Part II of FI research assistant Peter Quadrino‘s take on the Mets’ offseason moves…

Mets get: P Billy Wagner
Billy Wagner gets: $43 million over 4 years
Wagner’s agent, Bean Stringfellow, gets: recognition for having one of the funniest names in sports.

Just a few hours after introducing Delgado to the NY media, the Mets reached an agreement with free agent closer Billy Wagner. This was a big pickup, as their need for a good first basemen was matched only by their need for a good closer. And Wagner is a good closer. As a matter of fact, Wagner is one of the best free agent relief pitchers in a long time. Think about it, when was the last time there was a reliever this good who was available for the taking? Bruce Sutter in ’85 maybe?

If that sounds ridiculous (what about Hoffman and Tom Gordon this year, or Keith Foulke and Eddie Guardado a few years ago?), consider that even though Wagner is going to be 34 (hey, that number again), he still throws 100 MPH and is coming off probably the second-best season for a Phillies reliever in the modern era (where relief pitchers are given specialized roles), behind Tug McGraw’s 1980. Over at the Baseball Analysts, Rich Lederer put Wagner’s greatness into perspective:

Which active pitcher in the big leagues has the best collection of career rate stats? Pedro Martinez? Randy Johnson? Roger Clemens? Greg Maddux? Nope. Ahh, it must be a relief pitcher, ehh? Mariano Rivera? Trevor Hoffman? Eric Gagne? Wrong again.

The answer, my friends, is Billy Wagner. Yes, Billy Wagner. He is number one in hits (5.87), baserunners (9.28), and strikeouts (11.97) per nine innings, and is in a virtual tie for third with Hoffman behind Martinez and Curt Schilling in strikeouts/walks (3.84) while ranking second behind Rivera in ERA (2.44).

Lederer goes on to declare, “At a minimum, Wagner is the best left-handed relief pitcher in history.” He notes that with Wagner (with 277 saves at that writing, now 284) is third all-time in saves among lefties behind John Franco (424) and Randy Myers (347), but with better peripheral stats. Updated through the end of the season:

            ERA   WHIP   BAA    K/9   BB/9   K/BB
Franco     2.89   1.33  .249    7.0    3.6   1.97
Myers      3.19   1.30  .233    9.0    4.0   2.23
Wagner     2.34   0.99  .184   11.9    2.7   3.96

Lederer’s article was written while Wagner was in the midst of a 16-game scoreless streak in which he gave up only 5 hits and a walk and went 11-for-11 in saves. He ended the season with this line: 77.2 IP, 45 hits, 87 K/20 BB, 1.51 ERA, 38 saves in 41 chances and a 30.5 VORP. Braden Looper, closing for the Mets last season, had a 5.3 VORP, blew 8 saves and struck out only 27 in 59.1 innings. That’s a lot of balls put into play for a closer. Speaking of balls in play, it’s important to note (as Lederer did) that this 100-mph flame-throwing lefty has spent his entire career pitching in home ballparks that have been very unkind to pitchers, Enron/Minute Maid in Houston and Citizens Bank Park in Philly, and will now be pitching in one of the pitcher-friendliest, Shea Stadium. In road games for his career: 1.05 WHIP, 2.27 ERA.

There will always be the question of whether Wagner can stay healthy; he’s only 5’11” and puts a lot of stress on that left elbow, but that’s what they pay Rick Peterson for. He’s renowned for his work with keeping pitchers healthy. Just ask all the folks who speculated that Pedro Martinez’s (217 IP, 2.82 ERA) shoulder would explode or arm would fall off before the ’05 season got under way. If Peterson does his job, Wagner will gain the recognition he deserves as one of the greatest lefty relievers in the history of the game, as the New York media can exalt a player to greatness just as fast as they can tear him to shreds.

Mets get: C Paul Lo Duca
Marlins get: P Gaby Hernandez, player to be named later

Minaya really went too far with this one. He was probably on such a high from the great feeling of the big moves he had just made and couldn’t resist making one more. The Winter Meetings hadn’t even started yet and he felt he just had to fill in that last position with a pretty name. So he plucked three-time All Star catcher (and 34-year-old!) Paul Lo Duca from the Marlins, giving up Gaby Hernandez who, after all the other moves Minaya had made, was their #2 overall prospect. By Baseball America‘s reckoning, the Mets had sent their #2, #3, #4, and #5 prospects to the Marlins.

Two things about this deal upset me. First: like I said before, Minaya has shown no foresight. He has shown that he doesn’t look two or three moves ahead (he would be a shitty chess player). I was okay with him giving up their top pitching prospect for Carlos Delgado. No matter how great Petit becomes, that move can always be defended. The problem is, if he knew he was willing to get rid of his next-best pitching prospect in Gaby Hernandez, he should’ve done it earlier and sent him to the Marlins for second basemen Luis Castillo. The Twins sent the Marlins a couple of prospects who aren’t as highly regarded as Hernandez and they got Castillo instead of the Mets. That infuriates me. Luis Castillo and his career .379 OBP (.391 in 2005) replacing Kaz Matsui at second would’ve made A LOT more sense than Paul Lo Duca replacing Ramon Castro does. Castro is nothing spectacular but he would’ve provided just about as much offensively and maybe a little more defensively as Lo Duca will. The word at the Winter Meetings is that Minaya will sign two-bagger Mark Grudzielanek on Thursday, when they won’t lose any draft picks for signing him. Grudzielanek ain’t bad. But he’s 36 and he’s worse than Luis Castillo.

Gaby Hernandez was a third round pick out of Belen Jesuit High School in the 2004 draft. He hasn’t turned 20 yet and he tore up Single-A last season, striking out 141 in 135 innings and allowing only 5 homers between the Florida State and South Atlantic Leagues. Quoting Bryan Smith again: “Most organizations would kill to have Hernandez as their number three prospect in the system, as Gaby has been a steal since being drafted. His control could stand a bit of improvement, but that’s nitpicking in some pretty flawless peripherals in his first full-season league.”

