SEAT LICENSE RENEWALS It's almost spring
when a young man's thoughts turn to... those expensive
seat licenses. An online cash advance can help relieve the anxiety.
The late Bart Giamatti famously observed that baseball is designed to break your heart, but the former commissioner was notably silent about its ability to strangle you with your own entrails. That's how I felt on Monday, watching two teams near and dear fritter away late-inning leads and ultimately suffer walk-off losses.
Last Friday had me aglow. For the first time since October 9, 2004 and just the second time in my entire adult life, the Dodgers and Yankees—the two teams at the heart of what I've long referred to as my Bicoastal Disorder, a complicated set of rooting interests borne of blood and geography—both won playoff games. My dream of a World Series which would replicate the formative matchups of my youth was intact. The drop from that high point to Monday's action was dizzying, to say the least.
I offer that introduction not as a plea for sympathy. Indeed, the inherent contradictions of this life I've chosen have been the fuel for nearly a decade of writing beyond the decimals and differentials that make up so much of my work here, and I'm hardly ungrateful for this playoff bounty, particularly in the face of an angry mob of Tigers/Cardinals/Twins/Your-Team-Here fans. Nonetheless, Monday's twin killing will have to suffice as an excuse for the rather disjointed account that follows. As a fan, I feel as though I've been run over by a Mack truck. As an analyst... yep, Mack Truck again.
By far the more glancing of the two blows from Monday's action came in the ALCS, where the Yankees squandered a 3-0 lead thanks to a curious set of decisions by Yankees (over)manager Joe Girardi, all of which blew up in his face in spectacular fashion à la Wile E. Coyote. I'll leave that postmortem to others except to note that the Yankees still hold a two games to one lead in the series. Suffice it to say that my forehead was sufficiently tenderized for the nightcap.
As with the rest of the NLCS, Game Four continued to defy the percentages... [Dodger starter Randy] Wolf came into his start having allowed just one home run against lefty hitters all season long, and having held them to to a feeble .159/.217/.200 line in 185 plate appearances. [Ryan] Howard hit just six of his 45 homers against southpaws, managing just a .207/.298/.356 line. Yet when Wolf left a fastball up in the strike zone during last night's first-inning confrontation, Howard demolished it for a two-run homer.
We can scratch our heads and curse or cheer at the defiance of those percentages, but we'd do just as well to remember that Wolf's fateful pitch was set up by very human reactions. Home-plate umpire Ted Barrett, whose strike zone was small enough to fit into a pocket protector, made a lousy call on the preceding 2-1 fastball, which caught plenty of the plate according to both TBS's pitch tracking device and MLB Advanced Media's Gameday. Catcher Russell Martin had set up on the outside half of the plate, however, and in reaching back across his body to receive the pitch, swayed the umpire's judgment. Backed into a corner against the slugger, the flustered Wolf clearly still had that call on his mind when he served up Howard's homer, given the camera shot of him jawing with Barrett as he received a new baseball.
... At the outset of this series, my prediction hinged on the way the Dodgers' lefty pitching matched up with the Phillies' lefty hitting and vice versa, but thus far the Phillies have gotten the advantage. By my quick tally, Utley, Howard, Ibañez, and Cole Hamels are a combined 5-for-18 with two homers, nine RBI, seven walks, and four strikeouts against the Dodgers' southpaws, good for a .440 on-base percentage and a .611 slugging percentage. In the first two games, Dodger lefties Andre Ethier, James Loney, and Jim Thome started off 5-for-8 with a double, a homer, three RBI, and three walks against Philly southpaws, but they went 0-for-6 with a pair of K's against Cliff Lee on Sunday night.
So it goes. In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, "Tell your statistics to shut up."
Meanwhile, Dodger general manager Ned Colletti, better known as Stupid Flanders around these parts, has been granted a three-year contract extension. I have very mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, the Dodgers appear to have a pair of talented GM prospects in Kim Ng and Logan White, and among Colletti's moves are some real clinkers, such as the Juan Pierre, Jason Schmidt and Andruw Jones contracts, the trades of Edwin Jackson and Carlos Santana. On the other hand, the Dodgers have made the playoffs in three of the four years on Colletti's watch. They did so this year having trimmed $18 million from the Opening Day payroll relative to last year, and late-season pickups such as Vicente Padilla, Ronnie Belliard, Jon Garland and George Sherrill — all of them low cost except for the latter, who required the surrender of third base prospect Josh Bell — were instrumental in the team finishing with the league's best record.
In the context of an extended rumination about the winter's potential front office turmoil, Dodger Thoughts' Jon Weisman nails it:
Honestly, there's another chapter to be written before we come to a firm conclusion about Colletti's value as a GM, and that's when the young Dodgers stars who have been earning from $400,000 to $4 million earn the service time that multiplies their salaries tenfold. That's when Colletti won't be able to pencil in low-paying stars in half his starting lineup anymore. There will be a host of difficult decisions to be made – the more of these guys Colletti wants to keep, the more difficulty he'll have overpaying to fill the gaps elsewhere, especially if the McCourts' travails lead to the team being put up for sale, with the budget for salaries locked down.
Grappling with the Colletti question is something I'll be doing later this winter in the forthcoming Baseball Prospectus annual.
Speaking of Dodger critiques and moving along the spectrum from astute commentary to blithering idiocy is this takedown of Joe Torre. There's a lot to take issue with regarding the way Torre has run the Dodgers during the NLCS — starting with the counterintuitive rotation plan and some Game One pitching changes — but Yahoo Jeff Passan, who's certainly capable of better, manages to catch absolutely none of it. He's so busy building a gallows for Torre to re-hang him for his crimes in the Bronx that he can't point to a single bad decision that's disadvantaged the Dodgers in this series. The takehome seems to be that Dodgers are losing — and thus about to end the season in total failure — because Torre's years with the Yankees were part of some big fraud, and he now gets paid more than he's worth. Wait, what?
Seriously, robot monkeys could churn out such execrable hackwork, which makes this revelation that an automated product called Stats Monkey can now write semi-competent game stories all the less surprising. No word on whether Passan was running Stats Monkey's sibling program, Outrage Monkey, but would it surprise anyone?
Mike Piazza retired on Tuesday, ending a stellar 16-year career which saw him make the All-Star team 12 times and finish with a lifetime .308/.377/.545 line and 427 home runs. A fellow Dodger fan came asking about his Hall of Fame credentials on Tuesday evening, prompting me to put together a quick piece for Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered. The bottom line is that Piazza's JAWS score inches past the Hall of Fame standard for catchers on the basis of his strong peak, but that's not the most interesting part of the story:
Bolstering Piazza’s primary JAWS case are his secondary numbers, which confirm the oft-repeated claim that he’s the best-hitting catcher of all time. Piazza’s .311 EqA [Equivalent Average] is the all-time high for the position. No Hall of Fame catcher has an EqA above .300, though there are several in the .295-.299 range and the positional average is a robust .289. The highest EqA for a catcher not in the Hall of Fame is sabermetric hero Gene Tenace at .308 (ayyy Gino!), while the highest active marks coming into 2008 were held by Joe Mauer (.305) and Jorge Posada (.300).
Furthermore, Piazza’s 472 Batting Runs Above Average is light years ahead of the rest of the backstop pack. No Hall of Fame catcher has more than Johnny Bench’s 325 BRAA. Joe Torre, at 396, is the only hitter between Bench and Piazza, and while he played a plurality of his games at catcher (893) and this is classified as such in our system, the majority of his time was actually split between the infield corners (793 at first base, 515 at third). Torre’s got a lifetime .298 EqA as well.
Piazza also holds the record for home runs as a catcher, hitting 396 of his shots while playing that position. His fielding is another story; at -149 runs, he's the worst-fielding catcher ever, which prevents him from topping the JAWS list at his position. Had he taken the time to learn first base in his later years, he might have had a shot at 500 homers, but as it is, he's still got enough of the good stuff for the Hall of Fame.
As I discussed in the piece, his final game at Shea, as a member of the Padres, was a night to remember. No matter what uniform he wore, he was always something to behold as a hitter, and he'll be missed.
