A Gold Medal Vacation

I’m back from Salt Lake City, having spent the past nine days totally immersed in the Winter Olympics. My friends and I had an absolute blast–our vacation was everything we’d hoped for and more. I’d intended to post something of our goings-on, but our schedule, with 5 AM wakeups and often two events per day, was so jam-packed that I couldn’t find the time or the energy while there (I can hear you all sobbing for me right now; really, I think I’ll be okay…).

I’m in the process of putting together a writeup of our experiences, which I’ll post in the next few days.

Bad Rug Bud Beat Down

Add “the law” to the growing list of things Bud Selig does not have on his side these days: baseball fans, baseball players, politicians, economists, Minnesotans, common sense, decency, and the truth, to name a few. On Monday, the Minnesota Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal to lift an injunction which forces the Twins to honor their 2002 lease. On Tuesday, Bad Rug Bud was forced to call off baseball’s ham-fisted attempt to smite two teams–for this year. But don’t weep for Bud; he’s determined to try again for 2003 while trudging through this season with the havoc he’s wrought.

Baseball’s odious winter isn’t over yet. For one thing, there’s still a grievance by the Players’ Association hanging in the balance. The MLBPA had challenged the owners on two fronts–one. that the owners could not change to a 28-team schedule after the union approved a 30-team schedule, and two, that the owners had no right to contract unilaterally, and that contraction must be negotiated as part of the collective bargaining agreement. The first point is now moot, but the second part of the grievance is still up in the air. Should the players win, Bud’s deferred dream of 28 teams for 2003 may be in jeopardy as well.

And Mr. Selig will likely go to Washington again next Wednesday (February 13), as the Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings on baseball’s anti-trust exemption. Though the list of those who will testify hasn’t been released yet, it’s a pretty good bet that those hearings will produce as many surreal moments as the last one (think of Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura itching to put Selig in a Half Nelson, a Full Nelson, and a Jeff Nelson before applying a Sleeper Hold and you’ve only scratched the surface).

Finally, there’s still the small matter of a new labor agreement to replace the one which expired in November. With all of this legal wrangling, the two sides haven’t even sat down at the negotiating table to make any real progress since last summer. Selig has claimed he won’t impose a lockout, but it’s tough to take anything he’s said this winter seriously (though, to his credit, an invitation to Union head Donald Fehr to address the owners last month at least broke some ice).

Are we, as baseball fans, out of the woods? Even with Pitchers and Catchers (oh, holy of holy days) still a week away, the answer is “hell no.” Bad Rug Bud didn’t get to where he is today by dealing straight, so who knows what kind of shenanigans he may invoke before the season’s first pitch is thrown. Still, things are looking a little bit better than they did before.

But the Big C hasn’t gone away. The Montreal Expos, now that owner Jeffrey Loria has been approved as the new owner of the Florida Marlins, will be taken over by Major League Baseball and primed either for relocation or contraction in 2003. The Twins, unless Donald Watkins or some other buyer is successful in a bid to buy the team and gain public funding for a stadium, are still in danger. The Marlins may be safe thanks to the Loria sale, but the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and even the Kansas City Royals may be on the hot seat. At least until the arbitrator rules against Selig again.

ESPN’s Jim Caple does a great job at summing up the mess that Bud has made this winter: “Contraction was baseball’s worst idea since bullpen carts. In short, it had no chance of ever being enacted, alienated fans, embarrassed the game and crippled offseason negotiations, damaged ticket sales and worsened economic conditions for several teams while wasting the time of everyone who should have been working on far more important matters.” Amen.

• At Baseball Prospectus, Doug Pappas continues his enlightening series on baseball’s balance sheet. In Part Five, Pappas examines non-player expenses–that is, salaries for managers, coaches, scouts, front-office personnel, the farm system, foreign player bonuses, stadium expenses, and a share of the cost of running Major League Baseball’s New York office. The five highest-overhead teams: the Mariners, Yankees, Giants, Mets, and Dodgers. Pappas points out that the M’s had a unique expense with buying the Ichiro rights from his Japanese team, while the Giants are paying $20 million a year on Pac Bell Park.

Pappas talks about the kind of tricks this accounting can conceal (not surprising if you’ve been following the series or anything going on in baseball this winter). Then he goes on to show how MLB’s own figures “provide damning evidence that MLB has grossly exaggerated its economic problems,” as Pappas puts it. In a supplement to the Commissioner’s Blue-Ribbon Panel report, baseball’s figures reveal that rather than high salaries being the leading cause of the game’s ills, “over the six years covered by the report, non-player expenses have risen faster than player salaries. ” (Emphasis on original source.) Annual revenues increased 156% over the course of the report, while player salaries increased at 113%. Non-player expenses outstripped this, increasing at 134%. Leaving a question for Bud Selig as apt as one for the Enron executives: just where the hell is this money going? “Unless and until the owners provide credible answers to these questions,” writes Pappas, “their claimed ‘losses’ are about as believable as Enron’s September 2001 financial statements.”

In Part Six, Pappas reaches the bottom line: profits and revenue sharing. According to baseball’s numbers (though not Selig’s public statements upon release of those numbers), nine teams turned a profit after revenue sharing:

Milwaukee Brewers 	  $16,129,000 

Seattle Mariners 	   $15,475,000 

New York Yankees 	   $14,319,000 

San Francisco Giants $12,892,000 

Detroit Tigers 	      $5,660,000 

Oakland Athletics 	   $3,407,000 

Cincinnati Reds 	     $2,348,000 

Minnesota Twins 	       $536,000 

Anaheim Angels 	         $25,000

Well, isn’t that a coinky-dink? The team that Bud Selig doesn’t own (wink, wink) was the most profitable after revenue sharing. Revenue sharing turned four of its twelve recipients into profitable teams, and turned thirteen of its sixteen otherwise profitable teams (all but the Mariners, Yanks, and Giants) into unprofitable ones.

