Introducing “The Clubhouse Lawyer”

The Futility Infielder is no longer just the sound of one man yapping. Today I’d like to introduce you to Nick Stone, who will be contributing his own column to this site on an occasional basis and perhaps collaborating in other areas as well. More than just a great friend who lives around the corner, Nick’s been a big part of my baseball experience since moving to New York City. We’ve spent countless hours talking ball and taking in ballgames over the past six years, from the seats of Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field and the now-departed Tiger Stadium back to barstools in some of the lowest dives in the East Village.

It’s not much of a stretch to say that if we hadn’t become friends, I never would have started this web site. Because in Nick, I found somebody whose head receives the same telepathic baseball channel as I do. The one which always has its receiver watching a ballgame in some parallel dimension, and so makes “The funny thing about those Yankees in 1949…” seem like a perfectly acceptable social greeting. Somebody just as crazy about baseball as I am.

Which is not to say that Nick’s opinions are my own. He and I can clear a room when we get to arguing about an issue we don’t see eye to eye on, especially once we break out the folding metal chairs or the flaming emails. I’ll be clearing a space for Nick’s column (tentatively titled “The Clubhouse Lawyer”) elsewhere on this site in the near future. But before his first contribution to this site, a post-mortem on the Dan Duquette era in Boston, totally dries out on the back burner, I wanted to post it here. So without further ado, I give you the first installment of “The Clubhouse Lawyer”.

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In his March 1 column, ESPN ‘s Rob Neyer, whose work I’ve enjoyed for years, wrote a piece suggesting that on the whole, Dan Duquette didn’t do a bad job as GM in Boston. Neyer went on to suggest that Duquette deserves another chance in another city, and would be a welcome addition in Kansas City.

Frankly, that’s a poor comparison. To say that Duquette has done a better job than Allard Baird would be akin to saying I could write a better novel than a monkey armed with a typewriter. To be honest, if I were a long-suffering Royals fan like Rob, I probably would have abandoned baseball for Jai-alai years ago. To say that Duquette has done a better job than the two most incompetent people in his field (Allard Baird in Kansas City and Cam Bonifay (formerly of Pittsburgh) would be the equivalent of calling a player worthy of the Hall of Fame because he has better numbers than the least accomplished members of the hall. The fraternity of General Managers is similar to the Hall of Fame in that at any given time, their are people in both who simply don’t belong, and being better than them does not necessarily qualify one for membership (A point that Neyer and his mentor Bill James have made many times).

A General Manager’s job is made up of two parts; the evaluation and procuring of talent, and the creation of a harmonious environment where everyone, from futility infielders to superstars, bullpen coach to manager focuses on winning, with a minimum of distractions. In the former category, Duquette’s record was spotty at best. In the latter category it was downright atrocious.

Duquette clearly hit paydirt by trading for and re-signing Pedro Martinez. Regardless of his injury problems, when healthy (which has been often enough) Martinez has almost singlehandedly made a contender out of the Sox. The wisdom of Duquette’s other big free agent signing, Manny Ramirez, has yet to be determined. Ramirez is fairly young and extremely talented. What remains to be seen is whether his injury prone body can hold up over the life of the contract. An even greater concern is whether his fragile, moody, and childlike psyche can withstand the rigors of the toughest local media and fan base in baseball. Let’s not forget this is the same town that booed Ted Williams. From the raging alcoholic Dave Egan in the 1940s, to Bob Ryan today, Boston has had a long tradition of writers determined to find fault in anyone and anything.

Duquette’s two most controversial decisions were letting two legendary homegrown free agent walk; Mo Vaughn and Roger Clemens. Clemens has had three 20-win Cy Young seasons since his departure, although its probably fair to say that it his unceremonious dumping lit a fire under him. I do think his poor ’96 was an aberration, but I don’t think he would have done quite as well had he stayed in Boston. Mo Vaughn has failed poorly in California, although his injury plagued ’99 season was a result of a freak accident that was ballpark-specific. Still, signing heavy-set 30-year olds to long-term contracts has never been a wise strategy.

