Call it a weird day in the world of baseball journalism. Early Tuesday morning, Baseball Prospectus’ Derek Zumsteg and Will Carroll published an article at B-Pro announcing that Pete Rose and Major League Baseball had “reached an agreement that would allow him to return to baseball in 2004, and includes no admission of wrongdoing by Rose…”

The article continues:

The agreement includes removal of Rose from baseball’s permanently ineligible list. This would allow Rose to appear on ballots for baseball’s Hall of Fame, which bars such banned players from consideration. The agreement allows Rose to be employed by a team in the 2004 season, as long as that position does not involve the day to day operations. That employment restriction would be removed after a year, allowing Rose to return to managing a team as early as the 2005 season if a position is offered to him.

B-Pro went forward with this scoop, but no news organization stepped forward to corroborate the story. Early in the afternoon, ESPN published a report in which Bob DuPuy, MLB’s chief operating officer, refuted Zumsteg and Carroll’s assertion. DuPuy told ESPN’s Jayson Stark that there has been “”no decision, no agreement, no nothing” regarding the Rose reinstatement. In a press release, DuPuy called the Prospectus report “unsubstantiated and totally unfounded,” and for good measure, threw in the terms “wholly inaccurate” and “journalistically irresponsible.”

The Prospectus folks are sticking by their story. They told ESPN that the report “was compiled using reliable sources. We believe that, in the end, our report will be found to be accurate.” In an interview with Salon.com’s King Kaufman, Carroll said that the report was based on three sources: “I’ve got a source in Cincinnati, in the Reds organization, a source in the MLB offices and an independent outside-baseball source.” Elaborating on the agreement, Carroll told Kaufman that a deal had been signed last November but wouldn’t be announced until after this year’s World Series.

Let us consider all of this for a moment. In the near corner, we have the 98-pound challenger, a stellar website when it comes to baseball analysis, with an in-house expert on the Rose case in Zumsteg and an injury guru who’s well-connected with baseball insiders in Carroll. Neither, to the best of my knowledge, has any experience in hard news reporting. Baseball Prospectus is a lot of great things, but CNN they are not.

In the far corner, we have the 800-pound gorilla, an organization that has spent the past ten years trying to convince baseball fans that up is down, that the competitive balance of the game is out of whack thanks to the Yankees, that nearly every team in the game is hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate, and that the sky will fall unless the Players Association agrees to a salary cap. Nobody in that house has any credibility when it comes to the truth.

At stake is a story which, even if it’s true, won’t be corroborated until after the season. No one has stepped forward to back up B-Pro’s version of the story, they’re not backing down or revealing their sources, and MLB is about as likely to shoot straight on this one as they are to open a restaurant called Joe Stalin’s House of Pancakes, Propaganda and Pop Flies. The unlikelihood that MLB will just let Rose off scot-free is topped only by the unlikelihood that somebody with a shred of credibility in the matter will step forward between now and then to offer a definitive statement on the topic.

My advice? Without considering for even a moment whether or not Rose’s reinstatement to the game — particularly into an active role, such as managing the Cincinnati Reds — is a good thing, let us all take a deep breath and step away from the story before we start arguing — again — until we’re blue in the face. We’ve been here before. We’ve got better things to talk about, pennant races, challenge trades, whiny ballplayers and the violated corpse of the [Second] Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived, for starters. Let’s change the subject.

• • •

New blog on the block: Clifford’s Big Red Blog, which according to the banner, “is neither big, red nor a blog.” He might have added that it’s not about the Big Red Machine, either. Cliff’s a Yankees fan who’s been suffering through their latest bullpen meltdowns. Check him out.

• • •

I’ve got a new outlet for my writing. I’ve become a contributing writer at a new website called Baseball Interactive, which has been signing up my blogging brethren left and right. BI is a slick-looking commercial site with scoreboards, standings, and a fair amount of content centered around team pages and commentary, and it now features such luminaries as Mike Carminati of Mike’s Baseball Rants and Travis Nelson of Boy of Summer in featured roles. Basically, BI will be syndicating some of our pieces, providing us opportunity to reach more readers.

For those of you looking to break into the lucrative field of Internet baseball writing (average annual salary: $0.16), BI is offering opportunities for team beat reporters (including a Yankees correspondant) and other writers. Get a writing sample together and you’re halfway there.

