Today’s Batch

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At Baseball Prospectus, I’ve got a lengthy take on Nomar Garciaparra’s retirement, placing him in the context of the “Holy Trinity” of shortstops:

Back in the mid-1990s, a trio of young shortstops burst onto the American League scene. Soon dubbed the “Holy Trinity,” Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Nomar Garciaparra were part of an elite three-way positional rivalry not seen since the days that Willie, Mickey and the Duke ruled the center field scene. The trio were heirs of a sort to Cal Ripken, Jr., who a generation earlier had opened up the shortstop position to bigger, more athletic and more offensively adept types — a development which played no small part in moving the game towards a higher-scoring era. Arguments raged over which of the three was superior, though they often came down to a choice between Rodriguez’s video game offensive totals and Jeter’s championship rings, with Garciaparra’s own merits somewhat lost in the fray. But no matter which dog one had in the hunt, for a few years it certainly seemed as though all three were racing towards Cooperstown.

On Wednesday, the first one of that trio officially bowed out of the race. Garciaparra, who was traded away from the Red Sox mere months before they broke their 86-year World Championship drought in 2004, signed a one-day contract with Boston and announced his retirement. Though just 36 years old, his brittle body had aged far beyond its years, the result of a genetic condition which causes the development of excess scar tissue at the injury site. Already been interrupted by a wrist injury which cost him most of the 2001 season, his career had been on the downslope ever since Achilles tendonitis cost him the first two months of the 2004 season. From that season onward, he averaged just 323 plate appearances per year and qualified for just one batting title while serving a total of 384 days (over two full seasons!) on the disabled list. He did no less than 10 stints due to a groin tear, a fractured wrist, and an endless litany of oblique, knee and calf woes. As his body crumbled, he played just 57 games at his natural position following his exit from Boston.

…While Garciaparra couldn’t match Rodriguez’s home run numbers or Jeter’s championships, during the period that the three players overlapped up to that point — a carefully manicured stretch, admittedly — he had actually been the most valuable of the Trinity: 

     —-————-—Rodriguez——-—————
Year Age  Tm   TAv  FRAA  WARP
1997  21  SEA  .287   -3   5.2
1998  22  SEA  .302   -7   7.1
1999  23  SEA  .290   -1   4.9
2000  24  SEA  .333   24  11.6
Tot            .304   13  28.8

     ——-—————-—Jeter———-——-———
Year Age  Tm   TAv  FRAA  WARP
1997  23  NYA  .273  -14   3.6
1998  24  NYA  .300    1   6.8
1999  25  NYA  .324   -7   8.0
2000  26  NYA  .300  -21   3.9
Tot            .299  -41  22.3

     —-————-Garciaparra—-—————
Year Age  Tm   TAv  FRAA  WARP
1997  23  BOS  .286   -5   5.9
1998  24  BOS  .302    3   7.0
1999  25  BOS  .319   13   8.2
2000  26  BOS  .321   16   8.5
Tot            .306   27  29.6

Helped by a knee injury which cost Rodriguez a month during the 1999 season and by Jeter’s already-dismal defensive numbers, Garciaparra squeaks by both players in terms of WARP, and he edges past them in True Average as well. Of course, by that point A-Rod had already put up a 9.5-WARP season in 1996, and Jeter had enjoyed a pretty fair year himself.

…[Garciaparra] won’t wind up in Cooperstown due to the sad denouement of his career. He leaves behind a bittersweet legacy in Boston, where he reached stardom but like so many other Red Sox stars departed under unhappy circumstances. Nonetheless, he enjoyed a fantastic stretch at the outset of his career. Not only was he a part of one of history’s great concentrations of talent at a given position, but for a brief period he could make the claim at being the best of the bunch. No matter what came after it, that’s pretty special.

TAv is True Average, formerly known as Equivalent Average, a measure of offensive value per out which adjusts for offensive level, home park, and team pitching. A .260 TAv is defined as league average, a .300 is great, a .230 is replacement level. FRAA is Fielding Runs Above Average, WARP is Wins Above Replacement Player.

