I spent four and a half hours at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, four and a half tense, exciting, but ultimately depressing hours watching the Yanks fall to the Red Sox yet again in a 12-inning, 3-2 affair. The Yankees have now lost five out of six to the Sox and stand at 8-10 today, when they will try to salvage some dignity by sending Javier Vazquez on three days rest to face Pedro Martinez. Gulp.

Having missed the brunt of their 11-2 humiliation the night before, I was optimistic the Yanks might shake out of their funk behind Kevin Brown. Perhaps it was the crystal-clear day and the sight of 55,000 people wearing their war paint and plenty of red-and-bllue 1918 regalia — nouveau couture for tauting the Sox faithful. But all I had to do was look over the Yankee lineup, with four out of nine hitters — Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Travis Lee and Enrique Wilson — stationed below the Mendoza Line, to rid myself of that optimism. This is a team in the throes of a dreadful slump, looking every bit the overpriced, over-the-hill, uninspired, fragile worst case scenario that an analyst could conjure in March. They’re not hitting, the rotation outside of Brown and Vazquez has been a disaster, and suddenly a scuffle for the Wild Card seems like a very real possibility.

Facing the Sox for the second time in six days. Brown started out as shaky as can be, walking the first two batters of the game. He knocked Manny Ramirez in the dirt as the crowd showered him with epithets, but the Boston slugger got even by swatting a sacrifice fly to put the Sox on the board first. Brown’s problems in the second were even more of his own making. A sharp comebacker off of the bat of Kevin Millar prompted the pitcher to hurry his thrown to first, but the ball went well over Travis Lee’s head and into the stands. Then Mark Bellhorn grounded to Lee, who underhanded the ball to Brown as he reached first; he dropped the ball for his second error in as many batters. He plunked Gabe Kapler to load the bases with nobody out, and suddenly this must have seemed like a bad dream for the gritty hurler. Pokey Reese stroked a sac fly, but Brown escaped the inning with further damage. Still, he walked a tightrope. David Ortiz led off the third with a double into the left-centerfield gap, and with one out Jason Varitek walked. But Alex Rodriguez backhanded a hard Millar smash down the thrid-base line, saving at least one run and drawing a hearty ovation from the crowd.

Meanwhile, the Yanks couldn’t touch Sox starter Bronson Arroyo. He walked Derek Jeter to lead off the game, but DJ was immediately erased on a strike out/throw out double play. When A-Rod topped a dribbler back to Arroyo, the crowd booed intensely. In the second Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield both took called strike three. It was going to be that kind of day.

After Brown put together his first 1-2-3 inning in the thrid, A-Rod pumped some life into the frustrated Yankee crowd with a solo homer to left. That was the sole hit the Yanks got through Arroyo’s first six innings, and the score held 2-1 as Brown retired ten out of eleven batters. But he was doing so in an uncharacteristic manner. Fourteen times out of the 31 batters he faced, Brown started off with ball one, not exactly a recipe for success. Five times in his seven innings, the leadoff batter got on base. He induced ten flyouts against ten grounders, unusual for a pitcher with a career groundball/flyball ratio of 2.74, and not until Ortiz struck out in the seventh did he record a single strikeout. Even more amazingly, until that Ortiz at-bat not a single Sox hitter swung and missed against Brown all afternoon. He could hardly have made it tougher on himself, but he nonetheless did an admirable job of keeping the Yanks in the game on a day which he had very little going for him.

Arroyo began the seventh facing A-Rod, who again couldn’t get the ball out of the infield as he topped a slow roller to Bill Mueller at third. In a move that must have had the entire front office cringing but nevertheless delighted the crowd, A-Rod belly-flopped into first base in a cloud of dust: SAFE! Giambi singled through the two dozen fielders clogging the right side of the infield, and A-Rod took third when Millar bobbled the ball. Sheffield tied the score with a single, and the crowd became jovial for the first time on the day.

That spelled the end of Arroyo’s day, and Scott Williamson came on in relief. An infield grounder by Jorge Posada — practically the only Yankee batter with a pulse but nevertheless stuck in the six slot — sent the runners to second and third. Williamson then intentionally walked Lee to face Bernie Williams, in such a dreadful 1-for-April slump that he and his sub-Mendoza average were hitting eighth. With the bases loaded and one out, the crowd rose to its feet at the sight of the man who has delivered so many huge hits over the years. But number 51 is growing old before our very eyes; he grounded meekly into a 4–6-3 double play to snuff the rally.

Tom Gordon blew away the Sox in the eighth by striking out the side, but got into trouble when he walked Kapler to start the ninth. Surprisingly for the sabermetrically inclined Sox, Reese sacrificed him over to second, but Gordon shut the door by retiring Johnny Damon on a grounder and then getting Mueller to pop up to Jeter. The sac bunt theme reared its ugly head in the bottom of the inning when A-Rod walked against Alan Embree and Bubba Crosby, who’d pinch-run for Giambi in the seventh, got knocked over trying to bunt two high fastballs, both of which popped foul. Crosby nevertheless lay down as perfect an 0-2 bunt as you’d ever care to see, which is to say that it beat striking out, but ultimately didn’t help much. One out later, Embree walked Posada intentionally to face Lee, who grounded out to end the threat.

Mariano Rivera came on in the tenth and the Sox again got a runner into scoring position. Ramirez singled, was erased in a forceout, and then Jason Varitek got picked off of first. But Lee’s throw to the second base bag went wide left, and Varitek was safe. Fortunately, Millar popped out to Posada to end the inning.

Against Sox relief ace Keith Foulke, the Yanks returned to the infernal sac bunt strategy in the tenth. Ortiz misplayed Bernie’s leadoff grounder for an error and then Miguel Cairo, in for Enrique Wilson, moved Williams over. After Jeter grounded out, Matsui walked, and then A-Rod was intentionally walked to load the bases and get to Crosby. Yankee manager Joe Torre countered by calling upon the undead Ruben Sierra (when your OPS is around .400, the zombies have clearly taken over); he could manage only an inning-ending infield grounder.

