Paying Tribute

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I’ve been thinking about Jackie Robinson lately, and not just because today is the 60th anniversary of his major league debut, the momentous occasion that broke the big leagues’ color barrier and changed the face of this country. Recently I stumbled across a monument to another key step in Robinson’s journey, and over the winter he popped up in two seasonal narratives I wrote for the forthcoming It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over: the Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book.

Robinson wasn’t an active player in either of those chapters, one on the 1959 NL race and the other on the 1967 AL race, but telling either story was impossible without him. One can’t talk about the Dodgers’ success just prior to 1959 without noting the jump they got on the rest of the NL by leading the way in integration. Still based in Brooklyn, the Dodgers won six NL pennants during Robinson’s ten-year career (1947-1956). Such was the surplus of black players they signed that they seeded other teams with talent. For example, Sam Jethroe (1950 NL Rookie of the Year) and Jim Pendleton were both traded to the Braves, and Roberto Clemente was lost to the Pirates in the Rule 5 draft. Key members of the 1959 Los Angeles team like Johnny Roseboro, Charlie Neal, and Maury Wills spent five to eight years in the minors waiting their turns, not even cracking the starting lineup until the team moved across the country.

As for 1967, one can’t explain the Red Sox’s nearly two decades of futility leading up to that point without digging into the franchise’s shameful history of racism. The Sox were the last team to integrate, not doing so until July 21, 1959 via infielder Pumpsie Green, but ironically, the club actually had first crack at Robinson. On April 16, 1945 — a day short of two years prior to his major-league debut — the Sox granted Robinson, Jethroe, and Marvin Williams a tryout at Fenway Park. That tryout was the result of some political hardball by Boston city councilman Isadore Muchnick, who threatened to block the team’s “Blue Law” waiver (required so they could play ball on Sundays in Boston) unless they were willing to consider black players. As the coaches worked the three players through their tryout, the Red Sox brass — owner Tom Yawkey, GM Eddie Collins and manager Joe Cronin, all with long histories of racist actions under their belts — looked on in disinterest. One account even had one of those three yelling, “Get those niggers off the field!”

Ultimately the Red Sox judged the players not to be of major-league caliber. Yet six months after the tryout, Branch Rickey drove a golden spike into the Gentlemen’s Agreement which prevented clubs from signing black players by signing Robinson to play for the Dodgers’ Montreal club the following year.

I knew little about the Boston tryout until I began researching the chapter, but its details, as well as the various dark incidents that followed in its wake over the next decade and a half — a sight-unseen dismissal of Willie Mays, at whom they also had first crack, manager Pinky Higgins’ declaration that “There will never be any niggers on this team as long as I have anything to say about it,” and the general tolerance for intolerance that prevailed among the coterie of drunk racists who ran the Sox — are recounted to great effect by Glenn Stout in Red Sox Century and Howard Bryant in Shut Out: a Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. The happy side of the story for the Sox is that by 1967, the influence of GM Dick O’Connell — the first non-crony to handle the team during Yawkey’s thirty-plus years of ownership — had resulted in the development of George Scott, Joe Foy, and Reggie Smith, three homegrown black regulars in the lineup, as well as the acquisition of top reliever John Wyatt and, later in the year, reserve catcher Elston Howard. All played parts in the team’s 1967 pennant. Only by catching up to the times were the Sox able to succeed.

Back to Robinson, to mark the anniversary, more than 200 players, including six entire teams, will wear his number 42, which was retired leaguewide a decade ago (Mariano Rivera is the only still-active player among those who were allowed to wear 42 under a grandfather clause). The gesture, which began when Ken Griffey Jr. personally requested a dispensation to wear the number, has evoked criticism from a number of different angles. Among players, Torii Hunter spoke out that the number of those wearing 42 diluted the significance, while some writers have pointed out that the the Astros, one of the teams slated to blanked the field with the number, don’t have a single African-American player.

All of which points to the awkward timing of the anniversary. According to recent reports, just nine percent of players on major league Opening Day rosters were African-American. That’s down from 17 percent a decade ago and from a peak of 27 percent in 1975. Worse, it’s less than the 2005 U.S. Census estimate that 12.25 percent of this country’s population is African-American. At the management level, things are even more dire. Willie Randolph and Ron Washington are the only African-American managers, and Kenny Williams the only African-American GM. Laments that baseball is losing the inner-city African American athletes to the NFL (66 percent black) and NBA (77 percent black) abound. That’s the result of 60 years of progress? Hardly good news.

At the same time, overall minority representation on baseball’s playing fields offers a more encouraging picture. According to 2006 figures from Richard Lapchick of the the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, 29.4 percent of major leaguers were Hispanic, while 2.4 percent of them were Asian. Combined minority representation in rosters was 40.5 percent last year, down from the all-time high of 42 percent established in 1997. But outside the lines, the numbers continue to languish even if the management count is expanded to include minority managers (Manny Acta, Fredi Gonzalez, and Ozzie Guillen) and GMs (Omar Minaya).

I don’t have the prescription to right the wrongs of minority representation within the game any more than the likes of Peter Gammons, Buster Olney, or any other pundit do. But here’s a suggestion: instead of these awkward decennial tributes on April 15, make Jackie Robinson Day into an annual event that benefits the Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) initiative. MLB funds RBI at a paltry level of about $1 million a year, which isn’t going to go very far. By my back-envelope calculations, if every team donated its April 15 gate receipts, at an average ticket price of $22.21 and an average attendance of 31,307 (both numbers based on last year’s figures), that’s $10.4 million leaguewide, a huge leg up for a worthwhile program that can help baseball reassert its capacity to lead rather than follow, and to gain some of the ground it’s losing to other sports.

But bemoaning the current shape of things shouldn’t dominate this anniversary. Instead we should remember Robinson’s excellence as a player, his incredible courage and grace under pressure in overcoming the obstacles that were put in his path, and the way baseball led the nation on the issue of integration. Robinson’s debut preceded landmark moments such as the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling by seven years, Rosa Parks’ bus ride by eight years, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing discrimination based on race color, religion, sex or national origin by 17 years. Jackie Robinson was ahead of his time.

