Hall Monitor: The Veterans Committee Hates Credibility

The Veteran's Committee voted three managers into Baseball's Hall of Fame this week. They passed on the man who made all three rich --  Marvin Miller.

The managers, Bobby Cox, Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa, skippered eight World Champs and led their teams to more than 7,500 victories. Voters like wins and like to attribute them to individuals.

Marvin Miller skippered the players' union out of the Dark Ages and into the Modern Era when players have rights and earn their fair share of skyrocketing revenues. Since he took over the union and won the right to free agency, average salaries have leaped roughly 4,000 percent. Voters liked the Dark Ages and don't like high player salaries.

The three managers captained their teams to 37 losing seasons combined. Voters aren't real interested in inconvenient facts. 

Marvin Miller never seemed to lose a single battle with Baseball's establishment. In fact, the main criticism against him is that he won too much power for his constituents. Voters don't like it when guys who aren't as smart as they are make a lot more money.

Tony LaRussa is credited with some innovations that have affected the game long-term, such as the ninth-inning specialist, the LOOGY (left-handed, one-out guy) and the good-hitting pitcher batting eighth. Voters like innovation. Cox and Torre, despite their years of managerial success, are not known for any strategic innovations and are not likely to have long-term impact on the game. Voters like innovation but they like wins better. Wins are easy to count.

Marvin Miller's hot brand is stamped on every Major League game, every Major League team, every Major League player, every Major League front office and every baseball fan literally every single day. His impact is ubiquitous every day and will last as long as Major League Baseball does. Voters who are writers are upset that their own union has no teeth. Voters who were players think they earned their millions on their own.

Miller's critics argue that he went too far and corrupted the game with money. They preferred when owners kept their millions and treated players like indentured servants. How're those same people enjoying the endless pitching changes that are Tony LaRussa's legacy?

Joe Torre had a losing record until he inherited Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Tino Martinez, Wade Boggs, Tim Raines, Andy Pettitte, Kenny Rogers, Jimmy Key, Paul O'Neil, John Wetteland, Mariano Rivera, Roger Clemens, David Cone, Jorge Posada, David Wells, Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, Mike Mussina, El Duque, Johnny Damon, Chien-Ming Wang and Alex Rodriguez. Does anyone really know how much of Joe Torre's managerial success resulted from great managing and how much from historically great talent?

In his first nine years of managing, Bobby Cox's teams won six more games than they lost before he inherited Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Chipper and Andruw Jones, et. al. There's somewhat more evidence of his aptitude inasmuch as the general manager who brought those players to the team was the very same Bobby Cox. In addition, many fewer of Cox's charges than Torre's arrived with pedigrees already established. Nonetheless, can we really be sure that Hall of Fame team leadership was the key to sustained excellence in Fulton County?

One cannot credibly dispute that Marvin Miller is the greatest sports union chief of all time. One can credibly dispute the aptitude of almost any manager, particularly Joe Torre and Bobby Cox, whose skippering brilliance just happened to coincide with the accumulation of Hall of Fame players. 

The Veterans Committee doesn't like credibility.

Curve Balls In Alpharetta?

Just back from Atlanta where I exposed my baseball-ignorant bride to a first-place tilt with the Padres at the Ted. She read a book starting in the seventh inning. Philistine.

The home team took two of three, largely because, while both clubs sport deep starting pitching, superb relief and excellent defense, the Braves bring bats to their contests.

One player whom I was particularly interested in watching was freshly minted Native American, Alex Gonzalez. Atlanta swapped their uber-talented young shortstop, Yunel Escobar, for the bloated half-year stats of a 33-year-old journeyman. On the face of it, Braves GM Frank Wren got taken for a ride on MARTA. But there's more to this trade than meets the eye.

Escobar is brimming with ability -- a bazooka arm and on base talent has earned him 12 wins over a replacement player in the two full years of his career prior to 2010. In the first half of this year, his VORP tumbled 180 points and his longball power evaporated.