Pappas digs deeper into those numbers, then goes on to examine the major flaw with revenue sharing as it relates to market size. Namely, that the teams receiving the money are “low revenue” teams without necessarily being in small metropolitan markets. The Philadelphia Phillies, in the fourth-largest media market in the country (the largest unshared market when it comes to baseball), received over $11 million in revenue sharing because of their low local revenues.

Focusing on the amount of local revenues a team generates, as Pappas puts it, “shortchanges popular, well-run teams in smaller cities while rewarding incompetently managed big-market clubs.” As part of a solution, Pappas suggests adjusting the revenue-sharing formula to include market size.

While the game of Hide the Money can’t compare to the one on the field (not that we’ve got a lot of choice until spring training begins), all of Pappas’s stuff is worth reading for any baseball fan who wants to understand what’s really going on this winter. Which probably means anyone reading this. You have your homework assignment.

• Over the past couple of weeks, the Yankees have settled up with their arbitration-eligible players for their 2002 contracts. Orlando Hernandez, seemingly expendable now that the Yanks have five other starters under contract, signed a one-year deal for $3.2 million. Reliever Ramiro Mendoza struck a one-year deal for $2.6 million. Outfielder Shane Spencer settled for an $885,000 contract. And most notably, the Yanks signed catcher Jorge Posada to a 5-year, $51 million contract, making him the second-highest-paid catcher in the game.

The Posada deal is an eye-catching one, coming as it does after the catcher’s thirtieth birthday, a time when catchers tend to start breaking down (and no, the classic Rolling Stones song from Exile on Main Street, “Stop Breaking Down,” was penned by bluesman Robert Johnson, not George Steinbrenner). Much has been made of this over at Baseball Primer; a scan of the ten most similar players using Bill James’s Similarity Scores method shows that none of the ten comps had any kind of productive, full-time career after age 29.

But. As pointed out over at BP, none of those comps (Mike Lieberthal, Chris Hoiles, Andy Seminick, Johnny Romano, Eddie Taubensee, Ed Bailey, Mike Macfarlane, Tom Haller, Rich Wilkins, and Dick Dietz) was as durable in the two seasons leading up to age 30 as Posada, and none of the top 5 had his walk rate. Combine that with the fact that Posada converted to catcher from middle infield in the minors, and the fact that Posada’s not built like your traditional, burly catcher, and one can surmise that Jorge’s probably put less stress on his knees than most catchers at this stage, and thus may age a bit better than his comps.

What does it all mean? The Yanks essentially paid market value for the second-best catcher in the AL. Posada’s back-loaded contract will probably come back to haunt the Yanks down the road, but Jorge is a good enough hitter that he may retain some value as a DH-1B type when he’s no longer able to catch every day. That might not fit in with the current organization’s needs (vis a vis Jason Giambi’s eventual migration to the DH slot and the continuing question of What To Do With Nick Johnson), but Posada, presuming he stays healthy, will probably have value to somebody, somewhere–especially if the Yanks have to eat a small chunk of that contract (hey, if they can’t, who can?).

With these signings by the Yanks, I’ll now run another version of the payroll chart I ran several weeks ago (the asterisks indicate estimated salaries; all figures are in millions of dollars):

              2002               ESPN

          Base + bonus  total    AVG

Jeter     13.0 + 2.0    15.0    18.9

BWilliams 12.0         12.0    12.5

Giambi     8.0 + 2.8    11.8    17.0

Mussina    9.0 + 2.0    11.0    14.8

Clemens    7.8 + 2.5    10.3    15.4

Pettitte   8.5 + 1.7    10.2     8.5

Rivera     7.45 + 2.0    9.45    9.9

Ventura    8.25          8.25    8.0

Karsay     3.0 + 4.0     7.0     5.75

Hitchcock  5.0           6.0     6.0

Posada     4.0 + 1.5     5.5    10.2

White      4.5           5.5     5.0

OHernandez 3.2           3.2     3.2

Wells      2.0 + 1.0     3.0     2.3

Mendoza    2.6           2.6     2.6

Stanton    2.5           2.5     2.58

GWilliams  2.0           2.0     2.0

Vander Wal 1.55          1.55    1.92

AHernandez 1.0           1.0     1.0

Henson     1.0           1.0     2.83

Spencer    0.885        0.885   0.885

Wilson     0.72          0.72    0.72

Soriano    1.0*          1.0     1.0*

Johnson    0.5*          0.5     0.5*

-------------------------------------

                       131.96  153.49

As the New York Post reported on Tuesday, while this will be the largest payroll in major-league history, it also represents an artificial attempt to keep that payroll down by backloading several of the contracts–including Giambi’s and Posada’s. Even with bonuses, Giambi will only earn about 69% of the average annual value of his contract, while Posada comes in at about 54% of his annual average. (My figures may differ slightly from the New York Post’s, but I couldn’t obtain their chart to compare the actual numbers).

The Post notes that their figures don’t include the minor-league contracts for a few players the Yanks recently signed, pitcher Mike Thurman (who’s got a shot at being the long man), infielder Ron Coomer, and outfielder Ruben Rivera (now there’s a blast from the past; the five-tool flop has come home). They project El Duque, El Duquecito, and Gerald Williams as earmarked for trades, especially since El Duque’s likely not to accept a long-relief role too well, and Rivera gives the Yanks just about as much Williams does (albeit with worse hitting, better power, and better defense) at a lower cost. Bottom line: the Yanks may shed about $3 million off of this figure, but it’s still going to be a record-breaker.