As a Mets fan, I’m hoping that he becomes another example of TINSTAAPP (There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect). The Mets better hope so too, or the 2008 Marlins will be giving them regular ass-kickings. Even if Hernandez flames out before reaching the majors, the Mets will be paying $12.5 million over the next two years for a 34-35 year old catcher who hasn’t put up an OBP out of the .330s since 2001. Lo Duca has little power left in him and is known to collapse down the stretch the last few years (.615 OPS in August/September since 2003). The New York papers ought to have fun with him if he does the same thing for the Mets if they’re in a pennant race this summer. Mark Simon, who writes a Mets blog called “Mets Walkoffs and Other Minutiae,” was able to think of some positives for Lo Duca, but he can’t make me like him!

It’s not the end of the world; Lo Duca shouldn’t be relied on by the Mets for too much offense. They have enough already. But Minaya could’ve done a much better job of allocating his resources. It was a terrible move, but I’ll forgive him if he stops there. The more mid-30s guys you have in your lineup, the likelier someone will get injured. He has insisted on holding onto Seo, Heilman, and their top overall prospect, outfielder Lastings Milledge, and Wright, Reyes and Beltran are all still young, but I’d like to see him show a little more restraint for the rest of the winter, stay away from Manny Ramirez, and maybe pick up another guy for the pen.

After throwing all this money around and giving away prospects to other teams (it was actually just one team in this case), the Mets were being referred to as the “New Yankees”. They do have some notable similarities (an interlocking N-Y on their caps, high payrolls) and Minaya’s strategy is certainly very similar to the one the Yankees have employed in the last six years or so, but he’s walking a dangerously thin line between becoming the “New Yankees” and the “Old Mets” of the Steve Phillips era. Say what you want about the Yankees, but they haven’t missed the playoffs in ten years. The Mets haven’t been in the playoffs in five years thanks to stupid front office moves.

Peter Quadrino is a college student from New York City who’s been serving with distinction as my research assistant for the past six months on projects both for this site and Baseball Prospectus. He’s a Mets fan, and as the two of us swapped emails back and forth about their recent spate of moves, I suggested he write a guest piece for this blog, which will run in two parts. So here it is, his FI debut. Pete can be reached here…

For the second winter in a row, the New York Mets have made the most noise of any team in baseball thus far. GM Omar Minaya was dead set on improving a team that won 83 games last year in a competitive division. His stated goals were to acquire players at first base, second base, closer, and catcher. As the Winter Meetings opened, he’s filled those positions already, but the Mets farm system has taken a beating in the process. Here’s my take on his movements thus far, in chronological order.

Mets get: 1B/3B/OF Xavier Nady
Padres get: CF Mike Cameron

Minaya’s first big move of the winter was a complete shocker. At first, it was thought that this was just the opening move of an elaborate trading scheme in which he would flip Nady to Boston or elsewhere and end up with Manny Ramirez. My first impression was that the Mets wanted to clear a little salary by dumping Cameron’s contract, which pays him $6.5 million next season, and pick up a younger, cheaper player in the process. Cameron will be 33 next season and Nady will be 27. At the time, it seemed like it wasn’t such a bad move, with the Mets potentially starting the season with a first base platoon of Mike Jacobs against righties and Nady against lefties. But, in a minute you’ll see that this wasn’t what Omar was thinking. Or at least it doesn’t seem like it was what Omar was thinking. Who knows what Omar is thinking?

When the Mets signed star free-agent Carlos Beltran last winter and shifted Cameron to right, the immediate speculation was that the latter would soon be traded. Despite numerous rumors, no deal happened and Cameron was in a Mets uniform for all of 2005, when he wasn’t injured. He missed the beginning of the season recovering from surgery on a wrist that had hampered him for most of 2004, when he hit .231/.319/.479. He came back in May and went on a tear, batting .372/.476/.686 for the month and making a few SportsCenter-Top-10 plays in right field. The fun would be over for him soon; he and Beltran collided head-on while chasing a short fly ball in San Diego on August 11.

In almost every ESPN chat that he did during the summer, Rob Neyer had to explain to argumentative Mets fans the concept of the defensive spectrum and why they shouldn’t have a Gold Glove centerfielder in right when they could use the resources to get a cheaper option who hit more and fielded less. Well, then I have two problems with this trade, then. First, unless the injuries he suffered in the collision have made him a lesser player, the Mets should have gotten a lot more in return for Cameron. Nady is an ex-Padres prospect who never completely blossomed. His usefulness is in his ability to play multiple positions (though not necessarily well), but he’s not much of a hitter and Shea Stadium isn’t going to help that. He has a career line of .263/.320/.414, which is pretty much exactly what he did last year, except with a little more power. He doesn’t walk much and he can’t hit righties at all (.232/.282/.395 career), making him a platoon candidate. I saw it tossed around on the Internet in a couple of places that the Mets couldn’t keep Cameron in right because he wasn’t a good enough hitter for a corner outfield position. Well, put it this way: in 2004, Cameron played 140 games for the Mets in centerfield and he hit 30 homers, 19 of them on the road. In the NL this year, no right fielder hit more than 26 (Jason Lane). I think it’s a good idea to let Victor Diaz finally get consistent starting time as the right fielder next year. This was a bad trade in that Minaya a) could’ve gotten a lot more for what he was giving up and b) showed no foresight as his next move was…

Mets get: 1B Carlos Delgado, cash
Marlins get: 1B Mike Jacobs, prospects P Yusmeiro Petit, INF Grant Psomas

True Met-Heads should be very excited about this deal. Delgado is coming off a season in which he hit .301/.399/.582 with 33 homers and a .332 EqA. He’ll provide much-needed offense at a position that they sorely lacked any kind of consistency in last year. Mike Jacobs had some exciting moments late in the season, playing in 30 games and slugging .710, inflated mostly by his historic first 4 games in which he homered 4 times. He’s ten years younger than Delgado, so it’s probably a good bet that he’ll accomplish more over the next ten years than Delgado will, but I’d take the 2006 version of Delgado over the 2006 version of Jacobs in a heartbeat. Delgado turns 34 before next season’s All-Star break but hasn’t shown signs of slowing down.