In exchange, the Braves bit on a guy with 12 years of .295 OBP and intermittent power who suddenly in 2010 started banging the ball around the Rogers Centre. It sounds like the ultimate buy high/sell low proposition that made teams like the Pirates and Astros the Triple-A powerhouses they are today. Didn't you think the Braves are smarter than that?

They are. The mercurial Escobar is a prodigal child who was killing Atlanta defensively and causing agita in the clubhouse. Worst of all, managerial icon Bobby Cox had consumed all the Yunel he could handle, and was ready for a blander course that he could more easily stomach.

No doubt Gonzalez is a short term solution. But for a team with World Series aspirations, he brings proven defensive aptitude at a key position and a hale-fellow clubhouse persona. Moreover, what Bobby wants, Bobby gets, for as long as he fills out the lineup card. No one's going to argue with a first-ballot Hall of Fame skipper.

In the game I watched, AGon demonstrated in vivid hues how a guy can play 13 Major League seasons collecting outs at a 70.5% rate. Three of his at-bats were American Legion quality, including a couple where he chased sliders into Gwinnet. His all-or-nothing approach may pay dividends in Toronto, but it'll simply be all nothing if he applies it to the Senior Circuit.

On the other hand, Cox didn't have to reach for the antacid every time a ball traveled his shortstop's way. (Actually, Cox was serving a one-game suspension, so he didn't even have to watch. But you get the point.) In a pennant race, there's a lot to be said for a team's ongoing emotional health.

So what seemed like a poorly-conceived sacrifice of future value for a league-average present may turn out to be more evil Bobby Cox genius. The converse, however, is not necessarily the reverse. This deal still benefits the Blue Jays, who have less chance of beating the Yankees, et. al. than Robert E. Lee. (In fact, Lee took an early lead and kept it close longer.) They might as well flip their rent-a-shortstop for a chance to sip at the emerging star cup at below-market prices.

There is one small coda to this: In his first 30 plate appearances for Atlanta, AGon's been raking to the tune of .370/.433/.519. Maybe opposing pitchers ought to consider throwing more sliders into the Atlanta suburbs.

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Relief Is In Sight

Computer's in the shop, delaying posts. But a Mets-Braves game from two weeks ago provided a sufficiently excellent teaching moment to comment on even now.

In a division showdown at The Ted, Johan Santana locked up with Kenshin Kawakami in a 2-0 pitchers' duel through seven frames. Santana came out after 115 crisp pitches in favor of a fresh Pedro Feliciano, who needed all of two pitches to serve up a delicious tater to Chipper Jones. Brian McCann followed with a single and Feliciano was escorted off the mound. Sean Green mixed a walk in between two outs and lefty specialist Pat Misch was brought in to face southbat Ryan Church. Whom he promptly walked.

So to recap, Johan Santana blanked the Braves for seven innings and then it took a trio of relievers to lose the shuout and load the bases .

Mets up 2-1, bottom of the eighth, bases full, two outs in a game they really need to stay in the NL East race. Would you call this a critical moment of the game? Who would you want pitching in that situation, your best reliever (and probably second-best pitcher) or your fifth best reliever, with a lifetime 5.08 ERA in 161 innings?

Jerry Manuel chose the latter because the baseball gods have decreed that a closer pitches the ninth inning, not the eighth. Or perhaps he buys into the absurd myth (I know, I know, that's redundant and repetitive) that a pitcher can get burned out getting four outs, but not three. In any case, Manuel brings in journeyman Brian Stokes and leaves Fransisco Rodriguez warming up in the bullpen with the game on the line.

Stokes fans pinch whiffer Greg Norton to preserve the lead and vindicate Manuel. But then the Mets push three across in the top of the ninth and Manuel is stuck with KRod on the hill with a lead that even the Mets' sixth best reliever could nail down. The end result is that Manuel's groupthink paralysis leaves the game in Brian Stokes's hands and relegates KRod to irrelevance.

Contrast that with Bobby Cox, who for much of the season ditched the prevailing lack of wisdom and alternated his closer and set-up guy depending on the handedness of the opponent batting order. It makes a lot more sense and never put him in a position where his 12th best pitcher was the game's fulcrum. And that kind of flexibility is the difference between a good game manager and a bad one.
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