Welcome to my web log, published via Blogger Pro. Below are some links to recent baseball-related articles I found of interest, with my own two cents thrown in. Feel free to chime in via the comments link at the bottom of each post (powered by YACCS), or use my Contact page, or my email address, jay@futilityinfielder.com.
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True story: Giants pitcher Russ Ortiz comes to bat in the 6th inning of Wednesday night's Dodgers-Giants game, having given up the tying run and then pitched out of a jam moments earlier. He'd thrown 116 pitches at that point. My pal Nick turns and asks me what I think of Baker letting him bat rather than pinch-hitting for him.
Invoking the names of Shawon Dunston and Tsuyoshi Shinjo, I reply that Ortiz is as good a hitter as anybody on the Giants bench, recalling that he'd hit a sac fly in his previous at bat, and that I'd witnessed him smacking a 2-run double against the Mets earlier this season. Seconds later, Ortiz drilled Robert Ellis' third pitch over the leftfield wall, giving the Giants a 4-3 lead which they never relinquished. Ortiz didn't throw another pitch, but he didn't have to--his work was done.
Being right on that particular call didn't feel so good. But despite the result, this Dodgers-Giants series has been a treat thus far. I've stayed up until around 1 or 2 AM the past four nights, either watching the game or following it via the Internet (tonight I'm listening to Vin Scully via MLB.com's GameDay Audio, which I finally shelled out for--more on that another time).
The Giants pulled ahead early in the first three games against shaky Dodger starters, only to let the Dodgers claw their way back into the game. Both teams have illustrated why they're still in the postseason hunt, hustling all-out, gambling for the extra base and chasing down balls with abandon (see Paul Lo Duca's catch on Monday). Stars have starred--Jeff Kent has a pair of homers, Barry Bonds has been on base 12 out of 15 times (3 walks per night), Shawn Green's 5-for-11 with 4 runs, Adrian Beltre's 5-for-12 with 4 RBI. And unlikely heroes have emerged. Ortiz struck the big blow last night. Benito Santiago has 5 hits and 2 walks in the past two nights, Marquis Grissom robbed Rich Aurilia of a game-tying 9th inning homer on Monday and homered himself on Tuesday to bring the Dodgers back into the game. Giovanni Carerra stopped the bleeding by giving the Dodgers 3 1/3 innings of strong relief after Omar Daal departed early on Tuesday. All of it has made for some of the season's most memorable baseball.
Tracy's handling of Grissom is one of the things which exemplifies why the Dodgers are still in the race. Almost exactly a year ago, I practically beat my head against the wall regarding Grissom's play: "Marquis Grissom plays ball like his doppelganger, comedian Martin Lawrence, and he gets on base slightly less often. The Marquis de Sade drew an amazing total of 3 walks in 278 ABs through July; if that's not grounds for a restraining order preventing Tracy from leading him off, it ought to be."
Going into spring training, the Dodgers had three candidates for the centerfield job and leadoff spot:
1) 35-year old Marquis Grissom, coming off of a 654 OPS, making $5 million. 2) 33-year old Tom Goodwin, coming off a 622 OPS, making $3.25 million. 3) 30-year old Dave Roberts, who had a career 601 OPS in less than 200 big league plate appearances, making $217,500, just above the big league minimum.
Not a particularly appetizing menu. But Tracy saw something in Roberts during the spring and made him his leadoff hitter and CF against righties. Roberts has put up a .350 OBP and 45 steals. Grissom has played against lefties and also picked up some games in LF when Brian Jordan got hurt, posting an 831 OPS overall, including a .510 SLG. Goodwin was released and caught on with the Giants, where he's up to his usual tricks with a 617 OPS. Combined the Dodger CFs have put up .337 OBP/.413 SLG/750 OPS, which isn't great, but it sure beats the .282/.377/659 they posted last season. Faced with the daunting limitation of two unproductive players with moderately expensive contracts, Tracy wasn't afraid to try Door #3, and in doing so solved two problems at once.
