkey's still kicking.

Whew! 'Cause that dude is fun to watch with his all or nothing approach. He's nearing 400 home runs, 1,000 RBI and 2,000 strikeouts. His .374 lifetime OBP belies that lousy batting average (.244). And if Dunn isn't Done -- he's just 32 -- he could rack up lots more highlights.

Hooray for us.

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Attention Met Fans: Is Wright Best Ever?

I commend to your attention, if you live and die with the ballers in Flushing, this article by Alex Remington and published by the excellent site Fangraphs. 

On the occasion of David Wright's ascension to alltime Met RBI king, Remington notes that Wright was already the greatest Met position player of all time. (Tom Seaver, of course, is the best player ever and will be for a long time. As Remington also points out, the history of the team is thick with pitchers but not so much with hitters.)

I've co-opted this graph to support Remington's case. It shows that while Hall of Famers have passed through, Wright's time as a Met is first for overall value as a Met.

Name	G	PA	HR	RBI	SB	triple slash		Fld	BsR	WAR
David Wright	1121	4849	186	735	151	.301/.381/.508		-26.6	7.5	40.2
Darryl Strawberry	1103	4549	252	733	191	.263/.359/.520		7		36.6
Jose Reyes	1050	4840	81	423	370	.292/.341/.441		15.4	18.5	33.4
Carlos Beltran	839	3640	149	559	100	.280/.369/.500		12.4	17.3	30.9
Edgardo Alfonzo	1075	4449	120	538	45	.292/.367/.445		44.9		30.7
Mike Piazza	970	3941	220	655	7	.296/.373/.542		-48.9	-7.2	30.2
Keith Hernandez	875	3684	80	468	17	.297/.387/.429		52		27.0
Howard Johnson	1149	4591	192	629	202	.251/.341/.459		-81		24.0

 

WAR=Wins Against Replacement

The fielding numbers are calculated in runs, not in wins, so Piazza loses about five wins, not 49, for his ineptitude as a backstop. Also remember that WAR is adjusted for position. Wright's hitting prowess is remarkable compared to other hot cornermen while Hernandez lacked the punch of most first basemen and Straw was being measured against other corner outfielders.

Your mileage may vary when it comes to who the greatest everyday Met has been, but if he stays with the team, by next year David Wright should be #1 alltime in hits, walks, doubles, runs, RBIs and batting average (for players with more than 500 at bats) as a Met.

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Playoffs! Playoffs?

Finally, Still, college football is going to have a playoff starting in 2014. 

The braying of the uninformed aside, college football has had a playoff for a decade. It's a one-game playoff between the top two teams, as determined by the worst method in the world except for all the other methods.

(The method most people want used is the one in which they personally get to choose the two teams.)
 
The discussion now on the table involves four teams rather than two, which maintains the sanctity of the championship series while preserving the urgency of the season. It may, however, sap yet more relevance from the bowl games, particularly those that don't get to host a championship series game. Imagine the spectacular pyre of apathy facing, say, the Sugar Bowl, as it hosts two teams not involved in the playoffs.

Another seductive element under consideration is the removal of automatic qualifiers to the BCS bowls, particularly inasmuch as the conferences have all the coherence and permanence of Dennis Rodman's hairdo. Consider:

• The Big East includes teams in Houston and Dallas. 
• The Big Ten has 12 teams, but can't become the Big 12, because that's the name of another conference, which has 10 teams. 
• The Atlantic Coast includes Pittsburgh, 366 miles from the coast. 
• The Atlantic 10 includes a team from St. Louis, 950 miles from the Atlantic.
• Conference USA stretches from the NC coast to the Arizona border. 
• New Jersey Tech plays in the Great West conference. 
• The Southeast Conference will next year play in Columbia, Missouri, which is neither south nor east.

No wonder college athletes don't know anything: even the presidents of their schools are confused. Despite that, it appears we'll soon have an improved (and more lucrative, imagine that!) champion determinant in college football that won't undermine the weekly excitement of the regular season.
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That's Some Good Pitching . . . Not!

Clinging to a 3-2 lead yesterday, Atlanta handed the ball to the dynamic relief duo of Jonny Venters and Craig Kimbrell to nail down the eighth and ninth innings. 

The pair faced six Diamondback batters and whiffed them all. That's some good pitching.

In Seattle, White Sox starter Phil Humber faced 27 Mariners and retired every last one of them. (Does it count as a perfect game if it's the Mariners? It's not like they have any Major Leaguers in their lineup.) That's some good pitching.

