If you haven't had enough of the trade winds over the past couple of weeks, ESPN's Jayson Stark has a rundown on some of the players who cleared waivers since the July 31 deadline passed. Among them: the Angels' Darren Erstad and Adam Kennedy, the Rangers' Rafael Palmeiro, the Mariners' Freddy Garcia, the Expos' Livan Hernandez, the Cubs' Antonio Alfonseca, and the Yanks' Sterling Hitchcock. These players, by virtue of clearing waivers, can now be traded to anybody.
Stark runs down the waivers strategy, step by step, in a handy sidebar. The most interesting part is this: "Virtually every player in the major leagues will be placed on waivers this month, whether a team intends to trade that player or not. If nothing else, the sheer volume of names can at least disguise players whom clubs do want to sneak through so they can be dealt." So you can imagine, for example, the Yanks waiving Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, and Derek Jeter alongside Armando Benitez, in an effort to sneak Benitez through. Had anybody claimed Giambi, for example, the Yanks would have pulled him back, ending any possiblity of trading him. Interesting stuff.
Speaking of Benitez, the Yanks won Round One of that trade on Friday night. Jeff Nelson, who struggled with some jitters in his first appearance on Thursday, blew away the M's in the eighth on Friday. With his frisbee slider working like it was 2000 all over again, he struck out the side -- Ichiro, Willie Bloomquist, and Bret Boone -- to protect an 8-7 lead in a wild, see-saw game. The 52,792 fans at Yankee Stadium roared to the familiar sight of Nelson pumping his fists at the end of the inning. Perfectly following the script, Benitez came out of the pen immediately after to pitch the Yankee eighth. Though Mondo looked loose -- even grinning a bit as the crowd booed his entry -- he demonstrated why the Yanks were wary of him as he yielded a run on two hits. That gave Mariano Rivera a bit of breathing room as he pitched the first scoreless ninth in his past four attempts. He even struck out Edgar Martinez, who'd owned him to the tune of .643/.706/1.286 in 16 previous plate appearances.
Coupled with the Red Sox dropping a doubleheader to the lowly Orioles, it was a great night to be a Yankee fan.
Speaking of winds blowing, former Yankee outfielder Raul Mondesi fired some parting shots at Joe Torre and the Yanks. According to Mondi, the Yanks didn't show him respect, showed favoritism to homegrown players (such as Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada), and showed bias against players from the Dominican Republic (such as himself and Alfonso Soriano).
Like most of Mondi's swings over the past three months, this was a complete whiff. Raul took issue with Soriano being moved up and down the lineup when he's been slumping while Giambi and Posada stayed put, hitting ahead of poor little Raul, who was stuck in the eighth slot for a good portion of the season. Never mind the fact that even during their slumps, those two players' ability to take a walk now and then kept their OPBs near their career marks and probably higher than Raul's. Never mind the fact that a huge chunk of the Yankees' success over the past several years is founded on Hispanic ballplayers such as Posada, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Ramiro Mendoza, Soriano, Orlando Hernandez, and others. Why would Torre have something against Dominicans and not Panamanians, Puerto Ricans or Cubans?
All in all, it's an amusingly uninformed tirade which reminds me of Ruben Sierra's comment on being traded during the '96 season ("All they care about is winning..."). The outburst illustrates exactly why Mondesi is not only a former Yankee, but a career underachiever in the major leagues.
That street, for those of you who don't know, is the location of Yankee Stadium. Nelson toiled there for five years as a premier setup man, earning four World Series rings in the process before talking his way out of town. He signed a 3-year, $10.65 million contract with the Mariners (the team who traded him to the Bronx in 1995), and the Yanks have never adequately replaced him as their top righty setup man. They haven't won a World Series since then either. Hence "The Curse of Jeff Nelson."
On Wednesday the Yanks took a big step towards eradicating that curse, trading Armando Benitez to the M's for Nelson, one headache for another. Benitez, of course, was acquired by the Yanks from the Mets on June 16, and though his stat line is relatively tidy (1-1, 1.93 in 9.1 innings), he lost one game to the Red Sox, aided in another, and took Joe Torre's team on its share of bumpy rides. Torre clearly didn't trust Benitez, relieving him in mid-inning four times in nine games, three times calling on Rivera for four-out saves with some rocky results. In other words, the prized setup man actually increased the closer's work load. Is it any wonder Rivera's been struggling lately?