• • •

The New York Times has a sweet piece (written by Alan Schwarz of Baseball America) on the Milwaukee Brewers’ two-way wonder, Brook Kieschnick, who I wrote about last month. Schwarz sees Kieschnick as a throwback and notes that the player’s determination to find a spot for himself in the big leagues has inspired fans:

Kieschnick hasn’t played the field yet but probably will before the year is out. Meanwhile, he has attracted a legion of fans who delight in his becoming baseball’s Renaissance man. He is the host of a show on Major League Baseball’s Internet radio station, mlb.com. Letter writers relate how they have been inspired to expand their horizons or accept more responsibility at work. “They don’t even send me cards to sign,” Kieschnick laughs. “They just want to tell me about their lives.”

He has yet to play the infield in the bis, but this guy has to be the early favorite for the coveted Futility Infielder of the Year Award: as a pitcher, Kieschnick’s lowered his ERA to 4.77, and he’s now hit 5 homers to go with his 998 OPS. If there’s a fan club, count me in.

When I was little, I loved to draw. My father brought home endless supplies of scrap paper from his office, the pulpy real estate with which I could build my dreams, or least decorate the refrigerator. I drew cars, planes, houses and colorful circus scenes. But once my interest in baseball was kindled, I had a new focus for my masterpieces.

I have a vivid memory of one such drawing done during the 1978 season, when my consciousness of the game advanced from a backyard amusement to a daily scouring of the box scores. In pencil, I drew a scene of a ballgame, and instead of rendering it horizontally or vertically, I ran a diagonal line from corner to corner and used that as my horizon. At the center was a pitching mound adorned with Dodger reliever Terry Forster. The portly portsider’s ample gut protruded over his waistline, emphasizing the number 51 on the lower left corner of his jersey, while his hair curled out from behind his cap.

I don’t remember the other details of the drawing as vividly. I’m sure the batter, catcher and umpire were present and accounted for, and that a scoreboard could be seen in the distance. At eight years old, I had no knowledge of perspective, so with my primitive hand it all must have been a mess. But at a time when I felt a need to express my growing passion for the game, drawing was my outlet for communicating that passion.

That impulse, that need to communicate one’s love for the game by any means necessary, is a major part of a new exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City. The Perfect Game: America Looks at Baseball collects a wide variety of artwork and objects created by fans of all stripes, as well as an impressive collection of baseball-related curios. Viewers who come to this exhibit having seen the Hall of Fame’s traveling Baseball as America roadshow (late of New York, L.A., and Chicago, opening next week in Cincinnati) will notice some crossover between the two — a Civil War-era lithograph here, a colorful spinner game there — but make no mistake, this show has different aims.

Folk art, to use curator Elizabeth V. Warren’s definition, generally refers to “objects made by artists who were either self-taught… or were trained in a continuing cultural artistic tradition by other practitioners of the art.” The pieces in The Perfect Game run the gamut from drawings, paintings, and photos to quilts, embroideries, castings, sculptures, carvings, even grass rollings (no, not that kind of grass; we’re talking photos of the patterns rolled in the Fenway Park outfield). They’ve been chosen not for their value as masterpieces — indeed, some of these are fairly crude — or as memorabilia — though some of them would fetch a pretty penny — but for the way they express their connection to a shared heritage. Signage, arcade and carnival games, scorecards, weathervanes, and even a frieze from the original Yankee Stadium, not to mention plenty of bats and balls, are on hand to represent the vernacular culture from which such expressions drew.

One of the most prominent pieces of the exhibit is a 7′ x7′ quilt called “My Favorite Baseball Stars,” created by Clara Schmitt Rothmeier, the daughter of a minor league ballplayer. (This photo of the quilt and the other photos I link to for this article were generously provided by Susan Flamm of the AFAM for the purposes of this review). Over a ten-year period from the mid-Fifties to the mid-Sixties, Rothmeier drew pictures of her favorite players, traced them onto fabric, appliquéd and embroidered each one, then sent them to the players for their autographs. Once a panel was returned, she would add it to her quilt, embroidering the signature as well. Midway into the project, she added a border of cloth baseballs, each featuring another signature that she’d collected. The finished quilt contains forty-four panels and about three hundred autographed balls. There are some heavy hitters among those portrayed: Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Robin Roberts, Al Kaline, and a sleeveless Ted Kluszewski. Among the signed and embroidered balls are even more legends: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Jimmie Foxx, Frankie Frisch, Dizzy Dean, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige, “Cool Papa” Bell, Bob Gibson, and Sandy Koufax. Yeah, some of those guys could play ball.

