Happy V.D.

Pitchers and catchers report on Valentine's Day. Either Kennesaw Mountain Landis is a romantic or God is a baseball fan. 

I'm going with the Almighty. Someone get Him a box of chocolates and a catchers mitt.

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The Bonfire of the Inanities

I love the novels of Tom Wolfe. They're unsparing in their insights of modern, nonsensical American life and filled with characters plucked off the streets of Real Life, U.S.A. 

But among the common threads in Wolfe's three novels -- The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man In Full, I Am Charlotte Simmons -- there is this: he weaves stories out of the minutest details of his characters' lives for 800 pages and then, realizing he is only halfway through the narrative, ties up the story in a neat bow over the last six pages, as if his editor is sitting in his office with a fat check, glancing conspicuously at her watch and drumming her fingers against the desk.

I thought of this while glancing through the sports section today. I noticed that, for some reason, they're still conducting an NBA season. I love basketball and the athleticism of NBA players is frankly beyond my conception, but it's very clear that all the necessary questions have been answered halfway through the season. At this point, they're really playing to decide which mediocre outfits with utterly no hope of making any noise in the playoffs slip into the post-season.

Take a look at the standings. There are three tiers of teams in the NBA: the elite, the mediocre and the godawful. The elite have been established -- Boston, Miami, Orlando, San Antonio, Lakers, Dallas and Atlanta -- and they comprise the complete list of teams with even a one-in-a-thousand chance of winning the championship. The dreadful long ago eliminated themselves and the middle dozen or so either soon will, or will be allowed into the playoffs only as fodder for the teams that matter in a first round that could be eliminated without consequence.

If they ended the season now, the NBA could start its playoffs with all the right teams. It might turn out that some sub-.500 squad now seeded 10th could catch either fire or a string of home games against the Clevelands and the New Jerseys, and snag that last playoff spot. And that today's seventh seed could stage a lottery pick rally, but honestly, what difference would it make?  A home game or two before being eliminated by Lebron or Kobe won't change the overall flavor of such a franchise's season.

Instead, there is the faux drama of seeding, as if it matters whether Boston plays Miami in the third round, or Miami plays Boston. In the meantime, the NBA season drags on and on and on, and then they start eleven rounds of playoffs that take two months and don't end until baseball's picking its All-Star team. It's a ruinous formula and it augurs poorly for baseball's playoff expansion plans.

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Cy-onara

In five years, baseball writers will have the opportunity to consider Billy Wagner's Hall of Fame credentials. My guess is they will find him wanting, particularly having tossed just 900 innings in his 15-year career.

Take a look, though, at his swan song. Has anyone ever exited the game on such an upswing? 

In 69 innings, Billy Wagner allowed just 38 hits while fanning 104. That's domination. His K-rate was second in the NL. His 104/22 strikeout-walk ratio was second in the league. His 7-2, 1.43 with 37 saves was nothing to sneeze at either. He was worth 27 runs -- in just 69 innings! -- to the Braves.

Wagner called it a career at 38. The only practitioner of the twirling arts whom I can remember posting such an incredible valedictory season is Sandy Koufax (27-9, 1.73; 317 K in 323 innings, worth about 100 runs), but his departure, at 30, was transparently premature.

The closer is an over-rated position, but relief masters like Wagner can tilt the contest their team's way. The Braves made a lot of good moves in the off-season, but losing Wagner will be a blow.

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The Stupor Bowl

Quick note on the Stupor Bowl:

I haven't the foggiest idea who will win or what the score will be of Sunday's game. I do know one thing: whatever the analysts say is going to happen, won't.

The guys who can explain dime packages and bubble screens, and who can remember in minute detail third quarter plays from the NFC title game 17 years ago, all own crystal balls made of lead. 

This is particularly true because they've failed to notice that the past isn't prologue. Each week is different. The best rushing team in the league gets held to 47 yards by the 28th best run defense. The quarterback who's passed 223 times without an interception gets picked off twice by a second-string cornerback. And so on.