In Boston, starting moundsman Felix Doubront fanned seven Yankees while limiting them to one run in six innings en route to a 9-1 lead. That's some good pitching.

Over the next 20 batters, five relievers combined to set the lead ablaze. They walked five batters, and relinquished five singles, four doubles and two home runs. (There was one error.) Fourteen runs crossed the plate. They managed to record five outs, two of them on a rocket line-drive double play. That's some good pitching. Not!

The photos of Vicente Padilla, Matt Albers, Franklin Morales, Alfredo Aceves and Justin Thomas would be hanging in Post Offices today, if Post Offices still existed. (Or perhaps they are hanging there, but who would actually know? It's possible that Post Offices have gone on to bat cleanup for Seattle, which is to say they exist in some metaphysical sense, but not in the real world.)

In any case, the bullpen has so far been the undoing of Boston's playoff hopes. It has earned its 8.44 ERA and cost the Red Sox several games, though none as dramatic as yesterday's. Besides taking more opportunities to shut up, this will be Bobby Valentine's top priority if he's going to have success in New England.
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Hey, I'm Just Sayin'

The following falls into the category of "I'm not saying, I'm just saying." It is an argument wholly without merit. In fact, it isn't even an argument.

I'm just saying.

Last season, Ryan Braun hit .332/.397/.597 in a good-hitting home park surrounded by a monster lineup while trying not to embarrass himself in left field.

Matt Kemp hit a nearly-identical .324/.399/.586 in a ravine (no, literally, in a Ravine) surrounded by a lineup of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (we'll say the pitcher was Snow White) while contributing speed and a strong arm to the middle pasture.

The Baseball Writers opted for Braun as MVP because he had better teammates, an age-old and thoroughly-discredited logical process.

Come the off-season, Braun was allegedly caught juicing and won acquittal on a technicality. Kemp impressed by steadfastly refusing to denigrate Braun or the MVP vote and stifling efforts to transfer the MVP to him.

So far in the vindication round, here's the tale of the tape: Braun is scuffling to .245/.316/.388 with one home run. Kemp is at .481/.521/1.000 with eight home runs in 14 games. With less than 1/10th of games played, Kemp leads the league in runs, hits, home runs, RBIs, total bases, slugging and OPS.

Even if this did have any bearing on last year, it's not just premature, it's prematurely premature. It's so premature the baby was delivered before it was conceived. 

I'm just saying.

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Bo Ryan Is Not An Idiot

Did you hear Wisconsin basketball coach Bo Ryan's justification for restricting redshirt freshman Jarrod Uthoff's transfer options to "anywhere east of Kazakhstan"?

(He later rescinded most of the restrictions, saying the original list was a negotiating tactic to get the kid to discuss the issue with him.)

Ryan had the nearly unlimited ability to prevent a "student-athlete" from transferring because NCAA rules allow coaches to "protect the program." And so that stipulation is part of the "contract" signed by "student athletes" in the revenue sports before they begin "working." (All the words in quotes are Bo Ryan's, not mine. Except he never used the word "student-athlete.")

Ryan didn't use the word "student-athlete," because he's not a liar. He did use the word "job." Because Bo Ryan also isn't an idiot. He knows that basketball at the University of Wisconsin, as it is at every other BCS school, is about money, not about students. The players have "jobs," not extra-curricular activities. They are employees, not scholars. And he is their boss, whose job security depends on their excellence at their job, which is basketball, not academics.

So when the NCAA makes rules about how "student-athletes" can transfer, the rules protect the teams, not the "students." And when Bo Ryan enforces the rules, he is concerned about the program's bottom line, not the employee's future. Bo Ryan acted rationally given the actual circumstances, as opposed to the fictional circumstances that comprise the NCAA narrative.

Here's the richest part of the story: In 1999, Bo Ryan signed a six-year contract to coach at UW-Milwaukee, which he broke after two seasons to "transfer" to Madison for piles more cash. As I said, Bo Ryan is not an idiot. But anyone who thinks that big time Division I football and basketball are about "student-athletes" is.

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Clay Hensely for the Win

Yesterday, the Phils' Cliff Lee and the Giants' Matt Cain combined to shut out their opponents for 57 outs over 19 innings. Neither got a decision. 

Clay Hensley got the 1-0 win for the Giants in inning 10. He recorded one out.

Suck on that, win-puppets.