What Robinson did starting 60 years ago today was nothing short of heroic on a level that transcended baseball, and all of sport. It may sound like a hoary cliché, but he showed how one person can make a difference, and that’s a story that should never get old.

So it Goes

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First things first: this site turned six years old on Monday, and as with last year’s milestone, I was too busy to stop and serve notice via this blog. Yes, I wish I’d had the time to bake myself a cake, but I’m hardly complaining. The busyness has become business, and the idea that I could make it through an entire offseason gainfully employed while writing about baseball is something I wouldn’t have believed back in 2001. I thank all of you reading this who helped make it possible.

Moving right along, the first Hit List of the regular season is up over at Baseball Prospectus. It’s a new time slot, chosen to maintain some domestic harmony (my wife puts up with a lot of writing-induced tunnel vision over the winter, and clearing my schedule for her days off was overdue) and to prevent me having to punt so many of these puppies due to summer weekend travels. Hopefully, it’s not quite so counterintuitive as it appears at first glance. Thursday is often an off day for many teams, which helps with turnaround times as far as keeping the list’s stats fresh, and Friday marks the end of the work week for most readers, plus it’s traditionally a day when BP has been somewhat light in the content department.

The Mets top the list this week, followed by the Indians, Padres, Angels and Brewers — a nice mix of teams thanks to the early date. The Yanks are eighth, the Dodgers are 14th, and the 30th-ranked Nationals look like they may give the ’62 Mets a run for their money. No Simpsons reference in this week’s list (d’oh!), but I did get to call upon Sesame Street, Samuel Beckett, Sam Horn, the Sausage Race, and Slaughterhouse-Five.

The last was intentionally topical, since Kurt Vonnegut passed away on Wednesday, and discussions of his demise dotted my conversations and my web reading as I prepared this week’s list. The first Vonnegut novel I ever read was as an assignment, but it wasn’t for an English class; Galapagos‘ take on the future of human evolution was required reading for my introductory biology class at Brown (and I note with pride that my professor for that class, Dr. Kenneth Miller, has become a high-profile opponent of creationism who maintains that evolution doesn’t contradict religious faith). That Vonnegut would wind up on the Bio 20 syllabus wasn’t all that surprising; the brother of a prominent scientist, Vonnegut’s commitment to science was a key tenet of his worldview. Such were his politics that he noted just prior to the 2004 election, “No matter which one wins, we will have a Skull and Bones President at a time when entire vertebrate species, because of how we have poisoned the topsoil, the waters and the atmosphere, are becoming, hey presto, nothing but skulls and bones.”

I didn’t really get hip to Vonnegut until a friend slid me a musty, dog-eared copy of Breakfast of Champions about a decade ago. How I missed Slaughterhouse when I was such a fan of Catch-22 I’ll never know. Vonnegut quickly became one of my favorite novelists and cultural presences. His anti-authoritarian stance, economical style, black humor and ultimately his humanity made for an unmistakable voice that elevated even his most minor works, while placing his major ones among the greatest novels ever written, period. I don’t recall him ever writing about baseball, but I’ve appropriated the title of alter ego Kilgore Trout’s novel, Now It Can Be Told, more than a few times here and in the Hit List.

If you’re ever stuck in an airport bookstore without reading material for a flight ahead, grab a Vonnegut novel; it’s the surest bet there is for a few laughs and some deep thought at 30,000 feet. His is a voice that will be truly missed. As the man liked to say, “So it goes.”

Open Season (Part II)

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(continued from here)

Prior to stepping out on Wednesday night, I touched base with Alex Belth, and we mutually derided anyone insane enough to sit through the cold weather of early-season contests. “I’m happy to tough it out in October…” declared Alex. Agreeing, I completed his thought: “But now? Fuck it.”

I was quickly forced to contemplate eating my words when Jonah Keri offered me a bleacher ticket to Thursday night’s Yankees-Devil Rays tilt. Not knowing that temperatures would graze the freezing point and that snow (!) would be swirling throughout the stadium in a sloppy, disheartening affair that saw the Yankees blow two leads and squander a valiant comeback in Andy Pettitte’s abbreviated first appearance in pinstripes since 2003, I readily agreed. After all, attending a ballgame with a friend from out of town, particularly a witty and perceptive fellow writer like Jonah, is a rare treat. So what the hell, right?

Bundled up with a winter jacket (with broken zipper, alas) scarf, gloves, and counterfeit Yankees logo ski hat, I randomly wound up in the same 4-train car as Jonah at 59th Street, and we talked career moves, book proposals and Scoresheet drafts on our way up to the Stadium. Funny thing about that is that last year, on the way out to the Yogi Berra Museum for Baseball Prospectus’ big panel appearance, our BP posse missed our New Jersey Transit stop because of a lengthy conversation centered around Jonah’s various drafts, and I’ve been mock-badmouthing him ever since, my motto — “nobody wants to hear about your fantasy team” — amended to “nobody wants to hear about your fantasy draft.” Be that as it may, Jonah is the one who invited me to fill his slot in this league (NL Neifi), which was organized by Salon’s King Kaufman. More of my own words to eat.

The line to enter the bleachers more or less stretching back to the 149th Street/Grand Concourse subway stop, we missed the anthem, the lineups, the ovation for Pettitte and the entire top of the first, but arrived in time to see the Yanks put the first run on the board. Robinson Cano, batting leadoff in the absence of Johnny Damon, reached on an infield single off Jae Seo and then scored on a two-out double off the rightfield wall by Alex Rodriguez. The Rays tied the score in the second when Akinori Iwamura, Tampa Bay’s Japanese-imported third baseman, worked a two-out walk off of a very labored Pettitte, advanced to second on an infield single by B.J. Upton (Cano bobble the ball, but it was ruled a hit), and scored on a single by Josh Paul. The Rays nearly got a second run when Upton took third on a wild pitch (the first of what felt like seventeen on the night but was officially tallied at four plus a passed ball), Carl Crawford walked, and then Upton was thrown out at home when another pitch bounced away from Posada, who threw to Pettitte at the plate in time.