Duquette’s major mistake was that level of animosity that his poor handling of the situation engendered in both players helped create the perception that “no one wants to play here” (a now famous off-the-cuff remark that Nomar made during last September’s meltdown). These guys were both homegrown MVPs after all, not fly-by-night Jack Clark-type guns-for-hire [I think Nick just set the AL record for mixed metaphors in an electronic medium-ed.]. Wherever he ends up next, Duquette will also have a hard time signing big name free-agent pitchers, unless he can explain his attempts to bully Pedro into pitching with a partially torn rotator cuff even after the Sox had fallen far from contention. To question Martinez’s heart after he singlehandedly brought the Sox back from the brink during the ’99 ALDS vs. Cleveland simply defies belief.

Duquette’s greatest gaffe as a “manager of people” had to be the handling of the Jimy Williams/Carl Everett rift. Duquette ‘s willingness to take a chance on clubhouse cancer like Carl “we beat the kids” Everett was already a questionable decision. When the Williams/Everett rift exploded, Duquette had two choices; support his manager, or tacitly support Everett and fire Wlliams. By siding with Everett, he turned Williams into a lame duck, whom he inexplicably kept around for another year. If the general manager doesn’t recognize the chain of command, why should any of the players? The fostering of a harmonious clubhouse environment is as important as any part of a general manager’s job. Rule number #1; if a player has a public dust-up with the manager, you support the manager or fire him. If you side with the player AND keep around the manager, you clearly lack the basic interpersonal skills required of a general manager.

Duquette saved the Sox tens of millions of dollars by not re-signing Clemens and Vaughn, which is crucial considering that the Sox will always have less revenue to work with than the Yankees. Unfortunately, his tenure was filled with spendthrift gambles that one would expect of a team with almost unlimited amounts of money and finite amounts of sense, like the Dodgers. How about $25M over 3 years for José Offerman? Then there’s my personal favorite; picking up over $19M for a year and a half by taking in over-the-hill malcontents Mike Lansing and Dante Bichette, in order to get Rolando Arrojo for 1.625M per, who’s been a decent middle reliever.

Duquette pulled off a great deal early on, trading veteran Heathcliff Slocumb and getting major contributors Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek in return. One would think that he’d try to repeat that formula, but most of his time in Boston he’s been more interested in trading away inexpensive young talent and collecting rickety veterans like Mark Portugal and Pete Schourek. While Duquette certainly hasn’t traded away anyone who’s blossomed into a star (yet), one wonders why someone with limited financial resources would place more of an emphasis on overpriced veterans rather than developing prospects. Brian Rose and Tomo Okha, while not exactly setting the world on fire, both showed enough promise at various points to merit more attention than they got. It’s no secret that scouting and player development have been thoroughly neglected during the Duquette era.

The cruelest irony (well, not for me, I’m a Yankees fan) of all is that Duquette fired the one manager who was best suited to organizing this motley assortment of ill-fitting parts into a winning team. Jimy Williams is blessed with a Stengel-like ruthlessness; he will pinch hit and juggle lineups without any regard for players’ feelings, concerning himself only with creating the best opportunity to win. With a team long on role players and short on everyday players, he didn’t have a choice. Unfortunately, Williams is distinctly un-Stengel-like in his ability (or lack thereof) to charm and cajole the media and his players into going along with his plans. Then again, who’s going to listen to you when your own GM is too busy listening to some guy who doesn’t believe in dinosaurs?–Nick Stone

All Yankees All the Time? Just Say YES

Tuesday marked the debut of the Yankees Entertainment and Sports network, the cash cow that George Steinbrenner plans to milk to cover all the eight-figure annual salaries he’s accumulated. YES isn’t quite all Yankees, all the time. The New Jersey Nets, Columbus Clippers, Staten Island Yankees, and Manchester United soccer team all figure into the programming as well–not to mention the New Jersey Gladiators of the Arena Football League, in case you need your fix. But the Yankees are undoubtedly the star attraction.