I’ve heard that this deal could very well end up being a disaster of Mo Vaughn/Roberto Alomar-ish proportions for the Mets, and that could happen. Anything can happen. Both of those players came to the Mets entering their age-34 seasons. Alomar was coming off a pretty damn good year with the Indians, posting a .329 EqA in 157 games. But, a lot of people forget when using big Mo Vaughn’s name as a punchline that he was coming off a season in which he didn’t even play baseball! Vaughn sat out the entire 2001 season with a ruptured biceps. It’s tough to come back and play professional baseball after a year of lying on the couch eating potato chips when you’re 34 and weigh in excess of 300 pounds. The expectations weren’t very high when he came to the Mets to begin with. Also, unlike Vaughn and Alomar, who had both been playing in the AL for over a decade, Delgado is coming off a monster year in which he played in the same division, and in a park that might be an even worse park for hitters than Shea Stadium. It’s debatable how big the effect is when a hitter switches leagues, but Delgado (a meticulous hitter who keeps a notebook of all his ABs) won’t need any time to adjust to new pitchers or their styles. He’ll be facing largely the same pitchers, except for his teammates, of course. I don’t think he has any complaints about not having to face Pedro Martinez next season.

The Marlins sent about $7 million to the Mets in the deal and an agreement is still being worked on for how that money will be spread out over the life of the contract. Delgado is owed $13.5 million in 2006, $14.5 million in 2007 and $16 million in 2008. His contract contains a club option for 2009 at $12 million with a $4 million buyout, but it could become guaranteed at $16 million depending on how he finishes in MVP voting and whether he wins postseason MVP awards. The Mets also have to fulfill a provision from Delgado’s contract that provides for state tax equalization. This could mean about $400,000 extra from the Mets. Keep in mind that he only pays New York taxes for half his games, as the other half are played in other states.

Yusmeiro Petit reached legal US drinking age only a couple of weeks ago and, with impeccable command of his fastball and slider (in 21 starts last season for Double-A Binghamton he recorded nearly a 10/1 K/BB ratio), was considered one of the best prospects in baseball, let alone the Mets organization. Baseball Prospectus 2005 listed him as the fourth-best pitching prospect in the majors (former Met prospect Scott Kazmir was third), citing how rare his 200+ strikeouts in less than 150 innings in 2004 was (Josh Beckett’s 2001 was the only other year they could find that occurring), noting that “those hitters unfortunate enough to face him last year point out that his delivery was tough to read and his fastball had excellent late movement.”

Bryan Smith of The Baseball Analysts site wrote of Petit back in May: “Yusmeiro has it all: good control, deception, and a knowledge of changing speeds. There are questions about his stuff and about his ceiling, but Yusmeiro should be fine. Think Livan Hernandez (c. 2005, not 1997).” He’s going to be a good one, there’s no doubt about that. A Mets prospect with a deceptive delivery? Sounds familiar. Former Met prospect Aaron Heilman reverted back to the three-quarter delivery he used at Notre Dame at the urging of pitching coach Rick Peterson and pitched well last season, baffling hitters and finally living up to his high expectations. In 108 innings, he had a 3.17 ERA, struck out 106 and only walked 37. He allowed the lowest slugging percentage, .249, of any reliever in the NL with at least 50 relief innings (second lowest? Billy Wagner at .265). He’ll be 27 next season so this might be the best he’s got, but if this is his best, I’ll take it.

Minaya has shown that he’s not afraid to reach into his farm system and send away a potentially great player to get something he wants in return. Before the Paul Lo Duca trade (which I’ll get to in my next entry), he was doing an okay job. He has refused to give up Heilman and he still has a very improved 29-year-old Jae Seo on the staff. So far, he’s also held on to the two solid college pitchers (Philip Humber out of Rice U. and Mike Pelfrey from Wichita State) that they’ve drafted the last couple of Junes, but their once well-stocked farm system is starting to dry up. Consider that in the three of the last four drafts, the Mets have given up their third and fourth-round picks after signing free agents.

In this case, to get an excellent player you’ve got to give up something in return. Delgado is an excellent player and at the time, the Mets could afford to lose Petit if it meant getting one of the most consistent sluggers in the game. That’s not to say that Petit won’t be kicking the Mets asses while wearing a Marlins uniform by 2007 at the very latest, but the Mets need a first basemen. A cleanup hitter would be nice, too. Delgado plays first, and he slugged .573 last season out of the cleanup spot. Whichever order Willie Randolph chooses to combine Delgado, Cliff Floyd, and David “The Metssiah” Wright in the 3-4-5 spots next season (assuming he comes to his senses and bats Beltran either first or second), this will be a Mets lineup that not too many teams will want to mess with. The Mets need a lineup like that right now, while the dude with the curly afro is still pitching like Pedro Martinez.

To be continued…

It’s free agent season, and as silly dollars get tossed at players, here are a few interesting links I’ve come across amid the avalanche of my writing projects.

• My man Alex Belth has a fantastic historical recap of some milestones of the free agency era in his Sports Illustrated (SI.com) debut. No, they’re not all happy moments, but from Reggie Jackson signing with the Yanks to Nolan Ryan reaching the $1 million per year threshold to Kevin Brown getting the usage of a corporate jet (that unfortunately never went down in flames) to Alex Rodriguez becoming The Quarter Billion Dollar Man, these deals changed the game’s landscape and provide an interesting thumbnail history of the last 30 years.

Major congratulations to Alex for getting his foot in the door at SI.

• The silliest-looking, most landscape-altering contract of the offseason thus far is the Blue Jays’ five year, $47 million deal to reliever B.J. Ryan, a man who has exactly one year of experience as a closer and two more decent ones as a setup guy. The Jays overpaid, forcing every team in the market for a reliever to do the same. But Rob McMillan, ever the contrarian, points out that the performance of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar — a 30% gain over the last three years, and one likely to continue thanks to our northern hockey-haired neighbor’s relatively large supply of natural fuel resources — creates a substantial discount on the order of about 9% for the Jays. Now, I’m not savvy enough about currency and economics to fully evaluate this, but it does provide a bit more rationale for the deal, and the Jays’ desire to break the bank in pursuit of A.J. Burnett (still a possibility) and Brian Giles (gone back to San Diego).

