By now you know that the Major League Baseball Players Association finally set a strike date on Friday, giving themselves and the owners two weeks to work out a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. After a rare glimpse of optimism earlier in the week, both sides now sound increasingly pessimistic about bridging their gap, particularly on the revenue sharing and luxury tax issues.
If you've been reading this site with any regularity, you know that I am generally pro-player in this battle, and have been for some time. I remember the 1981 strike, back when I was 11 years old. I'd already read Jim Bouton's Ball Four a couple of times, and the name Marvin Miller was certainly familiar to me when the players struck. I was disappointed at the timing of the strike, with my beloved Dodgers in first place and Fernandomania sweeping the nation. But I held no blame towards the players. Ball Four had exposed, to me at least, the routine buggery owners and general managers had used to bully players prior to free agency. Conditions have obviously changed since Bouton's book, but as he noted more recently, "For a hundred years the owners screwed the players; for twenty-five years the players have screwed the owners - they've got seventy-five years to go."
I don't honestly think today's players look at the situation with that kind of acrimony. But I do share their sense of skepticism with regards to the owners' intentions and to their claims that baseball is hemmorhaging money. I'm not a financial genius, but the work of people such as Doug Pappas has given me a reasonable understanding of the shenanigans that owners can use to conceal profits in their balance sheets.
So I bear the players no ill will for working to protect the gains they've made over the past quarter-century. I certainly have more respect for their union than the inept NBA players' one which failed so miserably at the bargaining table and in the court of public opinion during the 1998-99 lockout. Yes, I'd be heartbroken if the World Series were cancelled again, but this game is too strong, too rich in history to be destroyed by morons like Bud Selig and Jeffrey Loria. Owners, especially stupid ones, are an eminently replaceable commodity, just like slick-fielding shortstops who can't hit their weight. If this labor war shakes some of the dumber ones out of the game, good effin' riddance. The players are the irreplaceable product, and the minute owners forget that, the absurdity of their position is revealed. Nobody will go to Miller Park to watch the replacement Milwaukee Brewers or PNC Park to watch the replacement Pittsburgh Pirates--the real thing is nightmarish enough.
My observation of the contrasting ways in which teams like the Yankees and the Brewers have run their organizations over the past few years has shaped my views greatly. I grew up hating Steinbrenner for the way he bullied his players (and managers), but since his post-suspension re-emergence, he's managed to curb that tendency. He understands that within the game, nothing makes money like a winning ballclub. So George seeks out new revenue streams, then takes the money and pours it back into the team via player contracts and a strong international scouting presence. My take is that he wishes every other team would do the same. Yes, he'd like taxpayers to build him a better Yankee Stadium, but he knows the team's Bronx address is part of its hallowed heritage, and that his team can compete just fine without more luxury boxes.
But all markets are not created equally. The Oakland A's and the Brewers, to choose two examples, come from much smaller markets, but they've shown that intelligent management (or lack of same) is every bit as important as money in creating a competitive ballclub. It isn't about a shiny new ballpark built at taxpayer expense. It's about creative baseball minds that are open to new ideas on the field and in the front office.
Unlike most baseball writers, I don't claim to have any coherent plan that would solve the ills of the major league game. While I think some improved form of revenue-sharing has to be put into effect, that money MUST be put back into the teams instead of into the owners' pockets. Any revenue-sharing system which penalizes a successful mid-market franchise like the Cleveland Indians in order to prop up the inept large-market Philadelphia Phillies is wrong. Any system that rewards decisions to sign the likes of Neifi Perez to a long term contract at the expense of jettisoning home-grown talent like Jermaine Dye or Johnny Damon is wrong. Any system which makes the Brewers the most profitable team in baseball while fielding such a shoddy ballclub is wrong. And I'm sorry to my fans in Milwaukee to keep harping on their team, but we all know that these aren't Harvey's Wallbangers we're talking about. I want them, as well as fans of every team in in every city, to have pride in their ballclubs.
Enough soapboxing. There are much better writers than myself who are covering this much more eloquently. Bootleg Sports' Dayn Perry has a great starting point, covering the 5 best and 5 worst articles on major league baseball's economics. Among the best: the aforementioned Pappas (even if you never come back to this site, please read his work), Forbes' Magazine's analysis of MLB's claimed $500 million in losses, and Bryan Burwell's comparison of Bud Selig to the inept scam artist from the movie Fargo. Perry's article on the worst writing about baseball economics is also worth reading. The execrable, arrogant Mike Lupica, the toadying Phil Rogers, and the Wall Street Journal make the dishonor roll, and with good cause.