Rivera loaded the bases in the elevenh with one out but to no ultimate harm, but the Sox finally put over a run in the twelfth off of Paul Quantrill. Manny greeted him with a double off of the right-center wall that appeared to befuddle both Bernie (who looks completely lost on defense these days) and Sheffield. Varitek moved Ramirez over on a grounder. Quantrill hit Millar, and then Bellhorn lofted one into the left-center gap. Bernie made a nice reaching grab, but his weak arm was no match and the Sox third run scored — all three on sac flies. It turns out that Boston went 0-for-19 on the day with runners in scoring position, the worst such clutch failure in 27 years. It was still too much for the Yanks, who couldn’t even get a runner on against Mike Timlin in the twelfth and fell to the Sox yet again.

The team is now hitting .221/.332/.377. Jeter is 1 for his last 26, hitting a meek .184/.262/.224. Williams is .179/.303/.214. Torre continues to write Wilson’s name in the lineup despite a .394 OPS and the fact that Cairo has 4 RBI in his 10 plate appearances, two more than Wilson has in 49. the best hitter on the team, Posada, is stuck batting sixth despite a .745 slugging percentage, a share of the league lead in homers and second in the league in RBI. The next four days find the Yanks facing Pedro and then the big three of the Oakland A’s, Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. The Yanks are 3.5 games out for the first time in nearly two years, and it may well get worse before it gets better. Enjoy it while you can, Yankee haters.

A funny thing happened on the way to my blog. What had started out on Sunday morning as an email to Dayn Perry in appreciation for last week’s Baseball Prospectus article on Hank Aaron turned into a quick and dirty research project. That in turn grew to a multi-spreadsheet undertaking and then into an overlong, caffeine-fueled blog entry. On a whim, I decided to run it by the BP editors before publishing it myself, braced for a quick but polite “no thanks.” But the editors liked it, and within the hour I was revising the piece for publication on Prospectus. To paraphrase the great Eddie Izzard on the discovery of the Heimlich Maneuver, the way it all came together was like, “A fist, a hand, hoocha hoocha hoocha… lobster!” (If you don’t know what I’m talking about you really need to watch Dress to Kill.)

Perry’s article was an affectionate if belated tribute to Aaron, the 30th anniversary of whose 715th home run was on April 8. Noting Barry Bonds’ progress up the all-time home run charts, Dayn began with a sentiment which I share: “With all due kudos to Barry Bonds for passing Willie Mays on the all-time home run leaderboard, I’m hoping his efforts to fell Hank Aaron’s mark of 755 come to grief.” Perry’s desire has less to do with a dislike of Bonds for his arrogance or for any taint of BALCO-related mischief. It’s based squarely on his admiration for Aaron and the obstacles which he overcame; a southerner himself, Perry’s acutely aware of what he calls the region’s “crueler natures.”

He reminds readers that Aaron started in the Negro Leagues with the Indianapolis Clowns, encountering segregation and racism at several turns, including an ugly incident where a D.C. diner destroyed the plates which the players had eaten off rather than serve food on them to their white clientele. As a 19-year-old, Aaron broke the color line of the South Atlantic (Sally) League and would have done so in the Southern League as well when he got a break, literally. Bobby Thomson (yes, that one) fractured his leg, giving Aaron an opening on the Milwaukee Braves at the tender age of 20. Seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, Aaron was the last Negro Leaguer to make it to the majors.

Perry notes that Aaron’s superficially declining stats in 1968 (the Year of the Pitcher) led him to consider retirement, but that historian Lee Allen reminded him of the milestones which lay ahead. Two years later, Aaron became the first black player to cross the 3,000 hit threshold, two months ahead of Willie Mays. By then Aaron was chasing 600 homers and climbing into some rarefied air among the top power hitters of all time.

It’s Aaron’s late-career heroics where I stepped into the picture. Intending to make a point about how Hammerin’ Hank’s homer totals were boosted by Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, a/k/a “the Launching Pad,” I dug out my old Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (the ’87 version) which contains home and road HR splits for a select group of players, and jotted some numbers down; lo and behold, during his Atlanta tenure, Aaron had hit 192 homers at home and 145 on the road. A big boost, to be sure, but then I began wondering how other top sluggers, particularly the Bambino, compared. Here’s the home-road breakdown for the Top 20 homer hitters of all time as of April 20 (asterisks denote an active players):

Rk   Player             HR   HHR   RHR

1    Hank Aaron        755   385   370

2    Babe Ruth         714   347   367

3    Barry Bonds*      667   327   340

4    Willie Mays       660   335   325

5    Frank Robinson    586   321   265

6    Mark McGwire      583   285   298

7    Harmon Killebrew  573   291   282

8    Reggie Jackson    563   280   283

9    Mike Schmidt      548   265   283

10   Sammy Sosa*       543   292   251

11   Mickey Mantle     536   266   270

12   Jimmie Foxx       534   299   235

13   Rafael Palmeiro*  529   288   241

14T  Willie McCovey    521   264   257

14T  Ted Williams      521   248   273

16T  Ernie Banks       512   290   222

16T  Eddie Mathews     512   237   275

18   Mel Ott           511   323   188

19   Eddie Murray      504   248   256

20   Lou Gehrig        493   251   242 

Who knew Babe Ruth hit more homers on the road than at home? I surely did not. As you might expect, there’s plenty of fun to be had with these numbers. That fun, accompanied by several other charts, is part of my BP article, which is a freebie this time (so I’ll hear no whining about how broke you are this week). Check it out, and post your comments here if you have any.