• Speaking of relievers, Baseball Prospectus’ James Click explores the lack of consistency when predicting their future performance:

Putting aside the dollar values on these contracts for a moment, it’s important to consider just how consistent and predictable reliever performances are. There are a multitude of factors that routinely influence reliever performance more than that of starting pitchers or batters; primarily those are small sample size and the prevailing usage patterns of modern bullpens. The sample size issue is obvious–most relievers top out around 60 or 70 innings, roughly 1/3 of a typical starting pitcher’s innings–but the way modern bullpens are managed (bringing in relievers in the middle of innings, for example) often means that a reliever’s performance, as measured by ERA, is as much a reflection of those pitching before and after him than his own contributions. Whereas starters often get to work into and out of their own jams, relievers don’t have that luxury.

The second problem is more easily corrected than the first. We can use Fair Run Average (FRA), a BP stat that removes the problems of appropriately placing responsibility for inherited or bequeathed runners. As a first pass, just to see how bad the small sample size is, let’s see how consistent a variety of pitching statistics are for both starters and relievers. To do so, we’ll only use significant consecutive seasons, in this case defined as a minimum of 150 innings in consecutive seasons for starters and 50 innings for relievers.

Among that group, Click reports year-to-year correlations of FRA — a stat I really dig, because it translates back into conventional stat terms the impact of a reliever’s performance based on how he dealt with inherited runners — of .146 for starters (not very high) and 0.04 (just about nuthin’) for relievers. Even using three years’ worth of data to predict a fourth, the correlations are .192 for starters and .064 for relievers, three times the randomness. Summarizes Click:

So what does this mean for teams like the Cubs, Yankees, Blue Jays and Mets? Of the five relievers they signed, it’s likely that two of them will post an FRA a run-and-a-half or more from their established levels. Some of this variance is the natural change in player performance; after all, starting pitchers, while more consistent than relievers, are certainly no models of consistency. But even when comparing three-year groups of relief performance–attempting to remove the small-sample-size issue–relievers never approach the consistency of starting pitchers. Over the next three years, it’s likely that two of them will post a total FRA more than a run off of their established levels over the past three seasons.

Meanwhile, on BP’s internal mailing list, Nate Silver has been discussing a key finding of his where a pitcher who moves from starter to reliever can expect a considerably lower ERA and improved peripherals. I’m not at liberty to steal Nate’s thunder in describing this, but watch for a piece from him in the near future. Frankly, I’m in awe of the way guys like Silver and Click can chip away at the problems that keep the rest of us lying awake at nights and come up with concrete answers that have practical applications for running a baseball team.

• BP’s Joe Sheehan advises any GMs reading his column to put down the checkbook and back away hastily:

One of the key credos in what you might call the “BP philosophy” is that you want to sign free agents from the very top of the market or the very bottom. Superstars in their early prime, guys like Greg Maddux and Barry Bonds in 1992, or Alex Rodriguez in 2000, are excellent investments, because it’s difficult to find players who have that kind of impact, and even harder to get their best seasons through the market. At the other end of the spectrum, a smart team can gain a real advantage by signing the right low-end free-agents to one-year deals, often minor-league contracts with invitations to spring training.

This winter, though, the very best free agents don’t come close to approaching the caliber of those available in recent seasons. There is no Carlos Beltran in this market, no Pedro Martinez, no Vladimir Guerrero or Miguel Tejada. The top players in this market are flawed, aging or both, and either have no superstar credentials to speak of or little chance of sustaining star performance over the life of a new contract.

Consider the B.J. Ryan signing, which combines about four different flaws in one package. The Blue Jays gave Ryan a five-year deal averaging just over nine million dollars a season. The five years covered by the deal are two more than the number of effective seasons on Ryan’s resume, and that’s giving him credit for 2003, in which he threw 50 1/3 innings in 76 games as a specialist, posting just over two Wins Above Replacement. This is the same mistake, down to the details, that a variety of teams made last year with guys like Eric Milton, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright, just to name a few of the more egregious examples. Evaluating a player just on his walk year is a recipe for disaster.

Which brings us to…

• … a team doing just that. Meet the new Yankee setup man, Kyle Farnsworth. Last year Farnsworth posted an ERA of 2.19 and an FRA (which accounts for the performance of inherited and bequeathed runners by divvying them up according to a Run Expectancy Table) of 2.01. Farnsworth’s career ERA, meanwhile, is 4.45, one percent below the park-adjusted league average, though the man at least has about one strikeout per inning over the course of his career. And this guy is the Yankees’ new latex salesman… I mean setup guy, because 38-year-old Tom Gordon extracted a three-year deal from the Phillies. The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner points out that between Steve Karsay, Chris Hammond, and Jaret Wright, the Yanks haven’t had much luck signing the Braves’ free agents. Let’s hope that new Yankee pitching coach Ron Guidry or bullpen coach Joe Kerrigan can find a little movement for Farnsworth’s straight-as-an-arrow fastball.

• Speaking of Yankee dollars, there’s been a lot of buzz about how little buzz the Yanks have generated this offseason in terms of signing free agents. Now comes a blockbuster: the New York Daily News has a report claiming that the Yanks lost between $50 million and $85 million in 2005 thanks to their bloated $200 million-plus payroll and almost $110 million in revenue sharing and luxury tax. Further, they may have to shell out more if an MLB consultant decides they’re undervaluing their TV rights (a common way for teams to show paper losses while raking in money hand over fist, according to the late, great Doug Pappas). In the short term, that’s bad news for Yankee fans, especially on top of a reported $37 million loss in 2004, but great news for Yankee-haters everywhere. In the long term, it should rightfully force the team to focus on developing its own talent rather than buying top free agents off the rack at a point where their careers are on the downhill slope.