Pappas' most recent piece at Baseball Prospectus is also required reading. It addresses the big stumbling block in the current negotiations, the double-whammy of revenue sharing and the luxury tax. As Pappas notes, the owners' current proposal will not improve competitive balance; it's fundamentally flawed:
"That flaw is requiring all teams to share 50% of all their local revenue, from Dollar One. By creating a 50% marginal tax rate that applies equally to the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals, the owners' revenue sharing plan discourages both clubs from spending money to improve their teams. Discouraging the Yankees is part of the plan, of course, but anything that deters the Royals from reinvesting their revenue-sharing proceeds in better players will only worsen "competitive balance."
Pappas instead suggests a formula for graduated revenue sharing, in which the more money a franchise earns beyond certain thresholds, the more heavily it's taxed. Pappas claims such a system would also correct the problem generated by the split-pool system the players favor: curbing the subsidizing of teams which aren't trying to improve. One can only hope Donald Fehr, Gene Orza, Bud Selig, Robert Dupuy, and the player representatives read this. You definitely should.
I'm going to remain optimistic that the two sides can work this out, but I know that even if the players strike, what comes out of it will ultimately benefit the game. Sooner or later, both sides will blink. Especially the owners, who make up a far more contentious contingency than the players do. From A-Rod to 13-year minor league veteran Alan Zinter, the players have more in common than do George Steinbrenner and Carl Pohlad, and a solid track record of defending their turf. My money is on them.
What do you do in a wild card race when the most un-clutch pitcher of his generation, Kenny "The Gambler" Rogers, turns you down"? You make another move for the stretch drive. You acquire a guy who's 4-9 with a 4.55 ERA and a reputation for being soft, a guy whose last start went walk, walk, walk, HOMER before he even retired a batter. And you book a golf vacation for October 1. The Cincinnati Reds may as well do that after acquiring Shawn Estes from the New York Mets for two prospects with great names (Pedro Feliciano and Elvin Andujar).
Lee Sinins, who runs the daily Around The Majors mailing list, wrote of the trade, "Actually, this is a nice trade for the Reds. They get one of the nicest players in baseball. Estes isn't one of those self centered players who only thinks of himself and his teammates. He helps the competition by consistently giving them more runs (both earned and unearned) than the league average, adjusted to his parks, which have been some of the best pitching parks in the league." Ouch!
Rany studied 68 pitchers who made between 37 and 43 starts in a season between 1973 and 1975 (I'll call them the 4-Men), and 68 who made 34 or 35 starts between 1991 and 1993 (the 5-Men). The raw statistical edge between the two groups is split, with the 4-Men featuring a lower ERA and the 5-Men a higher winning percentage. But the big difference is in the number of innings thrown by the 4-Men, an average of 50 more per pitcher. That's 50 innings which under the 5-man rotation would be given from the #1 starter to the #5, a big cost in runs. Furthermore, those extra innings thrown by the 4-Men didn't cause any long-term damage to those pitchers; five years later, they were still throwing MORE innings MORE effectively than their counterparts. As Rany concludes:
Bottom Line: if these numbers suggest anything, it's that pitching in a four-man rotation is less damaging than pitching in a five-man rotation. Now, the difference between the two groups isn't enormous, and neither is the sample size, so I'll concede the point that these differences are not statistically significant. I'm not trying to argue that working on three days' rest is more healthy than working on four days' rest, only that it isn't less healthy. Given the obvious tactical benefits that come from taking innings away from the worst pitchers on your staff and giving them to your best, shouldn't that be enough?
Very interesting stuff. Early on in the piece, Rany imparts some historical perspective to the issue, explaining that the Dodgers were the first to use it--basically because "unlike almost any other organization, they actually had five quality starters. How many teams can boast five starting pitchers whose names are still recognizable a quarter-century later?" The five to which he refers (the Dodgers 1972 rotation) are Don Sutton, Tommy John, Claude Osteen, Bill Singer, and Al Downing.
I thought about that one for a moment, then looked at the Dodger rotation the following season, when Singer was replaced by Andy Messersmith. By my reckoning, that's even more memorable a collection of ballplayers, with three of the five familiar enough to produce knee-jerk associations, the fourth a popular Hall of Famer and one of my personal favorites:
Al Downing - yielded Hank Aaron's 715th homer
Tommy John - gave his name to ligament replacement surgery and a statistical family of pitchers
Andy Messersmith - one of two players in a landmark arbitrator's ruling which created free agency
Don Sutton - Hall of Famer, 324 wins, fought Steve Garvey
Claude Osteen - ?