Very little of the baseball I saw this weekend — watching the Yanks’ lackluster showing in Boston or attending Sunday’s latest Met debacle as they were swept by the Pirates — was any good for the home team. But none of that meant anything to me compared to my own good news. To accompany a gorgeous weekend with sunshine and weather in the 70s, I did something I haven’t done in over ten months: I broke out my mitt and played catch.

It was the middle of last June when a moment of idiotic swimming pool-related horseplay — never ever dive onto a flotation mat in the middle of a pool, kids — left me clutching my right shoulder and writhing in agony. As I’d hit the mat, my arm had slipped laterally, pinning my elbow in the vicinity of my sternum while I felt a sickening pop in my shoulder. Hours later, in an attempt to gauge just how badly off I was, I tried throwing a baseball to Andra, only to find I couldn’t push the ball more than about 20 feet. Throwing like a girl would have been an improvement; my shoulder felt as though the wind had been knocked out of it. Not good at all.

A belligerent primary care physician, travel, and my own optimism delayed a proper diagnosis on my injury until I went to see an orthopedic surgeon in the middle of July. To make a long story short, I had torn my labrum, the ring of cartilage that holds the shoulder in its socket. Three months of physical therapy failed to alleviate the problem and cost me a lot of sleep (waking up several times a night to avoid certain positions), and so last November I underwent arthroscopic surgery; in fact, it was five months ago Monday. I spent a full month wearing a sling, then began physical therapy. At first I struggled to lift even two- and three-pound weights, feeling estranged from my own muscles and wondering if I had reinjured myself in my rehab. Progress was agonizingly slow; during one exercise my therapist had to remind me of the proper mechanics about two-thirds of the time. But I had been told it would be six months before I could return to a full level of activity, and I was being paced accordingly.

As the therapy went on I got to do some ball-related exercises in addition to the weightlifting. Mostly it was stuff like throwing a weighted ball into a diagonally-positioned trampoline six feet away, then letting it bounce back into my hand while cushioning the impact, or bouncing that ball above a door frame with the same purpose. But as baseball season approached and my shoulder continued to heal, I began practicing my throwing motion on my own time. In one of my desk drawers I rediscovered an old foam ball, roughly two thirds the size of a baseball, a replica of a globe dating to my time designing for the World Almanac Group. When nobody else was around, I began tossing that ball off of the walls in my apartment, once in awhile sort of letting loose and hearing it smack the wall with a satsifying thunk. Watching games, I would take a baseball — the forbidden fruit — out of my closet and either practice my grip or just spin the it in my hands. I felt like a kid on a rainy day, bummed that I couldn’t just go outside to do exactly what I yearned to do.

Finally, about ten days ago I asked my therapist if it would be OK for me to play some catch; he cleared me with the caveat that I shouldn’t throw very far. With last weekend cold and drab, I decided to wait for a nicer day, and this sunny Saturday felt divinely delivered. My pal Nick and I took our mitts to nearby Tompkins Square Park and tossed the ball around at about 20 paces for about fifteen minutes. While I had no trouble throwing it that distance, I quickly became self-conscious of my mechanics, noticing when I was occasionally wrist-snapping the ball back to Nick or stopping a short of a total follow-through. I spent a lot of time watching my feet, making sure to throw off of my left foot rather than resorting to my old flat-footed infielder peg.

I took a break as Andra, who’d wandered over to the park without her mitt, took over mine and continued tossing the ball with Nick. She can hold her own; no throwing like a girl for her. After she threw for about 10 minutes, I reclaimed my mitt and resumed tossing the ball. I was beginning to feel some stiffness below my shoulder blade, but enjoying myself too much to stop; Dusty Baker would have been proud. I’d be lying if I said that the inside of my shoulder joint feels the same as it did pre-mischief or pre-surgery, or that it’s anywhere close to normal yet. But two days after throwing I’m happy to report that my body felt no worse than it does after any of my PT workouts, and my soul feels a whole lot better now that I can pick up my mitt and throw the ball any damn time I want.

* * *

The Yankees’ soul, on the other hand, was MIA this weekend in Boston as they lost three out of four games to the Red Sox to drop below .500 (6-7). Alex Rodriguez had a weekend from hell, getting a deserved earful from Sox fans while going 0-for-16 until he finally singled in the ninth inning of Monday’s game. Too little, too late. A-Rod is parked well below the Mendoza Line, hitting an anemic .160/.263/.280, but he’s not alone in his futility; the team as a whole is hitting .217/.334/.381 and scoring 4.3 runs a game. So much for scoring 1000 runs. Aside from Jorge Posada’s .256/.375/.692 line, the only positive to point to for the Yankee hitters is that they’re drawing walks, one for every 6.4 at bats, 66 in all.

The team’s starting pitching, aside from Kevin Brown, is a bit more worrisome, posting a 5.06 ERA so far. Brown wasn’t as sharp on Monday as against Tampa Bay, but then three outings against a perennial doormat might lull one into a false sense of security. Javier Vazquez, after dazzling in his Yankee debut, got knocked around on Friday night, though the Yankee defense didn’t do him any favors either. Mike Mussina continues to sputter, with a 7.52 ERA and a 1-3 record after four starts; some of his velocity has gone missing, likely due to the Yanks’ abbreviated time in Florida rather than any injury. Jose Contreras is even worse, with a 9.39 ERA and only 7.2 innings in his two starts. Staked to a 7-1 lead on Sunday, Contreras couldn’t even show Joe Torre enough to get himself out of a jam in the third inning. As if that wasn’t bad enough, substitute fifth starter Jorge De Paula was placed on the DL with what’s been called a “sprained elbow” and is headed to visit Dr. James Andrews. More than likely, that spells Tommy John surgery and a lost season. Rookie Alex Graman will make his major league debut on Tuesday starting against the Chicago White Sox, and assuming he keeps his head above water, would draw another start against the Red Sox next weekend. Gulp.