Despite choosing Roberts as his starter, the mileage he's gotten out of Grissom is impressive. Here are Grissom's platoon splits over the last two seasons:
AVG OBP SLG OPS PA 2001 L .254 .270 .500 770 137 2001 R .207 .242 .363 605 329 2002 L .290 .352 .603 955 144 2002 R .268 .298 .441 739 188
Last year 71% of Grissom's plate appearances were against righties, this year only 57%. (I don't have platoon breakdowns for sac flies and bunts, so they're not included in the OBP and PA calcs). He's destroyed lefties, and he's even held his own against righties.
Tracy's decision to play Roberts this year resembles his choice of Paul Lo Duca as his regular catcher last year. Lo Duca entered the season as a 29-year old with around major-league 200 PAs in his career. Given the starting job, he responded with a 917 OPS and even spent a stretch of the season as the Dodgers' leadoff hitter (which I studied in great detail). He was moved out of the spot primarily because he was leading the league in batting with Runners In Scoring Position. Lo Duca hasn't had as good a season this time around, but take away his anemic August (440 OPS) and he's at a very respectable .306 AVG/.340 OBP/.441 SLG. As Monday night's game showed, the guy plays all out as well.
Decisions like these have helped Tracy overcome injuries to the pitching staff and subpar production from Jordan, Eric Karros, Adrian Beltre, and his middle infielders (except for Alex Cora, another player whom Tracy has spotted well). He's the NL Manager of the Year for my money.
But Tracy's biggest test may be to come, as he patches together the Dodgers' tattered rotation from here on out. Coming into Thursday night's game, LA had only 1 quality start in its past 7 games and 2 out of 12. In that span they've lost two key pitchers to season-ending injuries--Kazuhisa Ishii to a fractured skull off of a line drive, and Kevin Brown to back problems. They're thin in pitching, which is never a good thing at this time of year. But if anybody's going to find a way to pull it off, I believe it's the Dodger manager.
• James Surowiecki writes the excellent Financial Page in The New Yorker. His weekly takes on the business world bring a fresh sensibility to an often dreary subject. This week, the writer turns his eye to baseball, specifically the job Billy Beane has done as GM in Oakland:
Billy Beane followed a different path. Beane was frugal, Beane was shrewd. In three short years, he turned a stumbling outfit into a profitable enterprise that is the pride of its industry. If he hasn't been recognized as one of the most successful executives in America, it's only because his business isn't derivatives or microchips. It's baseball.
Surowiecki emphasizes the role sabermetrics plays in Beane's success, and points to a few ways it's influenced the A's organizational philosophy:
...Beane is the first G.M. to build his organization around [sabermetrics]. Beane uses actuarial analysis to figure out, say, the odds of a high-school pitcher's becoming a major leaguer. And, in drafting and acquiring talent, he relies on sabermetric truths. For instance, if your team draws a lot of walks and hits a lot of home runs while giving up few of each, it will win a lot of ballgames. So Beane has stocked his team with sluggers who take walks, and control pitchers who rarely give up home runs. This strategy wins games and, equally important, saves money, because even though the players Beane likes are as productive as many high-profile stars with gaudy stats, they come a lot cheaper. Think of Beane as the Warren Buffett of baseball.
Well worth reading.
• Elbow surgery made Tommy John a household name. It also put orthopedic surgeon Dr. Frank Jobe on the map for figuring out how to repair John's torn ulnar collateral ligament with such success that John won 164 games AFTER going under the knife. Baseball Prospectus' Jonah Keri had a fascinating interview with the doctor. Among the topics discussed are the complexities of repairing the shoulder as opposed to the elbow, recovery times for TJ surgery, and the phenomenon of pitchers claiming they throw harder after the surgery than before, an effect Jobe dodges the credit for: "What the surgery does is restore the ligament's stability to where it was four or five years ago. A pitcher might say the operation did it, but it's just more stability in the arm contributing to better mechanics." Jobe also offers his views on the way pitchers are handled, and points to regrowth of cartilege as one of the most promising areas of research in its impact on pitcher (not to mention the rest of the world).