Now Torre will have a reliever he trusts almost as much as Mo. Nelson has earned that trust. In a twelve-year career split between the M's and the Yanks, Nelson has had an ERA better than the league average every single season, 39% better than the league for the course of his career coming into this year. He's struck out more than one batter per inning in every year except his rookie season. And postseason experience? Even better. Nellie's put up 47.1 innings in October with a 2.66 ERA and 54 strikeouts, and has been scored upon in only six out of 17 postseason series. This is a reliever built for October. He's put up a 3.35 ERA in 37.2 innings this season, striking out 47, but he's been lights out lately: twelve consecutive scoreless appearances, dating back to July 5. In that span he's pitched only 9.2 innings, but he's struck out 16 and walked only one. Talk about a weapon out of the bullpen.
My friends and I were giddy at the news of the trade. The thought of having the 6'8" Nellie coming out of the pen with that drop-down motion and that vicious slider had us swapping emails late this afternoon. "Pinky's back!" my pal Nick exclaimed, using our nickname for the flush the fair-skinned Nelson takes on in the heat of battle. Alex Belth was similarly elated. Here is what he wrote:
I was just thinking last night what an asshole Benitez is, and how difficult he is to root for. Nellie is an asshole, but he's our kind of asshole. Now at the very least the rest of the hacks in the pen look better: Orosco, and Hammonds throwing junk from the left side. And when Gabe White comes back they'll have a lefty with some pop. Add Osuna -- who is a dead ringer for the great New York character actor Luis Guzman -- and the soporific Cuban Contreras in the mix, and the Yankees bullpen is a likable motely crew. They could even be good enough to win a championship with.
...from karma point of view, it's like a breath of fresh air for the Yanks. (Fuck all the Mets fans who were waiting for us to suffer through Benitez in the post-season.)
What's suprising is that both players slipped through waivers. As I understand it, the transaction rules that govern this time of year require each player to pass through waivers, in which every team gets a crack at the player with the worst teams in the player's same league getting first dibs. The player claimed can then either be dealt to the team claiming him or withdrawn, closing the window on any trade opportunity for the season. For both Benitez and Nelson to have made it through means that the two teams chasing the M's and the Yanks, Oakland and Boston, respectively, passed up the opportunity to claim the player either as a means of aiding their own bullpens, or at the very least of blocking a trade to their rivals.
What's in this for the Mariners? Their regular closer, Kazuhiro Sasaki, has been on the DL since June 11 after fracturing two ribs and tearing an abdominal muscle when he fell carrying his luggage. Sasaki's reportedly ready to return, but he's expected to be eased back into the closer role. Shigetoshi Hasegawa has done an admirable job picking up the slack, but the M's felt they needed some "insurance" at closer, hence the trade. Warning: this guy carries his own baggage.
Julian Headley of Julien's Baseball Blog had a rather curt dismissal of former Yankee prospect Brandon Claussen as a non-prospect based on his low strikeout rate at AAA Columbus this season. I fired off an email to Julien looking to set the record straight. That letter, along with his response, is up at his site, so I won't rerun it here.
Some of the missed communication on Claussen centered around his Tommy John surgery. ESPN does a lousy job publicizing it, but their recent Outside the Lines episode on the surgery is definitely worth catching. The show featured the heavy hitters of the TJ world -- Dr. Frank Jobe, who invented the operation, Dr. James Andrews, who performs as many as seven a day now, and John himself, as well as recent recipients Jon Lieber and A.J. Burnett. The show explained the surgery in graphic detail (make sure you're not eating when you watch), Andrews noted that recovery rates are now around 95%, Jobe called for stronger pitch count monitoring of young pitchers and discussed the future possibility of growing new ulnar collateral ligaments in a lab from stem cells, John discussed his own famous surgery, and Burnett described his recent experience. Don't miss if you get the chance to watch this episode.
And now for something of the non-Yankee variety. The Dodgers have been struggling for runs all season, to no avail. On Sunday, with their offense last in the NL in runs, homers, walks, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, they fired hitting coach Jack Clark. John Wiebe of John's Dodger Blog has an insightful take on the situation, laying a good portion of the blame on GM Dan Evans and his failure to upgrade the Dodger offense this past winter:
But who, outside of the team, really knows how much Clark could have done? The correlation between acquiring poor hitters and scoring very few runs is pretty high, suggesting that GM Dan Evans should probably have expected a crappy offense out of this team. Clark's preseason motorcycle accident didn't help matters any, and some have said that part of the problem this year was that Clark was physically unable to perform some of his duties.