YES will televise 130 regular season games and rerun another 20 local broadcasts, also producing a one-hour pregame and a 30-minute postgame show per telecast. The network’s other pinstriped programming will include a weekly magazine show, airings of famous games from throughout Yankee history (David Wells’ perfect game and the no-hitters of Dave Righetti and Jim Abbott are on tap the first week) and something called Yankeeography, the network’s “signature biography series.” Those of you reading this who are not Yankee fans can be excused for gagging at the thought of yet another fawning profile of Derek Jeter; me, I think I’ll find something better to do at 7 PM on Friday when it airs.

It all feels more than a little excessive, but then most Steinbrenner productions do. At least until the moment when you realize that, by George, you ARE hungry for a Yanks-Reds preseason game. I reached said moment at approximately 8:12 PM EST on Tuesday night while waiting for my sushi take-out to arrive. And so, with my cable package and rooting interests putting me squarely in the demographic crosshairs, I decided to get a first look at both the team and the channel. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.

From the first glance, the channel appears to be a refreshing upgrade from the Madison Square Garden network, where for the past several years the Yankee coverage has been mired in a sea of dated graphics and tired production. Maybe it’s my cable system, but the quality of signal just seems better than its predecessor–volume at the same level as the other channels, lighting looking as if it was supplied by something besides a backup generator, Al Trautwig and Marv Albert legally prohibited from appearing. The graphics are attractive and occasionally elegant (especially the player stat lines), though the game status bug in the upper left corner is a bit clunky. The visual effects are relatively tasteful, and the sound effects accompanying all of this are mercifully muted (and good riddance to–CLANK! CRASH! CLUNK!–Fox as the Yanks’ broadcast partner).

The Yanks brought several familiar faces and voices over from MSG and Fox to YES. Play-by-play Michael Kay has moved from radio broadcasts and postgames to the TV booth. He’s a bit of a homer, though less gratingly so than his former partner, John “Theeeeeeeeeee Yankees Win! ” Sterling, and for all his faults he’s probably closest to the team’s pulse than any of the other announcers. Ken Singleton, who did smooth and subdued play-by-play on MSG, moves into a role as a game analyst. The excellent Jim Kaat and not-so-excellent Bobby Murcer will also serve as analysts, with Murcer also working the pre- and post-games. Freshly-retired Paul O’Neill is slated to work a small handful of pre-/post-games, hopefully without smashing any helmets or water coolers. Former CNN/SI anchor Fred Hickman will be the studio host as he searches for a middle ground somewhere between the extremes of the undead Bill Daughtry and the back-from-the-dead Marv Albert. Fox know-it-all Tim McCarver is gone, a welcome departure from where I sit. Only the presense of Suzyn Waldman as pre-/post-game reporter and occasional play-by-play is cause for worry–her voice can cut through tin, and the camera doth not flatter her, either.

I watched about four innings of the debut broadcast. Kay and Kaat did a solid job and seemed to establish a rapport when Kay asked Kaat about his famous slide-step move to hold runners on first. Befitting their experience around this team, the duo exhibited a strong familiarity with the Yankee roster well beyond the regulars, touching on several of the battles for spots on the Yankee bench (which I’ll discuss more in the coming days).

I tuned in around the time that most of the Yank regulars were taking their last at bat, and so got a glimpse of new faces like Jason Giambi, Robin Ventura and John Vander Wal, as well as youngsters like Drew Henson, Eric Almonte, and Juan Rivera. The big news in tonight’s game was David Wells’ performance, five strong innings with all of his pitches working, as he struck out 4 and walked none. Boomer is indeed slimmed down, and with his strong spring, he’s squarely in the starting rotation, leaving the fates of Orlando Hernandez and Sterling Hitchcock still to be determined. “I’m ready. I’m throwing everything right where I want to throw it,” Wells told Waldman in a postgame interview. Derek Jeter was the offensive star, with a homer among his three or four hits from the leadoff spot. Only the team’s fielding looked suspect; Wells apparently dropped a throw at first base before I tuned in, second baseman Alfonso Soriano threw one past Giambi at first base (though Jorge Posada nailed the runner at second), and outfielder Vander Wal misplayed a fly ball into a double. But for the most part, the Yanks looked ready to go, right down to Mariano Rivera closing out the ninth inning and striking out the last batter. It don’t mean a thing, but it’s sure nice to look at again.