• By hanging with the red-hot Oakland A's, the Anaheim Angels have shown everybody that they 're for real. Gary Huckaby of Baseball Prospectus analyzes the Angels over at ESPN and admits that Huckaby admits that nobody in BP's cast saw it coming: "Every single person at Baseball Prospectus picked the Angels to finish dead last in the AL West. Not a single contributor picked them to even beat out the pitching-poor Rangers for third in the division." He points out how the Angels are strong across the board, featuring some of the league's top pitching, an excellent (and economical) bullpen, and the benefit of several hitters at or near their peaks. Elsewhere within ESPN's vast media empire, Rob Neyer and Tony Gwynn offer their takes, with the former talking to GM Bill Stoneman and the latter extolling the virtues of manager Mike Scioscia.
• Twins Geek John Bonnes gets to celebrate early; as his team has already clinched its division. After the drama the Twins have been through off the field, it's impossible for any rational fan not to savor the irony of their success. So here's a hearty hoist of the mug to the team and its fans for getting the laugh on Bud Selig; let's hope the Twins can lose owner Carl Pohlad and find a way to build on this season.
Bonnes is looking ahead to the AL playoffs in his column. Today he examines the Yankees, and the way the Twins match up with them. Bonnes points out that the Yanks' two lefties (Pettitte and Wells) may spell bad news for his team, as the Twins don't hit southpaws very well (712 OPS, vs. 797 OPS against righties). More bad news for the Twinkies: their most consistent pitcher, Rick Reed, has posted a 10.39 ERA against the Yanks this season, and Bernie Williams owns Twins closer Everyday Eddie Guardado (1380 OPS in 28 ABs). But Bonnes notes that while the Twins went 0-6 against the Yanks, all of those games were played in a 10-day span in May, which might limit their applicability in drawing conclusions.
• Lest Twins fans get too down about their chances, ESPN's Tim Kurkjian points out that their home-field advantage is significant enough to be a factor in a short series. The fast turf, the white ceiling, the Homer Hankies, and the noise level--not to mention the team's 49-26 performance at home this season--are enough for Kurkjian to warn the Twins potential opponents to "Beware the Metrodome." As somebody who rooted for the team during its two unlikely World Series victories--during which they went 8-0 at home--I think Tim's definitely onto something.
• Twins fan Aaron Gleeman spent a lot of time watching baseball via DirecTV, enough so to offer his opinions (scroll down to the September 13 entry) about the announcers for half of the teams in the bigs, as well as ESPN and Fox. Among his favorites are the announcers for the Giants (Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow), the Twins (Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven), the Yanks (except for Suzyn Waldman, of course) and Braves groups, and of course, Vin Scully.
• I keep meaning to add this MLB Contracts site to my links page. This unofficial site (run off of a British server) is an incredibly handy resource for looking at the contracts of a particular team or at the year-by-year breakdowns of an individual player's deal. Though it's by no means complete, it's well worth a bookmark the next time you want to complain about the lousy, overpaid bum of your choice.
• Shilling for myself: I recently added a listing for this site (under "Stats and Analysis") over at HeavyHitter.com, "the world's largest baseball directory." You can stop by there and vote as to the quality of this site; positive votes help to increase this site's visiblity within their listings, and would certainly be appreciated.
I've come down with a case of Dodger Blue Fever. I stayed up until 2 AM Monday night sweating out the Dodgers-Giants result from the West Coast, and I'm prepared to do the same again tonight. With these heated rivals in a dogfight for the NL Wild Card, my long-dormant allegiances have been stirred. I'd rise from the dead to watch these two teams mix it up in a meaningful late-season series.
As a lapsed Dodger fan now living in NYC and rooting for the Yankees at much closer range, it's been awhile since I got a charge out of my old team. I've carried a grudge against them ever since they folded the tent at the ends of 1996 and '97 season, hastening their plunge into the clueless oblivion of the Fox era. Late-night vigils for West Coast scores were no longer worth keeping for such a listless and mediocre ballclub, not when a great one was a Bronx-bound subway ride away.