• This is my last post before taking a break of sorts. I’m headed to my parents’ home in Salt Lake City to attend the 2002 Winter Olympics. My girfriend, two buddies and I have tickets to events on every day from February 11th to the 16th: Women’s Downhill, Women’s Luge, Ski Jumping, Short Track Speed Skating, Men’s & Women’s Snowboarding, Hockey (Team Canada), and Men’s Super G. I’ve been a bit pressed due to work demands and the logistic requirements to set this all up to really think too much about how much fun this will be, but I’m really starting to look forward to all of this–even though the reports are that Salt Lake City is like an armed compound with all of the security in place. I’ll probably check in once or twice with reports from SLC, for those of you interested in this off-topic foray, and I’ll try to keep abreast of the baseball doings as well–on my brand-new iBook (a reward given out by the head of The Futility Infielder to his best field reporter and most valuable employee). Oh yeah, and while I’m gone, my Jay Buhner Bobble-Head Doll will be manning operations at Futility Central. Call him if you need anything…

Hope Springs Eternal

Here in New York, it isn’t much of a stretch to envision the local nine embarking upon a playoff-caliber season. Seven straight postseason appearances have raised the bar far beyond that measure; a playoff run isn’t just hoped for, it’s expected by Boss Steinbrenner. The Yankees hunt bigger game(s), and the braintrusts’s every major decision is seen through the same filter: “Is this team good enough to win a World Championship?”

Even across town, where they haven’t won a World Series since 1986, the bud of optimism (not to be confused with the sport’s czar, the Bud of Pessimism) when it comes to the postseason isn’t too farfetched. If Mo Vaughn can still hit, if Edgardo Alfonzo regains his form, if Robbie Alomar stays young, and if the rotation holds up… stretches, some of those are, yet at least the players in the mix, and the team itself, have a track record of some success in the not-too-distant past.

But in Kansas City, on the other hand, gloom reigns. For starters, there’s the matter of seven straight losing seasons and a last-place finish in the AL Central. And then there’s the dismantling of the Royals’ nucleus of the few decent hitters they’ve produced in recent times. In the past two years, the franchise has traded two of its biggest stars–Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye–as they approached free agency and has gotten crapola in return–a bloated has-been of a closer and a glove man with Coors-inflated hitting stats that weren’t very good to begin with. Their marquee free-agent signings this winter are Chuck Knoblauch and Michael Tucker. Manager Tony “Sarge” Muser and GM Allard Baird have witlessly conspired to sabotage the careers of promising players like Mark Quinn, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Febles, Dee Brown… and on and on. Owner David Glass seems poised to keep K.C.’s payroll near the bottom of the league. Pundits like Rob Neyer have stopped pulling their hair out over the Royals’ bafflingly stupid ways and gone straight to surrender. It ain’t pretty.

But here K.C. Star columnist Joe Posnanski, taking a rose-tinted view of the local K.C. nine, says that the Royals can take the AL Central. A laughable proposition in some quarters, but that’s not quite the point. For starters, Posnanski invokes the annual tradition of a predecessor at the Star, a writer named Bill Vaughan, who would write similarly optimistic tomes–back when the team in question was the Athleticsm in the days when their best pitcher was a polio survivor. “…[L]ooking back, I’m not sure he was only joking. He had hope,” writes Posnanski. “January does that to crazy baseball fans. It turns us into 10-year-old kids.”

Fair enough. I’m sure all of us who came to the game at a similarly young age can remember our vain predictions and predilections. Maybe that schlub of a scrub who signed an autograph when he passed through Triple-A for us would lead the big club to glory. Maybe the young fireballer with lousy control would find the strikezone. Maybe that fan would give Reggie’s home run ball back and the Sox could beat the Yanks (as my pal Martin memorably suggested in the Bucky Dent game). Childhood is full of such delusions.

Posnanski points out the weakness of the division (the mighty Indians are no more, as their offseason actions in the wake of John Hart’s departure clearly indicate), and then runs down the roster, pointing out the plethora of young K.C. arms poised on the brink of Figuring It All Out. And he does have a point, because in these days of large market vs. small, the development of solid starting pitching is the quickest way toward respectability. Take the A’s and the Twins, for example.

Posanski’s piece is a breezy read, and it’s harmless enough in January. But where he falls short in his optimism is failing to include some kind of coup in the organization’s so-called braintrust as a necessary first condition to all of this. Tony Muser is a Terrible Manager, a red-ass who believes that machismo at the plate can repeal a fundamental rule of the game–you have to get on base to score runs. In four and a half years at the Royals’ helm, he’s managed a .426 winning percentage, with a high of 77 wins. Allard Baird, if it’s possible, is an even worse GM, having come up virtually empty in trading two stars (one can only shudder to think of the bounty of broken doorknobs and spoiled fish that awaits them when they trade Mike Sweeney to a contender). Baird’s idea of improving the club is trading for Donnie Sadler. Enough said.

Smarter men than myself who are more devoted to the Royals (okay, maybe that cancels out the “smarter” part), such as Rany Jazayerli, have pointed out in painstaking detail some of the Royals’ more foolish assumptions. In his most recent column over at Baseball Prospectus, Jazayerli (Rob Neyer’s former partner in Royal-watching) weighs K.C.’s claims that they couldn’t afford Dye or Damon against the motley (and I don’t mean Darryl) assortment of players the Royals “can” afford. He also points out that given the current management’s ineptitude, their Triple-A rotation stands a good chance of outpitching their major league one:

“There’s definitely something wrong when the best thing that can happen to your pitching staff is for one of your projected starters to go down with an injury so that a better pitcher can take his place. That’s what the Royals have brought on themselves. Faced with a choice between gambling on one of their many unproven but highly-touted young pitchers, and a proven veteran–proven only in the sense that he’s provably mediocre–the Royals have again taken the safe route. Risk aversion dominates the Royals’ philosophy at every turn.”