• • •
The transcript for yesterday's BP chat can be found here. The Cubs, about whom I spent a good portion of the day working on a forthcoming piece for the New York Sun, were a popular topic, as were the Dodgers -- particularly regarding the news that Andruw Jones has torn cartilage in his right knee -- and the Yankees, whose season continues to spiral downward:
scareduck (Still closer to Angel Stadium than Chavez Ravine): Three questions: 1) For my Cubs lovin' wife, are the Northsiders for real? They've done well so far, but what are their big questions down the stretch? 2) Is there any light at the end of the Andruw Jones tunnel, or is that the sound of a diesel locomotive? 3) Joe Torre: great manager, or *greatest* manager? Seriously, look at Friday's Dodgers lineup: how could he expect to win?
JJ: Cubs: for real. Their run differential is the best in all of baseball by a wide margin, and I don't see any of the other NL Central teams being able to hang with them. I think the big questions are whether Rich Hill rediscovers his control and returns to the rotation, and whether Kerry Wood can hold up as the team's closer. Barring injuries, I think they'll be OK, and even with those injuries, they have a bit of depth to either cover from within or make a trade to help themselves out.
Andruw: lots of questions about him today. The upside of his injury is that it may explain some of his struggles, it may force him to get back in shape as he rehabs, and it will give Dodger fans a bit of relief when it comes to the daily drama of the outfield lineup.
Torre: Furcal being hurt certainly takes a bite out of that lineup. But really, Torre's going to have to get over this Russell Martin-at-3B fetish, even though it's only been a total of 37 innings he's played there. It's fine to give him a breather now and then, but when you're stealing at-bats from DeWitt or LaRoche to give them to Gary Bennett, something is definitely wrong.
jlebeck66 (WI): Dodgers. DeWitt. LaRoche. How's this gonna end? Did LaRoche anger a deity or something?
JJ: Sticking with this topic for a moment, I'm as big a LaRoche booster as you'll find, but DeWitt is knocking the stuffing out of the ball. I don't expect that to continue unabated, but there's no sense in sitting him down right now.
From a long-term standpoint, it's a nice problem to have. I'd hate to see them trade LaRoche, but I don't think they necessarily have to. I wonder whether the Dodgers would consider revisiting the DeWitt-to-second experiment that they tried in 2006, when the kid was at Vero Beach. With Jeff Kent clearly showing his age and Tony Abreu apparently joining the Federal Witness Protection program, that may be a palatable option.
Joe (Tewksbury, MA): Why do I keep reading about how much trouble the Yankees are in? Hasn't this been the story for three years running now? Slow start, fast finish. Do you see anything to make you think this year will be different from 2005-2007?
JJ: Yes. Everybody in the lineup, including Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada is a year older, and with the exception of Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano, they're a year further away from their statistical primes, to say nothing about the fact that Cano looks pretty lost right now. The bench is weak even for a team that's done poorly in that area in the recent past. Seriously, I'd take Chili Davis, Darryl Strawberry, Luis Sojo and Ron Coomer circa 2008 over some of the stiffs they have lying around.
There's that, plus a weak pitching staff where the back of the rotation has been a thorough disaster thus far and the bullpen situation is considered so fragile that there's actually a question about whether they'll move Joba Chamberlain to a starting role this year. Add to that the fact that the AL East has gotten tougher and I think there's no longer any guarantee that the Yankees will contend, let alone win the division.
The other thing in play is the new manager. Through the early season debacles of the last few years, Torre was able to absorb the front office's slings and arrows and still give off a sense of calm confidence that things would eventually turn around. Girardi is protected from the barbs of Hank Steinbrenner at the moment -- his focus appears to be on forcing Brian Cashman out -- but Little Joe is the kind of guy who seems more likely to go Billy Martin bonkers as things get worse, and I don't think that's going to help.
That's Rob McMillan in the top spot above, operator of the Dodgers- and Angels-themed 6-4-2 blog, which is one of my daily reads, incidentally. Anyway, I had some great chat questions left over, enough that I may repurpose some of them into my next Hit and Run column. Like a good chef, I do my best use the whole part of the beast.
In a season of great divisional and wild-card races, last year's NL West scramble may have been the best of the bunch. The Dodgers, Padres, and Diamondbacks all spent at least six weeks in first place, and by the end, just one full game separated the top three teams in the standings after the Rockies beat the Padres in a Game 163 playoff to decide the wild-card. The West looks similarly wild this year, as Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA projection system forecasts the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Rockies to finish with 87, 87, and 82 wins, respectively, the tightest three-team cluster in any division. As with last year, the outcome may well rest on the shoulders of young, homegrown talent. The Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and Rockies have earned reputations as three of the game's top player development machines, offering a pipeline of top prospects to combat the ever-rising cost of signing free agents - especially important for the small-market Rockies and Diamondbacks. All three are poised to augment their lineups and pitching staffs with even more prized prospects as the year goes on.
Hardly anyone predicted the Rockies could win the NL pennant last year, and nobody foresaw their season-ending 14–1 dash. However, BP prospect guru Kevin Goldstein ranked the Rockies' minor-league system the game's second-best at the outset of the season, noting their ability to provide instant help in the form of 22-year-old shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who hit .291 AVG/.359 OBP/.479 SLG with 24 home runs while anchoring the league's best defense. The system also produced a pair of hard-throwing hurlers -— 23-year-old right-hander Ubaldo Jimenez and 21-year-old lefty Franklin Morales -- who patched a rotation wracked by injuries in time for their amazing stretch run. Meanwhile, 24-year-old Manny Corpas, a second-year reliever, took over the closer role from Brian Fuentes by midyear, saving 19 games after July 6.
Strong player development is hardly a new thing for the Rockies; it's arguably the only area in which the team (once notorious for a $172 million binge on free-agent busts Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle) has ever excelled. Their 2008 Opening Day lineup featured seven homegrown players, including five-time All-Star Todd Helton, 2007 MVP runner-up Matt Holliday, and former first-round draft picks Tulowitzki (2006), Jeff Francis (2002), and Jayson Nix (2001). Three days later, with Chris Iannetta behind the plate, and Ryan Spilborghs in center field, they featured an all-homegrown nine. Nix, 25, is a late-arriving, good-field/no-hit rookie; PECOTA forecasts him for a .245/.300/.379 showing but defense at second base that's nine runs above average. Iannetta, also 25, was expected to win the starting catcher job last year, but a .158 AVG in April coupled with a solid performance from Yorvit Torrealba consigned him to the backup backstop role. Still, Iannetta forecasts as the better hitter, and he may yet claim the job.
I've remarked before about the prescience of Goldstein's ranking of the Rockies' org, but left on the cutting room floor was Tulowitzki's role in helping the Rox lead the NL in Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. I had plenty to say about the D-backs and Dodgers, of course, particularly with regards to the latter's new skipper:
Even more tantalizing [than third base prospect Andy LaRoche] is 20-year-old southpaw Clayton Kershaw, a blue-chip pitching prospect. Despite less than 25 innings above A-ball under his belt, he spent most of March in the big-league camp and drew raves for his poise and his arsenal. Though sent to Double-A to start the season, he's poised for a midsummer promotion, either as the fifth starter or -- of particular interest given new manager Joe Torre's experience last year -- in a Joba Chamberlain-esque setup role.
It's Torre who may draw the most scrutiny of any newcomer in the division. As the Yankee skipper, he often drew criticism for preferring marginal veterans over untested prospects, but his latter-day ability to integrate Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, Phil Hughes, and Chamberlain into the mix mitigated that somewhat. Already he's drawn fire for juggling Kemp with expensive, unproductive Juan Pierre in the outfield, and if Garciaparra and LaRoche are ever healthy at the same time, all eyes will fall on that choice, too. Given a slim margin for error, nothing less than a playoff spot may ride on Torre's willingness to choose youth over experience.
Given the Sun's space constraints, I didn't even have room to tackle the Padres, whom PECOTA forecast for a paltry 78 wins on the heels of their agonizing near-miss last year. As noted in my essay for Baseball Prospectus 2008, the Pads are at a real disadvantage against those divisional talent factories. They ranked 24th in Opening Day payroll last year, with the Rockies 25th and the Diamondbacks 26th; furthermore, Forbes.com's 2007 estimates show them second-to-last in Operating Income. Their farm system has improved in a year's time; Goldstein ranked them 29th in 2007, but they've risen all the way to 12th thanks to strong seasons from Matt Antonelli and Chase Headley and a stockpiling of free-agent compensation picks. Still, Antonelli's a year away and Headley, farmed out to begin this year, figures to help only so much once he arrives. PECOTA has him at .231/.316/.388 due to a shaky track record; an equivalent translation of his searing season in Double-A is .255/.356/.474, but he'd have to surpass his 90th percentile projection to reach that.