Even if YES weren’t any good, I’d probably find myself watching it over 100 times in the coming season–a championship-caliber ballclub will do that. It’s too early to say whether the new network itself is of the same caliber, but it definitely looks a damn sight better than what came before.

Nearly Four Years Later…

At long last, my epic piece on attending the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City is complete–three pages and 28 photos worth. I managed to beat my self-imposed deadline–the 2006 Winter Games in Turino–by at least a few days. And with this out of the way, I’ll be able to focus a little bit more on baseball. Enjoy!

The Artful Martone

This is going to sound weird coming from a Yanks fan, but most readers of this space know I’m not exactly a typical Yanks fan (Mattingly sucks! There, THAT got your attention…). But I’m glad to see that the best Red Sox beat writer is apparently back on the job. Art Martone of the Providence Journal-Bulletin isn’t a name that rings as many bells as some of the more infamous Boston press personalities whom I’m fond of slandering (speaking of which, I saw Bob Ryan at a Salt Lake City bar during the Olympics. Insert punchline here). But he’s the one I read when I want a smart take on what’s happening with the Sox.

First off, Martone tends to be less of a sensationalist than some of his New England peers. He doesn’t sound like a homer or a crony of the Sox front office (then again, Dan Duquette did alienate just about every Boston writer). Most readers of this column know I enjoy a little Sox-related schadenfreude now and then, but I do like to keep my facts straight, too. And Martone doesn’t seem to have lost his objectivity yet.

Second, Martone is one of the few daily newspaper guys who understands sabermetrics and uses it in his writing, and as such I feel compelled to support him even though he’s covering “the enemy”. It would be nice, once in awhile, to read a New York Times or Daily News beat reporter who cited Baseball Prospectus or understood the concept of OPS or Offensive Winning Percentage when talking about Tino Martinez’s season, instead of approaching everything as a graduate of the Proven Veterans Know How To Win School of Journalism.

Martone stopped keeping his Notebook shortly after the Sox ship hit the iceberg last summer, and in my own mind, I wondered if Dan Duquette had him “disappeared,” or if poor Art had checked himself into an institution. As it turns out, Martone went from vacation to 9/11 aftermath to an employee buyout which left the ProJo short-staffed, and he had bigger fish to fry than the dismal Sox. Joe Kerrigan’s dismissal has brought Martone back out of the woodwork (not to mention full circle), hopefully to stay. In his second piece since his return, he adds up the Sox projections in the STATS 2002 Major League Handbook, runs them through the Pythagorean Method, notes that those STATS numbers project the Sox for a 103-win season, and then dissects what that could mean. Yes, I scoff at that 103-win notion, but that’s not Art making the prediction.

Anyway, here’s wishing Martone an interesting season in covering the Sox.

A Season in the Homer Bush League

I just completed one of my annual rites of spring, the purchase of my ESPN Fantasy Baseball team. My Mendoza Line Drivers will be out to defend their title in the Homer Bush League IV.

This is the sixth season I’ve competed, and the seventh team, and my experiences have run the gamut. I won during my first season in an NL-only league, and finished as low as 9th (in a 10-team league). Some years, the best thing about playing is naming the team, such as the case for the Dock Ellis Islanders or the Homer Bush Leaguers (sub-par precursors to my current franchise).

I don’t take myself to be an especially good owner, though I obviously follow the season very closely. My best trait is knowing when to stick with the hand I’m dealt. Last season I won my league without making a single trade or using my waiver slot. Then again, with a pitching staff that included Roger Clemens Eric Milton, Jason Isringhausen, Ramiro Mendoza, Mike Stanton, Steve Karsay and Latroy Hawkins (1st Half), and hitters like Jim Thome, Miguel Tejada, Troy Glaus, Tino Martinez, Carl Everett, Shannon Stewart and Ellis Burks, it didn’t take a moron to see that I had a good thing going from the outset.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t know when to strike. My NL win back in ’97 was thanks in part to my accepting an offer to trade Tony Gwynn for Barry Bonds, and a late pickup of Otis Nixon off waivers to replace the traded Rickey Henderson.