The brightest spot at this point has been the revamped bullpen, which has posted a 3.38 ERA thus far. Take away Felix Heredia — please — and that drops to 2.10 (Heredia was placed on the DL this weekend). Mariano Rivera’s been his cool self, Tom Gordon, Paul Quantrill, and Gabe White have combined for 20 appearances in 13 games, and even Donovan Osborne, who did mop-up duty on Saturday, has been getting hitters out. Monday was not a good day for that troupe, however, as they allowed Brown’s fourth and tying run to come around from first and then gave up the winning run in the eighth. It happens.

What should make the Yanks kick themselves (or give Boston fans hope) is that the Sox did this all without Nomar Garciaparra, Trot Nixon, or Pedro Martinez, and with a leadoff hitter who looks like he escaped from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Monday’s lineup featured David McCarty batting sixth and playing first base, Cesar Crespo batting seventh and playing second, and number nine hitter Pokey Reese getting two hits and scoring the aforementioned tying run. Eeuch. Sooner or later the Sox are going to get reinforcements and they’ll be even tougher to beat than they were this weekend.

But nobody in Yankeeland should press any panic buttons yet. Fifteen or 20 years ago, the Yanks’ 6-7 start and key early-season loss to the Sox would have spilled managerial blood, but with George Steinbrenner having just extended Joe Torre’s contract for three years, that possibility seems remote. Torre and company will remain calm, A-Rod and the rest of the Yankee hitters will come around, as will the pitching staff. Here’s a rule of thumb: if the IRS hasn’t processed your tax return yet, it’s too early to worry.

Reader Chris G. passed along a funny article about itinerant reliever Todd Jones, now with the Cincinnati Reds. Recall that Jones’ most notable accomplishment last season — besides drawing a $3 million paycheck for 68.2 innings of 7.08 ERA ball — was (to paraphrase Jim Bouton) revealing himself to be as smart as his ERA. Commenting on the Broadway show Take Me Out, the reliever gained notoriety last April for shooting his mouth off about the possibility of an openly gay ballplayer in the majors:

“I wouldn’t want a gay guy being around me,” Todd Jones told [the Denver Post]. “It’s got nothing to do with me being scared. That’s the problem: All these people say he’s got all these rights. Yeah, he’s got rights or whatever, but he shouldn’t walk around proud. It’s like he’s rubbing it in our face. ‘See me, Hear me roar.’ We’re not trying to be close-minded, but then again, why be confrontational when you don’t really have to be?”

…Jones also said in the story that the player better be good “Because if (the team) thinks for one minute he’s disrupting the clubhouse — if he doesn’t hit 50 homers or win 20 games — they’re not going to put up with that.”

After his homophobic comments made John Rocker-style headlines, Jones issued a half-assed apology but didn’t back off his remarks. Released a couple of months later after posting an 8.24 ERA, he bounced from the Rockies to the Red Sox and continued to struggle. This spring, he went to camp with the Devil Rays but was released late in March and subsequently caught on with the Reds.

He must be more comfortable around his new teammates, because this Hal McCoy article in the Dayton Daily News reveals… well, everything:

There are a million stories in The Naked Clubhouse, with Todd Jones behind most of them…

The sound of a baseball thwacking into gloves echoed from the hallway leading to the showers in the Citizens Bank Park visitors clubhouse Wednesday afternoon.

Cincinnati Reds first baseman Sean Casey peered around a corner, spotted what was going on, then said, “Get my camera. I have to take a shot of this.”

The naked truth: It was relief pitchers Jones and Brian Reith. Playing catch in a shower hall

was strange enough, but Jones and Reith were as naked as the day they were born, except for baseball gloves.

“Just getting our work in,” said Jones, clearly the team’s bullpen stand-up and sit-down comedian.

…Jones, a veteran who has had success in the bullpen as a closer and a set-up guy, is the type of personality a young team needs, a guy who makes everybody laugh.

Insert punchline here:

A) The reliever is turning the other cheek

B) He’s turning over a new fig leaf

C) Those in glass houses shouldn’t throw naked

D) Nothing wrong with two men being naked in the clubhouse shower so long as they’re “working,” but the moment they start “rubbing it in” faces, it becomes a problem

Reader Chris takes Jones to task, writing, “I’m glad Jones isn’t ‘gay.’ If he was, he’d actually have to perform (i.e. ‘hit 50 homers or win 20 games’). Since he’s obviously ‘heterosexual,’ his nude cavorting isn’t ‘disrupting the clubhouse’ and guys will ‘put up with that.'” But I’m inclined to laugh this one off, hoping that Jones has gained some enlightenment and that the next time the reliever shoots his mouth off, somebody’s got incriminating photos of The Infamous Todd Jones Shower Scene.

* * *

Elsewhere in this major-league version of News of the Weird, Jon Weisman provided an update to earlier reports about former Dodger and Yankee outfielder Raul Mondesi’s woes. Back in 1998, Mondesi was sued by former futility infielder Mario Guerrero, who claims that he was promised one percent — now roughly $640,000 — of Raul’s future earnings for helping him improve his baseball skills. In February, a Dominican court ruled in Guerrero’s favor, and Mondesi subsequently appealed the ruling. But the court ordered his bank account frozen, and his current employer, the Pittsburgh Pirates, has decided to withhold his pay until the dispute is resolved.

Said Mondesi: “I have no agreement with Guerrero, and he never taught me anything. I’m not going to give him a cent of my money.” The stubborn Mondy may be onto something, as he’s spent his entire career showing that apart from his great natural talents, he’s unwilling to learn how to control the strike zone, how to stay in shape, or how to win friends and influence people. After earning $44.5 million over the past five seasons, he’s currently playing for a paltry $1.15 million in Pittsburgh. While acknowledging the ridiculous interpretation of the court’s ruling regarding his frozen assets, I’m just hoping that Raul stuffed some of those millions under his mattress.