In any event, beyond that professional take on Garciaparra and his minimal Hall of Fame chances, I’ve also got a One-Hopper which expands upon this brief tribute regarding the Dodgers’ 4+1 game.

• • •

Having covered the Red Sox and Dodger flavors — and a bit of the Yankees’ flavor, with Jeter involved — in my Nomar coverage, I’ve also got something expressly more pinstriped. Over at Pinstriped Bible, I join Steven Goldman and fellow guest traveler Cliff Corcoran for a roundtable concerning the Yankees’ fifth-starter battle between Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes. Here’s a taste:

STEVE: Given that Joba was averaging 91 MPH during Wednesday’s start and his velocity was down last year as well, is it possible that we’re no longer looking at a potential elite starter or am I jumping to conclusions?

JAY: It’s probably a bit early to start worrying about any pitcher approaching maximum velocity at this stage of the spring, but the results (11 runs in 3.2 innings via two appearances) are certainly unsettling. That said, I think we’re at the point that every minor variation in what Joba does relative to expectations is under such a microscope that we – by which I mean everyone following the Yankees, not specifically you two – are in danger of losing perspective. It’s the Yankees brass that’s brought this situation about, and one has to wonder if the uncertainty of Chamberlain’s role at this point in time is weighing upon him.

STEVE: You bring up a good point about the Joba-scope, Jay. Still, though we always talk about how it’s crazy to make decisions based on small sample-performances in Spring Training, but on the other hand, isn’t there a point at which you have to say, “Track record be damned, we need to see this player execute already?” Cliff?

CLIFF: …Track record should absolutely play a part in it, however. In a perfect world, the players competing for jobs in camp aren’t all starting from zero. Rather, they’re demonstrating the skills that allowed them to compile the track record that got them to this spot in the first place. To use an extreme example, based on track record alone, Ron Guidry should be the fifth starter. He’s in camp as a special instructor, so he’s available and in uniform, but ask him to win the job and you’ll realize that he’s 59 years old and no longer has those skills. Based on track record alone, Chamberlain should be the fifth starter, because in his 32 major league starts before the team started skipping his turn and limiting his innings late last year, he posted a 3.27 ERA and 8.74 K/9, while Hughes has a 5.22 ERA and 7.1 K/9 in his 28 major league starts.

Joba also has the advantage of being prepared to throw up to 200 innings this season, but he has to prove that his velocity is not an issue, that he can still break off those nasty sliders we saw in 2007 and 2008, that his curve and change are effective major league pitches, that he can mix those four pitches effectively, and that the debates and rules that hounded him over the past two years haven’t undermined his confidence on the mound. Jay is right about Joba being under a microscope and there being a loss of perspective about his performance as a starter (I imagine the stat I quoted above will surprise a lot of readers), but Chamberlain also has to prove that he can withstand that concentrated heat without bursting into flames.

Plenty more where that came from.

Clearing the Bases: While I Was Out

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Amid all of this recent book promo hubbub, I’ve actually gotten to do some writing:

• Last week, I noted the introduction of the ESPN Insider TMI blog. Today I’ve got another piece there, this one on Ozzie Guillen’s stated desire for the 2010 White Sox to be more aggressive on the basepaths. There’s a longer version over at Baseball Prospectus. Here’s a taste:

Despite the coupling of his predilection for smallball tactics (bunting, base stealing, and manufacturing runs) with a desire to call attention to them that’s so outsized you’d think these were the 1959 Go-Go Sox, [Guillen’s] teams have been overly reliant on the longball in recent years. So reliant that colleague Joe Sheehan christened the Guillen Number, which measures the percentage of a team’s runs derived from homers. Last year, the White Sox ranked third in the majors at 41.0 percent, trailing only the Yankees (45.1 percent) and the Phillies (42.1 percent). They’ve been among MLB’s top four during every year of Guillen’s tenure…