When the experts tell you that Troy Polamalu or James Starks is the key to the game, or that the contest turns on how Pittsburgh's offensive line protects their quarterback, or on Aaron Rodgers' completion percentage on third down, just giggle. They're predicting the past.

Here's my prediction. Some guy I never heard of will make a key play. An unexpected turnover will loom large. Someone will do something he doesn't ordinarily do -- fumble, get sacked, commit pass interference. Most importantly, the game won't follow form.

None of this is suggested by what's happened before. But that's the point. We're talking about the future.

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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.

Braindrizzling In Review

Every year following the NFL draft, all the little Mel Kipers hurl plaudits and bric-a-brats at the various organizations for their picks. It always rankles me that they never review their own track record so we can determine whether their opinions are wheat or chaff. My guess is that they are no better at evaluating talent than the average GM. They're just as likely, I'd bet, to extol Ryan Leaf and whiff on Demarcus Ware as is the NFL braintrust.

Which reminds us that it's time for a Braindrizzling Year In Review, where we emancipate the year's statements from the archives and examine them in the light of hindsight. Although there are few actual predictions in this blog, there's plenty of gazing into crystal balls. Let's see.

YER OUT!
There were a couple of mis-interpretations over the course of 131 posts. The worst won't make the list. That would be the post in which I slammed the baseball writers for bestowing a Gold Glove on Derek Jeter. E-Scribe! The players and managers vote for that one. Mea culpa...and theirs too.

Our Better Angels -- In a series on interesting teams in 2010, I posited that the Angles would outplay the sabermetric forecasts of a sub-.500 season because of Mike Scioscia's magic touch and Arte Moreno's deep pockets. Wrong! I forgot to anticipate Kendry Morales's broken leg or the demise of the back end of the rotation. 80-82 is sub-.500, bub.

Boarding the D-train -- Dontrelle Willis tamed the walk tiger in his first start, prompting me to gush about his future. Bzzzzt! Now that it's his past, we see he has no more future in the Major Leagues. Willis made nine starts for Detroit in which he walked 29 and fanned 33 in 43 innings with a 4.98 ERA. After they kicked him to the curb, the desperate D-backs endured six starts of  a 6.85 ERA with a 14/27 K/BB ratio. I wish Dontrelle a lovely career as a baseball announcer.

All We Have To Fear Is... -- The Yankees themselves! I whined about the inevitability of a Yankees- Phillies World Series. Thhhppp! To be fair, I didn't really believe it so much as fear it. Nothing is inevitable in baseball playoffs, especially when AJ Burnett is starting.

STEEE-RIKE!
Some ideas are not quite either wrong or right. These were foul balls with two strikes.

Oye Como Va -- After three starts, Johan Santana looked to me like, well, the Johan Santana he'll never be again. Though his stats didn't reflect improvement, they were listing in the direction of one bad inning. I noted his 18 K in 18 innings and foresaw another Cy-worthy year. Hmm. He's no Roy Halladay, but unless your team plays near a Liberty Bell, you'd covet a guy who throws 199 innings at a 2.98 ERA, even in a pitcher's park. Santana was worth 5.6 wins against a replacement pitcher. That's still swell.

The Home of the Braves -- In another post on intriguing teams, I observed that Atlanta was a mile wide and an inch deep. With the breakout seasons of Jayson Heyward, Omar Infante and Martin Prado, the lineup turned out wider and deeper than I expected. The Nakahomas finished out of the tournament, as I'd anticipated, but at 91-71, better than I'd envisioned.

HITS
With all due disrespect, there were a lot of these. Behold.

Traded to His Family -- Twice I begged Ken Griffey, Jr. to retire lest he resemble Muhammad Ali fighting Larry Holmes. Did he listen? Well, yes, eventually. But not before slugging .184/.250/.204 in 108 painful at-bats and then falling asleep mid-game.