... So Clark is the one who is dismissed, perhaps because Evans is starting to feel pressure on his own job, what with the pending ownership change. His influence on the team we may never know, but one thing that we do is that the team's offense slid nowhere but back during Clark's tenure. He probably won't get another shot in the big leagues as a batting coach, unless there is a GM or a manager out there who really thinks it wasn't his fault in LA.
Meanwhile that other excellent Dodger blog, Jon Weisman's Dodger Thoughts, has a tough look at the big contracts the Dodgers are saddled with for next season -- $72.4 million for 10 players, including $16 mil for Shawn Green, $15 mil for the always-fragile Kevin Brown, and $11 mil for ever-injured Darren Dreifort. Weisman runs through a couple scenarios for how the Dodgers can fill their lineup without breaking the bank. Let's just say the news is not so good for Dodger fans.
Wow, am I capable of delivering the whammy. On Sunday afternoon I was half-watching the late innings of a pitcher's duel between Andy Pettitte and Mark Mulder while reading a piece written for Bronx Banter by correspondant Christopher DeRosa called "Jeteronomy." I soon joined in a discussion of the piece, in which DeRosa evaluates the common claim that Jeter is overrated, over at Baseball Primer. Looking to make a point about Jeter's defense -- subpar no matter which sophisticated metric you use -- I was frantically typing a post and attempting to place some links within. In doing so, I bollixed the HTML so badly that I crashed the entire thread. Everything that was written is still there, but go ahead, just try to post something new. Ka-blooey! In all my years of posting at Primer, I've never had that happen. I once had a browser go haywire and send my post 11 straight times at five minute intervals, but that's a story for another day.
Here is part of what I had written before messing up the thread (note that the stats have been updated since then, changing the exact totals slightly):
Jeter seems to be back on track after his shoulder injury: .324/.396/.462. [Miguel] Tejada, on the other hand: .259/.312/.439.
This in-season Win Shares calculation has Jeter ranked 5th among AL shortstops overall despite having missed so much time. He's clustered with Tejada and Jose Valentin, only 0.51 WS out of third behind Nomar and A-Rod. Nearly all of that is based on his work with the stick; even with the missing six weeks he's third on offense (Nomar 15.03, A-Rod 11.59, Jeter 9.85 and then Tejada in 4th with 6.91).
As for D, on the other hand, Jeter gets handed his lunch: 1.54 win shares, well off the lead of Jose Valentin (5.53) and Miggy (4.99). Prorated to 1000 innings, it's 7.06 WS for Valentin, 5.46 for Tejada, 4.58 for A-Rod, 4.30 for Nomar, and Jeter waaaaaaaay down at 2.71 per 1000. Even Erick Almonte comes out to 2.93 per 1000 and Enrique Wilson 3.39.
I had started to write something snippy about Miguel Tejada, then thought better of it in the face of some data from DeRosa's piece, and retreated to providing links which were examples of Jeter-bashing on Primer. Shortly afterwards, Tejada got the game-winning hit off of Mariano Rivera, foiling Andy Pettitte's masterful 8-inning, 1-hit effort. When the shit hits the fan, it really hits the fan.
Memo from Above: don't even *think* evil thoughts about Miggy.
That DeRosa piece is well worth reading, whether you're a Yankee fan or a Yank-hater, and let's face it, you're either one or the other. Jeter is a lightning rod for emotion regarding the Yankees. The girlies shriek, the fanboys yell, "Count da ringz!" the media gushes that the captain deserves a Gold Glove, and the statheads cringe. Here is some of what DeRosa has to say:
Id like talk a bit about Jeters rating, but first off, let me recognize that there are more than two positions in the debate. There are:
1. The people who think Jeter can do no wrong, possesses magical abilities, and is better than A-Rod.
2. The people who know A-Rods better, but still count Jeter among the elite.
3. The people who think Jeters good, while understanding that hes a not a good fielder.
4. The people who think hes first and foremost a lousy shortstop, but still a decent player in other ways.
5. The people who think Jeter sucks, resent that girls like him, and hate the Yankees.
Grouping the opinions of 2, 3, and 4 with those of 1 or 5 tends to emotionalize the issue, so let me state up front that though a fan of Jeter, I can see that most of his critics are just trying to evaluate a player as honestly as they can, and get irked when they think a player has an inflated reputation. My premise here is that a player can be praised up and down without really being overrated.