Over the winter, Guillen pressed Williams to provide him with a more flexible roster, one which offered more speed than he had in the past. In reacting to the team’s shedding of sluggers Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye and the addition of Juan Pierre, he declared that aggressive baserunning would be a major point of emphasis this spring. While the Sox have stolen 10 bases through their first five exhibition games, the skipper’s statement highlights the fact that they’ve been hemorrhaging runs on the basepaths, according to our Equivalent Stolen Base Runs (EqSBR) and Equivalent Base Running Runs (EqBRR) metrics, the latter of which incorporates not only steals and caught stealing but also advancement on hits and outs: 

Year EqSBR  Rk   EqBRR  Rk
2004 -14.2  29   -2.1   12
2005  -7.4  19   -2.0   11
2006  -7.1  22  -22.3   30
2007  -6.5  24   -7.0   22
2008  -4.6  21   -3.2   14
2009  -4.1  16   -9.2   25
Tot. -43.8  27  -45.8   24

Under Guillen, the Sox have failed to break out of the bottom half [of the 30 teams’ rankings] in EqSBR, and they’ve done so only twice in EqBRR. In all, team has cost itself between four and five wins via baserunning over the past six years, which at least explains why Guillen thinks it’s an area where the team needs improvement.

Still, that won’t mean a whole lot more runs scored, particularly if the Sox can’t rise above last year’s measly rankings of 20th in OBP (.328) and 27th in True Average (.249).

The piece concludes with a link to former Orioles manager Earl Weaver’s famously blue comment (NSFW; see here for those with more sensitive ears) on the relative merits of team speed and team power, which should tickle Guillen’s funny bone even if it doesn’t change his philosophy. If I am confident of one thing about Ozzie, it’s that he’s got a legendary tirade just waiting to be recorded.

• Baseball Prospectus has launched a handful of new blogs over the last several days, with some of the posts available for all readers and others behind the subscription wall. Yours truly is heading up a new one called “One-Hoppers.” A version of the Clayton Kershaw piece is here, and I’ve also got a more recent freebie on last week’s Barry Zito versus Jeff Suppan “showdown,” a matchup initially notable for Zito’s plunking of Prince Fielder in retaliation for what the Giants felt was an overly excessive home run celebration from last September. Had Suppan, whose fastball is almost as slow as Zito’s, attempted to further the hostilities, “A beanball war between those two hurlers would be like watching a pair of elderly men spar with sporks,” I wrote.

What piqued my interest beyond zingers like that was the fact that the game in question paired two of the more dubious contracts given out to pitchers in recent years:

Zito is in the fourth year of a seven-year, $126 million deal, one which represented the largest contract ever signed by a pitcher at the time (it’s since been surpassed by Johan Santana and CC Sabathia). Suppan is in the fourth and final year of a $42 million deal. Check the tale of the tape across the first three years of their deals (all dollar amounts in millions): 
Pitcher   IP     K/9    ERA   WARP     Sal    MORP     Net
Zito     568.2   6.4   4.56    3.1   $43.0   $14.0   -$29.0
Suppan   546.0   5.0   4.93    0.5   $26.5    $1.5   -$25.0

MORP is Marginal value Over Replacement Player, a measure which was originally introduced by Nate Silver back in 2005, and is currently under revision by our own Matt Swartz. What MORP does is place a dollar value on a marginal win (i.e., a Win Above Replacement-level Player) which is based upon the actual behavior of recent free agent markets. That dollar value changes from year to year as baseball’s economy expands and contracts, but for this back-of-the-envelope calculation, I’ve substituted a 2007 value of $4.5 million per win, and increased it by five percent in each of the past years.

…Zito has provided the Giants with about $1 worth of value for every $3 spent, while Suppan has given the Brewers $1 worth of value for every $18 spent.

Ouch.