• And speaking of those bad Yankee free-agent signings, Mr. Belth has the best and worst of the Steinbrenner era. It’s too early to throw Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright onto the latter pile, but Steve Karsay can take a bow. I’ll come back to this topic if I get more time down the road.

• Rafael Furcal to the Dodgers for three years and $39 (or $40) million? Wow, the eight-ball didn’t see that one coming. I’m much more of the opinion that it’s better to overpay a player for a shorter contract, and in this deal, the Dodgers are doing just that for a guy who is entering his Age 28 season. It’s tough to complain about that kind of move, even if — especially if — it renders the team’s commitment to Cesar Izturis, who endured a dismal, injury-riddled campaign, redundant. Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal suggests that the Dodgers will shift Little Cesar to second base and Jeff Kent to first upon the former’s return, Jon Weisman fears the end is nigh for Hee Seop Choi, but Rob McMillan thinks that Izturis is the more tradeable commodity. I’m going to withhold a close analysis of this here at FI because the two teams involved are the ones I’m covering for BP06 (there, I said it. Let’s keep this between us, OK?).

• OK, enough free agency chitchat. The baseball world lost a very interesting, colorful player in Vic Power earlier in the week. Steven Goldman writes about how the Yankees’ racism prevented Power, a slick-fielding, line-drive swatting first baseman, from breaking the pinstriped color barrier by trading him to Kansas City in December, 1953. Alex Belth expands upon that theme with some choice quotations from historian Jules Tygiel, who points out that the rumors that Power dated white women were at the root of the Yanks’ hesitancy to promote him. Jon Weisman has pointers to more on Power’s legacy.

As for me, I know Power mainly through his entry in one of my all-time favorite books, The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book, by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris:

With the possible exception of Jonas Salk, John Foster Dulles, and Annette Funicello, no one public figure so personified the fifties for me as did Vic Power. He was a line-drive-hitting first baseman for the Athletics and the Indians all through that glorious somnambulant decade who held his bat like a stalk of bananas, caught everything with one-handed disdain, and always managed to hit around .300 no matter how many times they tried to knock him down. I don’t know what it was exactly that made Vic stick out above all those other ruggedly ostentatious individualists — Frank Sullivan, Alex Kellner, et al. Suffice it to say that no one ever hit such frozen ropelike liners, assumed such a novel and menacing stance in the batter’s box, was so deft and lightfooted around the first-base bag, swore so mightily at umpires and hecklers, or possessed a more novel approach to the game than did Mr. Victor Pellot Power of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Wherever you may be now Vic — let it all hang out.

I love those last few lines, which I’ve italicized. Power wasn’t a Hall of Famer, but that’s a Hall of Fame epitaph right there.

• Speaking of epitaphs and not baseball, a school chum of mine named Margaret Brown has produced her first feature film, a documentary on the late, great country singer Townes Van Zandt called Be Here to Love Me. I saw its theatrical premiere on Friday night here in NYC and came away incredibly impressed. It’s not the most cheerful story (Van Zandt was a very troubled man who was quite obviously destined for a short life in which he was completely devoted to his art) but it’s a very well-done film — arty and impressionistic, with tons of vintage footage from the mid-’70s and onward — with a lot of great music, and appearances by Willie Nelson & Emmylou Harris (both of whom had #1 hits with his songs, “Pancho and Lefty” for the former, “If I Needed You” for the latter), Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle (who declared, “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that!”), Guy Clark (who puts in perhaps the best documentary interview ever, in which he discusses TVZ’s perennial flirtations with his wife, who’s sitting right next to him), Lyle Lovett and other country stars testifying to his reputation as a songwriter’s songwriter.

I doubt too many of you reading this share my love of vintage country music or its bastard alt.country offspring, but if you do, or if you have an appreciation for a well-done, award-worthy documentary, please go see this when it comes to your town.

Back when I can get my head above the snow again…

Wednesday’s Education section of the Boston Globe featured an article on the Tufts University course, “The Analysis of Baseball: Statistics and Sabermetrics,” to which I paid a visit last spring after learning that my DIPS page had wound up on the course syllabus. In the article, by Peter Schworm, yours truly gets in a good quote and a plug for Mind Game:

The class has excited baseball analysts, who view it as a potential tipping point for the increasingly influential field. Sabermetrics — the name derives from the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR — is derided in some circles as the presumptuous work of computer geeks who never played the game. But its tenets, embraced by successful teams such as the Oakland Athletics and Red Sox, is changing the way the game is watched and played.

“It’s another sign of sabermetrics’s growing acceptance,” said Jay Jaffe, one of the contributing authors of “Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning,” and a guest lecturer at the Tufts class last spring. “We’re going to wind up with a generation of fans that isn’t as beholden to the sacred cows as before.”

Schworm interviewed me six weeks ago, and I’d pretty much written off any chance of the article seeing daylight, so it was a nice surprise to get a heads up on this. Since that interview, however, the regimes of two sabermetrically-inclined teams, the Red Sox and the Dodgers, have been toppled. So much for timing.

A quick visit to the Tufts course’s home page reveals that this semester’s guest lecturers were Bill James and Alan Schwarz. A bit of a step up from last spring’s doubleheader pairing me with Red Sox baseball operations assistant Zack Scott, no? Hey, at least the company’s good.

p.s. I’ve started poking at the 2005 DIPS numbers with a sharp stick, but let’s just say that the Hanukkah Fairy is making no promises as to the timing of their arrival.

I’ve managed to come up for air, for a couple of days at least, after meeting both of my deadlines for player comments for Baseball Prospectus 2006. After a long weekend devoted to NOT writing about baseball — my wife gets me for some quality time, including a celebration of our five-year anniversary together — I’ll be turning my attention to team essays, the JAWS take on the 2006 Hall of Fame ballot, and a very exciting development that will keep me up to my ears in writing about baseball — none of that pesky graphic design work to track down — until the new year rings in (details after the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed).

Anyway, this is just a note to wish my friends, family and loyal readers a happy Thanksgiving. I’m a big fan of this holiday not only because I enjoy sharing in such a beautiful feast with some of the special people in my life, but because it’s a wonderful opportunity for genuine reflection. I count my blessings every year, and I hope you’ll take a few moments between the turkey and the mashed potatoes to do the same.