Hitting the Mark -- Mark Reynolds remains for me the most fascinating player in baseball. Reynolds' spectacular '09 was built on an unsustainable BABIP of .423. I mentioned that he's a great player if he bats .260, but that's a tall order for a guy who fans one-third of the time. Sure enough, despite smacking 32 homers and walking 83 times, he was worth just nine runs against replacement value to Arizona because of a .198 batting average.

Beat the Mets -- I said the Mets' stars and scrubs lineup would be a train wreck. Do I get a cookie?

Too Much of a Good Thing is...Wonderful -- New England fans were hankering for a trade as valuable assets Jason Varitek and Mike Lowell collected splinters. I noted that the rest of the infield was aging, fixing to get injured and in need of backup. I didn't realize the team would hit its medical deductible in the first month, but they surely had to appreciate having Tek and Lowell to fill in.

SIERA MIST -- Raise a glass to the seamheads at Baseball Prospectus, whose advanced pitching metrics noted that 90% of Ubaldo Jimenez's 13-1, 1.15 start was half luck. Unusually good strand rates, BABIP, relief help and run support all suggested that Jimenez was combining good -- not great -- pitching with extraordinary luck, a volatile cocktail. After brewing a 15-1, 2.20 first half, UJ spilled his drink in the second, and the result was 4-7, 3.80. His 19-8, 2.88 final line didn't attract a single Cy Young vote. I get the credit for reporting it, but they did all the work.

THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT!
There were two outright predictions here and they both paid off big. Literally.

I'm Going To Disney Land -- Last January, I told you to put money on the "under" in the Super Bowl. In fact, I told you to put money on the double-under. I told my bookie the same thing. My reasoning was the over/under of 57 required the game to be a track meet. But football analysts, savants though they are, have all the predictive ability of hurricane forecasters. With the double-under set at 49, the Saints downed the Colts 31-17. Cha-ching!

Oh, Votto Beautiful Morning -- Here is the entire March 26 post.

The winner of this year's Ben Zobrist Award for the best player who came out of nowhere will be Joey Votto. This is a trick selection. Just because you're not familiar with him doesn't mean the big-swinging, 27-year-old lefty isn't already an accomplished Major League hitter.

The Reds' first baseman, Votto has been pounding Major League pitching for two years and a coffee break. His .310/.388/.536 resume may be (Great American) Ballpark-aided, but 53 homers and 77 doubles in a thousand at-bats is hard to argue with.

Votto enters his third full season ready to explode. With a couple of full campaigns under his belt, with an increasing walk rate and with an improving team around him, the big Canadian is channeling Justin Morneau in the Queen City. His .414 OBP in an injury-trimmed season last year suggests a full year of Votto could catapult him into the MVP discussion in '10.

If that happens, you'll hear of him. And you'll wonder, where did this guy come from? Well, a pretty good place.

Oh, you heard of him all right. So did the MVP voters. Don't say I didn't warn you.

SO...
That's a pretty good batting average, even in a hitter's park, against a weak schedule, with a high BABIP and a low walk rate. I hope to score as well in '11.

I wish you a new decade of hanging curves with the bases juiced. Only two months until pitchers and catchers report.
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Woebegoing, Woebegoing, Woebegone

A trade this week between the woebegone Kansas City Royals and the woebegetting Milwaukee Brewers has baseball economics' fingerprints all over it. Both teams gave themselves a chance to get better, but only within the confines of an economic system that bequeaths MLB's two smallest markets limited opportunities.

First, some context. KC is the 29th largest metro area in the nation, just behind Orlando and San Antonio, with 2.07 million people. Milwaukee is 39th, with 1.56 million souls, fewer than the Nashville, Providence, Virginia Beach and Austin metro areas. The Milwaukee market fits neatly into the New York market 12 times with enough people left over to fill the city limits of Pittsburgh. That doesn't even account for the encroachment of the neighboring Chicago market that traditionally represented southern Wisconsin fans.

So when the biggest bopping Brewer, Prince Fielder, fixes his sights on one of those juicy nine-figure contracts, Milwaukee brass can't be faulted for considering its options and placing its chips on "win now, while he's still here."