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Take the Money and Run

Let's do a thought experiment, like Einstein used to do, but without the Greek letters. Suppose you knew that over the next seven years your unique ability would likely be worth $33 million to your employer. That's life's lottery ticket, wouldn't you say?

If things go right, you could be worth even more -- like $68 million. But if something goes awry, your career will fizzle after the first $900,000 earned.

In other words, it's pretty likely that you'll be able to guarantee that your grandchildren will be rich even if you never work another day in your life. But you're one ACL away from missing out on all of that.

Now suppose your employer comes to you in the middle of your second year, at which point you've earned less than a million dollars, and offers you $25 million over the next five years. There's a very good chance you'd be leaving millions on the table -- up to $43 million.

Would you take the deal?

If you're like me, or Evan Longoria, you sure would. The reason is diminishing marginal utility.

Diminishing marginal utility means the value of a million dollars is immense for the average college professor, plumbing supplies salesman or nurse. It would change most of our lives. But the marginal utility of a million dollars to someone with 20 million already in the bank is significantly smaller.

That $25 million offer catapults you into the "set for life" category just as $33 million or $68 million does. It relieves you of the financial risk of flaming out.

Think about it this way: you probably pay homeowner's insurance knowing in advance that you're unlikely to recoup your premiums over your lifetime. Still, you'd rather pay $100 a month-- an amount you can afford -- rather than risk losing a quarter of a million dollars when a freak hurricane flattens your Ann Arbor home.

Four years ago, the Tampa Bay Rays inked rookie third baseman Evan Longoria to a six-year deal for $17.5 million. (Subsequent team options could make the contract worth $44 million over nine years.) Longoria was ecstatic about the deal then, two weeks into his Major League career.

"Knowing now that I'm pretty much set for life, that's just very assuring to me," he said.

Today, it's the Rays who are thrilled. Even with the dampening effect of arbitration, Longoria would probably have made his $17.5 million by now with a bigger payday ahead for year six. Those three years of options that kick in when Longoria would have qualified for free agency will pay him $26.5 million over three years, a fire sale price for a player worth 24 wins in his first four seasons. In all, the opportunity cost of that contract was somewhere in the vicinity of $32 million for the slugging third baseman.

But suppose Evan, who after all had 50 at bats when all the hands got shaken, hit instead like Eva during his big league career. He'd be back in SoCal today, but he'd be surfing with the dudes on the best dang board in town, thanks to $17.5 million guaranteed. He'd live in a big house and drive whatever car he wants. He'd have done all right.

So what we have, in effect, is a baseball team selling an insurance policy to a young potential star.

We've seen this before, most recently two weeks ago when the Brewers signed Matthew Lucroy to a similar deal. Expect this to become the norm as teams recognize the potential savings and players cash in on the guaranteed riches. And everyone can thank diminishing marginal utility for this latest development.
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Yu and You

Great news for Japan! Yu Darvish won “his much anticipated major league debut in the Rangers’ victory” over Seattle last night, according to the Associated Press.

Please. You had as much to do with that victory as Yu.

Darvish got rocked out of the gate for five runs in the first two innings and ran into trouble again in the sixth before reliever Alexi Ogando and the powerful Texas lineup bailed him out. Down 4-0 thanks to Darvish, the Rangers pasted Mariner starter Hector Noesi  and three relievers for 11 runs. Ian Kinsler, Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz and Mitch Moreland deserve the credit for going yard and erasing the ill effects of eight hits, four walks, one hit-by-pitch and one wild pitch allowed by a whirling Darvish.

It’s another example of how irrelevant the W is for starting pitchers. Would the Whigs who defend pitching wins like to argue that Darvish pitched to the score when he allowed four runs in the top of the first inning to the worst-hitting team in baseball?

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Breaking Up Not So Hard To Do

With Peyton Manning on the shelf in 2011, the Colts staggered into last place. When Michael Jordan took a hiatus to hack at Minor League pitching, the Bulls barely scraped into the postseason.

Albert Pujols's name will not be in the St. Louis Cardinals' lineup all season. Fans in the Gateway may discover that breaking up wasn't so hard to do.

Replacing a once-in-a-generation talent like Pujols requires some skill at jigsaw puzzles, but it's easier than replacing a medium-talent first-string hockey goalie.

Barring cloning, which Major League Baseball has yet to master, even the greatest players only bat once every nine times. They only play one position on the field. And they don't throw a single pitch. There's a low ceiling on even the mightiest everyday player's value.