And you should be too…

• Caught between two batches of player comments, I partook in an email chat about the Dodgers with fellow bloggers and Dodger fans Rich Lederer, Rob McMillan and Jon Weisman, the latter of whom has the transcript of our little roundtable. Suffice it to say that the hiring of Giants assistant GM Ned Colletti as Paul DePodesta’s successor fills me with dread (thanks to Jon for inviting me into this little powwow, by the way).

• My man Alex Belth might be his best when his writing only tangentially touches on baseball. This guest piece at Baseball Analysts (Lederer and Bryan Smith’s site, where I delivered my Sausage Race piece) is a touching must-read. I think I’ve got something in my eye.

• The Cy Young voting was, to put it bluntly, for shit, especially in the AL, where Johan Santana got jobbed. The MVPs I’m much happier about. Steve Goldman has an excellent piece of reader mail in the latest Pinstriped Blog on the AL winner: “Aren’t you being just a little disingenuous in your A-Rod column, when you wonder why Yankee fans haven’t embraced him? Yankee fans aren’t smarter than other fans (I wish they were, especially the ones I end up next to at sports bars, but —) The “blame your best player for your team’s failure” syndrome has long been identified. If you don’t win, it’s his fault! — lack of leadership. See all the negative things ever written about Bonds.”

• In the wake of ESPN Rag’s expansive cover story on steroids in baseball, we’ve got a stiffer new policy, one that starts the penaltlies at 50 games, includes a lifetime ban for the third offense and testing for amphetamines (“greenies”). Will Carroll has an excellent Q&A about the new policy. In the New York Sun, Tim Marchman explains why the deal is good PR but a horrible precedent in terms of Congressional involvement. Since this may be behind the subscription wall for some, I’ll excerpt:

I still think the idea of Congress subjecting Americans to international law is dubious at best, especially when that law is to be administered by the International Olympic Committee, and I still think Congress was wrong to threaten to write laws that would forbid ballplayers and other athletes from taking legal substances.

This last point is subtler than it is usually thought to be. Because the federal government subsidizes professional sports through various elements of the tax code – especially those that allow municipal bonds meant for the construction of ballparks to be issued tax-free and those that allow corporate entertainment in pricey luxury boxes to be written off as a business expense – it does have a legitimate interest in the inner workings of those sports. The appropriate way to protect that interest, though, would be to threaten sports owners with the revocation of those elements of the tax code, not to threaten legislation of the game.

The difference is important. In the former scenario, the government says that the corruption and illegitimacy brought about by drug use in sports is an issue important enough that the government is willing to forego revenue over it; in the latter, it keeps on subsidizing wickedness while creating a class of citizens to whom a different set of laws applies.

Of course, Congress would never take tax benefits worth billions away from sports owners – plutocrats who in their day jobs as CEOs contribute millions to re-election campaigns and party committees; so, rather than dealing with the problem through the appropriate means, it bullied players and owners into cutting a new deal by claiming the law would be re-written if they didn’t.

I can’t sign on to that. Process is important, and there are things much more valuable than ensuring juiced-up shortstops can have the book thrown at them if they fail a drug test – things like ensuring Congress doesn’t illegitimately intervene in the workings of American businesses. Yesterday might have been a good day for baseball, but it was a bad day for the country at large.

Speaking of those tax benefits…

• …Nobody covers stadium issues like Neil deMause. This chat, this BP piece, and this Village Voice piece are all required reading for those of you who care about new ballparks, particularly the ones slated to come to the Bronx and Flushing Meadows in 2009. Some frightening stuff there, including the part about $800 million in hidden costs; throw in Bruce Ratner’s Brookyn Nets boondoggle and you’re up over a billion for New York taxpayers. Quoth deMause:

* YANKEES: $379-469 million ($140m in city funds, $15m in city rent rebates on current stadium, $0-90m in Metropolitan Transportation Authority capital expenses, $55m in tax-exempt bond subsidies, $44m in property-tax savings, $22m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $103m in forgone city rent revenues)

* METS: $435 million ($85m in city funds, $15m in city rent rebates on current stadium, $75m in state funds, $96m in forgone city parking revenues, $55m in tax-exempt bond subsidies, $39m in property-tax savings, $16m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $54m in forgone city rent revenues)

* NETS: $399 million ($100m in city funds, $100m in state funds, $50m in tax-exempt bond savings, $21m in property-tax savings, $14m in sales-tax breaks on construction materials, $114m in discounted land price)

So much for the defeat of that West Side Olympic/Jets stadium when it comes to saving New Yorkers money.

• Back to drugs. On the greenies topic, accompanying Jack Curry’s piece in the New York Times is a photo of Jim Bouton (circa the time I met him)and a quote from Ball Four: “We don’t get them from the trainers because greenies are against club policy, so we get them from other teams who have friends who are doctors of friends who know where to get greenies.” Funny that Sen. Jim Bunning’s sanctimony about performance enhancers doesn’t cover the players of his day who were “beaned up.” Or that Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, can find the time to posture on this issue when he’s got bigger fish to fry.

Speaking of fish to fry, it’s back to reading the tea leaves of toolsy High-A outfielders and the General Managers who love them…

Back when I attended the Winter Meetings in New Orleans two years ago, I met a handful of Baseball Prospectus writers, nearly all of whom shook their heads, rolled their eyes, and used the term “book season” when describing their general maladies. Now I understand a bit better. I’m up to my rolled eyeballs in my Baseball Prospectus 2006 player comments, with a deadline looming for my first team on Monday and an even more imposing one — for the other team, which I haven’t started, and know less about — the following Monday. It doesn’t help that I’m writing about 50 percent more than I probably need to (Jaffe going over length? Go figure…). I also did a bit of pinch-hitting for the as-yet-unnamed BP book from Basic Books, writing about two-dozen glossary entries for such sabermetric concepts as the defensive spectrum, support-neutral pitching stats, and run expectancy tables. I’m pysched for that book, which will be hitting the shelves in the spring, along with BP06.