Claude Osteen won 196 games in the major leagues; he also lost 195. He made up for this with a 1-2 record in the 1965 and 1966 World Series, putting him eternally at .500. Osteen was something of Sandy Koufax's mirror image, a righty who wore #23 (I remember this from an old baseball card showing an awkwardly-torqued elbow which made me think of the Dodger ace). He was the only non-Hall of Famer of that 1966 rotation which included Koufax, Don Drysdale, and the rookie Sutton--each of whom topped 40 career shutouts. Those four also combined for 893 wins and 704 losses in their respective careers, a .559 winning percentage:
W L
Sutton 324 256
Drysdale 209 166
Osteen 196 195
Koufax 165 87
TOTAL 893 704 (.559 Win Pct.)
Having left the original purpose of this column and gone galloping down some weird tangent, I now give you another rotation to consider in terms of impressive career totals, the 1970 Minnesota Twins:
W L
Jim Kaat 283 237
Jim Perry 215 174
Bert Blyleven 287 250
Luis Tiant 229 172
TOTAL 1014 833 (.549)
Anybody who can find a rotation with more wins, losses or decisions in their collective career wins a prize. Tomorrow, I'll offer up one of those fancy charts on the pitching staff which included 8 men who won 150 or more games in the big leagues. You'll want to get some sleep before then, trust me.
Watching tonight's Yanks-Royals game, the Royals just took a 2-1 lead as Mike Sweeney brazenly stole home off of Andy Pettitte. Sweeney, who was just activated at the beginning of the series after missing a month, isn't exactly known for his speed (now 5 SB this year, 35 for his career). But he drove in the tying run with a sharp single down the rightfield line, advanced to second when Raul Mondesi misplayed the ball, and took third on a sac bunt. After Pettitte struck out the next batter, he had rookie Aaron Guiel in a 1-2 hole--a pitch away from being out of the inning.
With the double-whammy of having his back to the baserunner AND pitching from the stretch (that ought to be in the dictionary under "futility," right next to underthrowing into double coverage and locking the barn door after the horse has escaped), Pettitte obviously had no idea Sweeney would run. Thus Sweeney got a terrific jump, getting past halfway down the line before Pettitte delivered the ball to Posada, and beat the Yankee catcher to the plate.
I've seen a few steals of home in my time, even recently--the Mets' Roger Cedeno off of Ted Lilly earlier this year, Raul Mondesi off of Randy Keisler last year. Most of the other ones were on the front end of delayed double steals, or missed suicide squeezes that miraculously survived. Rarely have I seen one which was as bold as that Sweeney's, or as flat-out exciting. Even in the dog days of August, playing for one of the worst teams in the league, somebody's battling, and playing heads-up baseball. Unique moments like that are what keep me watching.
• Did somebody say hot? Bernie Williams is en fuego. Both the New York Times and the Daily News had articles today on how the Yankee centerfielder is streaking despite two ailing shoulders which require daily treatment. Bernie's numbers for July (.368 AVG/.427 OBP/.557 SLG) and August (.357/.413/.476) have long since erased the memory of his early-season struggles, bringing him up to .324/.411/.487 on the year. Though his power numbers have suffered (he's on pace for only 22 homers), the enigmatic Williams seems content to concentrate on putting the ball in play and hitting the gaps. Given that he's got the 3rd best OBP in the league, nobody's complaining except the Jeter-haters, and they don't count anyway. As I write this, tonight's ballgame is in the fifth inning and Bernie's got a 2-run homer and a 2-run double. Did I say en fuego?
• Retracto Ad Absurdum. Every man has his price, including Nelson Doubleday, apparently. After raising quite a ruckus last week, Doubleday has reportedly agreed to sell his half of the New York Mets to co-owner Fred Wilpon. Back in June, Wilpon had filed suit against Doubleday for failing to live up to an agreement to sell his half once the team was apprased. Last week Doubleday countersued, claming that the appraisal was biased, and that the Commissioner's office was "in cahoots" with Wilpon to artificially devalue the franchise.
According to the agreement, Doubleday will get $135 million for his share of the team, actually a smaller amount than the one set by appraiser Robert Starkey, once debt was subtracted. But Doubleday will receive $100 million up front, rather than an earlier-agreed-upon 20 percent of the sale price, with the rest to be paid over five years. Doubleday will also get $20-40 million if the Mets move into a new ballpark, based on how soon that actually happens. So for his squawking, Nelson got his hands on the loot sooner rather than later, and all it cost him was a public statement along the lines of what came out of the Commissioner's office churned out on Doubleday's behalf:
I am pleased this is behind us.While I was not happy with the results of the appraisal, I deeply regret and apologize for the conclusions many drew from the papers that were filed last week by my lawyers.