The Rays took a 2-1 lead in the third when Ben Zobrist reached on a Derek Jeter error, advanced to second on Posada’s passed ball (you getting the idea yet?), stole third, and scored on a single by Delmon Young. The Yanks delivered a body blow to Seo in the fourth. They’d been swinging at first pitches and getting burned into making meager contact thus far, but here they got a break. Hideki Matsui hit a sharp grounder that required first baseman Ty Wigginton to make a diving stop; Wiggy’s throw trailed Seo and produced a collision that found Matsui safe. At least I think that’s how it happened; sitting in the unfamiliar territory of the bleachers, where the action is so far away, I always feel half a second behind whatever is going on.

Posada followed with a sharp single to left, and Doug Mientkiewicz, of all people, dunked an RBI single into shallow center as Jonah and I made light of his offensive contributions (including my sushi bet with Steven Goldman). A Melky Cabrera groundout put two runners into scoring position; Cano picked Posada up on another dunked single to center, and then Stinky Minky crossed the plate when Derek Jeter beat out a potential 5-4-3 double-play grounder. Jeter was promptly caught stealing to end the threat.

Pettitte had recorded his first and only 1-2-3 inning in the fourth, but the Rays juggernaut stormed back in the fifth. Crawford beat out an infield hit to first, and took second on a bunt single by Zobrist, with a throwing error Minky tacking on a base for the speedy Crawford. That ended Pettitte’s inefficient evening after just 83 pitches (I later learned that he was on a pitch count of 90 given the cold and his recent back spasms). Scott Proctor came on, and after the Yanks conceded a swipe of second base to Zobrist so as to hold Crawford at third, a Wigginton sacrifice fly brought the speedster home. He was followed in short order by Zobrist when Proctor uncorked a wild pitch, and after Young reached on a throwing error by Jeter, he was nabbed stealing second on a questionable call. Tied at four, with all of the runs charged to Mr. Pettitte’s room.

Elijah Dukes, who homered in his first major-league at-bat on Opening Day, hit another one out to open the top of the sixth, this one a frozen rope — and I do mean frozen — that barely cleared the fence. Singles by Iwamura and Paul chased Proctor in favor of Mike Myers, who yielded a single to Crawford to give the Rays a 6-4 lead.

The falling temperature thinned out the bleacher crowd. Struggling to keep warm, Jonah and I compared notes on numbed extremities (literally; from Jonah’s writeup for ESPN Page 2):

Second inning: Really, really cold
Fourth inning: Teeth chattering, knees knocking
Sixth inning: Lost all feeling in toes

With obstructing the views of fans behind us no longer an issue, we at least were able to stand up, thereby removing our frozen asses from the metal benches, but the departures also removed the bodies who buffered the worst of the wind. Though we threatened to leave after every half-inning thereafter, the potential for column fodder continued to grow; we shifted into martyrdom mode as stray snowflakes began fluttering.

Snow. At the Stadium. In April. On the out-of-town scoreboard, noting that the Tigers-Blue Jays game in Detroit had been called off earlier in the day due to cold weather, we questioned the fortitude of the defending AL champions. “Pussies,” we agreed.

The Yanks tied the score in the seventh on a pair of one-out singles by Jeter and Bobby Abreu (the first of which chased Seo in favor of Ruddy Lugo), a two-out walk to Jason Giambi (who yielded to pinch-runner Miguel Cairo), and then a two-run single by Matsui. Frigid despite the excitement, I wondered aloud as to the propriety of setting a trash fire in the sparsely-populated bleachers. With the wind howling, it seemed like a bad idea.

Luis Vizcaino came on in the eighth and promptly stank up the joint. A double by Iwamura, a single by Upton, and then ANOTHER DAMN WILD PITCH put the Rays up 7-6. As Vizcaino escaped without furthering the damage, snow began swirling, blanketing the stadium in an eerie, surreal atmosphere. I snapped a few pictures with my cellphone’s Crappicam(TM), but they don’t do it justice:

Meahnwhile, the Yanks looked as though they were doing the voodoo that they do so well. Stinky walked but was erased on a bad bunt by Melky, but Cano followed with a single. Jeter grounded back to reliever Brian Stokes, who inexplicably threw — wide — to third, loading the bases with just one out and the heart of the order coming up. Lunchtime, right?

But no. Abreu grounded meekly into a fielder’s choice that forced Cabrera at home, and then A-Rod popped out meekly to second. The remaining Bleacher Creatures, who’d cheered Rodriguez’s RBI double in the first, turned into boo birds, predictably speculating about the third baseman’s recent sexual congresses and future in pinstripes. The crowd thinned.

Eighth inning: Horizontal blowing snow!
Ninth inning: My friend Jay died from exposure. I ate him for warmth.

Reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated; it was the Yankee offense that perished in the cold. Former Yank Al Reyes, who missed nearly all of last season while recovering from Tommy John surgery but improbably nabbed the Rays’ vacant closer role, set Josh Phelps, Matsui and Posada down in order in the ninth inning. Just the type of game the Bronx Bombers almost invariably steal from the Rays, but on this night, the blue plate special was a cold dish of revenge.

All in all, a brutal SufferFest of a night for baseball that only a masochist could endure. Even the rightfielders drectly in front of us, Abreu and Young, were visibly struggling, wth the latter keeping his right hand in his back pocket whenever possible (a source of much colorful discourse from the bleacher crowd). And I have to admit that with the exception of watching a ton of bad baseball and losing the circulation in my toes, I had a blast. Joe Sheehan, replying to my quick summary on BP’s internal mailing list, summed up my evening in less than 20 words:

“Sitting in the Yankee Stadium bleachers watching the Devil Rays in the snow” is basically the gold standard for “baseball fan.”

Kiss my ass, Murray Chass.

Open Season (Part I)

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It was often said that Manny Mota could roll out of bed on Christmas Day and get a base hit. On Monday, I discovered that I could roll out of bed on Opening Day and do coherent radio for a couple hours, ten minutes at a time. From 7:30 AM until just before 10:00, I did a series of nine radio hits all around the country with various Fox News Radio affiliates who wanted to discuss the new season with a Baseball Prospectus author.