There is no "win now" for the feckless Missouri franchise and there hasn't been any "win then" since 1989. The Royals have notched at least 90 losses in 10 of the last 14 years, interrupted in part by the moral victory of 1998's 72-89 mark. For GM Dayton Moore, the only possible route to relevance is rolling simultaneous sevens with his minor league prospects. Even with Zack Greinke as their ace, the Royals have won just 42.6% of their games the last three years, and his deal is up after next season. Combine that track record with a plastic, 40-year-old home park built five miles into the woods and it's a wonder anyone pays to see their games.

That's why we might want to refrain from slapping our heads when the Royals announce they've filled their outfield gaps with Jeff Francoeur, Melky Cabrera and 162 bottles of aspirin. While the Red Sox are offering Saturday's Mega Lotto Jackpot for Carol Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez, Kansas City has just $3.75 million to spend, and a pair of .715 OPS outfielders is all that buys.

Which brings us to the confluence of the Win Now and Roll the Dice rivers. The Brewers considered their team-killing pitching and the closing-window of low-cost performance from offensive stars Fielder, Ryan Braun, Corey Hart and Rickie Weeks and decided to chuck the farm system for two shots at a flag. In the NL Central, where the Cards have run out of money after paying Pujols and Holliday; where the Cubs are busy climbing out of a scillion-dollar bad-contract hole; and where the Reds -- the Reds! -- wore the 2010 crown; it's a reasonable gamble.

The Royals, meanwhile, realize that they can come in last without their Cy Young hurler as well as with him, so why not flip him to further stock the farm. Hence, KC's decision to flip Greinke and incumbent shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt for four touted young guys. The deal is one of two recent Milwaukee blockbusters yielding Shaun Marcum and Zack Grienke to join Yovanni Gallardo and Randy Wolf in the suddenly formidable Brewer rotation. 

It's a low percentage move for Kansas City, but the percentage was zero before the trade. Likewise, there'll be hell to pay for the Brewers in 2013, assuming Fielder bolts after this season and Greinke's bill comes due without any farm-grown beef to feed the big club. In the meantime, the NL Central is there for the taking and the Beer Kings are making their claim.  

Maybe it's small ball compared to the giant stakes among the Phils, Saux, Yanks and their ilk, but it's life for the mice of baseball who must scamper as best they can among the elephants.

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A Very Tasty Ruben

I live in a small city 750 miles from my big city upbringing. I work in non-profit and earn hundreds of thousands less per year than my college classmates. So I'm feeling Cliff Lee right now. He made a lifestyle choice, opting for quality over quantity. He chose happiness over money. 

The real question raised by Lee's return to the sibling-loving city is this: "Is Ruben Amaro, Jr. the best GM in baseball?"

The five-year pact with Lee is a coup in itself, but it's the American Revolution in context. Amaro correctly deduces that the mountaintop is within reach, but the weather will turn foul after two or three tries. The manufacturer's warranty on Utley's contract, Howard's reflexes, Rollins' health, and Oswalt's fastball all run out eventually, so Amaro is bulking up for the assault today. If he has to cast a few drachma to the wind in years four and five, it's a small price to pay for sticking his flag at the precipice.

Amaro is a Philly native, a Major League scion and eight-year veteran himself and a 1987 Stanford graduate. He was a respected assistant GM under newly-minted Hall of Famer Pat Gillick, taking over immediately following their 2008 World Series championship. Building a champion is one thing; Amaro is constructing the modern version of a dynasty.

Because Dominic Brown is no Jayson Werth, at least not right now, and Carlos Ruiz is no Carlos Ruiz (his '10 BA was 41 points higher than his previous career high), the Phillies' offense may hiccup a bit in 2011, absent another deal. But what's the difference whether they win 8-1 or 3-1? With Halladay, Lee, Hamels and Oswalt, middle relievers need not apply. Baseball Think Factory estimates that this is the second greatest foursome entering the season of all time, after the '76 Mets of Seaver, Matlack, Koosman and Mickey Lolich. (Let that serve as a cautionary tale, Phanatics.)