Anyway, I’ve generally made it a point not to go off too much in this space about my fantasy teams, but I wanted to extend an open invitation to my readers to join me this year. It’s the Homer Bush League IV (not to be confused with the inaccurately named “Real Homer Bush League 3,” which by definition is a blatant fraud). It’s a 10-team AL-only league with 5×5 scoring (Wins, Saves, K’s, ERA, WHIP for pitchers, R, RBI, HR, SB, AVG for hitters) and a multi-list draft which runs on March 31 (I’m of the opinion that nothing wrecks a season like a draft run long before the final trades and injuries of the spring).

The league is public, so it’s on a first-come, first-served basis, and you don’t need a password to join. I hope some of you readers do so–the more people we know, the more active and fun the league will be. So come and get it.

We Have Comments!

I’m trying out a new comment system, the third one I’ve tried. This one is called YACCS and it looks promising because it allows me some administrative control. Let’s see if it works.

Stay The Hell Away From Our Hitter

Sunday’s New York Times Sports section carried a piece on the Yankees prized rookie first baseman/DH Nick Johnson. Johnson is the latest Yankee prospect to have the “can’t miss” label hung around his neck, which, given the organization’s recent track record of home-grown ballplayers, bodes fairly well–Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams, and Alfonso Soriano are all recent graduates of the same system. What makes the 23-year old Johnson such a prized prospect isn’t merely his raw talent, it’s his precocious plate discipline. Here are Johnson’s On-Base Percentages in each of his minor-league seasons, along with his age and the league level (his complete record is here):

2001  23  AAA  .407

2000  22  ---  ---

1999  21   AA  .525

1998  20    A  .466

1997  19    A  .398

1996  18    R  .422

Johnson missed the 2000 season with a mysterious wrist injury and had a bit of trouble regaining his form last season, but he joined the big club when Tino Martinez tweaked a hamstring and stayed up during September. He didn’t embarrass himself in his cup of coffee, but he didn’t distinguish himself too much either, hitting .194/.308/.313 in 67 AB.

Still, with his patience and even moderate power, he probably should have made the playofff roster in place of one of the Yanks’ many futilitymen. Recall Luis Sojo’s at-bat against Randy Johnson in Game 2 of the World Series, in which the overmatched Michelin Man in Pinstripes grounded into an inning-ending double-play, killing the closest thing to a rally the Yanks ever mounted against the Big Unit. While a lefty-lefty matchup wouldn’t have been ideal in this situation, a hitter with Johnson’s patience might have stood a better chance. But alas…

The Times article focuses on Johnson’s relationship to Larry Bowa, former Phillies shortstop and current manager, about whom I rarely have a kind word to say. Bowa is Johnson’s uncle, and both players were taught the game by Larry’s father, the late Paul Bowa, a minor-league infielder in the Cardinals chain during the late 1930s and early ’40s, and later a minor-league manager.

Larry Bowa is one of those wonderful My Way or the Highway types whose bluster and insistence upon ripping his own players in the press starts to grate on the casual baseball fan after the first three game losing streak. Bowa managed to guide the Phils to a third-place finish last season, five games above .500 despite the kind of histrionics more appropriate in a last-place ballclub–most notably, alienating Scott Rolen, the Phils’ star third baseman. Rolen is Derek Jeter without the marketing or the championship-caliber team around him, and he’ll be richly rewarded when he signs a long-term contract ABP (Anywhere But Philly) following the season. But I digress…

Towards the end of the Times article, writer Tyler Kepner states that Johnson and his uncle talk two to three times a week, in which Bowa dispenses hitting advice to his nephew. “Walking frequently has served Johnson well in the minors; he led his league in on-base percentage four times in the last six years,” says the article. “But Bowa has warned Johnson that major league pitchers can make hitters look foolish if they take too many strikes, and Johnson seems to be listening.”