Anyway… ya gotta have hope, I guess. I wholeheartedly support the kind of foolish optimism of late winter which Posnanski invokes, and I don’t pretend (or care) to know much about the nuances of the Royals’ system. But I do think that if you want to restore some hope to what was once a great baseball town, the first order of business is to hand Muser and Baird a blindfold and a cigarette apiece, and usher in the next phase of K.C. baseball with a bang or two. And if you happen to be a columnist covering the home nine, you’re certainly better off leading the coup than sitting on your hands and waiting for it to happen.

Snuffing the Arsonist

Seattle lefty reliever Norm Charlton was recently diagnosed with not just a torn rotator cuff but a torn labrum as well. The former Nasty Boy obviously won’t pitch during the 2002 season, and at 39, might finally be done.

This item caught my attention because Charlton put up a strong season with the 2001 Mariners (4-2, 3.02 ERA, .212 Opp. Batting Average) after several years of wandering in the wilderness. From 1997 to 2000, Charlton posted a 6.26 ERA as he bounced from Seattle to Baltimore to Atlanta to Tampa Bay to Cincinnati, setting fire to almost everything he touched. Early in this miserable stretch, I christened him the Arsonist, and the name stuck among my friends. In his previous tour of duty with Seattle, which ended in 1997, Charlton had crashed and burned as a closer (3-8, 14 Saves, 11 Blown Saves, 7.27 ERA). Much to our amusement, it took several Seattle relievers to pick up the slack the following year (Bobby Ayala 1-10, 7.29 ERA), Paul Spoljaric (4-6, 6.48 ERA), Bob Wells (2-2, 6.10 ERA), Heathcliff Slocumb (2-5, 5.32 ERA), and Tony Fossas (0-3, 8.74 ERA). By this time, Charlton was in Baltimore, causing conflagrations so intense Boog Powell might have shut his Barbecue Pit at Camden Yards (2-1, 6.94 ERA).

Shortly after the trading deadline in ’98, an item appeared in the New York Times about the Yankees possibly being interested in Charlton. Seizing my muse at this odd bit of news, I composed a lunchtime email rant which I sent to a few friends. I still think is worth a chuckle now that I’m sharing my thoughts about baseball on a much wider plane, so I thought it was topical enough to pass along.

——————————

Date: 8/3/98 1:18 PM

According to today’s Times, commenting on the depleted relief corps:

[Yankee GM Brian] Cashman intends to ask other club officials if there is reason to be interested in the free agent reliever NORM CHARLTON, recently released by the Baltimore Orioles.

The following conversation is a dramatic re-enactment of a telephone call that took place at 11:30 AM EST:

“Hello, Brian?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Jay Jaffe, a fair-weather Yankee fan and partial season ticket holder.”

“Hi, Jay. Nice to meet you. What can I do for you?

“Well, Brian, I must say you guys are really tearing it up this year and I think you’ve done a great job on the hot seat as GM. Pricing the Big Unit out of the league was a stroke of genius.”

“Thanks, that means a lot to me coming from a fan like you.”

“Uh huh. Listen, Brian. I’ll be straight with you. I know you guys are a little thin in the bullpen, what with Nelson and Holmes on the DL now, but I’ve just gotta say, you’re really tempting fate if you sign Norm Charlton. Are you familiar with the term ‘arson’?”

“Arson, yeah, like a guy who sets fires?”

“Exactly. Norm Charlton, he’s so awful, my friends and I call him ‘the Arsonist.'”

“Wow. That’s not exactly a compliment, is it?”

“No Brian, it is not. Are you aware that over the last year and a half, Norm’s ERA is 7.17? Brian, my rule of thumb is that if you could mistake a guy’s ERA for a Boeing jet, you’re better off passing on him. And…”

“Jeez. Is he really that bad?”

“…this year opposing hitters are hitting .305 and slugging .470 against him. His ERA on grass is 8.46…”

“I didn’t realize he had a drug problem. That explains…”

“No, no, no. I mean as opposed to Astroturf.”

“Oh. Kinda like that story about Tug McGraw where he was asked which he preferred to play on…”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘I dunno, I never smoked Astroturf!’ Cracks us up all the time.”

“Well, look, Jay. I need bullpen help. Not a lot, but just some insurance. And if Norm’s not worth it, who else is there? The trading deadline is past.”

“Well, Brian, that’s the second reason I called. Did you see Jim Bouton pitch at Old-Timer’s Day?”

“No, I missed it. The damn sausage line was taking forever. George has got to do something about the vendors in the stadium. You know, I think that may be the key issue which seals this new stadium deal.”

“You may be right. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Bouton got his man out. He’s 59, but he’s got lots of big game experience. Two World Series for your franchise, a successful comeback at age 39. And he’s a knuckleballer. Those guys last friggin’ forever. I mean, that’s only a couple years older than Phil Niekro was when he was with you guys.”

“Hmmm. An unconventional thought, but it’s crazy enough that it just might work. Tell you what. Let me bounce it off George and some of the folks here in the front office. I might even call Bob Watson in on this one.”

“Good idea, Brian. Bob and Jim go waaay back. Did you know that when Watson was a rookie catcher with the 1969 Astros, he broke his thumb trying to catch Bouton’s knuckler?”

“You don’t say. Do you think it’s a good idea to bring that up?”

“It’ll jog Bob’s memory, and it’s probably healed by now. Water under the bridge, you know. Besides, Bob’s probably got more pressing health concerns. That *is* why you’re the man in the big chair now, Brian.”