(The great Jayson Stark has a comprehensive review  of this pitching staff's place in history.)

There are now many GMs in baseball who can discern the real value of players and pass on overwrought demands, which Amaro did with Werth. What sets him apart is his ability to understand when to spend too much. Getting Halladay and Lee below market price has enabled him to secure Howard's services a bit richly, swap out for Oswalt and add salary while the turnstyles are clicking. It won't always be that way, but it'll be a great run while it lasts.

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A Fire Hose That Melts In High Heat

Did they really build a stadium in Minneapolis whose roof can't withstand 15 inches of snow? 

Isn't that like building levees around New Orleans that will break in a strong hurricane?

The I-95 Balance of Power

Assuming Cliff Lee chooses lucre over loyalty -- and why else hire Scott Boras and drag on negotiations for a month? -- he'll bring seven years of his other-worldly command to the Big Apple, not the Big D. 

Except the sabermetric websites are burning up the ether about the likelihood that Lee's control falls off the Cliff before the pinstripes stop paying him $25 million annually, perhaps long before. K/BB ratios of 10/1, which Lee delivered in 2010, have notoriously short half-lives. Indeed, just three years ago, Lee fanned fewer than two batters for each free pass he issued, leading to a 6.29 ERA and a 5-8 record for Cleveland. Perhaps more than any other pitcher, Lee's ability to retire batters is dependent on his ability to paint the corners on demand.

Knowing that he might deliver four champion-grade seasons before returning to earth for the last $75 million of his contract might perfectly satisfy the brass in the Bronx, where the revenue streams run richer with gold each year. In Arlington, though, that's $75-million the club won't have to spend on, say, an entire infield, including the catcher. That kind of weight can sink a franchise burdened with spending limits, such as, well, everyone but the Yankees.

So assuming Lee leaves Texas and heads north, and considering the other significant off-season moves so far, a familiar phenomenon is shaping up. Other than Chicago, where the White Sox muscled up with Adam Dunn, the flow of talent has almost exclusively migrated northeast. The Yankees shored up their single largest weakness by acquiring Lee, the Red Sox added Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez to the returns of Dustin Pedroia and Mike Cameron, and the rest of baseball serves, to some degree or another, as their minor leagues. We can only guess which new superstar -- Josh Hamilton, Joey Votto, Felix Hernandez -- is simply auditioning for the big spenders.

Looking ahead to 2011, fans in San Diego, Texas, San Francisco, and Minnesota might want to temper their expectations. The Padres dealt away 78% of their team VORP (value over replacement player; i.e., how much players are worth on offense compared to AAA replacements at their positions. This is another way of saying that San Diego almost made the playoffs in 2010 with a lineup of Adrian Gonzalez and the Brady Bunch kids. In 2011, it looks like Florence Henderson will be suiting up too.)

The Evil Empire will have sucked the life-giving force from the Rangers, whose center-fielder will have to play in '11 without the magic pixie dust that transformed him into an MVP in '10. The Twins get back Justin Morneau, which seems to be the kiss of death for them, and the Giants have already won their once-every-56-years flag.

And, of course, there's St. Petersburg. The imbalance of power has swung even more forcefully to the AL Beasts in NY and Boston and it's hitting the Rays squarely in the butt. The Rise and Fall of the Tampa Bay Empire will cover three years. Without any blockbuster free agent pickups left for bidding we have a pretty good sense how things are shaping up.

Plus, the Yankees now have the sexiest mascot in the majors.

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Yo, Adrian!

Ron from Boston asks,

Why do the Sox think that they are  better off w/Gonzalez then Beltre?  Gonzalez may be better (and maybe, in Fenway, even better than we've already seen), but based on last year they bring quite comparable offensive and defensive skills to the team.  (You dismiss Beltre's 2010 as a walk-year anomaly, but it's not really inconsistent with the ups and downs he's had throughout his career.) 