WHOA! The idea that anyone–least of all Bowa, an impatient slap hitter and an even more impatient and slappier(?) manager–should be tinkering with this kid’s approach at the plate caused me to involuntarily flush my sinuses with hot black coffee first thing in the morning–a stiff awakening I heartily recommend against. Bowa was a slick defensive shortstop, good enough to win a couple of Gold Gloves, but he was a lousy hitter (.260 AVG/.300 OBP/.320 SLG). He took a walk about once every five games and had absolutely zero power (15 HR in over 8900 plate appearances). His offensive philosophy–why be patient at the plate when you can ground out on any old pitch–reflects the kind of baseball wisdom which keeps a speedster like Doug Glanville (.285 OBP) in the leadoff spot during a pennant race, the kind of thinking that’s become outmoded since Bowa’s playing days ended 17 years ago. Though apparently some teams didn’t get the memo.

Before anybody starts quibbling that Bowa’s offensive performance (the one with the bat, not the one with the mouth) took place in a much different context than today, I’d just like to point out that thanks to the aid of a new feature on baseball-reference.com which computes league averages for a player’s career, we can see that Bowa’s performance relative to the leagues he played in was still fairly dismal:

          AVG   OBP   SLG  OPS+

Bowa    .260  .300  .320   71

League  .276  .335  .393

OPS+ is, essentially, a park-adjusted ratio of the player’s OPS to the league OPS–in this case, not a good one. Here is another light-hitting middle-infielder of some renown, this one still active (well, sort of):

          AVG   OBP   SLG  OPS+

XXXX    .261  .298  .353   71

League  .269  .340  .421

Our mystery guest has a bit more power than Bowa, but essentially the same performance rates. His identity? None other than Luis Sojo. Not to pick on Looie at all (which I’m now doing for the second time in one piece), but if I saw him standing around the batting cage with Nick Johnson, I would pray that the two of them were talking about the weather, cooking, snake-charming, or sky-diving… anything but hitting.

Anyway, what’s really relevant isn’t what Sojo can hit, or how Bowa can run the Phils into the ground, it’s what Johnson will do. To that end, I took a look at a few projections:

• ProtospectWatch, a new website devoted to player projections, has him at .253 AVG/.355 OBP/.411 SLG with 14 HRs in 400 ABs, which seems low but not out of the question if the kid has trouble adjusting to major-league pitching. And for whatever its worth, the site also ranks him 5th on their Top 301 Prospects List.

•ESPN’s John Sickels puts Johnson in the Rookie of the Year race, noting, “He seems a safe bet to hit .275-.285, with an on-base percentage near .400 and 15-20 home runs. If Johnson shows normal development, he’ll rank among the best first basemen in the league within three years.”

• The 2002 Baseball Prospectus projects Johnson at .275 AVG/.398 OBP/.467 SLG with 18 HRs in about 400 ABs, and predicts, “He’ll likely end up as a cross between John Olerud and Barry Bonds,” which I take to mean having Olerud’s skill set as a high-average, medium-power, good-fielding first baseman, but with Bonds-type discipline at the plate, rather than having Barry’s power and speed. “I think most Yankee fans can live with that, even if it takes him a few years to get there,” writes the Prospectus, and this Yanks fan would agree.

Just so long as that route doesn’t take him through the Larry Bowa School of Hitting.

Excuses, Excuses

Regular readers will note that my updates of this weblog over the past few weeks have been somewhat sporadic. The lessons about paying at both ends when one goes away on vacation are certainly ringing true right now. Not that I would trade my nine days at the 2002 Winter Olympics for anything else. And the writeup should be up in a few more days.

Professionally, I’ve hit the busiest patch of my year, designing the prototype for the World Almanac for Kids 2003. Over the next three months, I’ll be immersed in its production. I’ll be keeping up with this weblog and other parts of my site (hopefully), but if things seem a little slower than usual around here, that’s the reason. I’m not complaining–working on that book is as good as it gets for me, but it does absorb a lot of my other energies. To put things in perspective, I conceived this site around Opening Day last year, and launched it during the first week of June–immediately after that book was put to bed. We’re headed into uncharted territory here, and I hope I can maintain the momentum this site has built up over the past year and especially the winter. But if I can’t, I’ll still be back in full force once I reach the other side of this patch.