“Right. Well, thanks for the advice, Jay. Is it all right if I have Joe Torre or the Zim call you back with regards to this matter?”

“Sure, Brian, no problem. But those guys are smart baseball men. They know about the Arsonist and what he’d mean to the franchise: instant disaster. You’d be the latest trophy on George’s wall, and I don’t mean as in ‘World Series’. Right up there next to Billy and Yogi and Gene Michael and poor Dick Howser and Buck Showalter and… you get the idea. Oh and one more thing: word on poor Norm last year was that he was tipping his pitches. Batters knew what was coming.”

“Holy shit! You don’t say….”

—————————-

Yes, well… Anyway, for all the derision I heaped upon the Arsonist when he was going bad, he showed a considerable amount of resolve by working his way back to being a serviceable pitcher. I salute him for that, and wish him the best if he and when he tries to make it back.

But just the same, I’m checking the fire extinguishers.

Insert Home Run Trot Here

I seem to have won an award given out by a website called Sports Central. While it’s not quite the same as Ed McMahon coming to my door with an oversized check, I am honored to be ANYBODY’s site of the week (and now, the Unemployed Yankee Fans of Greater New York present their award for Most Trenchant Criticism of the Yankees’ Glut of Futility Infielders…). Sports Central seems to be a pretty interesting opinion and discussion forum site dealing with all sports, not just baseball. The baseball stuff is pretty good, what I’ve read of it. This week’s column deals with the Gary Sheffield trade and what it says about the power relationship between petulant star players and their teams. Worth a read.

Hot on the heels of my two-part feature about ballplayers named Jay comes my induction of Jay Buhner into my Wall of Fame. Buhner was a classy ballplayer who I’ll miss every bit as much as the Yankees who recently departed. Readers of the series will quickly recognize that I’ve shamelessly repurposed much of the information for Buhner’s page, but I’ve provided a bonus of sorts by examining the man at the other end of the Yankees’ infamous trade of Buhner, Ken Phelps.

The Jay Ballers of the World, Part II

The second part of my research piece on ballplayers named Jay, which covers the hitters, is now up.

Here I present to you the All-Jays:

SS Jay Bell

1B Jay Kirke

CF Jay Johnstone (with Jay Payton as defensive replacement)

RF Jay Buhner

LF Jay Gibbons

DH Jay Gainer

C Jay Kleven

2B Jay Canizaro

3B Jay Ward

PR Jay Loviglio

SP Jay Hughes

SP Jay Hook (big drop-off after the ace)

SP Jay Tibbs

SP Jay Pettibon

RP Jay Baller

RP Jay Witasick

RP Jay Tessmer

SU Jay Powell

CL Jay Howell (can I get Orel Hershiser in case of a suspension?)

MGR Jay Ward (I’ve got enough problems without handing this team over to Jay Faatz and his 9-24 record)

Thanks to Pete Sommers at Baseball News Blog for calling attention to Part I and for getting into the spirit of things with his All-Pete team (which would probably hand the All-Jays their asses). No dice on the Pedros, Sommers, though I’ll give you Guerrero because fans actually called him “Pete” for a while. The only condition is that you have to play him at third base.

Then I think the Jays would have a shot…

The Futility Infielder Sweepstakes

Right now, the most amazing thing about the Yankees’ offseason activity isn’t the big-name free agents they’ve signed, the money they’ve spent, or the way they’ve retooled their offense. It’s their bizarre attempt to corner the market in futility infielders (and if I know a trend when I see it, it’s this one). It’s as if Brian Cashman, having bought a Ferrari, a Lexus, and a Jetta to go along with his BMWs and Porches, decided his parking lot wouldn’t be complete without a used Mustang that leaks oil and a couple of rusted-out Buicks he can prop up on concrete blocks.

This isn’t exactly a new tendency. Think back to the Yanks’ postseason roster, which included Luis Sojo, Enrique Wilson and Clay Bellinger, plus Randy Velarde (as a hitter, a significant cut above all three). Having all of those glove men at the expense of a bat like Nick Johnson may have cost them their only shot at a rally in Game 2 of the World Series. Pinch-hitter Sojo, overmatched against Randy Johnson, grounded into an inning-ending double-play in the eighth.

Sojo had plans to retire after the World Series to return to Venezuela. With his World Series-winning hit in 2000, and two game-winning hits last season (including one against the Red Sox on June 4 which may have been the turning point of the season–Pedro Martinez didn’t win a game after that and the Red Sox were doomed), he’s among the unlikely heroes of this Yankee run (move over, Jim Leyritz, and tell Graeme Lloyd the news). If Looie’s not quite qualified for a plaque in Monument Park, he’s at least earned a Bobble-Head Doll day in his honor. But hold the festivities–the 36-year old infielder trapped in a third-base coach’s body recently reconsidered. Or maybe he was just misunderstood when he said he was retiring to the couch in his Venezuela home. Either way, he’s bound for spring training. One can only hope he ‘s kept in “shape” during “retirement.”

Just before Christmas, the Yanks signed 34-year old F. P. Santangelo to a minor-league deal. Once a versatile everyday utilityman, Futility Player Santangelo’s hitting has declined considerably over the past two seasons: .197 AVG/.321 OBP/.249 SLG. But he is good at drawing the occasional walk (a career .364 OBP despite a .245 AVG), and he can play the outfield. If he shows he can still hit to any extent, he may find a spot with the Yanks.

Wilson, a soft-handed 26-year old, re-signed the other day, to the tune of a one-year, $720,000 contract. God forbid they should let such a hot commodity escape. Once a highly-regarded prospect, he looks like he’s trying to beat Sojo in the bad-body sweepstakes, and he’s nearing his prime years still somewhat mystified by big league pitching.