Another favorite of mine is a series of nine embroidered portraits commemorating the 1963 World Champion New York Yankees. These portraits were done in 1993 by a prisoner named Ray Materson who was serving time for armed robbery. What’s amazing is that the material Materson used to create these intricate full-color illustrations was unraveled sock and shoelace thread. Each portrait is 2.25″ x 2.75″, contains about 1,200 stitches per square inch, and took about 50 hours to complete. Shown here is the Mickey Mantle one.

The item which originally drew my attention to this exhibition was a baseball from a batch painted by a minor league umpire named George Sosnak. To commemorate occasions such as an All-Star Game, a no-hitter, a Hall of Fame induction, or another historical occasion, Sosnak painted balls with India ink, covering every inch of their surface. A Sosnak ball generally features a colorful illustration of a player or scene on one face, a box score or career stats on another face, and a text summary or even a Hall of Fame plaque on another face. These detailed balls — occasionally game-used, but more likely painted on the cheapest balls available — are unique little collectors items, and Sosnak is estimated to have done 800 of them. Among the ones in The Perfect Game are balls commemorating Hall of Fame slugger Mel Ott, the inaugural season of the New York Mets, the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn/L.A. Dodgers, the 500th and 501st home runs of Harmon Killebrew, Orlando Cepeda’s 1967 MVP season, Dean Chance‘s short no-hitter, and the 1980 All-Star Game.

Not every item lives up to the lofty standards of these pieces, of course. A few seemed scarcely more skilled than my aforementioned drawing. But even the most primitive ones can evoke an emotional response. Among the numerous items paying homage to Jackie Robinson, a pair of paintings feature a misspelled “D-o-g-e-r-s” across the front of his jersey. Seeing this, I giggled momentarily, until I realized that these paintings were done by a septuagenarian named Sam Doyle who lived his entire life on a small South Carolina island that was once a refuge for freed slaves. In the face of Robinson’s significance to a life like that, such trivial inaccuracies hardly matter.

The Doyle paintings weren’t the only time I scolded myself for such a literal-minded response. Viewing a vivid painting by Ralph Fasanella called “Night Game—Yankee Stadium,” I got hung up upon the incorrect, cookie-cutter-like outfield dimensions shown. Since when is the House That Ruth Built 350 feet down the rightfield line and 410 to center? Again, that’s hardly the point of the painting, which contrasts the urban decay surrounding Yankee Stadium with the rich metropolis in the distance.

The determination of these artists to deliver their message by any means necesary is what carries the day here, not the precision of their details. If you’re a fan living in New York City or planning to visit between now and February, you owe it to yourself to check out this exhibit.

• • •

Ugh, the less said about Sunday afternoon’s Yankees-Mariners game, which I suffered through, the better. I’m well-versed on the epic nature of the slugfests between these two teams, but this four-hour, nine inning affair — which featured an hour-long seventh inning and a four-man bullpen implosion on the part of the Yanks — is too grisly to recount at length. Go read somebody else if you insist upon knowing more.

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.

Call me a prophet. Last Friday, Seattle Mariners reliever Jeff Nelson ripped his team’s front office for failing to make an impact trade before the July 31 deadline. Over the next couple of days, I emailed a few friends and then posted a comment over at Bronx Banter, asking: “Anybody else think that the next stop on Nellie’s train is 161st St.?”

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:

I’d like talk a bit about Jeter’s 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-Rod’s better, but still count Jeter among the elite.

3. The people who think Jeter’s good, while understanding that he’s a not a good fielder.

4. The people who think he’s 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 player’s 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 don’t 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.

Tons of stuff to get to today…

• Thursday was one of the most exhilirating and exhausting days I’ve had in the short history of this website. Having woken to a premature report about the Aaron Boone trade, I spend the better part of the day counting down the hours, hoping that the deal would unravel and swapping nervous emails and phone calls with friends. Confirmation of the deal at 3 PM EST (a mere hour before the deadline) sent me scurring back to rewrite the second of two pieces that day, combing the web and my own baseball library for info about the prospects involved.