The opinion that Derek Jeter is overrated is common, and fast approaching Point Rudi, when the people convinced of a players under- or overrated-ness out-number the holders of the original perception. If you made an all star team of the players whose overrated-ness has upset the most people, Jeter would probably be in the starting line-up, along with Steve Garvey and Pete Rose (although I dont know that he could move Phil Rizzuto off the shortstop position, what with his awful range and all).
DeRosa goes on to examine various sabermetric rating methods (including Win Shares 2000-2002, the data which gave me pause about Tejada) as well as some comparisons between other players past and present. His argument speaks to just about every faction in the debate, so if you find yourself in one of the aforementioned five categories, you owe it to yourself to read this. And if you don't find yourself in one of those five categories, what the hell are you doing reading this in the first place?
In the category of New Ways to Look at Stats is this post from Rich's Weekend Basebal BEAT. Rich Lederer takes a look at different ways to rank prolific home run hitters in relation to league home run rates. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody except that petulant superstar in San Francisco that Babe Ruth tops every list, but some of the other names which float to the upper ranks will have you scurrying to Baseball-Reference.com or your favorite stat book.
The Bonds/Ruth issue is a bit old, so I shouldn't really get into it. But rereading what Barry said ("The only number I care about is Babe Ruth's. Because as a left-handed hitter, I wiped him out... In the baseball world, Babe Ruth's everything, right? I got his slugging percentage and I'll take his home runs and that's it. Don't talk about him no more.") three weeks ago still ticks me off. So I'll just rattle off a few fairly obvious points:
Bonds (.595) is still 95 points of slugging percentage behind the Babe (.690), and one year or two years or five of BB at his current level ain't gonna get him there even if he passes Ruth in total homers.
Bonds would still need to rattle off something along the lines of a 94-46 record with a 122 ERA+ as a pitcher to approach the Babe's total contribution on the diamond in the regular season.
Bonds would need to PITCH THE RED SOX TO A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (or two) before he could top the Babe as far as World Series feats go.
When that happens (i.e., when Hell freezes over and I vote Republican), Bonds will still trail the Babe in the sheer weight of his total contribution to American culture. Where's Barry's home run for the dying kid, or his "Called Shot"? Who cares that he makes more than the President of the United States? Which enemy of ours will charge into battle telling American soldiers, "To Hell with Barry Bonds!"
If Bonds needs any further clarification on the topic, he can look at that organ pumping inside his chest and wonder whether it's Barry the fans won't take into their hearts, or the other way around.
Enough Bonds-hating from me. Another interesting Sunday thread on Baseball Primer brought Barry's father, Bobby Bonds, into a comparison with Reggie Jackson, with a poster named Tom stating, "I always say that Bobby Bonds was the same player as Reggie with lousy luck."
On the surface of it, comparing the two seems odd, because Reggie holds a considerable edge in total homers (563 to 332) and other career numbers, not to mention magazine covers and memorable quotes. But Bonds and Jackson are almost exactly the same age and debuted one year apart, naturals for comparison. In my quick assessment, I made a few points:
Bobby's career line of .268/.353/.471 (130 OPS+) bears more than a passing resemblance to Jackson .262/.356/.490 (136 OPS+).
Both had power, considerable speed (Reggie stole 228 in his career and reached double-digits 10 time), and a ton of strikeouts (Bobby holds the single season record, Reggie the career mark).
Bonds hurt his hand, tripping on a turf seam in his first game as a Cub in 1981 (his final season). That's some pretty godawful luck. But he was 35 and had already been in serious decline (.203/.305/.316 the season before). Reggie had dismal seasons at 35 (.237/.330/.428) and 37 (.194/.290/.340) but rebounded both times, helping to push himself well over the 500 homer mark and into baseball immortality.
So there's a bit of sense to that argument. But I never got to see Bobby in his prime, and could probably count the number of times I saw him play on one hand. So I invited Primer's resident Giants fan (and Most Valuable Poster nominee) Steve Treder to weigh in. Steve rose to the occasion:
One need only look at how many times he was traded to suspect that Bonds was a player who didn't endear himself to management. Nobody was ready to give him a late-career break, as for instance the A's did with Jackson, bringing him back for a farewell season at age 41. Say what you will about Jackson's obnoxiousness, but teams (rightly or wrongly) perceived him as a harder worker, and a better role model for young players, than Bonds...