• Speaking of the Brewers, I pinch-hit for BP colleague Will Carroll to do their Team Health Report, which classifies every lineup regular, rotation member and closer according to a red light/yellow light/green light system which based upon a player’s history and some actuarial tables tells you roughly how likely they are to serve a stint on the disabled list; a red means at least a 50 percent chance, a green is less than 33 percent (Rickie Weeks is red, Prince Fielder is green). For the THRs we also focus on a couple of the big issues a given team faces.

The Cost: The “Brew Crew” put up another successful season in regards to injuries last year. Milwaukee lost $10.3 million to injuries in 2009 and had a total loss of just $29.8 million over the last three seasons. The biggest hits to their day and dollar counts came from David Riske, who lost the entire year due to elbow woes culminating in Tommy John surgery in June, and Rickie Weeks, who played just 37 games due to a wrist injury; those two combined to miss over 300 days and cost Milwaukee $5.7 million. Even with that, Milwaukee found itself in the black when compared to the rest of the league, losing almost $4 million less than the league average. The front office was busy in the offseason, spending nearly $30 million on Wolf, and bringing in Doug Davis, LaTroy Hawkins, and Gregg Zaun to fill holes. In total, the $47.65 million Milwaukee spent on the free-agent market was no doubt helped by their low injury costs over the last few years.

The Big Risk: Wolf enjoyed something of a career year with the Dodgers in 2009, posting a 3.23 ERA in a career-high 214 1/3 innings. That’s roughly 100 more than he’d averaged per year from 2004-08 due to a variety of elbow and shoulder problems, including 2005 Tommy John surgery and 2007 labrum surgery. After finishing last in the NL in rotation ERA (5.37) and SNLVAR (8.0), the Brewers had little choice but to invest in starting pitching, even during a winter where the market was thin. Wolf was the second-best starter available after John Lackey. The Brewers’ signing suggests a confidence that they can keep Wolf in working order.

The Comeback: Weeks’ season ended prematurely due to a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist, the latest in a litany of injuries to both wrists. From right wrist surgery in 2006 to tendonitis in the same wrist the following year — not to mention a torn ligament in his thumb which required surgery, and couple of other sprains along the way — his injuries have prevented him from playing more than 129 games in a single year, and he’s topped 100 just twice in five years. While Craig Counsell, Felipe Lopez, and Casey McGehee actually hit quite well in Weeks’ absence last year, the team lacks a fleet top-of-the-order threat when he’s not in the lineup, and they can’t always count on such similar good fortune in filling in for him.

• Still in Brewer country, I covered the National League Central in the latest installment of my number-crunching series on competitive ecology. Here’s the Brew Crew:

Among the litany of unhappy stories in this series, the Brewers rate among the happier ones. Throttled by a combination of ineptitude and political point-scoring, the team posted losing records during the last 12 years of the Selig family’s regime, inducing the good fans of Milwaukee to stay away in droves despite a new ballpark. Since purchasing the team in September 2004, new owner Mark Attanasio has helped turn over a new leaf. The 82 wins the Brewers have averaged during his five years of ownership is their highest since the 1988-1992 era.

Reaping the benefits of groundwork laid by since-departed scouting director Jack Zduriencik (who drafted Corey Hart, J.J. Hardy, Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, Yovani Gallardo, and Ryan Braun in consecutive years), the Brewers broke their skid of sub-.500 seasons in 2005, crossed the .500 threshold in 2007, and then went for broke in 2008, with general manger Doug Melvin making a well-timed move by trading prospects for CC Sabathia, who practically carried the team on his back to the postseason. Over that four-year span, Attanasio let Melvin double the team’s payroll, and luckily, the long-starved fans rewarded such aggressiveness at the gate. Attendance increased 49 percent from 2004 to 2008 as the team crossed the three million mark despite playing in the game’s smallest market — a remarkable achievement. That they ranked ninth in attendance over the 2007-2009 period only underscores the fact that the Brewers are punching well above their weight.