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.

• Damn, I could do this all day.

In a flurry of activity as the 4 PM trading deadline approached, the Yanks pulled the trigger on three deals Thursday. The previously discussed trade with the Cincinnati Reds became two separate deals, with third baseman Aaron Boone coming to the Yanks for minor-league pitchers Brandon Claussen and Charlie Manning and cash, and reliever Gabe White (currently on the DL with a groin situation) going for a Player To Be Named Later. In the third deal, the Yanks sent third baseman Robin Ventura to the Dodgers for two minor leaguers, outfielder Bubba Crosby and pitcher Scott Proctor.

I’m thoroughly disappointed in GM Brian Cashman and the rest of the Yankee braintrust right now, not for failing to improve the team ever-so-incrementally, but for giving up such a potentially large part of their future for so little. Boone is a solid, inexpensive but replaceable player on the wrong side of 30, yet still not old enough to shave or be a free agent. He’s got pop, but not much control of the strike zone; his .339 OBP would be the second-best of his career. Robin Ventura could pull that off while hitting .097. Boone is versatile in the field, able to play second or even the occasional shortstop, but it’s debatable whether he’s actually a better fielder than the creaky Ventura. Here’s a quick comparison between the two 3Bs:

          AVG   OBP   SLG  OPS  HR  BI  SB

Boone    .273  .339  .469  808  18  65  15

Ventura  .251  .344  .392  736   9  42   0

Ventura’s been suffering through a serious power outage this season, last homering on June 8 and shedding about 100 OPS points since then. It’s entirely possible he’s cooked, and if so, the Yanks would have needed more than Enrique Wilson and the bloated corpse of Todd Zeile at the hot corner as insurance. But it’s too bad they have to replace one of their most likeable players with the less-talented son of one of the most annoying managers of the 21st century.

White has been on the Yanks’ wish list for a long time, with previous talks centering around the forgotten man in their pen, Sterling Hitchcock. The 31-year-old lefty is 3-0 with a 3.93 ERA in 34.1 innings this year, but he’s been on the DL since June 20 and has suffered multiple setbacks in rehab. Here’s what the Cincinnati Post said on Wednesday: “Reliever Gabe White was supposed to make a rehab appearance Sunday in Louisville, but lingering soreness in his left groin from bullpen sessions Friday and Saturday prevented that appearance. The Reds haven’t set a date for White’s next attempt at a rehab outing.” Ugh. White’s great against lefties, holding them to a 631 OPS this season, but he’s been getting tattooed by righties to the tune of a 905 OPS — and he’s faced righties 57% of the time this season. See what I meant about Bob Boone? On the other hand, prior to this season, White had been pretty respectable against the other side, holding them to a 717 OPS from 2000-2002, compared to 661 against righties. When he’s healthy, he’ll be more useful than Hitchcock, but so would an inanimate carbon rod.

The real blow here is the loss of Claussen, a 24-year-old lefty coming back from Tommy John surgery better than ever. He was previously thought to be “untouchable” in trade talks and considered a good candidate to make the Yanks next season, perhaps even as a starter. At this point there’s a good case that the Yanks could have done better by trading Jeff Weaver and inserting the kid into the rotation. But that kind of creative risk-taking is anathema to the Yanks, who prefer to bury their big-name mistakes under piles of cash.

On the other hand, the prospects the Yanks have traded away in the past few years haven’t really amounted to much, despite all of the hand-wringing (some of it by yours truly). D’Angelo Jiminez, Willy Mo Pena, Jackson Melian, Ted Lilly, Ed Yarnall, Jake Westbrook, Zach Day, Jason Arnold, John Ford-Griffin… none of these guys has come back to bite the Yanks in the ass, though Day got off to a great start this season for Les Expos, and Jiminez has had his moments. Maybe the Yanks do have some insight into the minor-leaguers who can help them after all? But then, why Claussen for Boone when he might have netted them a Giles or a Gonzalez? Call this an article for another day.