I think Bonds would have been better appreciated than he was if he hadn't come up with a team with an established superstar in center field, and thus been allowed to play (at least most of) his major league career as a center fielder... Good as he was, the Giants always seemed to be a bit unsatisfied with him; they wanted him to strike out less and hit .300, regardless of the fact that even with his flaws he was almost certainly the best leadoff man in baseball in 1969-74.
Coming up behind Willie Mays and needing to change positions, with management not able to appreciate your unique talents, still saddling you with the weight of expectations.. well, that's a bit of bad luck indeed. And so is the fact that Bonds is struggling with illness at age 57, suffering from lung cancer and having recently undergone open-heart surgery while Reggie gets another victory lap.
One more note on Bonds and Jackson. At Arizona spring training in 1986, I tried to get autographs of both. Bobby, then the Cleveland Indians hitting coach, dutifully signed. Reggie, still playing with the California Angels, brushed right past me and wouldn't sign. That was my bad luck when it came to these two.
Still hungering for baseball chat later that night, I stayed up late watching the Yanks play the Angels in Anaheim, chatting on Baseball Primer's Game Chatter. While the Yanks outlasted the Angels to win 2-1 in 10 innings, several other Yankees fans including fellow blogger Larry Mahnken kept me abreast of developments in the Red Sox-Rangers game. That contest couldn't have turned out better from this Yankee fan's vantage point. The Rangers outlasted Pedro Martinez, who threw 111 pitches in 6 innings. The Sox tied the game in the ninth while Byung-Hyun Kim held down the fort, exerting himself for three innings. Kim yielded to Todd Jones in the 11th, and the card-carrying homophobe surrendered a game-winning grand slam to Alex Rodriguez. Since then the Sox have lost two to the Orioles, running their streak to four in a row, and giving the Yanks a 4.5 game lead in the AL East standings. Now, what was it all those New Englanders were gloating about a few days ago?
Back to the trading deadline, several people pointed out a few salient facts worth passing on. For one, Aaron Boone's already mediocre batting stats are propped up by a huge home-road split: 896 OPS at Great American Ballpark, 719 OPS on the road. Eeech. Also, according to this website which calculates in-season Win Shares (the Bill James metric which takes offensive and defensive contributions into account within the context of a team's performance) has departed third baseman Robin Ventura as a superior fielder by a wide margin. Ventura leads all major-league 3Bs with 3.5 defensive Win Shares and 5.45 per 1000 innings. Boone, on the other hand, is 8th in the NL with 2.1 defensive win shares and 3.1 per 1000 innings. That Win Shares site is awesome, by the way, and you can bet your propellor hat and slide rule that I'll be back with more on that topic soon.
On the other hand, sabermetrically speaking, it was also pointed out that in terms of Baseball Prospectus' Equivalent Average stat, Boone's lead over Ventura was pretty slim, a .272 EQA to .269 (.260 is league average). In Boone's defense, it's worth pointing out that Ventura's numbers have been protected by being platooned with Todd Zeile, whose EQA is an anemic .234. This includes time spent as a first baseman and DH, but BP doesn't separate the stat out.
One more area where Boone represents an upgrade is on the basepaths. He stole 32 bases in 40 attempts last season and was 15 for 18 this year. Ventura, on the other hand, was considered the slowest Yankee and had yet to attempt a steal this season. Typical of the humor which surrounded Ventura and made him such a critical clubhouse presence, some of the Yanks joked that for Robin, running was merely "walking with his head down." Though his bat may have been slowing, as a character, the witty Ventura (who requested 100 tickets for Elvis on the night of his trade to L.A.) will surely be missed around these parts.
Holy Homer, Batman! Robin Ventura's first hit as a Dodger was an inside-the-park homer. "Usually, someone has to go on the DL for me to get even a triple," said Ventura. According to the ESPN recap:
On a drive to the left-center gap, Darren Bragg jumped against the wall attempting a backhanded catch. The ball popped loose as he turned his glove and crashed into the padding. Sitting on the ground, Bragg snagged the ball with his bare hand before it struck the ground, holding it for the umpires to see.
But umpire Jeff Kellogg, running out from his position at second base, ruled that the ball had struck the wall. Bragg tried to flip the ball to left fielder Chipper Jones, but it sailed over his head. Ventura never stopped running, sliding across home before the Braves could retrieve the ball and throw home.