Amped on half a pot of coffee, I talked baseball with WTAM in Cleveland, WERC in Birmingham, Alabama, WILS in Lansing, Michigan, WOOD in Grand Rapids, Michigan, WLOB in Portland, Maine, WGST in Atlanta, WOAI in San Antonio, KODY in North Platte, Nebraska, KVI in Seattle. No sooner would one call end than I’d be picking up the phone for the next one, talking about how I like Oliver Perez at the back end of the Mets rotation, think the Mariners made two of the worst trades this winter, and can’t wait to watch Daisuke Matsuzaka. It was exhilarating, and between all of the other radio and promotional appearances I’ve done this spring plus my preseason predictions and the debut of this year’s Hit List, not the least bit intimidating. For every team and every division, I had my talking points down cold. It felt like connecting with batting practice fastballs once you’ve gotten the timing down. I was in the zone. And oddly enough, I even heard from a couple of long-forgotten college classmates around the country who just happened to tune in at that moment and then decided to drop me a line.

Most importantly, the 2007 baseball season is upon us. Plugging away at my final Fantasy Baseball Index spring update, I didn’t have the luxury of sitting still to watch either Sunday night’s Mets-Cardinals affair or Monday’s Yankee opener, but the magic of TiVo allowed me to get the gist of both. On Tuesday I made my first foray into MLB.tv’s Mosaic, as it appeared that would be the only way to see out-of-market ballgames this year; I watched the Dodgers cough up a 3-2 lead on Kevin Mench’s two-run homer, and sampled a few other games from the West Coast, impressed at the software’s integration with the Mac OS X platform but exasperated by the glitchy sound cutouts and the between-innings Pong bleeps.

I didn’t get to see any baseball Wednesday night; instead I went out to see Steven Goldman and Jonah Keri read at the Gelf Magazine Varsity Letters series, where both deviated from the script to read something a bit less… Prospectus-y than BP07 and Baseball Between the Numbers. Steve read some passages from Forging Genius, including my suggestion of the story where Casey Stengel, manager of the Worcester franchise in the Eastern League, sent a letter to Charles D. Stengel, club president of said franchise, requesting that he be freed from his contract so that he could take a better job with the Toledo Mud Hens; president Stengel wrote back, acceding to the manager’s surprising request. Jonah read his farewell to the Expos piece from BP as well as a segment from BBTN on Derek Jeter’s defense. Also speaking were Cor van den Heuvel, who in three seperate (and somewhat interminable) interludes offered a number of baseball haiku, and Curt Smith, who read from The Voice, his biography of Mel Allen, the famed voice of the Yankees and “This Week in Baseball,” making a case for Allen as the greatest sports announcer of all time (my nickel goes to Vin Scully on that score, but I’ll grant that Smith may have a point). Afterwards, accompanied by Derek Jacques and Jonah’s friend Dave, we went out to dinner, and en route, Derek received an email from a BP colleague telling us the wonderful news: MLB and In Demand struck a deal to keep the Extra Innings package on cable TV.

That happy news meant that on Thursday afternoon, free from deadlines for the first time since, like, October (yes, I made it through an entire offseason gainfully employed from baseball writing, how about that?), I was free to kick back with the Extra Innings showing of Matsuzaka’s major league debut against the Royals, with a compelling pitcher on the other end, too: Zack Greinke, making his first big-league start since September 2005 after missing most of last season due to what was termed a social anxiety disorder. For seven innings this turned out to be a hell of a pitcher’s duel, though the 36-degree weather and ump Jeff Nelson’s wide strike zone had something to do with that.

The Sox scratched out a run in the top of the first against Greinke, with Manny Ramirez doubling home Kevin Youkilis. But even then, Greinke looked promising; the double was sandwiched by backwards-K strikeouts of both David Ortiz and J.D. Drew, with Big Papi especially stunned. Matsuzaka, after surrendering a leadoff single to David DeJesus and then his only walk of the afternoon, needed a double play to escape the first unscathed. He got his first major-league strikeout on a 94-MPH fastball that fooled Ross Gload to end the second, and wound up ringing up 10 hitters, including the entire side in the fourth on a mere 14 pitches.

Matsuzaka’s motion (dissected by Will Carroll over at MLB.com) was interesting, featuring a pause at the top of his windup that was noticeable but less pronounced than, say, Hideo Nomo. He went as high as 95 on the gun, but changed speeds effectively with a changeup, a splitter, and three or four breaking pitches, one of which may have been the fabled gyroball (the New York Sun‘s Tim Marchman does a nice job of describing his repertoire). Sick stuff that will give hitters fits this year, guaranteed.

Greinke, in a heartening comeback, struck out seven himself, including Ortiz twice more (once looking, once half-assedly swinging). But his defense let him down in the fifth, as the Sox doubled their lead when Julio Lugo doubled, stole third, and scored on a throwing error by John Buck. The Royals didn’t score in the bottom of the inning, but K.C. phenom third baseman Alex Gordon led off the frame with his first major-league hit, a sharp single to leftfield. They got on the board in the sixth when DeJesus led off the inning with a solo homer to rightfield, and they should have tied the game shortly after. Esteban German singled to follow DeJesus, and then was thrown out at the back end of a strikeout-throwout double play — which was immediately followed by an Emil Brown double that shoulda coulda woulda tied the game. Gordon struck out looking to end the frame, and that was that. The lines for the two starters wound up looking impressively similar: 

        IP  H  R ER BB  SO  NP-St
Dice-K   7  6  1  1  1  10 108-74
Greinke  7  8  2  1  1   7 101-64

With Greinke done for the day, Royals reliever Joel Peralta instantly surrendered two runs in the eighth, and Boston’s Jonathan Papelbon came on to close the door in the ninth, more or less completing the checklist of what to watch for. Not too bad for a Thursday afternoon.