The bounty of homegrown talent — particularly Fielder (16.7 WARP over the last three years) and Braun (15.3 WARP) — helped the Brewers rank 11th in Non-Market WARP, ninth in MP/MW [Marginal Payroll per Marginal Win, a measure of economic efficiency; the Brewers spent $2.06 million per win above replacement level from 2007-2009], and eighth in PER’ [Payroll Efficiency Rating, a measure of the money the team spends to gain extra wins with what we’d expect them to generate given their market size; the Brewers were 16 percent better than average] over the past three years, though the times they are a-changin’. Fielder is in the second year of a two-year, $18 million deal, and as his final pre-free agency year looms, the question of whether the Brewers can afford to keep him looms as large as the slugger himself. It’s not entirely out of the question, particularly with the horrendous Jeff Suppan contract coming off the books, Braun locked into an eight-year, $45 million deal through 2015, and just $22 million committed for 2011. But like any small-market team, the Brewers will need to catch a few breaks.

That ought to give my people in the dairy state enough to ruminate on for a little while.

The Hits Keep Coming

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It’s been a busy and exhilarating couple of weeks promoting Baseball Prospectus 2010. After a wave of some two dozen radio hits, last weekend my colleagues and I made appearances at the Yogi Berra Museum at Montclair State University in New Jersey and a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan. Sandwiched between those two appearances, I did an hour-long spot on the Fox Strategy Room’s “Clubhouse Report” streaming videocast, on a panel with New York Post deputy sports editor Tim Sullivan and Sports Illustrated writer Pablo Torre, hosted by Duke Castiglione.

While we spent a bit of time at the top of the hour talking about the just-completed Olympics and in particular about the USA-Canada gold medal hockey match, baseball was the bigger topic. Duke’s curiosity about BP 2010 led him to feed me a generous number of questions about the book and the way we use statistics to measure defense and reliever value. He was so taken with the discussion that a couple of days later he invited me to appear on his television show, Sports Extra, which airs every Sunday night at 10:30 PM here in New York on the local Fox affiliate, WNYW.

The spot, which taped a couple of hours earlier (I got to meet former NBA superstar and basketball Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins while waiting my turn) and ran up against the Oscars, was just over three minutes long, and the topic of Derek Jeter’s defense was the hook:

Overall, I wasn’t terribly smooth — adrenaline, thanks — but I wasn’t incoherent, and Duke certainly seemed enthusiastic enough that there’s hope I’ll get to do another spot down the road. I’m very grateful to him for having me on, and for giving BP 2010 such prime promotion.

Meanwhile, I’m back from a couple nights in Washington, DC, where yesterday Steven Goldman and I made an appearance on Sirius-XM’s Home Plate “Power Alley” show with hosts Jim Duquette (he of the infamous Scott Kazmir trade and last year’s self-deprecating introduction) and Seth Everett.

In the evening we joined colleagues Clay Davenport, Kevin Goldstein and Matt Swartz for our annual appearance at the fantastic Politics and Prose Bookstore. This marked, I believe, our seventh appearance there, and my fifth, four for the annual and one for It Ain’t Over. Thanks to a bit of a push from the Washington Post‘s website, we set personal bests for attendance and sell-through, with something like 130 people present to hear us answer questions about Stephen Strasburg (who looked like something special — as advertised — in his spring debut, which we’d watched earlier), Derek Jeter, David Wright, Ryan Zimmerman, Bud Selig, competitive balance, Walter Johnson, Willie Mays and a whole lot more. I wish I had the energy to do justice to the discussion, but hopefully we’ll have an MP3 clip or two to share. In the meantime, I’d just like to give a shout-out to the folks at XM and Politics and Prose for welcoming us and helping to give BP such a big push.

Update: Some pics of the Politics and Prose event from Matt’s lovely wife Laura, and a fine writeup from another attendee. Thanks to both!

Thank You, Nomar

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… For one of the most memorable moments I’ve experienced in over 30 years as a Dodger fan. I speak, of course, of Garciparra’s 10th-inning walk-off homer off the Padres’ Rudy Seanez on September 18, 2006, capping a miraculous comeback in which four Dodgers — Jeff Kent, J.D. Drew, Russell Martin and Marlon Anderson — hit consecutive solo shots in the ninth inning to tie the game.