Back to Torre and the Dodger outfield, here's what I had to say in the Hit List, where they ranked 19th:
Ding-dong, Juan Pierre's consecutive game streak is dead at 434, but the early returns on Joe Torre's ability to manage the crowded outfield are less encouraging. Thus far, Andre Ethier's started nine times, Andruw Jones eight, Pierre and Matt Kemp five apiece, and the four outfielders are hitting a barren .204/.241/.301. On a more positive note, Rafael Furcal looks like the 2006 model as opposed to the 2007 one, and Jeff Kent has been solid despite missing most of spring training.
That's not very encouraging so far, particularly when it appeared towards the end of spring training that Torre had let go of the idea that Pierre would be a regular. It does appear I missed one significant choice, via this article: when Torre sat Jones on Wednesday, Kemp started in center field -- where he played just 17 innings last year -- instead of Pierre, with Torre again kicking the latter in the head: "I'd much rather have someone with the confidence and aggressiveness that [Kemp] has... I'd rather have his arm in center field." Thunk.
Elsewhere on the Hit List, the Yankees were just above the Dodgers at #18 (that's what happens when your offense is down to 3.1 runs per game) and the Brewers were fourth thanks to the anomalies of a Ben Sheets complete-game shutout (his first since his rookie year in 2001) and a sizzling start from Jason Kendall (.538/.567/.731). Most importantly, this week's pop-culture cameos include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Keith McCready, the Capital Punisher, David Bowie and the former Attorney General, the latter of which should (and does) come with a suggestion to try the veal.
One brief but neat aside about the Hit List: Baseball Prospectus has long had a function called "Audit Team" available via a drop-down menu in the upper righthand corner throughout most of its site. They function as team-at-a-glance pages, handy to have up while watching a ballgame or mulling your local nine's lineup, but recently, they've received a massive and very cool overhaul, adding headshots, graphics, links to the oft-cited PECOTA projections, and a whole slew of BP-flavored sortable stats, including current Hit List ranking and recent Transaction Analysis entries. Here's what the Yankees page looks like -- if you're not familiar with their predecessors, let's just say that the new ones are like stepping into Technicolor. As I found while putting together this week's piece, this is a great resource that's worth taking advantage of, and you can't beat the price (free).
Hat tip to Dave Pease, not only for his hard work on this, but also for eliminating the single most painful hour of my week, the agonizing mad dash to finish each week's list that involved hand-coding each player mentioned in the Hit List with opening and closing < player > tags in order to link them to their BP player cards, often upwards of 100 per week. A very clutch performance.
We can look forward to these "historic" markers growing increasingly absurd as the year wears on, with broadcasters encouraging fans to catch the historic final midweek series against the Rays in July, and in August alerting us to Carl Pavano's historic final trip to the Yankee Stadium Trainers' Room. (I can almost hear Suzyn Waldman reverently running down the historic implications of the latter event: "Should Pavano somehow stay with the Yankees next year, and need a cortisone shot, or a rub down, or a precautionary X-Ray, it will be at the new Yankee Stadium.")
Of course, there will be an audience for all the sentimentality that's being unleashed with the Stadium's send-off. In a sport that conscientiously markets itself on its past and its traditions, the Yankees trade most effectively in nostalgia. Possibly the greatest achievement of the Yankees' nostalgia machine is the perceived continuity between the building that Colonel Ruppert built in 1923 to house Babe Ruth's bat and the current Yankee Stadium. The 1976 "renovation" was more of a gut-and-rebuild job than a simple sprucing up of the structure. Just about every significant detail of the building -- its dimensions, the playing field, the seats, the scoreboard -- was altered, resulting in an arena that doesn't fit in with the great classic ballparks like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but doesn't quite have the plastic uniformity of the cookie-cutter parks of the '60s and '70s, either. Although many still admire its timeless look, Yankee Stadium II (as we sometimes like to call the post-1976 structure) shares little with the original other than its address.
Across the street, the new new Yankee Stadium looks a bit like the Death Star, circa Return of the Jedi, enough so that I half-expect it to sprout a laser cannon and vaporize the present stadium sometime after the last pitch of the 2008 season is thrown. Its still-under-construction exterior shell self-consciously recalls the original structure, but the ballpark within will be thoroughly modern and built from scratch-there's no longer any plausible deniability that this isn't a break with history. Talking to fans around the ballpark, the recurring theme was anxiety about the new ballpark. Will they be able to afford tickets? Will they be near the other regular ticket plan holders in their section? Will the new Stadium be the same kind of place the old one was?
• My parents were just in town, and in addition to getting to watch the Dodgers opener with my dad, I took him to see the plaque commemorating the signing of Jackie Robinson to a professional contract at the Dodgers' offices on 215 Montague Street in Brooklyn, a few minutes' walk from my new apartment. Speaking of Robinson, Steven Goldman has a great (and free) piece on his arrival in the majors, set up by another scene from Steve and Jay's Excellent Promotional Adventure:
I hope you enjoyed Opening Day, or as I like to think of it, the 61st anniversary of America. Yes, there was 1776, when the 13 colonies declared independence, or 1787, when the current Constitution kicked off, or even 1865, when Abraham Lincoln both ended slavery and established the supremacy of the federal government over the states by force of arms. Yet, in all that time, the country never began to close the gap between its rhetoric and its realities. That had to wait for 1947 and Jackie Robinson.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. A couple of weeks ago, Jay Jaffe and I were in Philadelphia for a BP book signing. We were doing our usual Q&A when an older black man, standing at the back in a tweedy newsboy cap, raised his hand. He didn’t really want to ask a question, but to say a few words — well, a lot of words — about Barry Bonds, and how the color of his skin influenced the way he had been treated by the media and by official baseball. I’m not completely clear on how the conversation progressed, because the gentleman was making a speech without stopping to breathe, let alone allow us to answer, while Jay and I were simultaneously trying to respond and reclaim our platform, with the result that the three of us were talking over each other in a way that became unintelligible even to me.
I do know that at one point, while the gentleman was indicting baseball for racism, I brought up Jackie Robinson, saying that whatever happened since, the breaking of the color line was a huge, gigantic thing, more than just a seminal moment in baseball but in all of American history.
That gave him pause. "Why?" he asked.
"Because for the first time in this history of the country, something that had been promised at the very beginning was finally delivered: equality of opportunity."
"Well, I don’t know about that," the gentleman said. At that point Jay jumped in again, and the conversation spiraled off in another direction. Eventually, the gentleman thanked us for the use of our soap box and left.
The point I tried to make in that three-way scrum was that I have colleagues who don't consider any major league baseball before Robinsons's arrival in 1947 to be valid -- an extreme view, perhaps, but by no means an unreasonable one. Anyway, what follows that excerpt is a lengthy history lesson involving democracy and baseball, one that rises above even Steve's usual high standards. Read it.
• Hat tip to Yanksfan vs Soxfan: This isn't an April Fools joke, though the outcomes of Steve C. Wang's use of Chernoff faces to graphically represent managers' tactical tendencies look like the help at a Mongolian yak-farming outpost. From the article: "Dr. Wang used a kind of statistical Mr. Potato Head to portray the spectrum of managerial characteristics in a way that intrigued even the skippers themselves."
If I'm reading these correctly, Joe Torre keeps a stable lineup, goes with the platoon advantage, uses a lot of pinch-hitters, tends to steal, sacrifice bunt, and hit and run. A pretty good summation of his tendencies with the Yankees.
Randomly picking a couple of others... Oakland's Bob Geren: lots of lineups, lots of platooning, few pinch-hitters or pinch-runners, almost no stolen base or sac attempts. Washintgton's Manny Acta: big platoon advantage, lots of pinch hitters, lots of lineups, few sacs, few hit and runs or steals, few sacs.
Acta incidentally, considers Mind Game to be his baseball bible. So now I'm rooting for the Nationals, too.
• Acta's not the only manager reading BP. Joe Girardi has an annual in his office, and from the sound of it, the New York Times' Tyler Kepner is the one who's unfamiliar: "...I don’t think I ever saw a Baseball Prospectus volume like the one Girardi has in his office." And he calls himself a respectable journalist!