Not that my readers out there should suffer for baseball-related content. This is a fertile time of year, as baseball writers emerge from their winter hibernations and shake the rust off of their cliches just as the ballplayers do for their swings and their pitching motions. A look at the recent “Clutch Hits” over at Baseball Primer yields headlines begging for a one-line putdown. Ordóñez Embraces New Role as Hitter? That one’s about as ripe as a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. Royals Think Tucker Can Be Impact Player They Envisioned? Another fat pitch just waiting to be hammered. And then there’s Bobby Bonilla’s on-again, off-again retirement: a fat bitch waiting to be hammered, perhaps?

Just not by me, because I’m a little short of time right now.

And don’t even get me started on the flaps emerging from the Cincinnati Reds Embittered Alumni Club. Pokey Reese, Dmitri Young, and Ron Oester are upset at the Star Treatment Ken Griffey Jr. received? As my friends are prone to say, tell them all to have a nice hot mug of Shut the F*** Up. I’ve enjoyed picking on Junior in the past, but the cheap shots emerging from these disgruntled hacks about Junior doing outrageous things like treating his injured hamstring instead of shagging fly balls with the rest of the team don’t fly here, nor do accusations of him maneuvering to have players traded when he publicly went on record with offers to defer salary to help the flexibility of the Reds’ miserly payroll. As Joe Dimino pointed out on Baseball Primer, it’s telling that Oester has joined the Scott Rolen Sendoff Parade in Philadelphia. He certainly sounds like a match for Larry Bowa and Dallas Green’s My Way or the Highway Club.

See? Like I said, don’t get me started.

Instead, I urge you to enjoy the flowery prose of all of those puff pieces sprouting from Florida and Arizona, buy yourself a copy of the new Baseball Prospectus for something more thought-provoking and useful, and surf on over to the recently revamped Baseball Junkie website to read the work of some smart young writers (disclosure: I designed their new banner). Take a moment to mourn the passing of Dan Duquette from the reins of the Red Sox, because his incompetence has provided us all with so many hours of entertainment. To borrow a Simpsons reference: “We are richer for having lost him.”

And keep checking back here, because I’ll have plenty more stuff soon, including that Olympic writeup. Just not today.

Don’t Let the Door Hit You in the Ass

Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad, the mogul whose miserly way of running a baseball team made it a target for contraction and a symbol of the game’s ass-backward financial situation, announced his intention to sell the team on Thursday. This represents something of a victory for fans of baseball everywhere. So wherever you are, Twins fan or not, raise a glass and toast the coming end of an era.

It’s not that Pohlad didn’t have some success during his tenure as the Twins’ owner. On the contrary. Shortly after buying the Twins from Calvin Griffith in 1984, Pohlad’s team won two unlikely World Championships, in 1987 and 1991. While that does feel like a bygone era–back when ANY TEAM, it seemed, could win a World Championship–anyone complaining about a team which has gone only ten years without a championship is advised to try selling that from atop a Boston barstool (Step Two: attempt to pick up broken teeth with broken fingers).

And it’s not as if Pohlad hasn’t tried to sell the team before. Recall that back in 1997, Pohlad, unable to squeeze a publicly-funded stadium out of Minnesota taxpayers, agreed to sell the Twins to North Carolina businessman Donald Beaver. That deal fell through when Carolina residents proved themselves to be no more gullible than their North Star counterparts, voting down referendums to raise taxes to support a publicly-funded stadium. In 1999, Pohlad agreed to sell the team to St. Paul-based group which included the owners of the NBA Timberwolves and NHL Wild. Again, voters rejected a stadium-related referendum, halting the sale.

So perhaps we shouldn’t get too excited yet about the prospect of the Twins being sold out of the hands of Forbes.com’s 115th Richest Man in the America. But let us indulge in some premature jocularity anyway, because the news of Pohlad’s latest announcement offers yet another emphatic rebuke to Bud Selig’s already-shelved contraction plan. Had that plan gone through, Pohlad stood to receive $150 million or more in blood money as Major League Baseball bought the Twins out of existence.