Meanwhile, here are Claussen’s minor-league numbers, along with those of the other minor-league pitchers involved in these deals:

          W-L   IP   K/9  K/W   ERA

Claussen  4-1  80.2  7.3  3.1  2.78  (AAA Columbus and A Tampa)

Manning   2-6  77.1  6.9  1.2  5.12  (AA Trenton and A Tampa)

Proctor   5-4  56.1  8.0  3.0  2.58  (AA Las Vegas and AA Jacksonville)

Proctor is a 26-year-old righty who’s spent all of this season pitching in relief after some success as a starter at Jacksonville last year (7-9, 3.51 ERA, 131 K in 133.1 innings) ands split between Jax and Vero Beach the year before (10-7, 3.08 ERA, 127 K in 140.1 innings). Manning is a 24-year old lefty who got bombed in AA as a starter and reliever (6.26 ERA in 46 IP), and has since been sent back to Tampa, where’s he’s been having some success. He split last season between Tampa and Norwich, going 10-6 with a 3.37 ERA and 146 K in 163 innings. Those two pitchers essentially cancel each other out, with the departed Manning’s age advantage offset by the arriving Proctor’s ability to pitch well in the high run environment of Las Vegas (5.25 runs per team per game).

That same high-offense environment has been pumping up the 27-year-old Crosby’s stats. The lefty-hitting centerfielder was a non-prospect coming into this season (.261/.311/.394 split between AA and AAA in 2002), but he’s hit .361/.410/.635 with 12 HR and 57 RBI in about 300 plate appearances in Vegas, leading the Pacific Coast League in batting average and slugging. He walks once every 11.1 ABs, and strikes out about twice for every walk, and he’s got a bit of speed, stealing 8 bases this season without being caught. He’s done two stints with the Dodgers, going 1-for-12 thus far. On the offensively-challenged and injury-riddled Dodgers it made sense to give him more of a shot, but since he’s not the answer to the Yankees’ rightfield problem (hell, he ain’t even Bubba Trammell), they’ll probably mothball him in AAA until September unless disaster strikes. Columbus, meet Bubba Crosby.

Four hours, two scrapped drafts, several phone calls and emails and one throbbing fist later (I punched my desk), I need some oxygen. And maybe a new chair.

• • •

The Yanks haven’t been the only busy team in the AL East arms race over the past several days. The Boston Red Sox have — if you believe the hype — trumped the Yanks, first by adding lefty specialist Scott Sauerbeck (from the Pirates) and then reliever Scott Williamson (Reds) and starter Jeff Suppan (Pirates). The Yanks were in on discussions for Sauerbeck, and their settling for Jesse Orosco while the Sox got the goods from the Bucs was treated as heralding the Second Coming by Red Sox Nation. Take two out of three from the Yanks in Fenway, and suddenly you can’t get their heads to fit through the door.

Stocked with Scotts, the Sox didn’t get off scot-free in all of this. They surrendered top prospect Freddy Sanchez (AAA 2B), to the Pirates in the Suppan deal. But they didn’t give up much else, a couple of minor-league pitchers. Williamson is the most important acquisition of the three; he can set up Byung-Hyun Kim, he can start, or he can close, allowing the Sox to start Kim. Or he can be part of that nebulous “closer by committee” concept the Sox tried to implement earlier in the year, with hilariously disastrous results. Aaron Gleeman has a good look at the remade Sox pen.

With today’s non-waiver trading deadline set for 4 PM EST, it’s likely that the Yankees still have a major trade up their sleeves. Unfortunately, there’s a rumor going round about a deal which has me not just cringing, but angry. The Yanks are believed to be interested in Cincinnati Reds third baseman Aaron Boone, whose father, Bob, was fired as manager of the Reds earlier this week. Boone, as one might expect, has asked to be traded and the Yanks, along with the Dodgers, are in the mix, according to ESPN:

New York’s offer is minor league left-hander Brandon Claussen and more than $3M for Boone and Gabe White. The Dodgers are offering cash and minor league prospects.

The Yanks have long coveted White, a lefty reliever with a 3.93 ERA who’s currently on the DL with a groin pull. But all season long they’ve rebuffed any attempts to include Claussen, their top pitching prospect, in any deal. Recall that Claussen made his major-league debut on June 28 against the Mets and pitched brilliantly, then returned to the minors. He’s clearly ready for the bigs, and a sensible Yankees organization should have him pencilled in for next year’s rotation. To include him in a trade for a big bat (Brian Giles, Vladimir Guerrero, Juan Gonzalez) would be understandable, though disheartening. But to give up Claussen for a middle reliever and a servicable but hardly stellar third baseman (Boone’s hitting .273/.339/.469 with 18 HR) would be a crime. The upper Yankee farm system is nearly bone-dry as it is, and trading Claussen would leave Erick Almonte and Juan Rivera as the Yanks top prospects, a chilling thought.