For all of the Yankees-Red Sox battles in which a prime-era Nomar Garciaparra was a centerpiece — getting through that middle of the lineup with him ahead of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz was like running across I-95 during rush hour — it’s the walking wounded warrior of his Dodger days doing the damned-near-impossible that I’ll remember most vividly. I still have that game on my TiVo, and you can be damn sure I’m watching it tonight in honor of his retirement.

Clayton Kershaw: TMI

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Behind the subscription wall, our partners at ESPN Insider have launched a new blog called TMI (The Max Info). Baseball Prospectus is contributing to it, as are writers from Fangraphs, Tom Tango from the Inside the Book blog, and folks from within ESPN’s Stats and Info department, a couple of whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I went to Bristol for a big baseball summit a few weeks back. It’s an all-out slide rule war. Well, not really, since I don’t think you’re going to see the future of sabermetrics settled over 250-500 word posts delivered by otherwise competing entities.

Today I made my debut with a short bit on the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw. Back in June, the 21-year-old southpaw introduced a slider into his arsenal. His numbers from that point onward are eye-popping, and can stand with both league’s elite hurlers, albeit with the caveat that his age limited his workload: 

Player            GS    IP    ERA   K/9 BB/9 HR/9
Clayton Kershaw   20  115.0  2.03  10.2  4.6  0.2
Felix Hernandez   23  167.1  2.10   7.8  2.7  0.5
Tim Lincecum      22  160.0  2.25  10.0  2.8  0.5
Adam Wainwright   23  161.0  2.29   8.6  2.1  0.6
Jon Lester        21  138.0  2.35   9.9  2.6  0.6
Chris Carpenter   23  163.2  2.53   6.4  1.8  0.4
Javier Vazquez    21  149.0  2.54   9.2  1.7  0.9
Jair Jurrjens     23  149.0  2.60   6.8  3.1  0.7
Zack Greinke      22  147.1  2.75   9.4  2.4  0.7
Roy Halladay      21  157.0  2.87   8.0  1.4  0.9

Seven of the players on that list received Cy Young votes. Kershaw did not, but if he keeps pitching like that, he will soon.

Area Man to Answer Questions: The BP 2010 Promo Tour

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The Baseball Prospectus 2010 book promotional tour starts in earnest this weekend. On Sunday, February 28, I’ll join Cliff Corcoran, Steven Goldman, Kevin Goldstein and Christina Kahrl for a panel discussion at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center at Montclair State University in New Jersey (if you need directions just know that when you come to a fork in the road, take it). First pitch is at 3 PM. You really don’t care whether the US wins the gold medal in hockey, anyway, right?

On Monday, March 1, the law firm of Goldman, Goldstein, Kahrl and Jaffe will be at the Barnes & Noble at 18th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan starting at 6 PM. We’ll answer questions and sign anything except veal cutlets, because as Casey Stengel liked to say, his ballpoint pen slips on veal cutlets. Me, I’ll be packing a Sharpie in an attempt to surmount such obstacles.

Also, on March 9 Steve, Kevin and I will be appearing at Washington, DC’s legendary Politics and Prose bookstore. More details on that one as the date near; see BP’s events page for further details.

• • • 

Saturday’s radio hits:

• Another Wisconsin hit, this one on WFAW 940 AM at 8:30 AM Central, streaming here.

• Out in Dodger country, I’ll be appearing on KCAA 1050 AM at 8:40 AM Pacific, streaming here.

More to come on Monday. I’m also booked for another appearance on the Fox Strategy Room streaming webcast at 1 PM Eastern that day. I’ll be working overtime to get my mustache in shape for all of this action.

Prospectus Radio Blitz: Thursday and Friday

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The hits to promote the release of Baseball Prospectus 2010 keep coming. Here’s the schedule for the rest of the week:

• This evening, I’ll be on Milwaukee’s WAUK 540 AM, the local ESPN affiliate, at 6:40 PM Eastern (5:40 Central), streaming here.