(to be continued)

Clearing the Bases

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Hola amigos, been awhile since I rapped at ya, at least in this forum. The past week and a half has been a whirlwind: four promotional appearances on behalf of Baseball Prospectus 2007 in such exotic places as New Haven, Montclair, New Jersey and the Columbia University campus, five radio appearances in markets such as Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, and wherever it is that gets Sirius’ “The Fellas,” (which completes my sweep of the satellite radio networks), one article for BP’s preseason “Hope and Faith” series (with an accompanying BP Radio interview), about 16,000 words worth of Fantasy Baseball Index spring update coverage, and the chance to break bread or bend elbows with a fine bunch of BP colleagues and assorted friends. Oh, and one sushi bet on the length of Doug Mientkiewicz’s leash. Suffice it to say that I’ve talked a lot of baseball since you last saw me here. If you came out to see or tuned in to hear me, so much the better — and thank you for showing up.

About that “Hope and Faith” piece, the idea was to take Bud Selig’s deathless catchphrase from the 2001-2002 labor negotiations about how few teams actually had a chance to win it all, and to illustrate — sometimes with the aid of fiction or pharmaceuticals — how that particular team might win the World Series. I had one of the easier ones, the Dodgers:

As you’ve seen throughout the past month here at Baseball Prospectus, hope and faith is not distributed evenly among major league baseball clubs. Some teams’ shots at October are relatively straightforward, while for others, the fine writers who have graced this series have often need to wax creative or even wander in the desert under the influence of peyote-like substances to summon the requisite visions of champagne-soaked glory.

The Dodgers would appear to fall into the former category. In General Manager Ned Colletti’s first year at the helm, the team won the NL Wild Card despite a wildly up-and-down season. But for a few bad breaks (such as the beer glass that sliced up Joe Beimel’s hand) and assorted aches (Nomar Garciaparra’s hamstring, Brad Penny’s back), they might have played ball deep into October. Salve a few wounds, spackle a few dings and cracks, paint liberally with Dodger blue and–voilà–contender, right?

Not so fast. As has been the case since the moment he took over, Colletti spent the past winter confounding both admirers and detractors with his wheelings and dealings. One minute he was overcompensating for J.D. Drew’s abrupt departure by re-upping Garciaparra to a two-year deal, drawing ridicule for dishing out one of the winter’s worst contracts to Juan Pierre, and signing a Luis Gonzalez so long in the tooth he could be mistaken for Bugs Bunny. The next minute, he was earning kudos for inking Jason Schmidt to the kind of short-term, big-dollar deal that has served the team’s interests well with regards to Rafael Furcal and Jeff Kent. Other good news? Non-tendering Toby Hall, and… um… avoiding the temptation to trade Matt Kemp, Andy LaRoche, and Chad Billingsley to the Devil Rays in a package deal for the bleached bones of Doug Waechter and a pair of unwashed Mark Hendrickson lederhosen (the Rays won’t accept a return to sender on Hendrickson himself).

I went on to identify four players and one executive whose seasons will be the bellwether of the Dodgers’ fate. For Brad Penny and Nomar Garciaparra, the key is to stay healthy and provide more of the good stuff they gave the Dodgers when healthy last year, and — duh — less of the bad. For Matt Kemp and Chad Billingsley, the key is to live up to all that potential and force their way into the lineup or rotation, burying the mediocrities by the wayside. For Ned Colletti, it’s staying away from his “Stupid Flanders” tendency to burn off high-upside prospects for the next Toby Hall/Hendrickson package.

You can hear the accompanying BP Radio spot I did for this piece here. And be sure to check out Rany Jazayerli’s fantastic finale to the H&F series here.

• Speaking of Toby Hall, man, did I put the hex on him or what?

• Alex Belth chipped in the Yankees’ Hope and Faith piece, but the Belth piece you should really read is his interview with Curt Schiling at SI.com. For all of the bad things I’ve said about Schilling over the years — and there have been plenty — I have to applaud the way his new blog does an end run around the Dan Shaughnessys of the world, the self-important insiders whose only real skill, at this point, is knowing how to procure a press pass. Schilling more or less broke the news about the Sox returning Jonathan Papelbon to the closer role, and you know some of those hacks had to break out in a cold sweat, knowing they were just a little bit less relevant than before.

The Big Schill even stuck up for BP in one question:

SI.com: Do you think that Internet-based baseball analysts and writers should be available for BBWAA awards and Hall of Fame voting?

Schilling: Oh, it’ll come full-circle at some point. Why wouldn’t it? They already have a much larger impact than the Murray Chass’ of the world would like to believe. I mean, you’ve got guys who are putting out what I know to be legitimately valuable statistical information and its relevance to a game in a win or a loss at Baseball Prospectus. Then you have guys that I’m not too fond of, like Murray Chass, who says, “What is VORP and who cares?” It was a stupid article. The only thing it did was show his ignorance to me in modern day baseball. Because those numbers do matter, those numbers do have value. Do they have value to me in getting a player out? No. But I would tell you that there are a lot of front offices that use those numbers for a lot of important decision making.

I’m not so sure that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but Schilling’s going to have to work extra hard to make my blood boil the way he usually does. I’ll wager he can pull it off.

• Tangential to Alex B., Allen Barra makes his debut as a guest blogger at Bronx Banter, and part of the pleasure of reading his very entertaining piece is that after sitting across the table from him after BP’s recent outing at the Yogi Berra Museum, I can practically hear him reciting it:

Hello. Some of you may know me as Allen Barra. Some of you may know me under my pseudonyms, Norman Mailer — check out The Naked and The Dead, it kicks butt — or Eleanor Holmes-Norton, the black congresswoman from D.C — I’m thinking of giving up that identity as it forces me to do too much writing from the bleachers while watching Nationals games.

I promised Alex Belth that I would do this blog, so here I am. I wanted to call him up this morning and say, “I’m not responsible for the decisions I make when I’ve been drinking.” But then the horrible truth struck me: I don’t drink, and I actually made the decision to do this while sober. This has to rank with the worst decisions I ever made in my life, right up there with not returning Angelina Jolie’s phone call.

Bemoan that though he may, Barra must have eventually returned Ms. Jolie’s call, because in the handful of times I’ve hung out with him, he’s always got a new story about hanging out with her (my favorite is the one about this photo). I wonder if she’s a baseball fan.