Moreover, no one who's not married to Cal Ripken's wife plays everyday, every year. Prince Albert missed 15 games last season, and lest you think that was an anomaly, chronic back and elbow issues aren't traffic violations and nightly bar hopping: they don't tend to subside after age 30.

Even so, Pujols in his worst year posted a .299/.366/.541 line with 37 homers and splendid defense, worth 5.4 wins to the World Series Champions. That's a lot of performance disappearing with one sweep of the pen in Anaheim.

Except that performance is not disappearing: someone will play first base in Pujols's absence. In the case of St. Louis, it's Lance Berkman, who was already on the field regularly, so he's not an offensive addition. But Berkman was in right field, where he probably no longer belongs, costing the Redbirds almost a game compared to the average right fielder.

Most teams would attempt to plug a Pujols-sized chasm with a montage of performers -- platooning, shifting and developing their way to recoup most of the loss. Not so for the Cards; they signed Carlos Beltran, whose 2011 performance in NY and San Francisco was .300/.385/.525 with 22 homers in 142 games, worth 4.4 wins to his teams. Beltran is a center fielder playing right and should be good for at least average performance with the leather. 

Presto, the wins that flew to California during the winter have come home to roost under the Arch.* Theoretically, the return of co-ace Adam Wainwright to the rotation and a full season of World Series hero David Freese at third should have actually portended improvement in eastern Missouri, despite the loss of the best player (chemically-unaided division) since Willie Mays. 

*Details schmetails. Okay, so it's not that simple. We compared Pujols's worst season to one of Beltran's better years, Beltran is older and the statistics suggest he left his outfield defense at the bars of his youth. Still, they won the title with Pujols in that state, so it's hard to argue they needed more from him. Besides, you get the point, and if you don't, go read John Kruk's blog.

Other issues, like injury to Chris Carpenter, may offset some of that; nonetheless, it's pretty astounding that St. Louis can just shrug off Superman's departure. That's baseball though, where the greatest player in the game wins just five of 162 games for you compared to a replacement who doesn't even belong in the league.

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NCAA Scores 4 Out of 50 On Honesty Test

The problem is not that 2012 first-round NFL draft prospect Morris Claiborne couldn't outguess a gerbil on the Wonderlic test. There are several possible explanations for getting a four out of 50, but "he was exhausted from studying calculus" is not one of them.

Claiborne is a genius on the football field and is considered one of the 10 best football players on the planet not yet in the NFL. In order to succeed in his field, he doesn't need to know how to calculate the volume of a prolate spheroid. He doesn't have to know what a prolate spheroid is as long as he can intercept one. He doesn't need to know how to spell prolate spheroid. In fact, Morris Claiborne can make the NFL Hall of Fame without knowing how to spell Morris Claiborne.

What's problematic is that until January, when Claiborne quit school and hired an agent, the NCAA called him a "student athlete." The NCAA endorses a system offering  Morris Claiborne admission to the flagship university of the state of Louisiana when he can't outperform a second-grader on an admissions test. In exchange for three years of brutal bodily self-sacrifice that earned LSU millions of dollars, Claiborne was bequeathed a college education, which is as apt as offering Stephen Hawking a bitchin' pair of Nike Airs.

Morris Claiborne, was in fact, a minor league football player whose only function at LSU was to propel the team to victory and increase its revenue production. The Byzantine NCAA regulations that prevented him from getting paying jobs during school or accepting a free meal from a team benefactor don't change that. The intellectually dishonest TV ads about women's volleyball players and men's fencers graduating and going pro in other careers don't mitigate the foundation of fraud upon which the NCAA is built.

It's hard to imagine that anyone on staff at Morris Claiborne's high school could be unaware of his scholastic ineptitude. Nor could anyone in the LSU athletic department be ignorant of it. Someone, after all, either took Claiborne's SATs for him or somehow rigged the system. (A man who doesn't know the ninth month of the year, can't calculate four times 21, and can't determine whether .8 or .33 is less isn't knocking down an 800 on the SATs without some serious fudging.) And since the scenario is repeated annually with myriad football and basketball players across the nation, the NCAA can hardly be unaware either.

But none of those entities is interested in scholastic aptitude. They are interested in fat profit, the kind people like Morris Claiborne help produce. It's the system that forces Morris Claiborne into college without recompense of any value to him and then blatantly lies about his purpose that is the problem.

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Meet the New Best Pitcher. Same As the Old Best Pitcher

In season previews, I've heard/read several allusions to either Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw as the best pitcher in baseball.