• Another no-fooling April 1 selection, from when I was surfing through the Giants' MLB page in search of details for the fantasy update and reveling in just how craptacular they looked on Opening Day. The top headlines (none of these are made up):
Giants have big plans for parking lot
Young Giants adjusting to bench roles
Giants make no changes to lineup
Zito's fastball lacking in opening loss
Giants shrug off low expectations
With news like that, an 11-151 record appears optmistic. And then there' this: it's no secret that Brian Bocock, the 23-year-old who's playing shortstop in Omar Vizquel's absence, isn't qualified to be a major leaguer. Last year the guy hit .220/.293/.328 in High-A and he was old for his level. He hit .183/.247/.183 this spring in 71 at-bats, and while those numbers don't count, that's not a typo either. There are PE teachers all across America who can hit that.
• Speaking of BP, I've got a quickie Unfiltered post on baseball-themed holiday loot that adds to a staff rundown of my colleagues' hauls. The best items from this awesome bounty might be the DVD burn of the 1975 All-Star Game taped off the local Brewers channel (it was played at Milwaukee County Stadium), and a scan of a photo of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig with a local politician who was the grandfather of a dear family friend, Karen Edson. Quoth my BP colleague Christina Kahrl, "About the only thing missing was a four-day weekend with Sandy Koufax."
Here's a shot of the All-Star Game, with AL starting pitcher Vida Blue resplendent in a full yellow uniform:
• My boy Alex Belth has edited a forthcoming anthology, The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan, which he's understandably jazzed about; the book hits the shelves in late February. Alex has some choice Jordan stuff on Joe Torre (his former batterymate in the Braves' system) dating back to 1996. It didn't make the cut for the book but it's enjoyable reading nonetheless. He's also been pulling some vintage articles on Red Smith and Dick Young. Go get 'em.
• The clearance of my major workload has meant the opportunity to catch up with some of my lighter reading. Amid an epic stint on the couch watching college football bowl games on New Year's Day (more football than I've watched all year combined), I settled in with some excellent entries from Josh Wilker's Cardboard Gods blog which reminded me what I'd been missing: Rickey Henderson, John Urrea, Ray Corbin, Paul Mitchell and Mickey Klutts. Sometimes hilarious, other times philosophical, and often painfully confessional, his stuff is always worth a read.
With Joe Torre now officially in as Dodger manager, many have asked me what I think about Torre and Alex Rodriguez vis-à-vis the Dodgers. Here are a few selected snippets and parting thoughts for the week:
• On the impact of Torre to the Dodgers: Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts put together an in-depth look at Torre's tendencies as Yankee manager, calling upon Bronx Banter's Cliff Corcoran and BP/YES man Steven Goldman, who put together a Bill James-style Manager in a Box feature upon Torre's departure, for some insight. I weighed in via the comments, and Weisman wound up appending what I had to say to the original post:
Having watched Torre at close range for 12 years from my New York vantage, I have fewer reservations regarding his taking over the Dodgers than I think most of you do here. Yes, he has his foibles, but he's also shown himself to be more adaptable than commonly given credit for. He handled the in-season integration of Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera into the lineups pretty well, and particularly this past year, showed that he wasn't afraid to bench expensive, gimpy and ineffective veterans like Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi. Yet he was also able to quell any major clubhouse dissent over those moves, which is pretty impressive.
A few other things to add:
• He's done an outstanding job managing Jorge Posada's heavy workload, keeping him effective all year long - there's virtually no difference between Posada's first- and second-half splits careerwise, and his September numbers have historically been strong. Granted, he won't have the DH to help Russell Martin out in the same way, but Torre was a catcher, and he understood the workload.
• Right now the Dodgers already have a deeper bullpen than the Yankees have had the last few years. In [Jonathan] Broxton, [Scott] Proctor and [Joe] Beimel, the Dodgers have three capable setup men, and that's not to say they won't be even deeper. Torre hasn't had more than one good righty setup at any one time in awhile, and his recent lefty relievers have primarily been LOOGYs or mop-and-bucket guys. Beimel is more of a Mike Stanton type, capable of pitching full innings without [his manager] worrying unduly about platoon matchups.
• Anyone pointing to Torre's lack of success in his pre-NYY days would do well to remind themselves that this Dodger club has far more to work with than some of those teams did, particularly in the rotation.
• Whatever the expectations are in L.A. with the ink still drying on Torre's contract, they're lower and more reasonable than they were in New York. Torre will do a good job of keeping the pressure off his guys by deflecting it towards himself, and this is a guy who can stand more heat than just about any manager I've ever seen. He'll demand accountability for the kind of BS that's gone on around problem children like Jeff Kent over the past few years, and I think he'll find his way through this mix of veterans and youngsters better than Little did last year.
Cliff did a particularly nice job of elaborating on the vets-versus-rookies topic:
Looking at the 2008 Dodgers," Corcoran says, "if the team decides to start the season with [Andre] Ethier and [Matt] Kemp in the outfield corners and [James] Loney and [Andy] LaRoche at the infield corners, Torre will give the youngsters a long rope. A player has to be really bad for a really long time to lose a starting job he's been given by Joe Torre. The challenge for young players, however, is getting that starting job in the first place.
"If Ned Colletti brings in another 'proven veteran' outfielder, or if Nomar [Garciaparra] has a blazing hot spring training and reclaims the third-base job, you're unlikely to see a change in the lineup before June, if at all, no matter how poorly the vets play.
"The one exception there, particularly regarding Nomar, is injury. Torre is not above allowing a young player to Wally Pipp a vet. If the team and the youngster excel while the vet is on the DL, that vet could come back to a spot on the bench, as [Jason] Giambi and Doug Mientkiewicz did this year. Heck, even Johnny Damon lost his center-field job to injury this year, and he didn't spend a day on the DL. Of course it took until June for that to happen."
• On the possibility of Rodriguez to the Dodgers: I don't think the Torre hiring increases the likelihood that Rodriguez will sign with LA. For all of Rodriguez's claims that he loved playing for Torre, he had to feel rather betrayed by his manager throwing him to the wolves in that Tom Verducci Sports Illustrated article in Septmeber 2006, and in Torre batting him eighth late in the Division Series against the Tigers.
But that's really only a small part of the issue regarding the A-Rod-to-the-Dodgers scenario. The biggest part is, of course, money. Dodger owner Frank McCourt is notoriously underfinanced, making it unlikely that he could absorb the operating losses stemming from adding A-Rod's $30+ million salary to a payroll that was $108 million on Opening Day last year. Though those annual losses could be countered by an increase in franchise value via increased attendance (even atop a Dodger record 3,857,036 this year), media revenues and other ancillary streams, McCourt's reputation for short-sightedness -- just look at the frenetic way he's handled his GMs and managers since taking the reins in early 2004 -- makes this scenario unlikely.
Furthermore, GM Ned Colletti's relationship with Scott Boras grew rather acrimonious last winter after Boras 1) engineered the opt-out of J.D. Drew; 2) reacted harshly to the team's refusal to pick up Eric Gagne's $12 million option for 2007 after he pitched just 16 games for them in 2005-2006; and 3) steered Greg Maddux away from the Dodgers and to the NL West rival Padres as payback. While Colletti is reportedly on thin ice in LA, the indications are that he's being given the opportunity to turn things around, but I doubt he'll wind up in any situation where he's negotiating with Boras.
Which is a good thing, since I'd have a hard time stomaching going through another go-round with Rodriguez. As much as I admire his talent, I'm tired of the baggage that comes with it, and thoroughly turned off by the way his departure from the Yankees has played out. It all plays into what's been said all along by jealous scribes, that the guy is a head case, insecure and desperate to be liked, putting a counterproductive amount of pressure on himself to succeed, hopelessly out of touch with reality, insulated by Boras and the bubble that only his kind of wealth can produce. Thanks, I'll pass. As fun as it was to watch him here in New York when he was at his best -- and I attended both his three-homer game and the one where he went yard twice in one inning -- and as much as the Dodgers could use his big bat in the middle of the lineup, the circumstances make it very easy for me to wish he'd just take his weak-willed, insecure ass elsewhere.
• On Rodriguez's other options: with the report that Boras and Rodriguez were seeking a $350 million package from the Yankees, it seems pretty clear why Boras is trying so desperately to remind the Yanks that they haven't closed the door on the possibility of A-Rod's return: without him, the market lacks momentum, not to mention an obvious leading contender for his services. Giants GM Brian Sabean doesn't sound optimistic about his club's chances. Boston's Leaky Larry Lucchino says Mike Lowell is his top priority (the Yankees are said to be very interested in him as well), which puts A-Rod further down the list; I think he's an impossible sell to their fan base. The Marlins, of all teams, appear interested in the Miami native, but if Rodriguez was worried about the instability atop the Yankees he can't be enamored of the Fish ownership situation and threats to relocate unless they can extort the local taxpayers. The Angels might be interested but find themselves in a similar position to the Dodgers financially; Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times runs the numbers and illustrates how stretched even Arte Moreno's finances would be. The Mets might be capable of making the biggest splash of all, but with David Wright and Jose Reyes locked in on the left side of the infield, somebody would need to switch positions; the Mets have asked Wright to zip it on that score.
