Spring Fling

As I stare out the window at the fallen snow and accumulated slush, my thoughts are of warm, sunny places where baseball is being played and feet are dry. One of my favorite bloggers, Cub Reporter Christian Ruzich, was lucky enough to spend some time one of those places: Maryvale, Arizona with the Cubs. Christian got up close to the Cubs' brass -- team president Andy MacPhail, GM Jim Hendry, manager Dusty Baker, coaches Gene Clines and Sonny Jackson -- as well as ballplayers like Kerry Wood, Corey Patterson, and Hee Sop Choi, and he's got the photos to prove it. It looks like A LOT of fun. I can hardly wait for my own trip, but it's two looooong weeks away.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 11:45 PM Link

The Catchy One

Hot on the heels of my recent brush with fame, I've created a Lenn Sakata page for my Wall of Fame. A prototypical futilityman who was about my size (5'9" 160 lbs) in his playing days, Sakata caught my eye in a number of ways, and I've gotten a lot more mileage out of him than your typical futilityman. Suffice it to say, he's earned his spot up there. Now that I've got a bit of time on my hands, I'm hoping to add a few more entries to this portion of the site in the next few weeks.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 10:23 PM Link

Email Trouble

Apparently I'm having trouble with messages to my futilityinfielder.com address bouncing. If any of you reading this have suffered this fate, please re-send your email to jayjaffe@nyc.rr.com.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 9:10 AM Link

Quoth the Peña, "Little Ball."

Baseball Primer is running a series previewing each team for the upcoming season, and they've started with the cellar-dwellars. Rather than face the music about how awful the Kansas City Royals could be in 2003, writer David Brazeal has turned to poetry. Or rather, Poe-try, for Brazeal has chosen to parody Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" in assessing the Royals' outlook under manager Tony Peña. The results are breathtaking, lacking only James Earl Jones to narrate:

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Peña, of the Pirates’ days of yore.
Not much of OPS knew he; loss of veteran pride did rue he;
Grounding to the right side knew he, was the perfect way to score.
Perched upon a bust of Dave Glass, just inside my office door,
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this manager beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By his bright and warm decorum made me want to scale a wall,
"Though thy attitude is sunny, we," I said, "don’t have no money,
Optimistic silly Peña, Michael Tucker can’t play ball.
Tell me what the lordly plan is ‘ere this team impact the wall."
Quoth the Peña, "Little ball."

Even Primer's Poet Laureate, the Score Bard, was moved to give his props:

I once was our poet of lore,
But that I shall be nevermore.
I've been outmerited.
Now The Raven's been parroted,
So how to explore Baltimore?

Oh, and Primer's Dan Szymborski, he of the Transaction Oracle, gives a partial explanation of his new ZiPS projection system; DIPS meets CHiPS, if you will.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 8:39 AM Link

Mercurial Fame

In what's already been a momentous month, I reached another milestone of sorts on Sunday. I was quoted, and this website was mentioned, in a mainstream media outlet for the first time. The San Jose Mercury News published a column by San Francisco Giants beat writer Dan Brown about the odd careers of the Giants' minor league coaches. Sound obscure? Well, Brown starts his article with a mention of Mario Mendoza, and within a few lines has worked his way (up? down? three steps into the hole?) to Fred Stanley and Lenn Sakata. In other words, he's in the Futility Infielder's wheelhouse.

Brown had an idea for a lighthearted article on the coaches a couple of weeks ago, and hit this article of mine while Googling Fred "Chicken" Stanley. We exchanged a few emails on the likes of Stanley and Sakata (who's due for a Wall of Fame entry on the basis of this photo I took in 1986 and the story behind it) before he called me last Wednesday. We spoke on the phone for about 15 minutes, touching on Mendoza, Stanley, and Duane Kuiper (former second baseman and current Giants announcer who hit 1 homer in his 3600 career plate appearances) as well as players at the other end of the talent spectrum.

My site and I get two mentions in Brown's piece, the first a few paragraphs down in the article's introduction:

"I think people relate to players like that because they know how hard a game baseball can be,'' said fan Jay Jaffe, a 33-year-old New Yorker. "Most of us are more like the Mario Mendozas of the world. We can identify with a scrappy middle infielder more than we can with a superstar like Reggie Jackson.''

Jaffe, a graphic designer, put together a Web site two years ago called Futilityinfielder.com. It celebrates the little guys such as Stanley, Mendoza and Luis Sojo in a veritable Disneyland of overachievers. It's the scrappiest place on earth.

Further down, under Stanley's profile, Brown writes:

Jaffe, whose Web site salutes the offensively challenged, describes Stanley as "an exemplary member of the infielderus futilis classification.'' Stanley never hit better than .238 in any season in which he had at least 50 at-bats. He never drove in more than 20 runs in a season. (A's shortstop Miguel Tejada had 20 RBIs in a month five times in 2002).

Brown gets into the swing of things as well, referring to Stanley's defensive prowess ("a free-range Chicken, if you will...") and showing a general appreciation for niches these coaches occupy in baseball history.

Anyway, being interviewed by a real reporter was a lot of fun (Brown told me that our conversation took place between ones with Kuiper and Peter Gammons), and seeing my name pop up in front of several thousand unsuspecting readers might yield a few interesting replies from far-off places. "The scrappiest place on earth" has all the makings of a good slogan for this site. So thank you to Dan Brown, and thanks to any of you who stopped by this site after reading his article. And to Lenn Sakata and Chicken Stanley, on the infinitesimal chance that you're reading this, thank you for exemplifying the spirit in which this site was named.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 8:29 PM Link

Striking Gold, Man

You wouldn't -- or perhaps shouldn't -- expect stellar objective analysis to emanate from a team's cable-network website. And you shouldn't -- or perhaps couldn't -- expect such frank and entertaining writing to emerge from the domain of the mad King George. But a writer named Steven Goldman is turning those notions on their ear. Goldman writes a weekly column called The Pinstriped Bible for the Yankees' YESNetwork.com website which only recently came to my attention.