• Elsewhere on Baseball Toaster, I stumbled into the wonderful Cardboard Gods blog and killed a good hour laughing my ass off. I’ve read and re-read the most recent Kurt Bevacqua entry, where writer Josh Wilker notes the horrible airbrushing done to the Mariners’ expansion draftees in the 1977 Topps set and imagines the new team materializing just beyond the blurry horizon, like figures in a classic Leone western but trapped in some horrible existential limbo. “I think we’re in a horseshit operation,” grumbles the Bevacqua character to the Pete Broberg character, and you know it’s going to be a long eternity for both.

For Pete’s Sake

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Having already established that the good folks at Yanksfan Vs. Soxfan have fine taste in interview subjects, today the blog offers a tête- à-tête with Peter Abraham. Abraham covers the Yankees beat for the Westchester Journal News, but it’s his accompanying Lohud Yankees Blog which sets him apart from most other beat reporters by providing a more spontaneous and often more candid take on the pinstriped team.

Abraham’s long been ahead of the curve when it comes to blogging. Three years ago, he interviewed me among 27 New York-area bloggers for a lengthy feature on the medium’s growing influence:

[Alex] Belth and many other bloggers were first inspired by Aaron Gleeman, Jay Jaffe and David Pinto, the Willie, Mickey and the Duke of this fledgling genre. They were among the first and are now three of the best-read bloggers.

Jaffe, 34, started “Futility Infielder” three years ago. Once primarily a Yankees blog, he has branched out to cover all baseball.

“I developed a penchant for lengthy lunchtime e-mails involving stat-based baseball arguments. My friends invited me to leave them alone and start a blog,” he said via e-mail. “The rest is history. I don’t watch very much TV, besides ballgames, or see many movies since I started doing this. I’ve always got a couple of ideas I’m working on, even if only in my head, to the point where it’s become like the music of my mind.”

A question about said feature leads off the YFSF interview, but the meatier stuff comes in further down:

YFSF: What do you see happening with the Yankees post-Steinbrenner, and how close are we to that time (or are we already there)? What are your impressions of Steve Swindal?

PA: I think we are already at the post-Steinbrenner phase. His health is one of the most closely guarded stories in sports and that is obviously because it is fading. I believe that Brian Cashman, Randy Levine and Steve Swindal make 95 percent of the decisions and once George gives up his title or passes away, Swindal will be the man in charge with Cashman at his side. I like Steve a lot, his recent arrest aside. I think he will do what is right. But I don’t believe you’ll see the Yankees with a payroll $50 million higher than any other team.

YFSF: You’ve been fairly critical of the Boston moves this off-season. Do you see them falling behind the Jays again?

PA: I think Boston’s offense is a house of cards. They’re relying far too much on second-tier players in important positions. J.D. “Nancy” Drew will be a terrible fit. That said, they have great starters and it’s all about pitching. But how do you go into the season without a closer?

Nancy Drew — gotta kick myself for not coming up with that one, even though I don’t think the Sox’s new rightfielder will have much trouble adjusting to Boston. Abraham does have a point in that the Sox probably should have made a few other upgrades, particularly at first base, where Kevin Youkilis is really not much better than a league average.

Anyway, check out the interview, and check out Pete’s blog, which recently celebrated its one-year anniversary.

Update: I knew I forgot something… last summer Pete did a fine “Designated Hitter” piece for the Baseball Analysts website on Joe Torre’s facility with the media and his ability to conjure a story for any occasion. Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Three B’s

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• After 12 years of living in the East Village, I’m Brooklyn-bound. On Thursday, my wife and I signed a contract and put down a deposit on a 1,250-square foot apartment in downtown Brooklyn, one that will allow me to have a dedicated home office AND keep a room in reserve for a Jaffe To Be Named Later, not that we’re “expecting” yet. The unit is still under construction and we won’t close for at least a couple of months, but it’s a very exciting development even if it does take us out of Manhattan. Most of our friends have long since moved to Brooklyn, and we desperately need the space, as we’re coming up on four years in a 450-square foot apartment that requires us to go outside to change our minds. The downtown Brooklyn area is a bit raw at the moment (which is what made our space so affordable), but with a ton of civic planning in the pipeline, it’s set to undergo a major facelift over the next few years.

In other words, we’re now carpet-bagging, gentrification-chasing scum. Ask me how I feel about that when I won’t have to double-stack books on my bookshelves or schlep a good quarter of my stuff into storage. Ask my wife how she’ll feel when she’s able to shut the door to my office and avoid the ever-growing pile of books, magazines, mail, computer cables and assorted whatever that’s practically reached sculpture status during this past offseason. Ask me about the dining room table that will finally enable us to eat like adults on a daily basis, not that we’ll actually do so because when else would we watch the previous night’s Daily Show?

The baseball angle, of course, is that I’m finally moving to the borough where my favorite team originated, and only fifty years too late. I intend to do all of those historical things like tracking down the Ebbets Field plaque and the Washington Park wall that I’ve never done because frankly, I don’t know my way around Brooklyn yet. Finding them will be part of my learning experience.

I have already come across one very cool baseball-related monument not ten minutes from my new home. It happened by accident when Andra and I were casing the neighborhood for the first time on the day after our bid was accepted, and it stopped me in my tracks. At 215 Montague Street, on the outside of Commerce Bank, is a plaque commemorating the fact that the Brooklyn Dodgers’ front offices once resided on that spot. In those offices, on August 28, 1945, Dodger President and GM Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to an agreement to play for the Dodger organization, thus initiating the chain of events that allowed him to break the major-league color barrier less than two years later.

For somebody who can turn Chapter Six of Ken Burns’ Baseball in to a three-hanky special, it was a total goosebump moment. Stumbling across the plaque by happenstance felt like a good omen. And soon I’ll be able to see it just about anytime I want.

Anyway, you can read more about the plaque here.

• As announced last week, Baseball Prospectus 2007 is on the New York Times Bestseller List for the first time in its 12-year history. The March 18 list had BP07 at #15 on the Paperback Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list, while on the March 25 one, we’re up to #9. Look out, What to Expect When You’re Expecting bitchez (ironically, published by BP’s former publisher).