But one thing is clear: teams aren't exactly stampeding to get in line to talk to Boras. And every time the agent opens his mouth, he insults someone's intelligence and perhaps further isolates his client.
• This week's installment of Prospectus Hit and Run just went up. In it, I note that the 2007 Red Sox are in very fine company in terms of post division-play teams that went on to win the World Series after conclusively proving themselves as the best teams of the majors in terms of run differential, Pythagorean record, and/or Hit List ranking -- and went went on to win the World Series. It's a short list, just nine or 10 teams long (depending on which of those criteria you use) and it includes some true powerhouses: 1970 Orioles, 1975 Reds, 1978 Yankees, 1981 Dodgers, 1984 Tigers, 1986 Mets, 1989 A's, 1998 Yankees, 2002 Angels, and now the 2007 Red Sox. Not too shabby.
Elsewhere in the piece, I revisit James Click's work on Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency, providing 2007 numbers which were retro-engineered by our data department, since Click himself now has better things to do as the Coordinator of Baseball Operations for the Devil Rays. The Defensive Efficiency metric, a Bill James creation, tells you how often a team converts a ball in play into an out; it's the flip side of the Batting Average on Balls In Play coin, though it also incorporates the number of times an opposing team Reaches On Error. Like everything else in baseball, it's subject to distortions by park, since some fields are easier to defend than others based on symmetry, fence distances, the amount of foul ground, and the playing surface itself. And like just about everything else in baseball which we can measure, it can be adjusted to remove some of that distorting effect.
Factoring in the park adjustments and cutting through a lot of interesting details which shall remain behind the subscription wall, here are the revised Defensive Efficiencies based on a formula where DE = [1 - (H + ROE - HR) / (PA - BB - SO - HBP - HR)]:
Team ADE BOS .7093 COL .7083 CHN .7052 SFN .6983 NYN .6976 ARI .6954 TOR .6949 ATL .6948 DET .6928 SDN .6898 PHI .6882 NYA .6874 CLE .6873 WAS .6870 SLN .6845 OAK .6840 KCA .6840 BAL .6826 CHA .6823 LAN .6823 HOU .6794 MIN .6776 ANA .6765 TEX .6751 CIN .6726 PIT .6720 SEA .6666 MIL .6636 FLO .6607 TBA .6484
Note that the two leaders were the teams that squared off in the World Series, that most of the top 10 were contenders, and that the Brewers are very conspicuously near the bottom, having watched their NL Central hopes slip away one ground ball through their porous defense at a time.
One other thing to note regarding this is that Click's finding that teams consistently play better defense at home than on the road (the park factors average out to 1.0089, in line with recent data) jibes very well with my Chien-Ming Wang-related finding regarding the homefield BABIP advantage enjoyed by pitchers.
• Alex Belth and the Bronx Banter community have a provocative discussion going regarding Josh Levin's Slate critique of Sports Illustrated magazine. Belth himself is a guy who works particularly well in longer-form pieces -- he's got a very readable book about Curt Flood, Stepping Out under his belt -- and while he's broken through on SI.com, he can't buy a page in the magazine because they've moved away from the kind of literate, long-form pieces that used to be the magazine's hallmark. The web, blogs, the instant news cycle, corporate takeovers of print media... it's all in the discussion.
• Chatting with Neil deMause on IM last night about Joe Torre reminded me of a classic Peanuts strip, one that I clipped out of the newspaper back in December 1999, less than a week before Charles Schultz's retirement and about six weeks before his death. The next summer, I found out amid a Baseball Hall of Fame retrospective on Schultz that it was his last baseball-themed strip ever. In light of the news about Torre possibly taking the Dodger job, it seems fitting to run this:
I'm walking on eggshells until Torre's deal with the Dodgers is done. Having seen the way Ned "Stupid Flanders" Colletti operates, I'm not taking anything for granted.
• Speaking of Stupid Flanders, Nate Silver had some scathing words to say about the Dodger GM:
There is no bigger disconnect in baseball between the Dodgers’ ability to develop talent and the front office’s lack of appreciation for that talent. Matt Kemp is someone that they should be thrilled to have in their lineup for the next six years. Andy LaRoche’s time is now. So is Chin-Lung Hu’s, and the Dodgers should consider trading Rafael Furcal to make way for him.
Instead, all rumors are that Ned Colletti’s compass is pointed in the opposite direction. What I envision happening is something like the following: Kemp or LaRoche are included in a deal for a premium starting pitcher. And then -– guess what -– you do have a hole at left or third, and you do need to work the free agent market to repair it. But it isn’t a hole that existed before; it’s one that you’ve created yourself. The behavior is literally almost pathological, a kind of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome: Colletti seems determined to make the Dodgers sick so that he can make them well again. Playing the kids-–these talented kids from your farm system that embody everything that used to be called the Dodger Way -– well, that’s just too darn obvious.
The Dodger front office is a drunk with a loaded gun and bad aim. I wouldn't weep a bit if Colletti is the next domino to fall after he wraps up the Torre contract.
When one door closes, another opens, goes the old saying. Today's news not only finds Joe Girardi accepting the Yankees' offer to manage, but the man he replaced and the man he beat out headed to the dugout of the Dodgers. Reports out of LA have the Dodgers firing Grady Little and hiring Joe Torre, with Don Mattingly -- whose son Preston was the team's supplemental first-round pick in 2006 -- coming along for the ride as well as bench coach. Prior to Girardi being offered the Yankees job, rumors about him either joining Little's staff or replacing the current skipper had surfaced, hinting that the Dodgers were up to the kind of backroom intrigue that saw GM Paul DePodesta ousted in late 2005.
My head is spinning on this one, but I'd be elated to see Torre land on his feet in LA. Little did a very good job with the Dodgers in 2006, but it all fell apart for him last year. On July 16, they were first in the NL West, a season-high 13 games above .500 at 53-40. They went 29-40 the rest of the way, including a 1-10 skid in the second half of September that featured Plaschke-fueledsquabbling between the veterans and youngsters (notably Jeff Kent and Matt Kemp, with Luis Gonzalez and James Loney chiming in as well) and some frighteningly ignorant pitcher handling by Little. The manager called setup man Jonathan Broxton's number 10 times between September 6 and 19. Broxton, who'd been brilliant all year, put up an 11.05 ERA in that span, allowing five of his six homers and a .794 SLG. In one of the more damning quotes by any manager last year, Little dismissed both that stretch and Broxton's own complaints of arm soreness: "It's not a fatigue situation. It's a situation where they're doing more adjusting than he is.... He's just snake-bit right now and he's paying for mistakes with the long ball." Yikes.
Still, the open question is how well Torre will handle the youth movement that caused Little to stumble. The latter said the right things at times, but he found the club's two top hitters, Kemp and Loney, just 686 plate appearances in 2007, and he futzed with the third base situation all year long with no great resolution. While Torre's New York tenure was hardly flawless, his efforts the past few years to integrate Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera at the expense of higher-paid veterans while quelling clubhouse dissent, and adhering to the organizational mandates regarding Philip Hughes and Joba Chamberlain may be the key here. If, that is, the Dodger organization isn't in the total disarray it appears to be and simply looking for the quick PR fix that a man of Torre's stature can provide.
What has set apart the Torre era is not just winning but a sense of attachment and identification that he effortlessly inspired among the fans and the players and the millions of sports bystanders. Already known by the fans as a strong-swinging Brooklyn-born catcher (and, later, a third baseman) with an eighteen-year career with the Braves, the Cardinals, and the Mets, and then for his long tenure as a semi-distinguished manager of the same three teams, he became a sudden celebrity, a Page Six sweetheart, in his first season with the Yankees, when his brother Frank Torre, another former major leaguer, underwent successful heart-replacement surgery the day before the last game of the World Series. The fourth game, in which the Yankees, trailing the Braves by 2–1 in the Series and 6–0 on the scoreboard, came back to win in extra innings, beginning their rush to the championship, changed New York to a Yankee town overnight. Torre’s composure and steadiness in hard times became as familiar as his odd, tilting trudge from the dugout to the mound to call in a fresh pitcher. A habitual modesty interwoven with an awareness of the difficult daily grind powerfully secured him to his players. Whenever someone brought up the batting title and National League M.V.P. award he had captured in 1971 with a .363 average, he threw in a reminder about his .289 mark the following year. Mid-July often brought on a retelling of a game of his as a Mets third baseman in 1975, when he batted into four double plays and also committed an error. This ease with himself and his profession set the tone in his pre-game and post-game press conferences, delivered every day to thirty or forty writers, plus TV and radio and Japan.