On the day they signed Wilson, the Yanks released Bellinger, a favorite of mine. After ten years of bouncing around the minors, Bellinger made the club in 1999, and he’s stuck around because he’s been a model scrub. Playing seven different positions, pinch-running, hustling out of the dugout to warm up the pitcher after Jorge Posada made the last out, and riding the Columbus Shuttle whenever a roster move necessitated it, he’s been the organization’s human cannonball, and he’s earned his three trips to the World Series. When Scott Brosius went down in August with a broken hand, Bellinger stepped in ably, hitting four homer in ten games while playing some sparkling defense. But he’s 33, and still can’t hit big-league breaking balls. Still, here’s to hoping that he catches on someplace.

Just before they signed Wilson and released Bellinger, the Yanks also signed Manny Alexander to a minor-league contract. Alexander is best known for replacing Cal Ripken Jr. as the Orioles shortstop and for being connected to a load of anabolic steriods and syringes found in his car by Boston police in the summer of 2000. The police were unable to connect Alexander to the drugs (the car had been loaned out and he was on the road with the Sox), and the charges were dropped. Alexander spent last year playing AAA ball in the Mariners’ chain. He’s 30 years old, and has a chance to turn 31 before the season opens.

Concerned that they hadn’t yet found the right replacement-level ballplayer, the Yanks then invited Kevin Polcovich and a retired Kevin Elster to camp as non-roster players. Polcovich spent two years with the Pirates in 1997 and 1998. He didn’t charm them enough for a third shot. He spent last year in Memphis, with the Cardinals AAA team. Elster, the regular shortstop for the 1988 Mets (he even saw action in the 1986 World Series as a reserve), is coming out of his THIRD retirement. After laying off for all of 1993, he appeared with the Yanks in parts of two season, going 0-for 20 (!) in 1993 and 2-for-17 in 1994 (he did rebound from all of this to hit 24 homers as Texas’s regular shortstop in 1996). His comeback with the Dodgers in 2000 was much more successful; he showed surprising power, hitting three homers in the first game played at Pac Bell Park and finishing the year with a .455 slugging percentage and 14 homers. Still, his best days are behind him, and they ain’t all that great to begin with.

Taken together, it’s an uninspriring collection of players, though Santangelo sticks out in the chart below because of his high On Base Percentage:

             AGE   G   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS

Alexander    31  541 .234  .285  .328   613

Bellinger    33  181 .194  .258  .365   623

Elster       37  940 .228  .300  .377   677

Polcovich    32  165 .234  .307  .326   633

Santangelo   34  665 .245  .364  .351   715

Sojo         36  845 .261  .298  .353   651

Wilson       26  324 .264  .305  .364   669

The kicker is that by signing all of these guys, the Yanks may hinder the development of one of their own prospects. Erick Almonte (no relation to Danny), the Yanks AAA shortstop, had a fine season in Columbus (.287 AVG/.369 OBP/.464 SLG), and even got a taste of the Show in September. The 24-year old has more promise than any of the futilitymen above, and he could stick if there’s an injury. But he may be groomed for the D’Angelo Jiminez trade-fodder sweepstakes if the Yanks need help in July.

No doubt about it. March in Tampa is gearing up to be the site for the Futility Infielder sweepstakes. Stiff competition, or competition of stiffs? Don’t think I won’t keep you posted.

A few other notes:

• During the Hall of Fame ballot build-up, I discussed the merits of Jack Morris in this space, but ultimately I left him off my ballot. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Michael Wolverton does a good job of summarizing the case against Morris. Using a stat called Wins Above Replacement, which is based on the runs a pitcher allows relative to a park-adjusted league context, Wolverton places Morris well behind solid but unremarkable inning-eaters such as Rick Reuschel, Frank Tanana and Dennis Martinez, as well as more effective but shorter-lived pitchers like Dave Stieb and Jimmy Key. Wolverton also points out Morris’s high level of run support, but he doesn’t provide too much in the way of hard numbers on that topic.

• Jim Caple has a nice piece on one of the game’s lifers. Wayne Terwilliger, the 76-year-old first-base coach for the St. Paul Saints of the independent Northern League, is under consideration for the managing job in St. Paul. Twig’s spent 53 years in the game; he was in the Dodger dugout when Bobby Thomson hit his famous home run, and coaching first base for the Twins when Gene Larkin drove in the winning run in Game 7 of the ’91 World Series (winning pitcher: Jack Morris). Twig’s gotten himself a little publicity along the way–he’s the first player profiled in the classic Great American Baseball Card, Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book, and a key figure in Neal Karlen’s excellent book on the Saints, Slouching Towards Fargo. The St. Paul managerial job is contingent on a couple of leading candidates finding work elsewhere, so it may not come to pass. But it’s a pretty good bet he’ll still be hitting fungoes to St. Paul outfielders next summer nonetheless.

• A reader sent me an email last week, asking if I knew whether Rickey Henderson had retired or was still looking for work. I told him Rickey was still hitting the phones trying to drum up some interest (trust me, when Rickey retires, Rickey will tell you all about it), and suggested that a fifth and final go-round with the Oakland A’s might be in order. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way. Marcos Bréton, a writer for the Sacramento Bee, wrote a column calling for the A’s to sign Henderson, pointing out that they have a need for a true leadoff hitter and could use a connection to their glory days as well. Food for thought, given that Henderson’s .366 OBP at age 43 with the Padres was 31 points better than projected leadoff Terrence Long. Henderson could probably steal some at-bats from Long, DH David Justice and a recovering Jermaine Dye. The A’s are going to need all the help they can get this year in filling the void left by Jason Giambi’s departure. God knows they could do much worse than having the Best Leadoff Hitter Ever on hand.