A reminder that I’ll be on the promo trail for BP this week and next:

  • Thursday, March 22, 6:00 PM with Christina Kahrl, Steven Goldman, Neil DeMause, Derek Jacques, and Will Weiss

    Columbia University
    Lerner Hall
    2920 Broadway (@ 114th Street)
    New York, NY

  • Saturday, March 24, 2:00 PM with Christina Kahrl, Steven Goldman, Ben Murphy, John Erhardt, Neil DeMause, Jim Baker, Derek Jacques, Will Weiss, Clay Davenport, Will Carroll, Kevin Goldstein, and Marc Normandin

    Yogi Berra Musuem
    Monclair State University
    8 Quarry Road
    Little Falls, NJ 07424
    973-655-2378

  • Monday, March 26, 6:00 pm with Steven Goldman and Neil DeMause

    Barnes & Noble
    Yale University
    77 Broadway
    New Haven, CT 06511
    203-777-8440

If you’re not in the area, see the BP events page for local listings in your market (not that all are as well-served as the Tri-State area).

• Last weekend, I got my copy of Bombers Broadside, which is now shipping from Amazon.

It’s a nice piece of work, 112 pages of glossy, full color, pinstripe-flavored content about the current team as well as its illustrious history — including features about the 1977 champions, and Babe Ruth’s (in)famous “Called Shot” — sure to appeal to Yankee fans, and featuring a roster that includes myself, editor Cecilia Tan, Alex Belth, Mike Carminati, Vince Genarro, Gary Gillette, Mark Healey, Derek Jacques, Tara Krieger, David Laurila, Dan McCourt, and Pete Palmer. I’ll wager a guess that more than one of those names means something to those of you reading this, so cut yourself a slice. Belth’s bittersweet piece on his childhood memories of Reggie Jackson and his recently deceased father is worth the price of admission alone.

Yanksfan vs Soxfan Interview II

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Here’s Part II of the interview which I did with the fine folks at Yanksfan vs. Soxfan. If you missed Part I last week, you can catch up here. The guys came up with some great questions about the Yankees, Red Sox and the rest of the AL East.

YFSF: How psyched are you for Phil Hughes?

JJ: Very, as this kid looks to be the real deal, not to mention the cornerstone of a plan that might see the Yanks rein in their payroll a bit and reap the benefits of growing their own pitchers. That said, I don’t think he should start the season with the Yankees no matter how good a spring he has. The scattered April schedule means more days off and fewer opportunities for a fifth starter, and let’s face it, the Yanks aren’t going to introduce him in the rotation as anything higher than that because the pressure is too great, the hype too overwhelming.

The additional benefit of waiting is the increased likelihood that Hughes won’t have enough service time to be arbitration-eligible after the 2009 season, as it takes three full years except for the “Super Twos” (the top 1/6 of the players who have just under three years of service time). That’s not an abstract issue, because young pitchers, even great ones, get hurt all the time, and the longer you can wait before you have to pay him big bucks, the better.

Geez, I’ve already got Hughes to the point of being an overpriced, broken-down bum like Carl Pavano. Sorry about that.

YFSF: Losing Sheff and Randy: addition by subtraction? How do you rate the Yankee offseason?

JJ: To the extent that it rids the Yankees of two aged and potentially fragile players who often create distractions, addition by subtraction is an apt term. That said, I will miss Gary Sheffield; he was a pleasure to watch when he was healthy here, whether he was cracking home runs, ripping life-threatening foul balls down the leftfield line, or simply waving that bat like a tiger waiting to pounce. Or even jabbering about whatever perceived slight he’d endured; that’s Gary being Gary just like Manny is Manny. So long as he’s not committing any crimes, you just have to laugh at the hubbub about what he says or does and let the guy hit.

The bottom line is that 38-year-olds coming off soft-tissue wrist injuries aren’t the horses to be betting on, particularly when they seem more concerned with their next contract than the distraction they cause. He’ll be missed, but let Detroit deal with his luggage.

As for Johnson, the same goes doubly for 43-year-old pitchers coming off of back surgery and dealing with Synvisc injections, terminal surliness and potential mullet regrowth. I really wish things had worked out better for him in New York — he’s a favorite from way back, even when he was handing the Yanks their lunch money — but he was pretty much just a more durable Kevin Brown last year. Blech.

I do like the direction the Yanks went this offseason, stockpiling young arms in deals for those two and elsewhere (such as the Jaret Wright trade, which brought Chris Britton in return). Growing your own pitching is a tremendously worthwhile endeavor that can save the Yankees millions of dollars worth of bad contracts in the future. The fewer Pavanos, the better.

YFSF: Willy Mo Pena: future star, or Boston’s Balboni?

JJ: Pena’s a curious collection of raw talents and bad habits. The dude can hit, though his plate discipline leaves something to be desired, and his defense… aye chihuahua. It will be interesting to see if any of what he diid last year in the wake of his wrist injury carries over; he showed more patience and ability to hit to all fields than in the past, and I’ve heard reports that he handled breaking balls better than previously.

Pena’s certainly more athletic than Balboni ever was, but not so much that he should be allowed to play centerfield ever again. I wonder if they can teach him to play first base. Keeping on the Balboni comparison, he’ll almost certainly enjoy a much better career; remember that he was playing semi-regularly at 22 where Balboni didn’t get a full shot until age 27. Huge difference from a developmental standpoint.

YFSF: Moose: There’s a strong statistical case for the Hall. Will he make it? Should he?