My allegiance to the Dodgers had been founded on continuity--a love for the team handed down from my grandfater to my father to me and my brother, and a stability within the organization that gave us time to form attachments to its key personalities. The stability of the Dodgers' O'Malley era was characterized by a single stat: two managers for forty-three years. From 1954 to mid-1996, Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda guided the club, in most years able to offer up a contending--if not quite championship-caliber--ballclub. By contrast, the Foxies burned through three underachieving managers in five years, none of whom ever made his mark on the team before bad front-office decisions took their toll.
But Jim Tracy changed all of that. I don't have much of an idea how he's pulled it off, but Tracy has done an amazing job of keeping the Dodgers in postseason contention in each of his first two seasons. His teams have overcome devastating injuries, clubhouse distractions, and some horrible contracts--they paid $22 million for six wins last season, and another $30 million for 14 wins from Kevin Brown over the past two. Tracy has gotten more out of players like Marquis Grissom and Alex Cora than even their mothers thought possible, and his patience through substandard years by Brian Jordan and Eric Karros has been rewarded by their hot Septembers (5 HR/20 RBI/987 OPS for Jordan, 2/9/843 for Karros). Paul Lo Duca has become an All-Star caliber catcher, and one of the league's more exciting players. Already on Tuesday night, he's tagged up and scored on a popout to second base and slid into the dugout at full steam to catch a foul ball. This team hustles for Tracy--they look ready to run through walls for him. Clearly, Tracy has won their respect; he's won mine as well.
Though I only experienced it through ESPN's GameCast and the occasional SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight update, last night's ballgame felt like one for the ages. Hideo Nomo fell behind early, yielding a solo homer to Jeff Kent and and an RBI double by Tom Goodwin (whose salary the Dodgers are paying) in the first inning, and a Rich Aurilia solo shot in the third. The Dodgers got it all back and then some in the fourth inning, as Brian Jordan hit a grand slam off of Jason Schmidt. The Dodgers furthered their lead in the fifth on a two-run double by Adrian Beltre--this just after the umps let slide a fan-interference call which prevented Goodwin from catching a Beltre foul.
Barry Bonds brought the Giants back with a 2-run homer off of 79-year-old Jesse Orosco. The undead Karros countered with a solo shot, making it 7-5. Goodwin scored from second on an infield hit and a Beltre error, cutting the score to 7-6.
The ninth inning was an absolute classic, with Dodger closer Eric Gagne facing the meat of the Giants' lineup: Aurilia, Kent, and Bonds. My palms were sweating and my heart was pounding as the ESPN GameCast ploddingly plotted the action, telling me that Aurilia had flied out deep to centerfield; I had no idea until seeing the replay on Baseball Tonight how close he'd come to a game-tying homer. Marquis Grissom absolutely robbed him. Gagne rung up Jeff Kent for the second out. Tracy elected to walk Bonds rather than give him an opportunity to tie the game; the gamble paid off as Gagne punched out Benito Santiago to end the game, bringing the two teams to a tie in the Wild Card race.
As I write this, tonight's game is on TV. The Dodgers have clawed their way back from an early deficit, and are down now 5-4 in the 8th on Tuesday night/Wednesday mornign, 1:15 AM EST. I'm wired on this race. Go Blue!
Sunday's contest between the Yankees and Chicago White Sox was my final regular-season game at Yankee Stadium. But with thunderstorms looming beforehand and nothing much at stake for either team, I told my brother and fellow ticketholder Bryan that I'd be just as happy if the game were rained out and our tix applied to meaningful games next season.