Amid this chaos, I’ve had the opportunity to catch up with a couple of fellow BPers and other baseball buddies in the past few days. Christina Kahrl came through town and offered some sage advice on my BP06 work (she’s the co-editor) and an excuse to roust Alex Belth, Alex Ciepley, Cliff Corcoran and Nick Stone for a dinner of comfort food at Chat-N-Chew. We spent a good deal of time talking about the free-agent market, particularly as it pertains to the Yankees, as well as the recent general manager-related drama. And at one point I caught Chris and Alex C. sneaking off to dissect disappointing Cub prospects; I mean, how else does Amaury Telemaco come up in polite conversation?

Later, Chris and I were discussing the demise of the Astros in the World Series. That night I had a strange dream, for part of which I was administering a stern lecture to Astros manager Phil Garner about publicly trashing his players. I was livid, nearly worked up to the point of tears in the dream. Garner, for his part, was severely chastened and admitted he was in the wrong (take heart, Lisa Gray). It wasn’t the strangest or most elaborate baseball-related dream I’ve had, even involving a manager, but it belongs in the pile.

Saturday night found me catching a late drink with BP’s Nate Silver after finishing a very rough draft of my first set of player comments. Nate told me about some of the changes to PECOTA, the performance forecasting system that he designed that forms the backbone of the annual book. Lo and behold, Nate and PECOTA are in today’s New York Times, in Alan Schwarz’s excellent “Keeping Score” column. Check it out, and don’t miss the accompanying graphic.

Also in the Sunday Times is a pretty decent Murray Chass take on Rafael Palmeiro’s clearance of perjury charges:

After he learned he had tested positive for stanozolol, a serious steroid, Palmeiro said he could only speculate that a vial of vitamin B12 he got from Miguel Tejada, the Orioles shortstop, had been contaminated with it.

Getting into this area, though, Palmeiro’s defense begins to raise questions. For one thing, Canseco wrote in his book that Palmeiro and other players had used stanozolol.

For another, Tejada and two other, unidentified Orioles players, all of whom acknowledged taking B12 shots from Tejada’s supply, produced negative tests. Additional vials of B12 that Tejada provided upon request were also clean.

Those three players, of course, could have used tainted B12 shots and not had the substance in their systems when they were tested. If he had steroids-tainted B12 liquid and knew it, Tejada could have supplied different, clean B12 liquid for testing.

But the question remains: If it wasn’t the B12 shot, which not even the union believes it was, how did Palmeiro have stanozolol in his system? By immaculate ingestion?

That is the sticking point one has to get past to believe that Palmeiro didn’t knowingly use steroids. Palmeiro’s test in 2003 was negative, according to the report (2004’s results were gone), as was a test Palmeiro took on May 27 – 23 days after the date of the positive test but two weeks before he was notified he had tested positive.

Of course, Chass may have simply taken his medication before he wrote that one; clearly that was lacking when he concluded that the Dodgers hiring Nationals GM Jim Bowden (whose first two moves for the Nats consisted of $23 million worth of contracts for Cristian Guzman and Vinny Castilla, two players who combined for a grisly 4.4 VORP in 2005) would be a “smart move.” Yikes. Suffice it to say that it made my day to find out that Bowden wasn’t interested in the Dodger job but was slated to interview for the Red Sox GM opening. As Nick quipped, “Talk about consolidating your schadenfruede into one low monthly payment.”

As for the Dodger vacancy, I’m rooting for assistant GM Kim Ng to get the job. Not only would she be the first woman (not to mention the first Asian-American) to hold the job in major professional sports, but she’s got a very solid resume that includes work with the White Sox, the Yankees (where she became the first female aGM) and the American League, and a great reputation among her peers. She knows the Dodger system, particularly the bumper crop of prospects slated to arrive over the next couple of years, and she’s well suited to continue the groundwork laid by her predecessors, Dan Evans and Paul DePodesta, both of whom got the rawest of deals from new owner Frank McCourt (as an upside, maybe the likes of Bill Plaschke and T. J. Simers, assclown L.A. Times columnists who virulently attacked DePodesta from day one, might pull a Bill Singer in trashing her, embarrassing themselves out of a job).

Of course, there are very solid reasons for Ng not to even want the job. The Dodgers have been in chaos since McCourt purchased the team almost two years ago. Failing to invest appropriate capital in the team, firing a GM two years into a five-year plan, firing that GM three weeks after he let the manager go, generally letting the mainstream L.A. media bully him around, giving the impression that Special Advisor Tommy Lasorda is the puppetmaster, making shell-shocked fans yearn for the carefree, spendaholic days of the Fox regime… ugh. Ng “would be set up to fail,” argues J.A. Andade of the L.A. Times, continuing:

Then it would be impossible for her to land another GM job. As hard as it would be for a team to sell a female general manager to its fans, imagine trying to sell them on a woman with a losing record. And the problem with being first is, Ng would represent every woman who hoped to follow her.

Chavez Ravine has been such a bad place for general managers over the last eight years that even male GMs can’t overcome the stigma. Of the four men who have held the position since Fred Claire got the boot in 1998, none has landed a similar job with another team.

The situation is as bleak as it has been in a while. We don’t know how closer Eric Gagne and shortstop Cesar Izturis will recover from their surgeries. We don’t know whom the Dodgers will get to replace Milton Bradley. There are questions at the corner infield positions. There are payroll restrictions and few tradable assets. The one strength, a solid farm system, might not kick in soon enough to benefit her.

…Unfortunately, because somebody has to be first, these are some of the issues Ng, 36, would face in addition to representing a new era in baseball.

Her qualifications can’t be questioned. She went to a top-notch school, the University of Chicago. She has worked for the White Sox under Ron Schueler and Dan Evans, the Yankees under Brian Cashman and the Dodgers under Evans again in an era that’s starting to look like the good old days. She has helped negotiate contracts with the likes of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.

If stat-geek boys who didn’t play the game or drive rental cars from minor league town to minor league town can grow up to be general managers, why can’t girls do it?