Boone is 30 years old, currently making $3.7 million and not eligible for free-agency until after next season. Baseball Prospectus’ Equivalent Runs stats show Boone as the 9th most productive 3B, 19.3 runs above a replacement-level 3B and about 8 runs better than Robin Ventura. With Ventura (.213/.305/.287 in June and July) clearly showing signs of decline, an upgrade at the hot corner is on the Yankee wish list, but it’s a secondary concern given the patchwork nature of their current rightfield setup.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting this deal as an inevitability:

So it was for the Mariners, who went from back in the pack to perhaps co-favorites with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the quest to land Cincinnati third baseman Aaron Boone, the brother of Mariners second baseman Bret Boone.

Then the Yankees stepped in and apparently stole the player the Mariners most wanted. In place was a deal that would send left-handed starter Brandon Claussen, a top Yankees prospect, to the Reds along with $3 million in exchange for Boone and left-hander Gabe White.

The finalized deal wasn’t announced, but it appears the Mariners will have to look elsewhere for help.

What’s next, trading Nick Johnson to the Tigers for the undead Bobby Higginson to plug that right-field hole? If you’re a Yankee fan, cross your fingers that reports of this trade are greatly exaggerated.

• • •

Update: chairs thrown. More to come shortly…

With the trade deadline approaching, the Yanks pulled a significant deal on Tuesday. But instead of adding another bat to their already formidable lineup, as some have been expecting, they subtracted one, trading rightfielder Raul Mondesi and their favorite reserve, Cold Cash ($2 million), to the Arizona Diamondbacks. “The Buffalo” has been banished to the desert in the company of Snakes. They received three players in return, outfielder David Dellucci, reliever Brett Prinz, and catcher Jon-Mark Sprowl. This translates, roughly speaking, into receiving a turnip, a rutabega, and a kumquat in exchange for one of their bigger headaches. Yes, it’s nice to cure that throbbing pain behind the temples, but how are you going to cook with that stuff?

Mondesi’s trade was triggered by an act of insubordination: the moody outfielder left the team after being pinch-hit for in Sunday night’s ballgame against the Red Sox. GM Brian Cashman made no effort to hide the organization’s displeasure. “He decided to shut it down,” Cashman told the New York Times. “He showered and left before the game ended. He left the clubhouse and took off. That motivated me and Joe Torre to make a change.”

Thus ends another chapter in the strange career of the “32”-year-old Mondesi. A legitimate five-tool player with power, speed, and a cannon for an arm, Mondy’s always been hampered by his ten-cent head. His poor discipline at the plate (a .331 OBP and one walk per 12.4 at-bats) has rivaled his poor discipline in front of the fridge; he’s added about 30 pounds over the course of his career and avoided off-season conditioning like the plague. He posted 30 homer/30 steal seasons with the Dodgers in his youth before his lackadaisical play and failure to blossom ran him out of the country. Traded to Toronto for Shawn Green after the ’99 season, he became the poster-boy for the Jays’ ailments: overpriced, underproductive, and with a bad attitute to boot. Meanwhile, Green became a superstar in the City of Angels. After two and a half seasons of disappointment, the Jays dumped Mondesi on the Yanks, agreeing to pay a hefty portion of his salary ($6 million of his $13 million this year). He managed only a 745 OPS for the Yanks in 2002, though he did shore up rightfield defensively and gave Yankee Stadium PA Bob Sheppard a regular opportunity for virtuosity every time he came to bat: “Rauuuuuuuuuuuuuul MON-desi!”