"That was a fall, not a slide," Ventura said with a smile.
I can't wait to see that one on SportsCenter.
One of the considerations of the Boone deal was the status of a particular Yankee organization prosp... er, suspect: Drew Henson. Yankee GM Brian Cashman minced no words when it came to the quarterback-turned-third baseman: "The move on Aaron Boone speaks volumes on where Drew Henson is at this time."
Where Henson is, of course, is Columbus, Ohio, hitting .228/.287/.400 for the Yanks' AAA affiliate. He's shown power, of course, hitting 12 homers and driving in 58 runs, but his total strikeouts (97 in 390 at-bats) and 4-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, not to mention his 22 errors, pose doubts about his viability as a prospect. With Boone only arbitration-eligible after 2003 and open to the possibility of a long-term deal, the Yanks may effectively bury Henson's chances with the organization in an effort to free themselves of their backloaded commitment him. That comes to $12 million over the next three seasons ($2.2 mil in '04, $3.8 in '05, and $6.0 in '06)..
There's now plenty of speculation that Henson might shift careers. As one headline put it: "Henson's Next Position May Be Quarterback." His NFL rights are owned by the Houston Texans, who would likely deal him since they're set with a budding star, David Carr. And though Henson has stated that he only wants to play for the Yankees (a situation which led the Reds to trade him back tothe Yanks a couple of years ago after he was sent to Cincy in the Denny Neagle deal), agent Casey Close expects his client's baseball rights to be dealt as well: "He's a guy they're still paying $12 million to and wants to continue playing baseball. You'd think they would want to move him, rather than keep sending him to Columbus every year."
Close, who has also discussed the possiblity of a position switch for Henson, says that Columbus itself is a problem for him. From the New York Daily News:
"There are some of their high-ranking officials who think he'd be better off if they just brought him to the majors," Close said. "I don't think people realize how bad things are in Columbus. You know what's going on down there."
There has been turmoil at the Yanks' top farm club as manager Bucky Dent has clashed with player development officials. At one point, Steinbrenner gave Dent control of the club and tried to limit the role of Gordon Blakeley, the Yanks' VP of baseball operations, who oversees the minor leagues.
Blakeley has since said things have settled down, but Close maintains that Columbus has been a difficult place for Henson to play.
"People there haven't forgotten that he's a Michigan football player; there's still the whole thing about Ohio State-Michigan," Close said. "It's not the best nurturing environment for him. Getting out of Columbus would probably be the best thing for him."
Does Close thinks that the intense scrutiny of the tabloid media and the Bleacher Creatures in da Bronx will make for more nurturing environment for the disappointing Henson? As my dad used to say when I wanted him to cut me some slack when it came to baseball drills: "Don't hit 'em so hard, Reggie!"
Speaking of Reggie Jackson, he can still stir things up. At a celebration honoring the 30th anniversary of the 1973 World Champion A's, Reggie told an Oakland crowd that the Yankees (his current employer) have the better team, drawing plenty of boos. Jackson pointed to the Yanks' superior grasp of baseball fundamentals, a point illustrated when a mental blunder by pitcher Barry Zito on a rundown play led to a throwing error and five unearned runs.
Speaking of the '73 World Champions and their aftermath... The main holdup in the announcement of the Boone deal, it turns out, was commissioner Bud Selig's intervention. According to this Peter Gammons piece, Selig was concerned about the amount of money the Yanks planned to send the Reds. Initially, when the deal included both Boone and reliever Gabe White, the Yanks were sending Claussen and $3 million. But baseball has a long-standing rule that no more than $1 million cash may change hands in a deal, a rule that dates back to 1976, when Oakland A's owner Charley Finley held a fire sale to dismantle his three-time World Champions.
Finley's sell-off of Vida Blue to the Yankees, and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox was nullified by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who invoked the "best interests of baseball" clause in baseball's working agreement (Hall of Fame curator Bruce Markusen has an excellent recap of that situation) and set a precedent which still stands. Selig was in the thick of that situation because as owner of the Brewers he was pursuing Oakland 3B Sal Bando. As Gammons reports:
"I was trying to get Sal Bando," said Selig. "Charlie Finley answered the phone, 'Finley's Meat Market.' He told me he wanted between $1 million and $1.5 million for Bando. I told him I'd give him prospects, that I had some good prospects.
"He told me, 'I don't want any prospects, what would I do with them?'," Selig recalled. "I tried to suggest that he needed players to put on the field, and he told me to forget it."