I say "only recently" because in my thirst for intriguing reportage regarding the Yanks, a company mouthpiece which is the domain of more homers than the back of Barry Bonds' baseball card is the last place I ever considered looking. While I'll admit to having a higher tolerance for Michael Kay than most people, I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that non-Yankee fans have little use for him; he preaches to the choir. And outside of injury news or some first-hand perspective gleaned from their own playing careers, the web-based scribblings of announcers such as Jim Kaat and Ken Singleton offer little more than what one can find in any one of a dozen local newspapers.

So it was quite a surprise when Goldman popped onto my radar a few weeks ago, via a thoughtful post-State of the Union piece expressing a wish for better stats for politicians, and a Bill James to collect them. Wrote Goldman:

We need the kind of numbers that announcers toss off casually in baseball and football games: "The congressman has made 28 misstatements and 12 deliberate falsehoods out of sixty statements in this address for a calumny percentage of .667. The all-time record of .812 was set by Senator Huey Long (D-LA) in his Jefferson Day address, 1933..."

Baseball has a Manichean transparency that politics lacks: the proof is in the standings. A team can claim a good faith effort at contention, but a 72-90 record is what it is. On the other hand, a president can propose a tax plan and say that it will give a break to everyone, but unless you're prepared to wade up to your elbows in the U.S. tax code, it's hard to know whether the plan will be good for some, all, or none -- and often that's just what the plan's proponents are counting on.

This would no longer be the case if James (now a consultant for the Red Sox) could be convinced to turn his attention away from the horsehide sphere for awhile and produce a new magnum opus, the Bill James Political Abstract. Your senator is running for reelection and says he's working 24 hours a day to pass legislation for you. Not sure? Pick up your copy of the BJPA and flip over to the attendance tables, then head to the back of the book for the all-time records and see where your guy ranks..."

Goldman offered several amusing charts to go along with the piece which won't reproduce here, so I invite you to check out the article in its entirety.

More recently, he's turned his attention to a position-by-position rundown of the American League's teams, with player comments that would be the envy of Baseball Prospectus' crack squadron. On Mariners' 3B Jeff Cirillo: "Last season, Cirillo's bat made occasional references to baseball but more often was off conducting orchestras, twirling in parades, or tapping on the ground and turning Dr. Don Blake into the mighty Thor. Let's hope it regains its focus this year. Whosoever pulleth this bat from this stone shall be king of all Seattle." On Rangers CF Doug Glanville: "I might have been unfair to the Angels in the centerfield comment; you can count on one hand the number of positive seasons turned in by a Rangers CF. Ready? Al Oliver, 1979, Mickey Rivers, 1980, Gary Ward, 1984, Oddibe McDowell, 1986, Juan Gonzalez, 1991 and 1992. Maybe it's Antonio Alfonseca's hand, but you get the drift. Glanville is an intelligent guy and very dependable with a quip, but if he wins the CF job you won't need to add a finger." On Royals 2B Carlos Febles: "Like an endless series of sequels to a movie nobody watched in the first place, Febles keeps coming back. He's 27 now. A few names for you: Brent Gates. Ty Griffin. Jerry Hairston, Jr. Lance Blankenship. Tim Naehring. New acronym for you: S.P.O.D.E.: Second-base Prospects Often Don't Evolve."

Lest anybody think that this Stevie-come-lately is here merely to tweak the Yanks' competition, it should be pointed out that Goldman's been working this beat for several years via the Yankees' old website and MLB.com; according to his first YES column this was "roughly the 150th time that I've opened these pages." In that column, Goldman put forth a bold statement of purpose: "This desktop companion to the adventures of the Yankees exists in the place where the myths meet the data and its purpose is to question both. Those old myths are designed to obscure the truth -- which is what is happening on the field."

Goldman spends a good amount of his time debunking those myths and the assumptions which many Yankee fans hold dear. He's no stranger to sabermetrics (check "The Cask of Soriano" for his take on the Yankee second baseman and the AL MVP race), and he's not afraid to contradict his own hazy memory with an exhaustive romp through the Retrosheet archives (as he did when checking Dave Righetti's alleged penchant for wronging Tommy John and possibly keeping the venerable lefty from the 300 win club).

All in all, his is an admirable mission, and one with which I can identify, especially regarding the Bronx Bombers and their affectionately blind fans. You know them -- the ones who told us that Giambi couldn't carry Tino's jock, and that Jeter was better than Nomar and A-Rod because, well, "COUNT DA RINGS BABY!" So it was quite a pleasure when -- moments after I sang his praises to a Mets fan named Eric -- Goldman himself pulled into the empty seat at the end of my table at last Thursday's Baseball Prospectus Pizza Feed. Though I can't say much for the pizza (franchise-formula deep dish ain't my thang), the three and a half hours I spent talking baseball with Goldman, BP's Greg Spira and Doug Pappas, and several other knowledgeable fans were a blast. The down-to-earth Goldman humbly accepted our compliments and offered his perspective on several issues surrounding the Yanks. He was a lively participant in our discussions on several other stimulating topics -- on-base percentage, heckling, revenue sharing, relocation, contraction, marketing, and of course Bud Selig. I had a great time picking his brain, and I look forward to following his column through the coming season. Even if you're not a Yankee fan, this is a writer to whom it's worth saying "YES".

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 6:30 PM Link