And the cost of the upgrade to Gonzalez is 3 highly rated prospects and probably about $10 million/yr. in payroll, assets that could be used to improve the team in other ways.  I don't see that the upgrade is worth the cost.

Here's why Theo and I prefer Adrian over Adrian. Guess what the following is:

91-97-98-163-93-105-112-108-103-141

Those are Adrian Beltre's OPS+ for the last 10 years. (OPS+ is a player's on-base + slugging compared to league average, on a scale of 100. An OPS of 91 is 9% below average.) Pretty inconsistent, and unimpressive other than two years, right?

Wait, I pulled the hidden ball trick. Let's finish the list:

91-97-98-163 (walk year)-93-105-112-108-103-141 (walk year). Would you buy that stock at 141?

With Beltre, you pay Adrian Gonzalez money and get Alex Gonzalez until Christmas Eve, and the prospect of Santa's arrival.

This year's version of Omar Minaya (whoever that is) will pay 141 OPS+ money for Adrian Beltre over five years and get four years of 103 OPS+. Meanwhile, the Saux shuffle that cash to a more productive Adrian.

With the signing of Carl Crawford, Boston now has a solid infield anchored by A-Gone and Youk, and an outfield that reads more like an Olympic 4x100 relay team -- Crawford, Cameron and Ellsbury. (JD Drew, who stole 49 of 65 bases his first three years, is the slowpoke here.) Good luck to any batted ball intending to land in that outfield.

These two deals also eliminate any uncertainty about Cliff Lee's whereabouts in April. The Yankees now must empty the vault for the only remaining significant upgrade available. Finishing second in that contest will lead to the same result in the standings.

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Swinging Bunts

Been quite a hot stove already and they haven't even lit the pilot light at the Winter Meetings. The Nats watched Adam Dunn depart and signed Jayson Werth for too much for too long to hit much less than Dunn. On the other hand, he can run and catch, two skills missing from the Dunn collection.

After Kenny Williams inked Dunn for the Sox, he started after incumbent first baseman Paul Konerko. That would push Dunn to his natural defensive position -- DH -- and give Chicago some mid-lineup oomph. Next, they'll need some relief pitching with the departures of Bobby Jenks and Scott Linebrink.

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Jed Hoyer appears to be continuing his apprenticeship to Theo Epstein, despite his new employment as Padres GM. Epstein schooled him out of Adrian Gonzalez for a trio of minor league maybes. Boston can move Kevin Youklis to third and let Adrian Beltre convert his walk-year revival into someone else's over-payment. It's an offensive coup and a defensive wash. A-Gone makes the difficult transition to the tougher league, but leaves Petco pitcher-heaven for the Fens. In the unlikely event Gonzalez leaves town after a year, the Sox get two sandwich picks (between the first and second rounds) to replace the stash they sent San Diego.

As for the Friars, that bottled lightning of '10 won't strike again in '11. They managed not to get back a single majors-ready player for the best hitter they've had in a decade. Find them at the bottom of the NL West playing to near-empty stadiums next year.

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Shaun Marcum is 37-25, 3.85 in the brutal AL Beast with all the chocolaty wholesome goodness that accompanies that pedigree. Plus he's 28 and earns less than a million dollars. So naturally, Toronto jettisoned Marcum for ... a minor leaguer. Man, that had better be some fantastical minor leaguage. (Word is that 2B Brett Lawrie was the Brews' top prospect, and a can't-miss edition at that.)

Actually, it's more sensible than it sounds. Toronto has more good arms than the Israeli military and a black hole where its lineup should be. Milwaukee has Rickie Weeks clogging up the keystone for the foreseeable decade and could always use a reliable #2 starter to bulk up an already above-average staff. The Blue Jays get chocolate in their peanut butter; the Brews get peanut butter in their chocolate.

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Now we know where Mark Reynolds' career will go to die: Baltimore. The O's sent a pair of journeymen relief arms to Arizona for the all-or-nothing cornerman. This is the D-Backs telling Reynolds they just want to be friends. Relief pitchers are easier to find than Waldo in a snowstorm.