Selig's bud-in (with the cooperation of his lieutenant, Sandy Alderson) resulted in the brokering of two smaller deals: the Boone one, which included prospect Charlie Manning, and $1 mil, and the White one, which was for $400,000 and the PTBNL.
Former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette has found a new line of work, at least for the time being. The Duq is playing manager Benny Van Buren of the Washington Senators in a community theater production of the musical "Damn Yankees." The production is being performed at a ballpark which should be familiar to readers of this column: Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the same ballpark that Jim Bouton made his pitch to save in Foul Ball.
That park is now occupied by the Berkshire Black Bears of the Northeast League, and one of the team's minority owners, Jenny Hersch, is a theater buff who hit on the idea as a fundraiser to restore Pittsfield's colonial theater. The Sox GM became an obvious choice for Hersch: "The only missing ingredient was a real baseball guy to be in the show," Hersch told the New York Times. "Dan Duquette made perfect sense. I knew he was out of work and returning to his native land, so I knew he'd be around and maybe available." Sez the Duq "If George Steinbrenner can get in a conga line with Derek Jeter, why can't I do this?"
No word on whether Bouton, a former Yankee, plans to attend the show.
I've had a soft spot for the Milwaukee Brewers which dates back in the late '70s and early '80s, particularly for the '82 pennant-winning "Harvey's Wallbangers." No player epitomized the Brew Crew more than their shaggy, unkempt, beer-guzzling slugger, Stormin' Gorman Thomas, who hit 175 homers for them from 1978-1982. A blue-collar superstar in a blue-collar town, Thomas was always a fan favorite; as he put it in Daniel Okrent's classic dissection, Nine Innings: "They come to see me strike out, hit a home run, or run into a fence. I try to accomodate them at least one way every game."
Along with Willie Randolph, Thomas just became an inaugural inductee into the Charleston (Ohio) Baseball Hall of Fame. The Charleston Post and Courier checks in with the swaggering slugger, who's still hacking away... on the golf course. The best line from the piece is this description of Thomas from one of his friends: ""big, loud and thirsty." Thomas lives in the Milwaukee area and remains connected to the club, signing autographs on a regular basis and lending his name to a Miller Park grill, Gorman's Corner.
On the subject of Thomas and the Brew Crew, bard of baseball Roger Angell had this to say in a lengthy interview with a literary website called Identity Theory:
[Like] The 1982 Brewers, there is a chapter in the book [Game Time] called "Blue Collar." This was really the last blue collar team that played in a industrial town and was blue collar itself, Gorman Thomas, Paul Molitor and a lot of other people of that ilk. And the manager Harvey Kuenn lived in the back of a restaurant, Cesar's Inn. It was bar, a tavern and a lot of the players would come back and work behind the bar after a game. And that feeling about that team was deeply, deeply, that old feeling that these guys represent us and that, with a little luck, I could be doing this. Which we don't think any more about athletes. The greatest change of all is that athletes are beyond us.
Heavy stuff, but well worth your time.
It's been a long time since I checked in with Only Baseball Matters' John Perricone. That probably has to do with the fact that I can't bear to read about how far ahead of the Dodgers the Giants are in the NL West. But since John asked, and since the Giants have lost four out of five, I'll mention that John has a new URL (http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com) and is now powering his blog via Movable Type. In a recent post John notes that new acquisition Sidney Ponson bears more than a passing resemblance to a departed Giant:
Ponson reminds me of another out of shape pitcher, Livan Hernandez. Actually, I'd say he's a lot like Livan, groundball pitcher, team wants him to drop a few pounds, if he keeps the ball down he's terrific.... The only significant difference is that Ponson's looking for 10 million per in his new deal, so this trade just might be a rent a pitcher for a ring type of deal, and if it works, great. If he's gone after this season and the Giants watch the World Series on TV, well, then you've essentially traded Russ and Kurt [Ainsworth, swapped in the Ponson dea for nothing. That's two young pitchers for nada, not the way to handle your franchise.
"Russ" is Russ Ortiz, now a Brave in a trade for Damian Moss. "Kurt" is Kurt Ainsworth, who along with Moss was sent to the Orioles for Ponson. The Aruban Knight has been a league-average inning-eater for the lousy O's for a long time, but this season has seen him turn a corner, going 14-6 with a 3.77 ERA. It will certainly be interesting to see if Sir Sidney can keep up that pace.