JJ: Moose is one of nine active or recently retired pitchers whose JAWS scores are better than the average Hall of Fame pitcher: 


Pitcher    Career   Peak    JAWS
Clemens     192.9   83.5   138.2
Maddux      165.6   81.9   123.8
R. Johnson  136.6   78.1   107.4
Glavine     129.4   61.4    95.4
Martinez    113.7   75.3    94.5
Mussina     110.1   62.5    86.3
Smoltz      114.1   57.7    85.9
Schilling   103.3   63.4    83.4
K. Brown    100.5   62.9    81.7
Avg HOF P    99.0   62.7    80.9

He’s in the middle of the pack here, but the problem is that he’s lacking the three major peripherals which could get him over the top without having 300 wins (he’s at 239 and counting): no Cy Young award, no World Championship, and no postseason dominance (he’s 7-8 with a 3.40 ERA, respectable but hardly Gibsonesque). Compare that to Schilling, who’s behind him here and in wins (207) but has an 8-2, 2.06 ERA line in postseason, including two rings. Compare that to Smoltz (193 wins plus 154 saves) and a 15-4, 2.65 line in October, including one ring. Moose will suffer by comparison in the eyes of voters.

YFSF: What’s your analysis of the Boston closer situation? Are the Sox better off with Paps in the pen or the rotation? Is the closer-by-commitee solution tenable in Boston?

JJ: The closer situation right now looks like a 2003-esque trainwreck in the making. Mike Timlin’s nursing oblique issues while coming off a year where he really showed his age; he would’t last the year as closer. Joel Pineiro is a worthwhile gamble; anytime you move a starter to the bullpen, you let him narrow his repertoire to the pitches he throws well, dodge his stamina issues and reap the benefits of increased fastball velocity. But Pineiro’s got mechanical issues that need solving before he can be what the Sox envision. I have a feeling they’ll start the year with Julian Tavarez or Brendan Donnelly in the role just as the last man standing, and I think they have to have somebody in there, because the moment “closer-by-committee” is whispered to a reporter, the ghost of Grady Little will come out of the woodwork and it will be hell for Terry Francona and Theo Epstein.

I expect the team to make a trade before they’ll go that route. If I were them I’d see what it takes to land Fernando Rodney or some other closer in waiting.

I think the Sox have to respect the needs and wishes of Papelbon to return to the rotation, as good as he was in the bullpen. You can’t have him turning up sore-shouldered in September. Just as importantly, I don’t think there was any guarantee he’d continue his early-season dominance once the league got more looks at him.

YFSF: How does the division shake out? Do the Rays pass the O’s? Are the Jays a serious threat? Will the division get the wild card?

JJ: I still see the Yanks ahead of the Red Sox because they’ve got fewer question marks, particularly in the bullpen. If I’m a Sox fan, I’m concerned about Mike Lowell bouncing back to the way he hit in the first half, about underpowered Kevin Youkilis at first, about Coco Crisp returning to form. Aside from Pavano and the gaping hole at first base, I don’t think there’s anybody on the Yankees that gives as much concern, and at least in the former case, the Yanks have some warm bodies to bridge the gap until the point where Phil Hughes is ready.

As for the rest, it’s still tough to envision the Jays cracking the top two, not with gimps Gustavo Chacin, Tomo Ohka and John Thomson as potentially 3/5 of their rotatoin. Nor is it easy to see the Rays leaving the cellar without improvements to their rotation. If they can convert their surplus of outfielders — Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Delmon Young, Elijah Dukes, B.J. Upton (yeah, that’s likely where he’ll settle) — into some pitching, I like their chances better, but until then, no.

As for the Wild Card, I think the AL Central, which could have the Tigers, Twins, Indians and White Sox all competing, may yet again threaten the return of the East’s second-place team to the postseason. Last year was quite a reminder that there’s no birthright which guarantees both teams make the postseason, though I expect the Red Sox to make a much stronger go of it than in 2006.

Vuk (1947-2007) [BP Unfiltered]

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The world of futility infielders has lost one of its legendary practitioners in John Vukovich, who passed away this week at age 59. Vukovich, a .161 career hitter, holds a rather dubious distinction, as I wrote at BP Unfiltered, but the 40 years he gave to the game as a player, coach, interim manager and executive is a truer testament to his baseball acumen and reputation within the game.

Yanksfan vs Soxfan Interview I… and Big News

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Back from a successful jaunt to Philadelphia, where Baseball Prospectus 2007‘s promotional appearance season kicked off with an enthusiastic turnout that included Baseball-Reference.com‘s statgod Sean Forman, with whom we had the pleasure of breaking bread afterwards. Other evening entertainment included a very enthusiastic young bartender at the Radisson who had vocal opinions about the career of Tim Salmon, and multiple glass clinkings — including my first vodka shot of the 21st century — due to some Big News:

For the first time in the colorful 12-year history of the BP annual, we have cracked the New York Times Bestseller List. Or will; as of March 18 (next Sunday), BP07 will be ranked #15 on the Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list. Ergo, the 19 of us who contributed to this year’s book and are listed on its title page are best-selling authors now, not that any of us are able to dine out on said laurels just yet. Anyway, a happy day here for the BP family.

My travels caused me to delay the posting of Part I of a two-part interview I did for the fine Yanksfan vs Soxfan blog on — guess what? — the AL East’s big dogs as they stack up this year. Here’s one of the exchanges:

YFSF: Josh Beckett and Chien-Ming Wang: They are the sabermetric paradox. Do you expect a big turnaround from Beckett? Can we expect another big year from Wang?

JJ: Beckett’s more of an enigma than a paradox. It remains to be seen whether he can harness his curveball while at the same time keeping free of the blister problems that have plagued his career; last year he wore a band-aid between starts and it prevented him from tossing the curve in bullpen sessions. If Lester is healthy, the Sox might have enough depth in the rotation to cover for a 150-inning season from Beckett where he does throw the curve and deals with the consequences. But right now there are a lot of questions about Schilling, about Matsuzaka, about Wakefield, and about Papelbon, so that may be too risky.

Wang is certainly a paradox in that he succeeds while striking out only about 3.1 hitters per nine. But so long as he throws mid-90s heat with that great movement on his sinker, I expect him to throw a lot of innings and be pretty successful, if not quite so so much as last year. He’ll never be an ace, I don’t think, but especially at his current price, he’s a very valuable commodity and fun to watch as well.

Part II of this home-and-home series will be posted in this space on Monday. As you read Part I, please note that the introduction includes one innacuracy that bears correction. As I’ve said in this space, I covered the Dodgers and Red Sox for BP07; Steven Goldman is the one who wrote about the Yankees.