Reynolds comes off a year in which he achieved notoriety as the best .198 hitter in history. He smacked 32 homers, walked 83 times and scooped up everything but the infield dirt at the hot corner. Baltimore snags him at a big discount. The question is, what can they do even with him?

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Cliff Lee and Carl Crawford are the big prizes, but the most interesting signing will involve a masochist GM who despises his manager. I wouldn't sign Manny Ramirez and the film rights to his life story for two wooden nickels, but someone's going to commit the GDP of Haiti to him. ($992,657) He can't play the field or stay out of trouble, but someone's going to take a chance that he can still hit. (Answer: with his eyes closed...if he can be bothered to.)

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Baseball's Hall of Shame now includes Pat Gillick; Jesse Haines, a slightly above-average 20s-30s hurler; Johnny Evers, whose .270/.356/.334 lifetime achievement is offset by his unequaled ability to be named in a catchy poem; Phil Rizzuto's mouth; journeyman 19th century outfielder Tommy McCarthy who was worth 19 wins in 13 years over a replacement-level player; and Bowie Kuhn, who was so feckless he couldn't get elected into the Bowie Kuhn Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Shame does not include: all-time great Shoeless Joe Jackson, all-time hits leader Pete Rose; Marvin Miller, who whipped Bowie Kuhn like a rented mule uninterrupted for two decades; and home run savant Mark McGwire. It appears likely that the Hall will also fail to include Barry Bonds, the greatest player of his generation; and Roger Clemens, the greatest pitcher of several generations.

So remind me, what exactly is the purpose of this institution?

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A Sad Day In Chicagoland

We lost one of the greats when Ron Santo died from bladder cancer Thursday at the tender age of 70. Santo might just be the best player ever to be considered and passed over for the Hall of Fame.

Santo's numbers are not startling and his teams unimpressive. His .277 average and 342 home runs in 15 seasons with the Cubs don't scream all-time great unless we listen to the echoes. His 1108 walks and 365 doubles helped him post a proud.362/.464 line that translates even 50 points higher when considering that the effective portion of his career -- 1961-72 -- was baseball's modern deadball era. Every year from 1963-1969, Ron Santo hit at least 25% better than average. Add to that his slick fielding at the hot corner and you have a truly great player.

Even more impressive, Santo never let on that he suffered from diabetes from the time he was 18, an often fatal disease 40 years ago. His doctor told the family that he could expect to live to 25. He famously smacked a grand slam once while suffering mid-game hypo-glycemia that was causing him to see triple. 

For this he was awarded 43% of the Hall of Fame vote. At his peak. In his final year of eligibility. 

Ron Santo never came close to an MVP award -- finishing fourth in 1967 -- because he was one of three great batsmen on decidedly mediocre squads. The Northsiders finished 7th-8th-8th-10th-3rd-3rd-2nd (the last three in division play) during his prime and never won a division or pennant -- much less a World Series -- during his career. Had Americans seen Santo play for two weeks straight in the post-season, they would have better appreciated his skills.

Which, ironically, is what many Cubs fans do with respect to Santo the announcer. Following his playing days, Santo spent 20 years pronouncing his love for the team over the airwaves. Beloved for his overt fandom, Ron Santo was below the Mendoza Line (the Rizzuto Line?) when it came to his radio play. He is very likely the single worst announcer of this millenium, and among the silliest and most grating I've ever heard. His admirers credit him with being "one of us in the booth." That is exactly the point. If I wanted to hear the irrational, biased frothing of the average cretin I'd sit in the bleachers with them and forget to drink. 

I don't know which would be sadder, for Ron Santo to be voted access to the Hall by the Veterans Committee now that he can't enjoy it or for Ron Santo to be voted access to the announcer's wing of the Hall despite his utter lack of contributions in that arena. In any case, he belongs in the former and not in the latter, irrespective of his existential status.

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