The Jay Ballers of the World, Part I

Off and on over the past six months, I’ve been working on a piece about all of the ballplayers named Jay who have appeared in the major leagues. Thanks to the wonders of Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet, the Baseball Library and other sites around the web, I’ve compiled capsule histories of each of the 38 ballplayers who share my first name (even if it was actually their nickname). Part I covers the pitchers. Part II, which should be up in the next week, will cover the hitters. Enjoy!

A Banner Day

A set of banners which I designed for the Baseball-Reference.com website are now in place: the main banner, the banner from the player search results, and a link banner over at Baseball Primer. These are something I offered to do for Sean Forman’s fine site back during the summer, but the process became long and drawn out because both of us were so busy elsewhere within our own sites. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to finish them off. In fact, I think that was the only solid resolution I made. Maybe I should set the bar higher… nah.

It’s nice to see the banners finally in place; I hope those of you who use that site enjoy them–though I’m sure the few Red Sox fans among you are probably gritting your teeth at my choice of photos. That’s Babe Ruth, along with his stats from 1919 (his last year in Boston, when he hit a then-unthinkable 29 HRs) to 1927 (when he swatted 60 for the Yankees). At the time I did them, Sean and I discussed doing a series with other famous players as well, but the issue there is finding a photo we don’t have to pay for, not to mention one so instantly recognizable at such a small size. Not to say it won’t happen, but you Sox fans are going to have to grin and bear it for awhile, heh-heh.

It’s not something I’m planning on doing to pay my bills, but any of you out there who are interested in my services as a graphic designer, particularly for a baseball-related project, feel free to email me because I might be willing or interested. I get a kick out of having designed a piece of something I use almost every day–there’s baseball-reference.com, my own website, and, from the world of my paid job, the World Almanac 2002, for which I did the cover and photo inserts. Believe me, it beats some of the other stuff I have to design to pay the bills.

Clearing the Bases

Finally a chance to catch up on a few things without worrying about what’s going to be in Part III of the next continuing series:

• Ozzie Smith was the only player who garnered enough support to gain election to the Hall of Fame. While I had the Wizard on my ballot, the announcement that he was the only one to do so felt anticlimactic after all of the spirited debate I’ve partaken in online over the past few weeks. I have no beef with Oz making it–he was on my ballot. And I was marginally heartened by the support some of “my players” got. But I was disappointed others didn’t fare so well. Here’s a breakdown of the voting, sorted into three groups–the ones I voted for, the ones I considered but ultimately didn’t vote for, and the ones I didn’t even mention, all of whom except one fall off the ballot due to the 5% rule.

VOTED FOR: Ozzie Smith (91.7%), Gary Carter (72.7%), Andre Dawson (45.3%), Goose Gossage (43.0%), Tommy John (26.9%), Bert Blyleven (26.3%), Jim Kaat (23.1%), Alan Trammell (15.7%).

DIDN’T VOTE FOR: Jim Rice (55.1%), Bruce Sutter (50.4%), Steve Garvey (28.4%), Jack Morris (20.6%), Don Mattingly (20.3%), Luis Tiant (18.0%, falls off of the ballot after 15 years), Dale Murphy (14.8%), Dave Parker (14%), Keith Hernandez (6.1%), Ron Guidry (4.9%, falls off).

DIDN’T MENTION: Dave Concepcion (11.9%), Dave Stewart (4.9%), Mike Greenwell (0.4%), Frank Viola (0.4%), Lenny Dykstra (0.2%), Tim Wallach (0.2%), Mike Henneman, Jeff Russell, Scott Sanderson, Robby Thompson 0

I’m disappointed that Gary Carter didn’t get in; he missed by only eleven votes. Apparently his wife had planned a surprise party for him on the likelihood that he would get The Call; when it didn’t it really wrecked their day. Memo to Mrs. Carter: a greater catcher and better philosopher than your husband had some wisdom which applies here: “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.” Memo to Mrs. Mattingly: skip the cake.

Mrs. Carter and her husband can at least take solace in the fact that her husband showed the largest percentage gain of the holdover candidates, moving up almost 8 percent from last year (64.9%). Sutter (47.6% in 2001), Blyleven (23.5% ), Morris (19.6%), and Tiant (12.2%) showed gains; Tiant’s wasn’t enough, as he falls off the ballot. Perhaps he” do better at the hands of the new and improved (?) Veterans Committee

Several ballot holdovers saw their percentages fall, among them Rice (57.8 in 2001), Gossage (44.3%), Garvey (34.7%), John (28.3%), Mattingly (28.2%), Kaat (27.0%), Murphy (18.1%), Parker (16.3%), Concepcion, Stewart, and Guidry.

Sutter joins Carter and Rice in crossing the 50% threshold, which is very significant. Not counting the players on this ballot, 68 of 69 who have received 50% eventually were elected; the odd man out was Gil Hodges (these numbers are from a Baseball Primer poster named jimd, who did a quick study). Eighteen of those 69 were elected in the next year, 16 in the year after that.

That’s not to say that I think Sutter should have beaten Gossage across that line. I felt that Gossage was one of the three strongest candidates on my ballot, along with Smith and Carter. Blyleven, whom I’d have ranked fourth, came nowhere near 50%, except among egghead types [he placed third in the STATLG-L Hall of Fame voting at 63.4%; Smith (83.2%) and Carter (76.0%) got in there].