I did not in any way mean to impugn the integrity of the commissioner, who has been a longtime friend and will continue to remain one, or anyone from his office. Nor did I intend the counterclaim to get in the way of the ongoing collective-bargaining process. That was not my intent or goal. If it did, I apologize to the commissioner and to Don Fehr if it in any way had a negative effect on bargaining.
How convenient.
• Dateless wonder. The news on the labor front--with the players again declining to set a strike date, is cause for some optimism. Consider all of my fingers crossed (this makes it very difficult to type, but if Bernie can gut it out with his bum shoulders, I'll carry on).
If you need a simple primer on the labor situation, Murray Chass of the Times has a decent Q & A, ideal for breaking down the issues into bite-size chunks. Chass points out, as Allen Barra did a couple of weeks ago, that "the players have not asked for anything new of real significance. The players are trying to hold on to the substantial economic gains they have made since the advent of free agency in 1976." More chillingly, he notes that the players and owners have never negotiated a new Collective Bargaining Agreement without a work stoppage, with the players going on strike five times and the owners locking out the players three times. A worthwhile opportunity to get your basics straight.
• Say It Ain't So, Joe! I was saddened to read that Baseball Prospectus's Joe Sheehan has cryptically decided to hang it up. I don't know Joe personally so I can't speculate as to the reasoning or the timing, but leaving midseason and without advance warning does seem somewhat odd.
Over the past few years, I've enjoyed Joe's insightful work in the published annual Prospectus, in his Daily Prospectus columns, and his occasional contributions to ESPN. Like Rob Neyer of ESPN, on any given day Sheehan could take on the game from a variety of angles, sometimes going straight for the numbers, other times speaking of the headlines, his own observations at the ballpark, or occasionally climbing atop his soapbox. Suffice it to say he's taught me a lot (Lesson #476: When you can't pull anything else off, a notes column will do).
Because Joe's a Yankees fan in a field which often has its share of anti-Yankee bias (especially among his BP colleagues), Joe's been a great ally to have when it came to Yank-related arguments, espeically at playoff time. But more than anything else, his work has been an essential staple of my lunch hours and late nights, and I will miss not having it around. I can only hope Joe finds some other outlet for his fine writing; here's wishing him all the best.
After my second whack at examining Mussina's troubles, John Perricone, who produces the excellent Only Baseball Matters weblog, called my attention to another analysis by a nascent weblogger named Aaron Gleeman. Aaron points out three things that may be causing Moose to struggle: his declining strikeout rate, the Yankees' defense, and his penchant for the gopher ball. Because Moose isn't striking out as many batters as before, more balls are being put in play. The Yankee defense is nothing special (they rank 10th in the AL in Defensive Efficiency--a Bill James stat which tells us what percentage of the time a defense converts a ball in play into an out. More on that in a moment), and so more balls in play means more hits. Hence, more troubles for Moose.
Over at Baseball Musings, David Pinto points out how the Yanks' Defensive Efficiency has been dropping as the season goes on. The formula for Defensive Efficiency is:
(Batters Faced Pitching - Hits - Walks - Strikeouts - Hit By Pitch) ÷ (Batters Faced Pitching - Home Runs - Walks - Strikeouts - Hit By Pitch).
DERs tend to be around .700; they are, essentially, the inverse of the batting average on balls in play. Here are the Yankee DERs by month, according to Pinto:
Month DER
April .726
May .710
June .669
July .647
Aug. .698
Wow. By comparison, the worst DER in all of baseball is Cleveland's .681. The Yanks' July .647 means that batters hit .353 on balls in play. That sure isn't helping Mussina or the Yanks' tired bullpen; it's surprisng that Andy Pettitte is surviving, let alone flourishing, in that environment, given how he relies on ground balls. And it's further evidence that the Yanks D is nothing to brag about.
• • • • •
Terrence Long seemed to be everywhere the past few days. First he robbed Manny Ramirez of a game-winning homer in Boston on Wednesday. Then on Friday, he made a crucial assist to nail the go-ahead run at the plate against the Yanks in the 8th, and a great sliding bellyflop catch on a Ron Coomer bloop in the 15th. Today he crashed into the wall catching a long drive (he held on), and nearly took a homer away from Shane Spencer. Long doesn't have a great reputation as a centerfielder--recall his misplay in the 2000 ALDS Game 5 led to a six-run first inning--but he had a hell of a week, and it was pretty fun to watch.