Shopped by the Yanks last winter, Mondesi finally channelled some energy into working out. He came to spring training looking lean and mean, impressing George Steinbrenner enough that the Yanks took him off the market. The results showed; Mondesi had a good spring and then put up a white-hot April. The hot start helped the Yanks overcome the loss of Derek Jeter and the slow start of Jason Giambi as they charged out to an 18-3 start. But since then, he’d gone into a funk:

                 AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS  HR  BI

March/April     .347  .409  .683  1092   8  18

May/June/July   .223  .299  .381   680   8  36

One of the knocks on Mondesi has always been that even with his 30-homer power, he’s never driven in 100 runs (he topped out at 99 in ’99). His splits reveal the reason, at least as far as this season goes: a .151 average and 526 OPS with runners in scoring position. Eeeuch. And as thrilling as it’s been to watch baserunners scamper backwards as they cower in fear when Mondesi cocks that right arm, his defense is overrated. Baseball Prospectus’ numbers show Mondy as a below-average fielder for the past five seasons.

Dellucci is a lefty hitter who lacks power (career .429 SLG, but only .382 this year) but who has just enough plate discipline (career .341 OBP and a walk every 10 ABs) to convince you that he’s a worthy bench player. He’s a strict platoon playeer; his numbers are weighted down by infrequent appearances against lefties (2-for-24 this year). Take those away and his career numbers against righties look a bit more respectable: .281/.356/.442. That could help a ballclub.

The Yanks already have another lefty in their odd assortment of rightfielders, Karim “Abdul” Garcia. Acquired from the Cleveland Indians on June 25, Garcia’s been hot in his limited action, putting up a .943 OPS in 48 at-bats and showing signs that his late-season run in 2002 (16 HRs, 52 RBI and a .299/.317/.584 line after August 6) was not a fluke. But he’s got no plate discipline to speak of (4-to-1 K/W ratio and one walk every 20 AB). Switch-hitter Ruben Sierra could see time against lefties, but rightfield might be a defensive stretch for his fielding “talents.” Expect the Yanks to continue shopping here.

Prinz pitched 41 respectable innings with a 2.63 ERA and 9 saves for the 2001 World Champion Diamondbacks, though he missed the postseason due to shoulder tendinitis. But the 26-year-old righty struggled in 2002 (9.45 ERA in 13.1 innings) and has spent nearly all of the past two seasons in the minors. He saved 18 games at Tuscon last year, but has struggled with groin problems and thrown only 16 innings in four stops throughout the D-Backs organization. At best he’s Al Reyes-level insurance with a bit more promiise; he may get a shot at the back of the Yanks’ pen should somebody else falter or more likely, come up lame. Sprowl is a promising 23-year-old lefty-hitting catcher out of a Billy Beane fantasy: he’s currently hitting .296/.402/.421 in the Class A Midwest League. On the other hand, Baseball America isn’t so high on Sprowl, noting that he’s repeating A-ball this year and that his defense is pretty bad (as for the age discrepancy, he turns 23 on Friday).

Upon further evaluation, the Yanks didn’t do too badly in trading Mondesi. No, they didn’t add Brian Giles, Vladimir Guerrero, or Juan Gonzalez, but they snagged a useful role player and two guys who could help the team down the road. Brian Cashman’s done worse, and so have a lot of other GMs.

• • •

I updated his latest links in the article below, but it should be noted that Alex Belth’s Bronx Banter has a new home on Cub Reporter Christian Ruzich’s site. The new addy is http://www.all-baseball.com/bronxbanter.

Alex Belth (who’s now at a new address) has a fantastic interview with Moneyball author Michael Lewis up at Bronx Banter. Here are a couple of my favorite exchanges:

BB: For a lot of the super stat nerds, this book is like the Torah. It’s had a real impact.

ML: It’s funny. I could understand as I was writing it, that would be somewhat unsatisfying to a hardcore stats nerd because all he wants in the statistical secrets of the Oakland A’s, and he wants them in a cold-blooded fashion. He doesn’t want a story. The truth is, I wasn’t ever going to get all of the secrets. I got some of the secrets, probably the most important ones, but there is still stuff I didn’t get. The other thing the stats geek wants me to do is dismantle whatever fallacies they might have. And I had no interest in doing that. I just wanted to give the reader a view of what they were doing. I didn’t want to say, ‘It makes no sense that on base percentage is three times better than slugging percentage…’ I didn’t have any particular interest in sifting through the minutia of the A’s statistical arguments. I thought the big point, is that they are even making them. If they are wrong, and it’s really only two-and-a-half times slugging, then who really gives a shit? I mean I give a shit sort of, but not really. The point is, the A’s are thinking rationally and analytically about it. We can argue about the finer details, but I didn’t care to do that. I knew when I was writing it that there would be a feeling with the hardcore baseball fan that they were being lead to the alter. It would miss the point too heavily to focus on just those arguments. These are people that basically embrace the same worldview, and they are arguing amongst themselves, in a language they can understand.