• The other big news in baseball these days is the revelation that So-Called Commissioner Bud Selig took out a loan from a bank owned by Twins owner Carl Pohlad a few years ago. If that rings a bell, it should, because Pohlad is the man who stands to gain hundreds of millions of dollars if Bud has his way and the Twins are contracted. The loan itself is relatively small potatoes ($3 million), and it was paid back with interest in a timely fashion, but it violated one of Major League Baseball’s rules, Rule 20 (c), which states: “No club or owner, stockholder, officer, director or employee (including manager or player) of a club shall, directly or indirectly, loan money to or become surety or guarantor for any club, officer, employee or umpire of its, his or her league, unless all facts of the transaction shall first have been fully disclosed to all other clubs in that league and also to the commissioner, and the transaction has been approved by them.”

Despite the obvious appearance of a conflict of interest, baseball owners don’t seem too concerned about Selig’s transgresssion. Bud’s best bud, White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf (a man who makes my skin crawl), takes a very interesting attitude towards the whole thing: “We have a lot of rules we don’t necessarily enforce all the time,” Reinsdorf said. “What is the big deal? …To me, it’s a like a cop sees a guy going 62 (mph) in a 55 zone. You let him go. What’s the harm?” I wish I’d passed by Officer Reinsdorf a bit more often back when I had a car.

On the other hand, three previous Commissioners were less charitable in their assessments. Fay Vincent, ousted by a Selig-Reinsdorf junta in 1992, decried, “It’s such a treacherous thing. It would raise in my mind all sorts of concerns.” Some of the senators forced to watch the Bud and Pony show last month in front of Congress felt similarly. Michigan Senator John Conyers called for Selig’s resignation, though he’s since backed off.

What’s amazing in all of this is the miraculous ineptitude of Selig. Between this loan and the backroom machinations behind the Red Sox sale, the smoking guns continue to turn up–with Selig’s fingerprints all over them and the driver’s license which fell out of his wallet as well. If Selig thought he was having a hard time selling the contraction/poverty stuff before, his sales job just got harder. This won’t lead directly to Bud’s ouster, but sooner or later the other owners are going to get tired of having the World’s Dumbest Liar giving them an even worse reputation, and they’ll realize that he’s part of the problem, not the solution.

• Part of my nice little just-celebrated birthday haul was baseball related. My friend Nick gave me “When It Was a Game,” a 3-DVD set which aired on HBO last summer (which I missed). All of the footage is from fans’ 8-and 16-mm home movies, and almost all of it is in color. I watched the first volume, which includes footage from 1937 to 1953, and some of it is jaw-droppingly spectacular–well preserved, with more than passable color. Seeing Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Dizzy Dean, Connie Mack, Judge Landis, Leo Durocher and others in this is like stepping into Oz. I half-thought some of these players’ natural complexions were gray before watching this. And the old ballparks… seeing color footage of old Yankee Stadium for the first time gave me goosebumps. There’s a there’s a ground-level shot up to the facade which is awesome. Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Fenway (with an advertising-covered, not Green, Monster), Wrigley Field (before the ivy coverred the outfield walls), Sportsman Park–they’re all here. So is footage from the 1938 World Series, believed to be the first color recording of any World Series. The voice-overs of the ballplayers are interesting, but the narration is flowery enough to make Ken Burns gag. Still, the footage is worth the price of admission.

My friend Lillie gave me a book entitled The Greatest Baseball Stories Ever Told. Edited by Jeff Silverman, the anthology includes writing by Roger Angell, Ring Lardner, Red Smith, John Updike, Red Barber, and others. There are transcripts of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” skit, Casey Stengel’s hilariously cryptic testimony before Congress, and Vin Scully’s call of the last inning of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game. Some of the other pieces are familiar–the Updike selection on Ted Williams and Gay Talese’s profile of Joe DiMaggio were selected for a book edited by David Halberstam called The Best American Sports Writing of the Century last year. A nice addition to my baseball library.

And my mother sent me a book called The World Series: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Fall Classic, by Josh Leventhal. This oversized book summarizes each series, and features great photos, detailed line scores for every game and composite box scores for every World Series through 2000, plus sections at the end on series records and an All-Star team. The endpapers alone are worth looking at–color reproductions of World Series program covers going back to at least 1907. Another one worth adding to the roster.

• Speaking of that Halberstam book, I went to a book signing at Barnes and Noble when it appeared last year and had the opportunity to have Halberstam, Talese, George Plimpton, Ira Berkow, and Dick Schaap sign my copy. I was saddened and somewhat shaken to learn that Schaap passed away just before Christmas. He was one of the finest sportswriters of all, a man ahead of his time who saw the way the Civil Rights movement would change the face of sports. I have fond memories of reading and re-reading Instant Replay, the as-told-to diary of Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer, which I read before I’d gotten my hands on Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. It remains one of my favorite sports books. I’m glad I had the opportunity to oh-so-briefly tell Schaap how much the book meant to me. He was one of a kind, and he’ll be missed.

• Speaking of passings, Bruce Markusen of the Baseball Hall of Fame does a very respectful and respectable job of chronicling all of the baseball-related people who died in 2001 in this piece over at Baseball Primer. From Willie Stargell and Eddie Mathews to Lawrence “Crash” Davis and Brian Cole, each of them left some kind of mark on the game. Worth a read.

• One passing which didn’t make the list because it happened in the new year was that of Al Smith, an American League outfielder from the 1950s. Though he was a solid player (.272 AVG, 164 HRs, two All-Star appearances in 12 years), you probably know him best from a famous photo. He’s the poor outfielder who got beer spilled on his head in a 1959 World Series game following a home run. The spill wasn’t intentional–the fan was going after the home-run ball, off the bat of Dodger Charlie Neal. It’s not a great claim to fame, but it’s certainly one of the most memorable sports photos of all time. Your 15 minutes should be so rich.