He’ll almost certainly receive less than that from selling a live team–but then, you can’t take it with you anyway, Carl. And his departure will remove a huge obstacle for the Twins in solving their stadium woes. Pohlad has long shown a less-than-sincere committment to building a new ballpark if it involved any of his billions–one past proposal amounted to him receiving an $82.5 million loan from taxpayers to do so while giving him a huge tax break for “donating” 49 percent of the team to the public.

It will also remove a chronic abuser of baseball’s current revenue-sharing system. Since the current plan was put in place, Pohlad has taken advantage of the lack of a minimum payroll to field bargain-basement teams with little chance of competing on the field or drawing interest at the box office (until last season, at least) and depending on revenue-sharing money to bring his team back into the black. Last year, the Twins showed a $536,000 profit after receiving $19 million in revenue-sharing. In 2000, they received $21 million in revenue sharing–$5 million more than their entire payroll. In 1999, they showed a $5 million profit after receiving $14 million in revenue-sharing. (Once again, I’m indebted to the work of Doug Pappas for providing this information). Does anybody detect a trend here?

Alabama businessman Donald Watkins has made lots of noise about buying the Twins and lining up a privately-financed ballpark. Watkins has also expressed interest in two other teams on the auction–or chopping–block, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Montreal Expos, so who knows how serious he really is. But other suitors for the Twins, including a group of Twin Cities lawyers and businessmen, have emerged as well, and without Pohlad’s track record of trying to screw the Minnesota taxpayers, they may find a more sympathetic public.

The bottom line is that we don’t know what will happen to the Twins, but in any hands but Pohlad’s, they’ll likely be far better off. And so will the game of baseball as well. Let’s all hope we can soon bid adieu to this miserly mogul and crony of Bud.

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Carl.

Birthdategate

The heightened security measures which have made it more difficult for foreigners to attain work visas post-September 11 have shaken several ballplayers’ birth-certificate discrepancies out of the trees. Among those aging before our very eyes: Indians pitcher Bartolo Colon (4 years!), Yanks hurler Orlando Hernandez (3 years, one year less than the Yankees and the local media had posited for quite some time), Angels pitcher Ramon Ortiz (3 years), Mets outmaker Rey Ordonez (2 years), Royals shortstop Neifi Perez (2 years), and Yanks futilityman Enrique Wilson (2 years).

I’ve got mixed emotions about these revelations. Lying about one’s age is a time-honored tradition in baseball, particularly among Latin American ballplayers–a mode contract-signing gamesmanship and a way to give a vulnerable segment of the player population a little bit of leverage to use with teams. It can certainly make a prospect more enticing–developmentally speaking, the skills shown by an 18-year old are worth even more when shown by a 17-year old. But it can also cause a team to lose a player if they can be shown to have signed him while he was underage (witness several cases involving the Dodgers in recent years, including Adrian Beltre, whom they at least were able to re-sign).

Several years down the road, it can make a 28-year old suspect out of a 26-year old “prospect,” (as in the case of Wilson, whose hype has impressed the likes of John Hart and Brian Cashman but not me) or reveal a “29”-year old to be even further past his statisical peak then previously thought (see Rey .000rdoñez). With so much riding on player contracts, it remains to be seen whether teams use these discrepancies to wriggle free from suddenly even-less-favorable commitments (like the Yankees did when they found out Cuban defector Andy Morales had lied about his age and couldn’t even hit AA pitching).

These revelations may also shed light on mysteries such as why Colon seemed to be so durable a pitcher at such a tender age, or why Carlos Baerga seemed to fall apart so quickly. Baerga’s age hasn’t officially been affected by the situation, presumably becaues he remained in the country this past winter, but it certainly would make sense if we were to discover he was 25-29 during his Indians heyday and 33 when he began his tour of oblivion instead of 22-26 and 30). Still, we may never pin down the ages of some players who haven’t left the country, or who are no longer active, and that’s probably a good thing. We’ll just have to wait until Fernando Valenzuela’s tree has fallen to count his many rings.