In all seriousness, Weisman’s got an interesting email from Dominican baseball writer and broadcaster Carlos Lugo, who’s covered the country’s Winter League for Baseball Prospectus. As Lugo wrote:

What’s in the background of this (not specifically in this case in particular but in general) I think is more interesting. Our country is transformed into a baseball player factory or some sort of assembly line. Everywhere you can see young kids playing ball, and the sad part is that they’re not exactly playing for the fun of it (as I did and as you did) but trying to become professional baseball players.

As a consequence, an informal industry has arisen around the MLB teams academies and operations. The lack of a more formal or structured development chain – like school or little leagues in the U.S. – resulted in some kind of “informal development chain” that started in disorganized little league teams, where the “coach” gave the basic training to the kids until they approached 15 to 17 years of age, an age when they show if they’re signable…

These “coaches” are the first ones looking for some sort of “return on investment,” and what they’re doing lately is signing some sort of formal contract where they get the player to share one fraction of their signing bonuses, or, if they’re as wise and lucky as Guerrero, hit the jackpot with a guy that eventually make it to the big leagues and becomes a regular player.

Lugo also told Weisman that in Mondesi’s case, such a formal contract actually exists, which explains why Mondy’s been getting his fat ass kicked in court. Lugo’s comments are worth checking out, as there are some fascinating and serious issues lying below the superficial schadenfreude I feel towards a player who’s pissed me off to no end while playing for the two teams whose caps I wear.

Though the “official” date passed last Friday and I’ve mentioned it just about everywhere else on this site, I haven’t posted the news to this blog yet: the Futility Infielder is now three years old.

It’s hard to believe time has passed so quickly. Though it doesn’t feel quite like yesterday when I registered this domain, it’s as fresh in my memory as last week. What’s even harder to believe is that I’m still at it. When I started the site, never in my nine years since graduating college had I developed the discipline to write regularly. Three years later, I’ve got hundreds of readers a day, occasionally I get paid for my work, and I can claim a whole network of friends and allies across the globe, many of whom have become a real part of my life here in New York City.

Of course, I never envisioned the blogging medium would take off to the extent that it did. I began building my site in April of 2001, putting it up piece by piece — mostly a few profiles, game reports, and other essays. The blog didn’t go live until mid-June with this post. I did some research recently and checked out some of my “old” peers, finding only one — Baseball News Blog — with archives that went back before that (all the way to February). Christian Ruzich (The Cub Reporter) came to the blogging scene right after I did, though I believe he’d been doing a baseball site prior to the blog, and John Bonnes (Twins Geek) another month later. Visiting the great Internet Wayback Machine, I looked up Baseball News Blog, which had archived a page from May 16 of that year. This is what it lists under weblogs:

Clutch Hits [Baseball Primer]

Sean Forman’s Blog [Baseball Primer]

Don Malcolm’s Blog [Baseball Primer]

Al’s Baseball Tidbits [Baseball Primer]

SurfJones Baseball [SportsJones site, now defunct]

Hot Stove Diner [a group site which took forever to load but had a great banner, now gone]

On Base [Ben Matasar, who went on to form Baseball Junkie with Ryan Wilkins]

Around Baseball – ?

Astroday (Astros) – ?

Dye-O-Meter (Royals) [not really a blog, by the look of it]

Curse of etc. (Red Sox) [Bambino’s Curse, still functional]

Bookworm’s Blog (Yankees) [not really baseball-focused but still functional at new site]

By the end of June, here’s the list:

Clutch Hits

Sean’s Outside the Box

Hot Stove Diner

On Base

Futility Infielder

Rob & Rany on the Royals [Neyer and Jazayerli’s site, which went defunct and then revived]

Astroday

Curse of the Bambino

The Other Side [Mets; still around, but not really baseball]

Cub Rants [still active]

The Cub Reporter [thriving]

News and Views [White Sox, one of the better ones for awhile, now defunct]

Braves Journal [still kickin’]

ExposNET News [goes back to ’97 in some form or another but not necessarily a blog]

Detroit Tiger Weblog [can you blame them for giving up?]

News from a Fan (LA) [a woman, Sarah Morris, who ended up getting hired by MLB]

Now so many blogs exist that nobody could possibly list them all, let alone visit each one on a regular basis. I find myself forgetting where I read stuff all the time, and I know it’s not just early senility setting in — it’s a whole new ballgame for writing about baseball.

On the occasion of the site’s third birthday, I’ve completed a piece I’d been meaning to do for years, a profile of Luis Sojo for my Wall of Fame. I had a blast doing the research, digging through Retrosheet and taking advantage of my SABR membership, which includes access to the New York Times archive via Proquest (worth the SABR price all by itself) and scouring the web for more information. I found myself reading articles that I remember emailing to friends and tripping down memory lane. Here is my intro to the piece, which I’m convinced might be the most detailed overview of Sojo’s career:

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: this website wouldn’t exist if not for the heroics of Luis Sojo, role player-turned-World-Series-hero. At a time when this Internet outpost was nothing more than a twinkle in my eye, Sojo’s October 2000 performance provided an unlikely source of inspiration: if a frumpy but amiable futility infielder could drive in the winning run of a World Series, then perhaps the rest of us could hope to transcend our limitations as well. Though I’ve mentioned Sojo dozens of times in my blog and other writings, his spot on my Wall of Fame is long overdue. On the occasion of celebrating this site’s third birthday, it seems only fitting to explain Sojo’s place in the FI pantheon and to formally recognize his 2001 Futility Infielder of the Year award.

