Banters, Ranters, and Other Stuff I Missed

Since I wasn't online for a whole five days, I've missed plenty of interesting baseball articles, some of which I'd like to call to your attention...

• Bronx Banter's Alex Belth interviews Marvin Miller. THAT Marvin Miller. In the name of a book proposal, Belth phoned the 86-year-old former Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players Association and spoke to him for about an hour on Curt Flood and his landmark Supreme Court case. Wow, great stuff.

• Mike C.'s got the latest lengthy installment of his look at relief pitchers over at Mike's Baseball Rants. This one covers the Nineties and the current decade (that would be the Aughts, wouldn't it?):

The saves numbers have changed so rapidly that the change has obscured the value of pitchers like Goose Gossage (13th), Bruce Sutter (16th), and Dan Quisenberry (21st), all of whom were arguably more valuable to their teams in the day than three of the top four in career saves (Lee Smith, John Franco, and Jeff Reardon) were to theirs.

This argument I feel is a stronger explanation for the current dearth of Hall of Fame relievers than the ubiquitous “The Hall voters don’t value saves” argument. They value saves, just not the relievers who have high totals in that statistic. I believe that there are voters who do not select the worthy candidates that I mentioned because they are over one hundred saves behind John Franco, a player who will not be regarded as a strong Hall candidate when he retires.

Good stuff, and lots and lots of data as well.

• Baseball Primer's Eric Enders, taking a tack from Bill James, enumerates the successes of Dodger manager Jim Tracy in making regulars out of several players. Enders points out how Tracy's resourcefulness has allowed the Dodgers to overcome several boneheaded contracts, returning them to the ranks of the competitive -- something I've harped on this myself recently. Continuing his examination of Tracy, Enders also has written a season preview of the Dodgers with some good analysis.

• Forget previewing a team; Aaron Gleeman, has lengthy previews of the entire AL & NL Easts. I'm guessing Aaron didn't spend much of his spring break outdoors.

• David Pinto's Baseball Musings has a slick new look and a new, easy-to-remember URL.

• The Yankees pulled off a good trade, sending outfielder Rondell White, who'd been rendered obsolete by the Hideki Matsui signing, to the Padres for outfielder Bubba Trammell and pitching prospect Mark Phillips. In the short term, the Yanks save $2.5 mil on this year's payroll, plus another $350 K on the luxury tax, and they get a lefty-masher well suited to coming off the bench (though admittedly not as good an outfielder as departed lefty-killer Shane Spencer). Long-term, they're on the hook for Trammell's $4.75 mil in 2004, but the acquisition of bona fide prospect Phillips should temper that.

Pinstriped Bible's Steven Goldman notes that Baseball America rated Phillips as the #3 prospect in the Padres organization:

Phillips is your prototypical tall lefty flamethrower -- the 6-foot-3 Phillips has whiffed 273 batters in 266 professional innings -- who struggles with his mechanics and control but is dominant when he gets it right... the Yankees took an expensive spare part and converted him into a potentially dominant young pitcher. That happens very rarely. Keeping all the usual caveats in mind (young pitchers are frequently derailed by injuries; the Yankees don't have the greatest track record of translating minor league pitchers into major leaguers) this has the potential to be the kind of deal that people cite for years afterwards as a steal.

Sweet.

• In one of the spring's most interesting experiments, former Cubs phenom Brooks Kieschnick is slated to make the Milwaukee Brewers' roster as a pitcher/outfielder. An outstanding hurler and in college at the University of Texas (2-time National Player of the Year), Kieschnick never stuck in the bigs as an outfielder, passing through eight organizations while racking up less than 200 major-league plate appearances. He made a couple of mop-up appearances here and there, but never gave pitching a serious shot again until last year. With the White Sox AAA affiliate in Charlotte, he pitched 25 games with a 2.75 ERA and 30 K's in 31.1 innings while also hitting .275 with 13 home runs and 40 runs batted in. New Brewers manager Ned Yost, who's got a long season ahead of him, is open-minded enough to try out this unique double threat, who bats lefty, throws righty, and can play both corner outfield positions and first base. And while spring-training stats don't mean much, it's worth noting that he's thrown 11 innings with a 4.77 ERA while going 4-for-10 with 2 dingers (tied for the team lead) and 7 RBI. Baseball Prospectus has a worthwhile interview with Kieschnick. I'm definitely rooting for the guy.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 9:56 AM Link

Holiday During Wartime

War makes a very strange backdrop for a vacation, and I can't say the current situation didn't dampen my spirits a bit while down in Florida. I never did get my web access to work while I was down there. And I'll never refer to Tampa and culture in the same sentence again. But the baseball part of my Grapefruit League trip went off quite well, save for a rainout on Sunday. All told, I saw five games, eight teams, and four ballparks. It never felt like enough, even after four games in a 48-hour span.

At this point in spring training, the lineups are fairly recognizable, so I got to see several stars up close, especially at the Dodger games. With the exception of the Twins, all of the visiting teams obliged by sending out what could pass for an Opening Day lineup give or take a player or two. Which isn't exactly great news in some cases.

Perhaps my best stroke of luck, beyond the weather, was the array of pitchers I witnessed: Jose Contreras (striking out Indians left and right), David Cone (bobbing and weaving through four solid innings against the D-Rays), Rick Ankiel (falling behind hitters but keeping the ball in the vicinity of the plate), Guillermo Mota (throwing gas at the Marlins while being heckled by some random Mets fans at the Dodger game), and Hideo Nomo (that hypnotic three-part motion), to name a few.

So much to tell... I'm working on a lengthy writeup of my trip and will have photos to go with it. Hopefully it'll be up by the end of the week.

--posted by Jay Jaffe at 9:34 PM Link