Please. If a Cy Young makes a pitcher the best in the game, someone explain Randy Jones and Pete Vukovich.

The world's best hurler is not a flamethrower who combusted to a 4.84 ERA three years back.

He's not a hot young southpaw with three years of service in a hitting suppressant park.

The best pitcher in the game doesn't change from year to year. He was the best in the game five years ago and three years ago and still today at 34.

The Majors' best hurler is the essence of consistency who, since 2002, has gone 169-74, 3.19 with a 4-1 K/BB ratio, most of it in the toughest division in baseball.

It's Roy Halladay, and it will be until he relinquishes the crown.  

Now that's no knock on Verlander or Kershaw, either of whom could be ordering a bronze sculpture by the time he hangs up his spikes. Since his faceplant in '08, Verlander has delivered 53-23, 3.07, leading the AL in innings twice and strikeouts twice. He's an inner-orbit star on the mound and certainly one of the five best in his field right now. But a longer resume is required to be king, or Dexy's Midnight Runners would be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Kershaw's 2.88 ERA over his first 116 starts is head-turning even in Dodger Stadium, but it's no guarantee of future greatness. Let's see him wear the crown awhile before we starting warming up the anointing oil.

By the way, of the five Hall of Fame projection models, Halladay wins election right now in two of them and he's one good year away in the other three. And that doesn't include his season-openging gem against the Pirates of eight-inning, two-hit shutout ball.

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Too Much Too Soon for Too Long

Back in the days when I had time to play Rotisserie Baseball, my better-looking but balder partner and I liked to sandbag other teams with high-cost players, husband our resources until the bidding cooled off, gobble up value picks and then spend lavishly on one or two players who particularly tickled our fancy. (Usually they were top players at positions of scarcity.) It was a pretty successful strategy.

The San Francisco Giants may be engaged in the same dance, albeit with a million times as many dollars.

The Goliaths inked pitcher Matt Cain to an astounding five-year, $117.5 million deal Monday that doesn't kick in until after this season and that can't, by any reasonable measuring tool, be justified. It's too much money for too long for a guy who isn't even the ace of the staff. 

Make no mistake, Matt Cain is a stud. He's thrown 190 innings in each of his first six years, posting park-aided ERAs between 2.88 and 3.76 in all but his rookie campaign. Because he gets less support from his hitters than from his jock strap, his W-L record belies his excellence, but he is among the 10 best hurlers in the NL.

The problem is, early studliness does not ensure future results. Some inning eaters keep gobbling, like Greg Maddux and Mark Buehrle, and some push away from the buffet, like Johan Santana and Mike Hampton. That's why in the old days, say 2010, long contracts requiring teams to take big risks involved smaller payouts. 

But there may be a method to the Big Men's madness. If the they can lock down ace Tim Lincecum with another mega millions outlay, they will have the entire young core of their roster signed or under team control for half a decade. That includes starter Madison Bumgarner, catcher Buster Posey, cornerman Pablo Sandoval and promising first baseman Brandon Belt. If a couple of their farm assets ripen on schedule, the G-Men have a championship window that is closed without Cain and Lincecum.

Such justification is an empty bucket in Cincinnati, where the Reds re-upped Joey Votto for a decade at $225 million guaranteed -- and it doesn't even commence until after the next two seasons, when anything could happen, like their slugging first baseman blowing out his Achilles on the last play of the season just before the cash machine starts pumping.

Again, Joey Votto is a monster, the best player the Reds have seen so far (he's only 28) since Joe Morgan. Really. He hits for average, gets on base, slugs, flashes leather, runs reasonably well, plays with hustle and humility, shares his hair product with the guys and tears up at Hallmark commercials.*  But for a bout of depression that sidelined him for three weeks three years ago, he's been relatively healthy.

(*Or he doesn't, whichever.)

The Reds were right to seek to retain his services for the foreseeable future but they rushed into a deal they could have made a year or two later after assuring themselves that Votto didn't turn into a pumpkin at midnight of his sixth season. They are shelling out the superstar Benjamins, assuming all the risk and accepting the late-year over-payments without any concessions from the player. It's almost impossible to detect downside for Votto unless he reprises the second half of Barry Bonds' career, and even then he has $264 million of career earnings to salve his wounds.

Teams need to tell their players that top dollar and long guarantees are either-or propositions. If the club is going to accept all the risk, it has to get a discount. If they pay market rate, they don't have to make a long commitment. Our fantasy team may have spent $26 on Miguel Tejada, but we could throw him back into the auction the following year.

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