Anyway, I want to thank everybody — family, friends, fellow bloggers, writers and readers — who has helped me with advice, encouraged me to keep going, or just showed up to read what I have to say day after day. Maintaining this site for the past three years has changed my life in ways I never imagined it would, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

Recently a friend and I were wondering aloud as to the whereabouts of Adrian “El Duquecito” Hernandez, a Cuban defector who spent the last four seasons collecting a cool million per year while pitching his way to a thorough tour of the Yankees’ minor-league outposts. Despite his major-league contract, Hernandez had bungled what slim chances he had with the parent club, notably begging out of a 2001 start with a fever, prompting Roger Clemens to pitch on short rest against the Tigers (he beat them). From there Hernandez was ticketed to oblivion, rarely even drawing a mention as potential bullpen fodder or trade bait, let alone a fifth starter role. His brief major league line with the yanks was an 0-4 record in 28 innings of 5.46 ERA ball, which comes out to a million dollars per major league loss. George Steinbrenner has spent better money.

The 29-year-old Hernandez didn’t pitch horribly in a swingman role last year at AAA Columbus, going 8-5 with a 3.21 ERA and 103 Ks in 101.2 innings. Not seeing him in camp this year with the Yanks, I thought the worst — Luca Brazi, Jimmy Hoffa, Jeff Cirillo (you say he’s not dead? With that .205/.284/.271 I beg to differ). But it turns out Duquecito’s alive and… if not well, at least drawing a major-league paycheck. In a move so minor that it probably escaped Brian Cashman’s notice, Hernandez signed a minor-league contract with the Milwaukee Brewers last December, and made the team out of spring training.

He may not stick around for very long, however; he’s been lit both times he’s pitched, allowing two runs in two innings against the Astros and five runs in one inning against the Cardinals, including a 3-run homer to Scott Rolen and a big L next to his name. That’s a 21.00 ERA, about four times worse than Brooks Kieschnick (5.40), and even worse than another former blink-and-you-missed-it Yankee in the Brewer pen, Ben Ford (17.18). Then again, on a team with a 6.17 ERA a week into the season, nobody should be pointing any fingers at these guys. Just tell them to rent, not buy.

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I just got through singing the praises of Steven Goldman, but he’s been slaying me lately with his newest BP column. In “Teams: A Critical Guide,” the bearded one periodically assigns letter grades and hilarious, pithy comments to each franchise in a style that recalls Village Voice rock critic Robert Christgau. As somebody who can take half an hour to get through one of Chris Kahrl’s Transaction Analyses because I’m so busy emailing the best lines to my friends, I’m in hog heaven with Goldman’s stuff. Just a few samples:

ANAHEIM ANGELS: Darin Erstad OPS Watch: .433 at this writing. Acknowledging that Adam Kennedy is no Ryne Sandberg, and maybe no Tony Cuccinello, there is no reason he has to be hidden at the bottom of the batting order like the product of some illicit affair between second cousins while Erstad is allowed to waive proudly in the breeze like a nudist hogtied to the yardarm of the HMS Victory…

FLORIDA MARLINS: …The bench is another matter, with Lenny Harris, Mike Mordecai, Damion Easley, and Abraham Nunez. “This is one of the strongest benches they have ever had,” said Harris. Lenny was referring to the literal plank of wood on which he and his comrades sit, because it takes a mighty strong piece of wood to support that much dead weight…

NEW YORK METS: A visit to Kabala Koala, the Mystical Jewish Marsupial, reveals that Tom Glavine will have difficulty sustaining a low ERA on two strikeouts per nine innings, Cliff Floyd will continue to get hurt as often as the sun rises, and Shea Stadium will continue to be the ugliest ballpark in the majors long after the Jets’ West Side stadium plan has died an ignominious death. KK also predicts six more weeks of winter. We’re still working some bugs out of the program…

There’s an even better one about the Orioles and David Segui which is too long to rerun here. Alas, it’s a premium piece, which means that like my good friend Mr. T, I pity the fool that doesn’t subscribe.

If you came to this blog via my home page, you might have noticed a change: thanks to the wonders of Really Simple Syndication (RSS), I’m now able to bring in headlines and intros from my recent blog entries, which is what I was asking about a couple weeks ago. What I needed was to get ahold of something called an RSS Parser, such as the one here.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. Unfortunately, not everything works quite as planned; as I write this my most recent entry still hasn’t shown up on the home page or on some (but not all) of the other places my blog is syndicated (such as Baseballblogs.org) even though it’s in the feed. I’m still hopeful this feature is going to improve the site, but like everything else technical, there will be bugs along the way. I still think that RSS has the potential to be one of the best developments in the baseball blogosphere.

I’ve gotten my feet wet — literally — with the 2004 season, having paid visits to both New York City stadiums since I last posted. Come to think of it, paid is the wrong word, as I was treated to both games. Friday’s game found me at Yankee Stadium, courtesy of a client of mine who was in town on business. Unfortunately said client (whom I’ll call Bob for reasons that will become clear), in an effort to procure good seats, purchased a pair of counterfeit tickets from an scalper, and the fakes were confiscated by the geezers at the gate without a second thought. Not a good start. Duly chastened, we went and procured some real tickets from the appropriate channel, somewhat sheepishly entering via a different gate.

The Yanks got off to a good start, taking a 1-0 lead on Sox starter Jon Garland in the second inning. Gary Sheffield led off, lacing a double down the leftifield line, and Hideki Matsui followed with a broken-bat single up the middle. But the Yankee offense, still sputtering since their return from Japan, remained in neutral. Sheffield left two men on in the third, and in the fourth, Garland escaped a four-walk inning without giving up a run or being given the hook by manager Ozzie Guillen (Matsui got picked off of second with nobody out).