As it was, the game went on, despite three rain-delays, the last of which ended the contest after six innings. Bry and I had an enjoyable time despite the rain, thanks to our foresight in moving from our Upper Deck seats to the covered Loge level a half-inning before everybody else got wise. We stayed dry while Andy Pettitte disappeared into a quagmire--literally and figuratively--in the third inning. The rain visibly gave Pettite problems with both his grip and his footing, and after he went from 0-2 on Aaron Rowland to walking him, the grounds crew came out to apply drying agent to the mound.
Following this ad-hoc landscaping, the next White Sox batter was catcher Miguel Olivo. With a Polaroid for his Jumbotron ID photo and legendary Yankee announcer Bob Shepherd introducing him as "Number Sixty-One, Miguel... Number Sixty-One," clearly this kid was making his major league debut. Indeed, Olivo had been recalled after the White Sox's Birmingham affiliate had won the Double-A Southern League Championship the night before. His 24-hour one-man fairy-tale continued. In the pouring rain, Olivo smashed Pettitte's second pitch over the right-centerfield wall for a three-run homer in his first major-league at-bat, the 83rd player to do so.
The White Sox put two more men on base before the umps got out of their rowboats to halt play. At this point the Yanks could be forgiven if they had hopes for a rainout. I'd have felt the same way had it not been for Olivo's homer. Aided by circumstances though it was, his auspicious debut didn't deserve to be washed away.
The delay lasted only about 35 minutes, so Pettitte found himself still in the muck once play resumed--first and third, nobody out. Robin Ventura instantly bobbled a Frank Thomas grounder to run the score to 4-0. At this point, with the Yanks having already lost the first two games of this series by a combined score of 21-3, a fan could be forgiven for shuddering as memories of the tail end of 2000 came flooding back. Recall that for the final three weeks of that season, with the AL East essentially locked up, the Yanks played baseball so badly that historians had to dig up the 1899 Cleveland Spiders (20-134) for an apt comparison. Had they begun folding the tents again?
Apparently not. They got down to business, Bronx Bomber-style, against White Sox starter Gary Glover in the fourth. Derek Jeter led off, lining Glover's first pitch into right-center for a single, and Jason Giambi followed two pitches later with a line-drive homer to rightfield. The sparse crowd (39,587 my ass) had scarecly quieted down when Bernie Williams sent a 2-2 pitch into the rightfield bleachers, cutting the deficit to 4-3.
Giambi's homer had tied him for the team lead at 37 with Alfonso Soriano. As I have a sushi dinner riding on this home-run race, I was even more gratified than usual to see Soriano send a Glover pitch into the leftfield bullpen in the bottom of the fifth, tying the game.
The rain started to sprinkle again as the Yanks loaded the bases in the bottom of the sixth, bringing up Ventura, the active leader in career grand slams with 16. Sox reliever Mike Porzio was called for a balk, allowing Jason Giambi to trot home with the go-ahead run. Porzio then walked Ventura, reloading the bases and ending his day. But before reliever Matt Ginter could retire Raul Mondesi, the tarps came out, sending us home. You can only watch a grounds crew roll the tarp so many times in a given day. Amazingly, play did resume briefly--long enough for all three runs to score on a Nick Johnson single and a throwing error by Magglio Ordonez. But we were long gone by then. And Miguel Number Sixty One's homer was safely in the books.
The list obviously starts with Denny McClain (1968 & 1969 AL), who did time for racketeering and cocaine smuggling. Vida Blue (1971 AL) went to the big house for attempting to purchase cocaine. LaMarr Hoyt (1983 AL) had two stints in the joint for drugs, including one for being nabbed at the U.S.-Mexico border with them stuffed in his pants.
This is where I get bogged down. Dwight Gooden (1985 NL) had cocaine-related problems (suspension and rehab, but no arrest) and more recently was arrested on drunken-driving charges (dropped in exchange for Doc pleading guilty to reckless driving). I don't think anything on his rap sheet counts as a felony, but you're reading a guy who got his law degree out of a box of Cracker Jacks, so caveat emptor.