…

BB: Why didn’t Billy Beane take the Boston job?

ML: In the book I don’t explain why he didn’t go; I explain why he even entertained it in the first place. He wanted the validation. Why he didn’t go? I think his daughter had a lot to do with it. I think that he almost breaks out in hives when he’s in an east coast city. I mean, he doesn’t own a suit. Being in a more corporate, conservative, or business-like environment makes him uncomfortable. I think that the Red Sox job is actually a really shitty job right now. Because you’ve got this organization that looks to the fans and the media like, ‘Oh, we could win a World Series this year,’ but in fact, the minor league system’s bankrupt. Four of your stars’ contracts are coming up after next season. To do it right, what they need to do is rebuild. Not to max out right away at the major league level, but actually take a longer view. And that is such a bad environment to try and take a longer view because everybody wants it now.

Elsewhere, Lewis addresses the possiblity of a Moneyball movie (don’t hold your breath), discusses some of what was left on the cutting-room floor, and skewers Joe Morgan for ignorantly spreading the false impression that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball.

Fans of the book will be pleased to note that Lewis plans a sequel — in six years, when the A’s draft choices profiled in the book (Nick Swisher, Jeremy Brown, et al) have reached the majors or busted. “I am following them through the minor leagues,” says Lewis, “Traveling on the buses with them and all that other stuff.”

For those of you who missed it, Belth’s audio interview with Foul Ball author Jim Bouton is still up on the Baseball Prospectus Radio site. It’s a freebie, so check it out while you still can.

• • •

The Yanks dropped the second and third games to the Red Sox in frustrating fashion over the weekend. On Saturday they clawed their way back from being down 4-0, tying the ballgame in the 8th inning. But new acquisition Armando Benitez lived up to the one in the catalog, giving up the winning run in the 9th inning. Sunday night was even more disheartening. Jeff Weaver, perhaps pitching for his pinstriped life, tossed six marvelous innings of two-hit shutout ball, staking the Yanks to a 3-0 lead. But Weaver unravelled in the 7th, walking a batter and hitting another. Enter Chris Hammond, who served up a 3-run homer to Jason Varitek, then a solo shot to Johnny Damon, pissing away Weaver’s gem. Benitez and fellow recent acquisition Jesse Orosco continued the bloodletting, yielding two more runs.

Once again, Torre’s management of the bullpen cost the Yanks the game. Instead of givng their shaky relievers a fresh start at the top of an inning, he waited until the Sox had a budding rally. And because he’d been relying on his shiny new additions, his mainstays had fallen into disuse. Hammond hadn’t pitched in a week and had only 2.1 innings over the last 10 days and only 4.2 for all of July. Osuna spent the first half of the month on the DL, and had only pitched 2.2 innings since returning prior to last night. Way to keep everybody fresh, Joe.

The AL East flag is going to come down to which of the two teams bullpens sucks less, which skipper can minimize the mismanagment there, and which shaky acquisitions come through in the big moments. The Yankee bullpen has a 4.07 ERA this season, dead even with their starters. The Sox pen has a 5.05 ERA, 0.73 runs worse than their starters. Baseball Prospectus’ Reliever Report shows the Yanks just about average, with -0.5 Adjusted Runs Prevented,16th in the majors. The Sox are at -30.7 ARP, tied for 28th in the majors. This one should turn out in the Yanks’ favor, but as this weekend showed, anything can happen when Benitez comes into the ballgame, and the same goes for Byung-Hyun Kim.

The New York Times’ William Rhoden has an amusing take on the Sox-Yanks rivalry, comparing the two teams to Warner Bros.’ Roadrunner-Wile E. Coyote cartoons: “Will Boston be mashed by safes and crushed by boulders, blown up by its own dynamite, flattened by trains it never saw? Will the Red Sox continue to buy defective material from the Acme Corporation?”

Last I checked, the Roadrunner was undefeated in head-to-head competition against the Coyote. The Yanks can’t live up to that lofty standard, but they might still elude the Sox yet again.