Up to that point, Yank starter Jose Contreras had been solid but unspectacular, but he unraveled in the fifth. Timo Perez led off with a single and then stole second on the first pitch to number nine hitter Miguel Olivo (whose first big league home run I witnessed on on a rainy September day in 2002). Contreras immediately followed with a wild pitch to send Perez to third, and then walked Olivo without throwing a strike. Ugh. Olivo — a catcher — then stole second on Supposedly Defense-Minded Backup John Flaherty. After escaping from a 1-2 count, Willie Harris brough Perez home with a sacrifice fly to tie the score, and then Jose Valentin walked on five pitches. I groaned and turned to Bob, telling him that Contreras was courting disaster, and that sooner or later one pitch was going to cost him dearly. The next batter, Magglio Ordonez, made me look pretty smart by smacking a three-run homer into the leftfield net, 4-1 Sox. An analytical pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.

Garland led off the fifth by walking Alex Rodriguez, and for a moment it seemed as though the Yanks would come right back. But they couldn’t get the ball out of the infield, and the inning ended with Sheffield hitting into a double play. Meanwhile, the Sox picked up where they left off. Joe Crede drilled a one-out solo homer, spelling the end of Conteras’ day, and then lefty Felix Heredia broke out the gasoline. He walked Perez on four pitches and then yielded a double to Olivo which put runners on second and third. Harris grounded one to Derek Jeter, who hurried a throw home trying to get Perez. The throw was off the mark — wide to the first base side — and Flaherty couldn’t hold on to it, so both runs scored. This prompted a verbal melee among the fans next to us over the semantic details of whether it had been “a shitty play” with a bad result or just “a fucking stupid play” in the first place. Plenty of insults were exchanged, and tension filled the air as the Yanks’ day slipped away. 7-1 Sox.

Heredia then walked Valentin and was mercifully given the hook by Torre. Paul Quantrill came on and yielded a first-pitch single to Ordonez. Bernie Williams’ reacted strangely to the hit; I’m not sure if he never saw the ball due to the late-afternoon light or whether his shoulder is in such dire condition that he didn’t want to make a throw, but with the ball about six feet from him, Sheffield had to come over and hurl it back to the infield while Valentin came all the way around to score. @#%$^*! With all four runs were charged to Heredia’s room without the benefit of a single out,I was sure I could hear Brian Cashman pick up his telephone to start working the lines for a lefty reliever.

The sole bright spot for the Yanks came in the ninth inning with the score still 9-1. Facing Japanese import Shingo Takatsu (making his major-league debut after 13 years playing in Japan), rookie Bubba Crosby, who’d replaced Bernie in the top of the inning, stepped up for his first at-bat as a Yankee. To the delight of the crowd, he smacked a two-run homer over the rightfield wall, his first ever in the big leagues.

Crosby gave the Yankee fans even more to cheer about on Sunday when manager Joe Torre started him in centerfield in place of the gimpy Kenny Lofton. The kid had several great plays in center, including a catch made where he crashed into a wall, and he smoked a three-run homer off of the face of the rightfield upper deck to propel the Yanks to a 5-4 win and a split of their four-game series. The victory marked the 200th career win for starter Mike Mussina, who had struggled his two previous outings and had taken a total of five-starts to surpass the milestone. Rightfully so after Mussina’s recent ugly American act, it was the gritty Crosby who was the toast of the town in the Monday papers. More on him in a moment.

Monday found me at Shea Stadium for the Mets home opener, courtesy of my friend Lillie, a former co-worker who’s taken me to a ton of games over the years. Amid a light drizzle, the Mets took it to the Atlanta Braves by scoring runs in the first five innings, ten in all. To the fans’ satisfaction, the first seven came against former Met Mike Hampton, who spurned the team’s offer following the 2000 Subway Series to sign a huge deal with the Colorado Rockies, making all kinds of noise about lifestyle. It was a slap in the collective face of New Yorkers, and they showered him with boos and epithets to accompany the rain as he departed. Hampton’s ERA since leaving the Mets: 5.28. How are those Colorado schools working out for your kids, Mike?

The Mets rolled to their lead behind a makeshift lineup. With Mike Piazza, Jose Reyes, Karim Garcia and Cliff Floyd all sidelined (the latter placed on the DL yet again), the 2-3-4 hitters in the lineup were Ricky Gutierrez, Shane Spencer, and Todd Zeile. By the fourth inning, Zeile had three hits, and Spencer got his second in the fifth inning. Making his Shea debut was Mike Cameron, who had an RBI single in the first and an RBI double in the fourth, also running down several fly balls in centerfield, an unusual sight for Mets fans used to the wanderings of Roger Cedeno and Timo Perez.

Steve Trachsel pitched six strong (and relatively fast, for him at least) innings, driving in a pair of runs himself, one on a double down the line in the second. The rain continued to fall and my interest began to wane even as the Braves (who were without both Chipper Jones and Rafael Furcal) came back with six runs in the late innings; I split after Atlanta catcher Johnny Estrada stroked a three-run homer off of Grant Roberts. Even with the rain, it was a fun day at the ballpark, and it was nice to see Mets fans have somthing to cheer about.

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On the heels of a great spring in which he surprised everybody by making the roster, Crosby’s two-game splash has Yankee fans abuzz. It’s not hard to see why; on a superstar-laden $180 million team with a moribund offense, he’s the humble, aw-shucks rookie making the minimum and providing the unexpected boost, giving the fans somebody new to root for. But Bubba and the Yankee fans should savor the moment, because it may not get any better than this.