Ferguson Jenkins (1971 NL) was arrested in Canada for possession of small amounts of cocaine, hashish, and marijuana during a customs inspection in 1980. He was convicted, but the verdict "was vacated by the judge." That is, Jenkins was completely let off the hook because the Canadian citizen was essentially a national hero. Not that my fake law degree is worth anything under the maple leaf flag, but I'm guessing Jenkins' short-lived conviction amounted to a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
After that, I'm stretching for candidates. Young David Cone (1994 AL) had a few sexcapades which made the scandal sheets when he was a high-flying Met, but no charges ever stuck. Jack McDowell (1993 AL) got into bar-room brawls and gave Yankee fans the finger. Roger Clemens (5-time AL winner) threw a bat at Mike Piazza and was virtually declared Public Enemy #1 in Queens.
Gaylord Perry (2-time winner) greased a lot of baseballs, while Mike Scott (1986 NL) scuffed them, and choirboy-faced Orel Hershiser (1988 NL) dabbled in the black arts as well. Lefty Carlton (4-time NL winner) was a right-wing wacko. Pete Vuckovich had suspect hygiene. Sparky Lyle (1977 AL) sat on many a birthday cake in his birthday suit. Doug Drabek (1990 NL) pilfered $1.6 million of Peter Angelos' money in 1998 while posting a robust 7.29 ERA. Rick Sutcliffe (NL 1984) commits criminal negligence on a nightly basis as an "analyst" for ESPN's Baseball Tonight, and 3-time winner Tom Seaver is unlistenably godawful as a Mets announcer, much to the public's endangerment.
But I can't pin any felonies on them, nor on any of the usual suspects on the winners' list: Koufax, Gibson, Hunter, Palmer, Glavine, Maddux, Johnson. Or the obscurities: Mark Davis, Steve Bedrosian, John Denny, Dean Chance, et. al. So unless the question's been incorrectly defined, I'm pretty close to stumped. Or in need of a private detective to dig up some dirt on these guys. Let's interrogate Pat Hentgen until he cracks, shall we?
Postscript: According to our sources, the number of felons in the original question was four, not five, and Fergie Jenkins was included in that count. So we'll put away the thumbscrews.
I had a late brainstorm on my Seven Starts for Seven Brothers piece (see below), which was to go back and check the game story of the Martinez matchup over at the Nando Sportserver to see if the other pairs of brothers were mentioned then (the Sportserver has a very useful archive which goes day-by-day back to 1995). Lo and behold, this yielded the answer: Virgil and Jesse Barnes.
The Barnes brothers were the first duo to oppose each other, on May 3, 1927. Virgil started for the New York Giants, while the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jesse came on in relief of one Doug McWeeny and tossed seven innings. Jesse took the W as the Dodgers rallied for six runs in the 7th and 8th innings off of Virgil, to win 7-6.
Not being particularly well-versed in that era, I never would have thought of the Barnes brothers myself. And I likely wouldn't have found them because I had been skimming the Retrosheet team game logs for games in which two brothers both started. So while I hadn't checked for the other pairs of brothers facing each other when one came on in relief, this does bring our total to seven and jibes with the pairs listed in the Martinez story, thus accomplishing our mission. Here's the complete list of the brothers' first matchups, with the winning brother listed first:
- Jesse and Virgil Barnes: May 3, 1927 - Phil and Joe Niekro: July 4, 1967 - Gaylord and Jim Perry: July 3, 1973 (the Indians won, but Gaylord didn't get the W) - Pat and Tom Underwood: May 31, 1979 - Greg and Mike Maddux: September 29, 1986 - Pedro and Ramon Martinez: August 29, 1996 - Andy and Alan Benes: September 6, 2002
Doug McWeeny? One of the most unlikely baseball names this side of Mickey Klutts. Mr. McWeeny finished his career with 37 wins, 57 losses and a 4.17 ERA for three teams between 1921-1930. He led the league in walks and shutouts for the Dodgers in 1928. Those '28 Dodgers, who went 77-76, were the only winning team McWeeny ever played on in the bigs. And he was no Cary Grant, either.