That said, I think Ng’s hiring would be the silver lining within the dark cloud hanging over the Dodgers. It would be very tough for McCourt, having annointed her, to give her anything but a fair shake, and if he didn’t… well, blood may not run through the streets of L.A, but red caps may. The Dodgers have already ceded the city of angels to, well, the Angels (Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Weisman has an excellent compare-and-contrast piece in his Baseball Prospectus debut). With the wrong decisions this winter, it may be quite awhile before they can earn it back.

Anyway, gotta stop this ramble to polish up those player comments. Hopefully I’ll get my head back above the Mendoza Line before too long…

Did I promise “more chat?” The title of this post was bestowed upon me by Baseball Prospectus’ Jason Grady, who clocked my BP Chat debut — scheduled to run two hours on Thursday — at three hours and 35 minutes. That’s believed to be a BP record, coming only a few weeks after Christina Kahrl broke the three-hour barrier. What can I say? Like Christopher Columbus, I didn’t set out trying to make history.

I answered 56 questions in all, from a diverse international group (Canada and England represented along with the US) that included family (my brother Bryan), friends, fellow bloggers, FI readers, and a surprisingly large contingent of women (seven or eight, with about another three or four that went unanswered). GMs were the hot topic, with questions about Paul DePodesta, Theo Epstein, Brian Cashman, the Brewers’ Doug Melvin, and Pat Gillick, the Phillies’ new hire, abounding. Folks had a lot of questions on the World Champion White Sox and their ability to repeat, and several off-topic questions about New York City as I shared a bit of background with my audience. Wrestling references abounded, and I’m pleased to announce that Vince McMahon has cast one Screamin’J to be in a steel cage match coming to you via pay-per-view very soon. Of course, I spent a fair deal of time talking about the Yanks, Dodgers, and Red Sox, but I also expanded and spent a good deal of time on the Brewers, Mets, Rockies, A’s, and other teams.

A few of my better answers:

Amol (Poughkeepsie, NY): Derek Jeter finally manged to be an above average shortstop, at least according to the statistics, and it even seems to be confusing Clay Davenport. Previously, I had thought that it might be an A-Rod effect, but considering his performance this year, it seems unlikely. Do you have any theories?

Jay Jaffe: It’s a real puzzle that we were discussing on our internal mailing list the other day.

Judging by our numbers, I do think it’s an A-Rod effect. Jeter’s strength is his arm, so going in the hole toward third base and making the strong throw is his bread and butter, while his footwork and moving to his left towards second is his biggest defensive weakness.

Scott Brosius and Robin Ventura were excellent 3Bs but nowhere near as athletic as Rodriguez. With him to his right, Jeter can shade towards second and get to more ground balls than he did before.

…

DrLivy (Charleston, WV): Jay: Did aliens suck Theo’s brains out this year, after he was so smart last year? I mean, that payroll and that pitching. Wow. Forrest Gump could have put together a better staff.

Jay Jaffe: Theo made some good moves and some not-so-good ones last winter, and many of the breaks that fell the Sox way in 2004 did not in 2005. For bad moves, I’d start with the Edgar Renteria contract (4/$40 MM) and suggest that the Varitek contract was a Faustian bargain he had to make to stay in the good graces of the locker room and the fan base.

I think the Wells deal worked out OK, that Clement’s season was affected by his getting drilled, that Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke left bigger pieces of themselves on the field last October than anyone realized at the time (and that the team should have spent more time insuring they were fully healthy before pitching in 2005), that Wade Miller was a worthy gamble, and that no matter how much they missed Pedro Martinez, resigning him at those prices was a huge risk not worth taking.

I’m somewhat surprised Theo couldn’t pull off a midseason deal for an extra starter by dangling a prospect, but I think that goes to show that he had reasonable expectations for this year and was looking out for the organization’s longer-term interests. If you’re a Sox fan whose 86-year wait has just been ended, I think you have to respect that.

…

Vince McMahon (Hell): Dan Shaughnessy and Bill Plaschke vs. Christina Kahrl and Joe Sheehan in a cage match. Pay-per-view spectacular! What do you think?

Jay Jaffe: In the words of Homer Simpson, “I have two questions: ‘How much?’ and ‘Give it to me!'” My money is on the BP tag-team.

Speaking of Shaughnessy, I learned that his nickname, Curly Haired Boyfriend, was given to him by Carl Everett. If so, I think that almost justifies Everett’s entire existence on this planet (which was, contrary to his opinion, once covered with dinosaurs).

…

scareduck (somewhere west of Hell, MI): Any comments on the firing of Paul DePodesta?

Jay Jaffe: Is that RMc of 6-4-2? Glad you could join us.

The firing of DePodesta is a travesty wrapped inside a debacle inside a catastrophe. For firing their GM three weeks after he ditched the manager, the McCourt family should be forced to wear matching t-shirts that say, “I’m With Stupid”.

Seriously, bowing to the public pressure created by no-brain hacks like Plaschke and Simers and scrapping a five-year plan after year two is one of the dumbest, most thin-skinned things I’ve seen since the George Steinbrenner ’80s. Why any GM would want to take the Dodger job — even with that great looking farm system and the chance to build on the groundwork left by Dan Evans and DePo — is beyond me. McCourt and the backstage machinations of Tommy Lasorda would appear to have poisoned the well.

On that last note (“a travesty wrapped…”), my pal Nick (who had a question of his own answered) offered up this assessment via email: “So it’s something like a Turducken, then?” I practically fell out of my chair laughing and meant to work it into the chat, but it got away from me.

Reading over the transcript, some of my answers are pretty superficial; that’s a product of the situation of having two questions pop up for every one that you answer. It’s a blessing that I can’t actually hyperlink in there or stop to look up splits every time somebody asked a really deep question about what Team X should do, or I’d still be there eleven hours deep. But it was a hell of a good time, and I thank everybody who submitted a question and/or stopped by for the chat. Check it out (it’s free), and if you were somebody who submitted a burning question that didn’t get answered, drop it in the comments and I’ll take a crack at it at my leisure.