...The shock of Torre’s departure will not soon go away, but of course we should have known how it would play out. Only the owners, down in Tampa, seemed startled (at times, anyway) by his decision, but if they knew anything about him how could they not have known what would follow? Is it possible that they have no sense of the calamity to the franchise and to the fans and to baseball itself that the departure of Joe Torre from New York represents? He, at last, supplied the touch of class, the Augustan presence, that the Yankees had so insistently proclaimed for themselves and have now thrown away. For Torre, it was still about the players.
If all this does indeed unfold as reported, it won't be quite an equal trade for this bicoastal fan with Torre managing the Dodgers instead of the Yankees, since he won't be on YES to do what he does best, deal with the media crush. But after missing him more than I ever thought I would in the three weeks since he last managed, I'm damn glad to have Torre back in my life.
• • •
Speaking of the New Yorker, now's a good time to go back and read Ben McGrath's fine profile of Manny Ramirez which I discussed here. On the eve of the World Series, I joked that Ramirez would hit a seven-run homer in Coors Field, upon which he would bronze himself at home plate. Will Leitch, the Deadspin domo who did a great job blogging the postseason for the New York Times (read his eloquent description of the Yankees' last stand here), trumped my vision with this:
When they say "Manny Being Manny," what they mean is "Manny is An Alien Life Form Unfamiliar With the Mores and Vagaries of Earth." Someday he's going hit a game-winning grand slam and, when he flips his helmet off to run the bases, it will be revealed that he has antennae, and these antennae are draped in a feather boa.
With his flamboyant home run celebrations and his helmet flipping, Ramirez frustrates the hell out of a lot of purists, but once you read McGrath's piece, you'll gain a bit more insight into his world.
• • •
Alos, I've got a pair of aging Baseball Prospectus Unfiltered posts of mine to report, one on Curt Schilling's Hall of Fame chances, and the other an accompaniment to a video appearance I made at the Bleacher Bloggers website. The latter focuses on the most dubious achievements of teams in 2007, sort of a Hit List of ignominy. I'm about three minutes in on the video, if you want to skip the soccer-styled comedy. Enjoy!
The Boston Red Sox swept the Colorado Rockies right out of the World Series on Sunday night, but before the game was even over, news from Yankeeland swept that off the front page. Late in Fox's broadcast, Ken Rosenthal reported that agent Scott Boras had informed the Yankees of Alex Rodriguez's decision to opt out of his contract, foregoing the remaining three years and $81 million of his landmark 10-year, $252 million deal in order to test the open market. No sooner had the sun risen on that news than a leak from the Yankees revealed that they've offered their vacant managerial job to Joe Girardi, bypassing favorite son Don Mattingly as well as first base coach Tony Peña.
Where to begin with all of this?
Start with the Rodriguez situation. The announcement was an utterly tacky play by Boras; frankly, it was horseshit. Nobody, not even the Red Sox, deserved to be upstaged at a moment that should have belonged to them alone. Rodriguez had until 10 days after the end of the World Series to make his decision, so there was little urgency to the matter. With the free-agent filing period yet to begin, no team can begin negotiating with him yet, even if there may be some back-channel deal already outlined. Why show your cards before the betting has begun?
The Yankees didn't even get the chance to negotiate. They had prepared a five-year extension to his current contract, said to be worth around $150 million, but Boras wouldn't let them present the deal to his client before breaking the news. The stated reason for not waiting was the instability of the Yankee organization, from the lack of a manager to the status of free agents Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettitte, but frankly that insults everyone's intelligence, given the imminence of the team's managerial announcement and the strong likelihood that the players in question will stay to play for their former teammate.
Even as a Yankee fan, it's tough to know who to root for here, or who to blame. In some ways, the Yankee organization is getting its just desserts, both for the way it embarrassed Rodriguez during the 2006 stretch drive and for the clumsy way they handled the departure of Torre, offering him a one-year, incentive-laden, take-it-or-leave it deal. In the transition from George Steinbrenner to sons Hank and Hal, the common denominator is the Yankees' public stance of ultimatums and inflexibility. By their way of thinking, the Yankee brand is an infallibly desirable commodity, and anyone who dares question the terms of their offer simply doesn't want to be a Yankee, so screw them. It's as though the Steinbrenner kids are a pastiche of the old man, operating via cues gleaned from watching Oliver Platt's bravura performance in The Bronx Is Burning. The my-way-or-the-highway bullshit doesn't work anymore, kids, and frankly, it hasn't since about 1978.
Not that the Yanks didn't have reasons — not necessarily good ones — for ousting Torre, or for declaring that if A-Rod opted out, they would no longer negotiate. The Texas Rangers, who traded Rodriguez to the Yankees in February 2004, were slated to pay some $21 million of the remaining dough on his contract, but once the contract no longer exists, that debt is gone. Simply to replace that money with Yankee dollars would cost the team closer to $30 million once the luxury tax is factored in. That $21 million trumps any suggestion that there's a double standard between retaining born-and-bred Yankees Posada and Rivera and the itinerant Rodriguez.
As for Rodriguez, opting out is certainly his right; that's the purpose of having the clause in the first place, and coming off a 54-homer, 156 RBI season in which he's likely to garner his third MVP award, he may never have better leverage. Whatever you think of Boras, don't confuse his ruthlessness with stupidity; he's as good at his job as Rodriguez is at his. And whatever you think of Rodriguez's party line that he loved playing in New York, loved the team and the fans, you have to figure he still bears a grudge for being booed and buried in 2006, and that he's been dying to stick it back in their faces. As I wrote back in July, when Rodriguez and Boras rebuffed any attempt to extend the contract before the season ended:
Of course, what A-Rod could have said is that the team and its fans deserve to sweat a bit for the shoddy treatment they afforded him last year; he owes them no discount for the times Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, unnamed front office officials (you think that Post cover happened naturally?) and a certain segment of the fan base (to say nothing of the rabid media) have thrown him under the bus. I'm reminded of the great Simpsons "Trash of the Titans" episode, where Homer's stint as sanitation commissioner ends with the re-election of the man he deposed, Ray Patterson. Upon returning, Patterson tells the crowd, "You know, I'm not much on speeches, but it's so gratifying to leave you wallowing in the mess you've made. You're screwed, thank you, bye."
But the problems for Rodriguez are just beginning. First, no matter whether it's the Angels, Dodgers, Tigers, Giants, Cubs, Red Sox, or some other team who signs him, he will be hard-pressed to match the deal he walked away from -- eight years and around $230 million -- without the Yankees being involved in the bidding. There's simply no other team that can afford him the way the Yankees can, and no one Boras can use to raise the stakes into the stratosphere. The Yankees' opening day payroll according to USA Today was $189 million, and that's not even counting the in-season signing of Roger Clemens. The Red Sox were next at $143 million, followed by the Mets at $115 million, the Angels at $109 million, and the White Sox and Dodgers at $108 million. If any of those teams decided to add Rodriguez, they'd instantly be bumping up their payroll 20 to 30 percent, which appears rather unlikely.
Second, the most sensible suitor to pursue Rodriguez, the Red Sox, seem to be getting along pretty well without him, having won two titles since their failed attempt to acquire him in December 2003. They were upstaged on a special night for the organization and their fans, who could be heard chanting "Don't Want A-Rod!" even as the team dogpiled. Their incumbent third baseman, Mike Lowell, is a pending free agent who's among the team's top run producers, not to mention the MVP of the World Series, and a scenario where the team lets him depart to sign A-Rod, only to see their hero wind up in Yankee pinstripes as his replacement, won't fly very well at Fenway Park.