• I’ll also be on Seattle’s KRKO 1380 AM at 7:30 PM Eastern (4:30 Pacific), streaming here.

• On Friday morning at 8:40 Eastern (7:40 Central), I’ll be on Chicago’s WSCR 670 AM, “The Score,” streaming here.

• Also on Friday morning, at 10:05 AM Eastern (8:05 Mountain), I’ll be on Grand Junction, Colorado’s KTMM 1340 AM, streaming here.

• On Fridy at 5:15 PM Eastern (4:15 Central), I’ll be on Madison, Wisconsin’s WTSO 1070 AM, the local ESPN affiliate, streaming here.

Prospectus Radio Blitz: Wednesday

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It’s day three of the Prospectus Radio Blitz, and the hits to promote the release of Baseball Prospectus 2010 keep coming. Here’s Wednesday’s schedule:

• Already in the can is a taped interview with Manchester, New Hampshire’s WGIR 610 AM, which will air tomorrow morning, time TBD.

• At 4:35 Eastern, I’ll be doing my usual weekly spot with Toledo, Ohio’s WLQR 106.5 FM, a local ESPN affiliate. It’s always great to talk baseball with host Norm Wamer. Streaming here.

• At 5:15 Eastern, I’ll be on Madison, Wisconsin’s WTSO 1070 AM, the local ESPN affiliate, streaming here. Rescheduled to run at a similar timeslot on Friday.

• At 5:30 Eastern, I’ll be on Green Bay/Appleton, Wisconsin’s WSCO 1570 AM, streaming here.

• At 6:20 Eastern, I’ll be on El Paso, Texas’ KROD 600 AM, streaming here. I’ve been on the air with host Steve Kaplowitz several times in the past, and I’m pleased to announce that this is going to be a recurring spot for me during this baseball season.

I’ll have Milwaukee and Seattle hits for tomorrow…

Prospectus Radio Blitz: Tuesday

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More radio hits to promote the release of Baseball Prospectus 2010. Here’s Tuesday’s schedule (all times Eastern):

• First up is Salisbury, Maryland’s WOCM-FM at 7:45 AM. Streaming here.

• Next is Philadelphia’s WIP 610 AM at 8:05 AM streaming at here.

• At 8:45 AM, I’ll taping an interview for “Inside Pitch” on the Cincinnati Reds Radio Network. It will air as part of a future pregame show next weeekend.

• At 9:15 AM, I’ll be taping an interview for Albany, NY’s “Don Weeks and the WGY Morning News” on WGY 810 AM. This one will air on Thursday or Friday via here.

• At 12:05 PM, I’ll be on Sirius/XM’s “The B-Team” show with Bruce Murray and Bill Pidto, which runs on, uh, the Mad Dog Radio Channel, 123.

• At 4:10 PM, I’ll be on Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida’s WQYK 1010 AM, streaming here.

Wednesday’s lineup has me doing Manchester, New Hampshire, and Madison and Green Bay, Wisconsin. More info as it emerges.

All Quilting, All the Time

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I’m pleased to report that the “My Favorite Baseball Stars” quilt made by the late Clara Rothmeier fetched $62,500 at auction on Saturday. One of the other quilts, commemorating an early 1950s Cardinals team, went for $10,200.

Both quilts feature autographs of players which Rothmeier then embroidered. The “Stars” quilt has over 300 of them, along with 44 fabric “portraits.” Numerous players represented on that one are in the Hall of Fame.

Both quilts were bought by Phyllis LaPlant, Rothmeier’s niece who was responsible for arranging and promoting the auction. “The more I promoted it, the more I fell in love to it,” said LaPlant, who plans to ask the National Baseball Hall of Fame to display the quilts again. All of the quilts sold, mostly to family members, with the average cost of the other ones around $1,200. The proceeds will be distributed among some surviving family members as well.

I wonder who got the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers one?