Third, the opt-out does nothing but harm Rodriguez's public persona. If he was unclutch because of his October failures -- 4 for 50 from his home run in Game Four of the 2004 LCS to his first at-bat in Game Three of this year's Division Series -- now he's leaving because he can't handle the pressure, can't win the big one. If he was a mercenary for leaving a very good Mariners team for a lousy Rangers one, he's an older and none-too-wiser mercenary for leaving a very good and much wealthier Yankees team for whatever's behind door #2. If he lacked leadership skills before, he lacks them even more now having waited for Posada, Rivera, and Pettitte to make their decisions instead of boldly stating his intentions and suggesting they follow suit. If he was a more palatable potential all-time home run leader than Barry Bonds, now he's lugging around a whole new set of Samsonite. No matter what he does, he's the villain here, subject to hatchet jobs from media hacks. Even by kicking the team that most of the baseball world loves to hate squarely in the groin, he simply can't win.
Meanwhile, the news that Girardi is in as Torre's successor isn't exactly unanimously positive. The former Yankee catcher, who played on the 1996, 1998, and 1999 champions, is more of an intense Buck Showalter type than a calm Torre clone. He won Manager of the Year honors in 2006, his sole season at the helm, going 78-84 with a young, cheap team that appeared ticketed for much worse. While his feuds with ownership -- the execrable Jeffrey Loria -- can be excused, his handling of the team's young pitching staff should be enough to make Yankee fans uneasy. The five pitchers under 25 who made up the bulk of his rotation -- Dontrelle Willis, Scott Olsen, Josh Johnson, Ricky Nolasco, and Anibal Sanchez -- all suffered either arm injuries or a precipitous decline after his departure:
--------2006--------- ------2007------ Player Age IP ERA ERA+ IP ERA ERA+ Willis 24 223.3 3.87 112 205.3 5.17 83 Olsen 22 180.7 4.04 107 176.7 5.81 74 Johnson 22 157.0 3.10 139 15.7 7.47 58 Nolasco 23 140.0 4.82 89 21.3 5.48 78 Sanchez 22 114.3 2.83 152 30.0 4.80 90
Johnson, whom Girardi sent back into a game following an 82-minute rain delay on September 12, 2006, suffered a forearm strain and was shut down for the rest of the season. He developed ulnar neuritis during his rehab, and amid his abortive return, blew out his UCL and underwent Tommy John surgery, costing him all of 2008. Sanchez required arthroscopic surgery on his shoulder in late June, while Nolasco was held back by elbow inflammation. There's no proof that Girardi's handling was responsible for any of these, but a team staking its hopes on a bevy of young pitchers like Philip Hughes, Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy might have done well to think twice before choosing Girardi.
In making their choice, the Yanks have cost themselves the services of Mattingly, who spent four years on Torre's staff, the last as bench coach, preparing himself for the day he might succeed his mentor. More popular than just about any Yankee this side of Derek Jeter, Donnie Baseball may have represented the most palatable way out of the public relations nightmare the team is experiencing this fall, and his stewardship could have provided more continuity with the Torre days. But he had zero managerial experience, and that was likely the deciding factor, the reason that while George Steinbrenner favored him, Brian Cashman did not.
For all of the well-deserved fallout from this double whammy, it's clear that the Yankees are in a position to remake themselves. Their ownership has new faces, they've got a new manager, and they're shedding a significant chunk of payroll and a cornerstone of their lineup, with perhaps more to follow. They can continue to cut costs, go younger, avoid locking themselves into the bloated contracts which ballooned their payroll over $200 million, and bill themselves as the underdog to the big bad Red Sox, who've won twice during thir interminable seven-year championship drought. After all, Hank Steinbrenner, who showed no patience with Torre's desire for more than a one-year deal and no tolerance for anything less than a championship, apparently feels that such patience and tolerance are necessities for his new skipper.
So the Yankees are leaner and decidedly meaner. It remains to be seen whether they can turn those new traits into assets as they try to build another champion.
When the Yankees were eliminated from the 2007 postseason, my friend Nick was some 8,000 miles away, floating on a boat in Halong Bay, Vietnam. He'd gone off the grid with the Yanks trailing two games to one, with George Steinbrenner's ultimatum still hanging in the air. As the outs dwindled, I pictured Nick lying awake at night envisioning the end of the Joe Torre dynasty, with the Doors' "The End" playing over an unsightly montage: one-hoppers to Derek Jeter's left... a parade of broken down starters and useless middle relievers departing the field dejectedly... lefty sluggers flailing at Rafael Perez's slider... and midges, an endless horde of midges.
Following a week and a half of tedious delays and breathless speculation, The End arrived on Thursday, when Torre rejected an incentive-based one-year contract offer from the Yankees. Though the base salary of $5 million would have allowed Torre to remain the highest-paid manager in the game, it nonetheless represented a 33 percent pay cut that he could only recoup if the team made it to the World Series, something they haven't done since 2003. It was a cynical, non-negotiable offer, designed to be refused but allowing both sides to save face. After 12 years, 1,173 regular-season wins, 10 division titles, six pennants and four World Championships, Torre wasn't fired, nor was Steinbrenner's managerial bloodlust -- held in check for an unprecedented dozen years -- sated.
Instead, the team, amid a changing of the guard from Boss Steinbrenner to his two sons, decided that their incumbent manager was only so valuable to them, and that what was behind door #2 -- Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi, Luis Sojo, Tony La Russa or the worm-eaten remains of Billy Martin -- might be preferable given the potential changes looming for the team. With Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Bobby Abreu, Roger Clemens and (likely) Alex Rodriguez all free agents or in an option year, the 2008 Yankees could look very different from this year's flawed model, and the presence of Philip Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, and perhaps Ian Kennedy in the rotation may require a different skill set and mindset to manage.
Which isn't to say that the current slate of candidates has that skill set or mindset. Mattingly, though providing some level of continuity with the currrent team, lacks any managerial experience. Girardi, though experienced at the big-league level, left behind a troubling legacy of damaged young pitchers in Florida. La Russa, though carrying a championship pedigree, likely attempted to drum up interest as a ploy to gain leverage in St. Louis, where he too is a managerial free agent. Sojo, though with experience in the minors and a connection to the heyday of the Torre dynasty, apparently hasn't drawn serious consideration from the Yankee brass. Coaches Tony Pena and Larry Bowa, both of whom served on Torre's staff, have managerial experience but hardly the kinds of track records one might want for a championship-caliber club; the latter will probably gain an interview to appease Bud Selig's requirements of minority consideration for such openings.
But let the next manager and the makeup of the 2008 Yankees wait for another day. Today is about Torre and what he meant to the franchise, and to this fan. Speaking as someone who moved to New York City in 1995 with a genetic predisposition towards rooting against the Yankees, I watched as "Clueless Joe" -- 109 games below .500 for his career and with just one division title in 14 seasons of managing -- took the reins of a club that hadn't been to the World Series in 14 years and hadn't known managerial stability in two decades. Skippering a team featuring an appealing mix of homegrown talent (Pettitte, Rivera, Jeter, Bernie Williams) and shrewd acquisitions (Tino Martinez, Wade Boggs, Paul O'Neill, Jimmy Key, David Cone), Torre was the calm voice of reason, providing a welcome antidote to the bluster of Steinbrenner and the shrill Dallas Green, manager of the crosstown Mets, who ripped his sad-sack players in the press on a daily basis.
To someone raised to hate the Yankee way, watching Torre work was an eye-opening experience, and it didn't take long before I found my resistance weakening. By the time David Cone made his dramatic comeback from a career-threatening aneurysm in his arm, tossing seven no-hit innings before departing in a cloud of -- whoa --perspective, Torre's Yankees had drawn me in. By 1998 I was part of a ticket package, bonding with friends over trips to the ballpark. We wiled away endless summer hours as the Bronx Bombers devoured the soft underbelly of some hapless bullpen, and huddled together through tense October showdowns where the good guys, Joe's guys, usually won. Perfect games, milestones, comebacks, endless rallies, towering home runs into the upper deck, clinchers, 55,000 fans singing "New York, New York" in unison while the champagne corks popped... we shared magical moments with Torre's teams over the past decade-plus. They brought us together as friends. At times, they brought a city together, and in the wake of September 11, even a country together. And somewhere in there, they inspired me to start writing about baseball.
So as the sun sets on this era of the New York Yankees, all I can say is this: Thank you, Joe Torre. Thank you for standing up to George Steinbrenner's bluster and the media's harsh glare, and for doing so with class, dignity, and grace while maintaining a firm grip on some of the best ballclubs I've had the pleasure to see. Your run with the Yankees has been a thrill to behold, and a life-changing experience for this fan. So again, thank you. Thank you a thousand times from the bottom of my baseball-loving heart.
I've got a Prospectus Hit and Run column up at BP today, loosely focused on the Rockies, who finished up their sweep of the Diamondbacks on Monday night. As improbable as their 21-1 run has been, the Rockies' claim on National League superiority is legitimate. They finished the regular season with the best run differential (+102) and highest Hit List ranking (#4) of any NL team thanks to their finishing kick.
Still, it was a weak league, Charlie Brown. The four NL postseason representatives combined for just a .532 Hit List Factor (the average of their actual, first-, second- and third-order winning percentages), the lowest of any slate from the Wild Card era, and their combined Hit List ranking of 38 tied for the second-highest of that era. This isn't an isolated situation, either. The 2005 slate, which featured the 18th-ranked Padres (-44 runs and a .483 HLF) has the edge with a combined ranking of 39, while last year's slate, with the 17th-ranked Cardinals (+19 runs but a .497 HLF) tied at 38. The presence of the 15th-ranked Diamondbacks (-20 runs and a .4998 HLF) hurt, as did the fact that the 8th-ranked Phillies and 11th-ranked Cubs were the other two teams in.
One league's weakness is the other league's strength. This year's AL finished with the lowest combined Hit List ranking of any league playoff slate via the #1 Red Sox, #2 Yankees, #3 Indians and #6 Angels. It isn't even particularly close:
Elsewhere in the piece, I point out that the Rockies' average ranking over the course of the year was 16.1; they spent time in both the top and bottom five spots of the Hit List. I came up with a compact form to display the week-by-week rankings of the various contenders. For the Yankees, it looks like this:
Yankees APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT 1 11 14 10 2 2 2 8 10 9 5 2 2 3 12 8 4 2 2 17 12 7 3 2 2 10 2
For the Rockies, it's like this:
Rockies APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT 20 24 22 16 14 11 4 16 25 21 16 13 8 16 25 20 16 11 6 24 26 15 17 14 5 19 11
The Rockies actually wound up as most volatile of any team in terms of the standard deviation of their Hit List rankings. That's not necessarily a plus, though four of the five most volatile teams -- the Phillies, Yankees, and Angels were the other three -- wound up making the playoffs; only one of the five least volatile, the Red Sox, made it in, though the bottom 10 also includes the Indians and the near-miss Mets and Padres.
Anyway, that's some stuff to chew on regarding the NL champions, who've become a pretty entertaining team to watch during this run. I'm still not much of a Todd Helton fan, but I do like Troy Tulowitzki and Matt Holliday, not to mention pitchers like Ubaldo Jimenez and Jeff Francis. I won't root for them if they face the Indians in the World Series, but if the Red Sox manage to claw their way out of a 3-1 hole, the Rox get my nod.
As for that series, I'm not terribly surprised to find the Indians up 3-1. In the Unfiltered addendum to my ALCS preview, I had the pitching matchups of the first two games as tossups and the Indians with an edge in the next two. Jake Westbrook and Paul Byrd helped me look smart by consistently getting Strike One on the patient Red Sox hitters and putting them in a hole, while Daisuke Matsuzaka and Tim Wakefield wilted like hothouse flowers, continuing their poor performance trends of the past two months. Bad breaks behind him had more than a little to do with Wakefield's demise, but once it started he was as powerless to stop them as any other 41-year-old coming off an 18-day layoff due to back and shoulder trouble.
Westbrook threw first-pitch strikes to 18 of the first 20 Sox hitters and 21 of 27 overall. Byrd did so to 17 out of 21 after doing so to 20 out of 25 Yankee hitters in the Division Series. How important is this? Baseball-Reference's splits show that batters hit .239/.283/.358 after an 0-1 count, compared to .284/.394/.463 after a 1-0 count. That's 45 points of batting average, 111 points of OBP and 105 points of SLG higher!
Of course, those first-pitch stats count all balls in play as strikes, but even so, the Red Sox only put Westbrook's first pitch in play twice, via a Dustin Pedroia groundout in the second and a J.D Drew single in the seventh. Here's the breakdown:
TBF is Total Batters Faced, SL is Strikes Looking, SS is Strikes Swinging (including fouls), and SIP is Strikes In Play. The Sox challenged Westbrook to throw Strike One and he did nearly every time until he reached the heart of the order for the third time, by which point Cleveland had a 4-0 lead. As for Byrd, his breakdown isn't quite so emphatic, but again, he took advantage of Boston's patience:
Can the Sox come back? Anyone who remembers 2004 would be an idi... a moron to deny that it's possible. To my surprise, many in the national media were pretty adamant about the idea of throwing Josh Beckett on three days' rest for Game Four -- something I felt could be the deciding factor in the series -- and are hammering Terry Francona for it now. Beckett threw only 80 pitches in his Game One start, but apparently, tightness in his back kept Francona from even considering pitching him instead of Wakefield on Tuesday night -- inconvenient for the Sox. Still, with two more days of rest under his belt, going against a C.C. Sabathia who hasn't lived up to his #1 billing in October, this series could easily go back to Fenway. I don't care who the starting pitchers are, that's a can of Whoop Ass I don't want to see opened.
As for the Yankees, the waiting game regarding Joe Torre's fate continues. With every pundit busy spinning their wheels regarding this ongoing Hamlet act and taking the we-have-no-news news to ridiculous extremes, I'll hold my tongue and focus on the baseball that's still going on. There's a ton to be said about the impending end of an era, whether it's Torre's era or that of paper tiger George Steinbrenner, but all in due time.
As somebody who spends much of my backwoods time slathered in Ben's 100 -- the no-bullshit equivalent of bug napalm, exponentially more powerful than OFF -- because I'm so prone to insect bites, I can't say Chamberlain's meltdown surprised me. When you're caught in a swarm, staying focused isn't easy. I'm not sure that the umpires should have stopped play on their own accord, but I wouldn't have blamed Torre for pulling the team from the field and engaging in a lengthy discussion with the umps and the grounds crew to buy his flustered pitcher some time to calm down. Still, part of being a well-paid professional athlete is keeping your cool under extreme pressure. Chamberlain did not -- hell, Jeter looked just as flustered, but the ball wasn't in his hands -- and it led to the Indians tying the game.
Blaming Chamberlain or the infestation for losing the game isn't appropriate, however. Over the course of nine innings, the offense simply couldn't solve Carmona, the Tribe's even filthier equivalent of Yankee sinkerballer Chien-Ming Wang. On the eve of the series, one pro-Yankee BP reader, responding to my series preview, suggested I wasn't giving the Bronx Bomber lineup their due going into the series: "Don't you think your undervaluing offense a little here? The Indians clearly have the better top two starting pitchers but the Yankees seem the perfect team to combat them with an incredibly patient offense that can push them out of the game early."
"You mean like the vaunted Yankee offense waited out the Tigers in the first round last year, and the Angels the year before?" I retorted. I got no reply.
Indeed, the storyline isn't too dissimilar to years past; the Yankee offense I "undervalued" isn't hitting (.121 through two games), and they left just three runners on base on Friday. By contrast the Indians left 14 on before finally breaking through against Luis Vizcaino in the bottom of the 11th. Vizcaino's capitulation was inevitable; the Yanks don't have a reliable reliever after Chamberlain and Rivera, nor do they have a lefty specialist to match up with lefty Travis Hafner, who stroked the game-winning hit.
With the Yanks facing elimination this evening -- I was none too optimistic about Roger Clemens in my preview, and here I'll predict a departure by the third, down 4-0, red-faced and limping -- the word on the street is that this may really be the last night of the Yankee dynasty. George Steinbrenner has stopped drooling long enough to assert that Torre's job is on the line: "I don't think we'd take him back if we don't win this series." With the Yanks having not reached the World Series since 2003, or the LCS since 2004, his point becomes increasingly valid. I'm not sure that what's behind door number two -- Don Mattingly, Joe Girardi or the Ghost of Billy Martin as skipper -- is anything to write home about, but I won't be surprised if we get to find out very soon.
For what it's worth, Torre reminds us why he's lasted this long in his job as Yankee skipper in this audio clip from Peter Abraham. If this is it, let the record show Torre remains the coolest customer around when it comes to the Boss' yapping, and for those of you calling for his head if the Yanks lose, don't be surprised when the next guy doesn't handle the heat so well.
• • •
With the first round of playoffs threatening to end tonight, the regular season already seems far off. Nonetheless, I couldn't achieve closure without running a season finale edition of the Hit List; it's up today at BP. Check it out.
, which he's understandably jazzed about; the book hits the shelves in late February. Alex has 