It’s tempting to tell the already limping, already disgruntled Kenny Lofton, “Park cars, bitch,” while Crosby takes over centerfield, but the fact is that Bubba is playing above his head. With the exception of last year’s stats, which are aided by the thin air of Las Vegas (which inflates runs by about 5 percent), Crosby’s minor league numbers aren’t so hot: .268/.343/.380 in A ball, .290/.354/.414 in AA, and the Vegas-boosted .304/.352/.502 in two half-seasons there. Baseball Prospectus has been quite critical of him, and didn’t even include him in either of the past two years’ books which is a pretty serious dis — though for ’04 it’s also a commentary on how unlikely it was for ANY rookie to crack the Yankee roster. Here’s a sampling of what past BP books have said about him:

2000: Crosby, the Dodgers’ 1998 #1 pick out of Rice, hasn’t adjusted to professional baseball. He illustrates the problems with drafting college players in the middle or at the left end of the defensive spectrum: if they don’t hit, they’re completely useless. It’s better to draft collegians from the right end of the spectrum. It’s better still to eschew college hitters entirely and draft college pitchers and high school position players. Crosby has about six weeks to save his career.

2001: Here’s a test of the Arizona Fall League’s power to save a career. Bubba Crosby hadn’t hit worth spit since being drafted in the first round in 1998. In the AFL, he hit .340 with some power, so he’s back on the prospect track. Still, he’s one-dimensional; there’s not much chance of him ever contributing to the Dodgers.

2002: Highly touted coming out of Rice, Crosby hasn’t adjusted to pro ball as well as the Dodgers hoped he would. His bat speed has really disappointed scouts. Crosby was pretty much an average hitter in the Southern League this year, and he’ll begin his age-25 season in Triple-A. In reality, he’s probably a better option for center field in Dodger Stadium than Grissom and Goodwin are. If he hits at all early in the season, look for him to get a shot with the big club.

Crosby’s shot to this point has been in 12 at-bats with the Dodgers last year prior to coming to the Yanks as part of the Robin Ventura deal. BP’s PECOTA system has his weighted mean forecast at an unremarkable .258/.309/.411 in about 250 PA, which comes out to an EQA of .248 — solidly below average. His defense is good; the system puts him at +3 runs, which means that he’s not a bad option as a fifth outfielder, especially on a old team with more than its share of defensive question marks. Here’s hoping he sticks around, as he may help the Yanks win a game here and there. But he’s going to have to produce AND get some breaks (and bruises and strains and tears) in order to do so, and this weekend to the contrary, that’s still not a given.

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Commenting on the Philadelphia Phillies’ 1-5 start, fellow Larry Bowa-hater Nick Stone sent me an email with the subject line “Bowa on the Barbecue” and wrote: “I have only one question: Spice rub or chipotle sauce?” Cracked me up…

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The Twin Cities’ Pioneer Press had an enjoyable article by columnist Charley Walters, who had a cup of coffee with the 1969 Minnesota Twins. Much of the self-deprecating piece revolves around Billy Martin, then the Twins’ manager (yes kids, Martin did manage — and win — before becoming George Steinbrenner’s personal yo-yo); after he made his big-league debut, Walters was rousted out of bed by Martin at 3 A.M. for the purpose of drinking. If that’s not a welcome to the big leagues, I don’t know what is.

During the aftermath of a recent Baseball Prospectus Bookstore Pizza feed, Steven Goldman and I had a good laugh, rolling our eyes as we discussed a recent Selena Roberts New York Times piece that had drawn my ire and gained some infamy in the circles we travel. Goldman told me he was itching to write his own take not only on the Roberts piece but on the anti-intellectual post-Moneyball backlash in general. With the latest (free) installment of his BP column “You Could Look It Up,” he’s delivered the goods in style.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that Michael Lewis’ Moneyball was lauded in many circles, transcending its status as a baseball book to influence not just other sports but the broader culture, particularly the business world, as well. The most negative reaction, as Lewis reminded us recently, was from “The Club,” which he defined as “not only the people in the front office who operate the team but also, in a kind of women’s auxiliary, many of the writers and broadcasters who follow the game and purport to explain it.” The historically-minded Goldman starts by comparing the reactionary strain of Moneyball responses (de rigueur among Club members) to similarly-toned dismissals of other baseball innovations — night games, the farm system, radio broadcasts, integration, western expansion, free agency — and notes, as others have, that many of the book’s critics, such as Joe Morgan, clearly didn’t read it. But it’s the reaction of those who did read it upon which he focuses:

Many of those critics who actually read the book — or seem to have read it — have frothed as if they were members of some baseball version of HUAC [House Un-American Activities Committee] circa 1950. The book has given birth to a retrograde, reactionary movement, all of it provoked by its important but less than revolutionary point: In a money-scarce environment, a business must maximize its chances. A good way to do this is to improve your intelligence-gathering operation, then start looking for opportunities the well-heeled operations might have missed.

Moneyball is not Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, inciting a people to rebellion. It isn’t Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species; yet we have our own counterrevolution promoted by the establishment.

It’s amazing to me how many people missed the major point of Moneyball — it’s not so much about some Billy Beane-led tyranny of numbers at the expense of all subjectivity, it’s about using the best information available to gain a competitive advantage and exploit inefficiencies in the market.

Goldman turns his his attention to the infamous Roberts article, siezing upon her dismissal of the Society of American Baseball Research [sic] as “the No-Life Institute.” “Anti-intellectualism is the last P.C. prejudice, ” he notes, “certainly the Times would not allow one of its writers to refer to ‘The Urban League (aka The No-Whites Institute)’ — and it’s an easy way of mocking an idea without really addressing it.” While Roberts isn’t alone in her empty mockery, as an irregular on the baseball beat (no Club membership for her), she’s hardly the one with much at stake. But as part of the mainstream press whose so-called expertise and position of privelege are threatened by statheads telling them that everything they know about baseball is wrong, she’s near the root of that anti-intellectual sentiment.

Like any good analyst, Goldman recognizes that stats are tools and he takes great care to remind us that they aren’t the entire story; subjective observation is still a necessary component. Turning his wayback machine to 1934, he compares the two competing points of view (performance analysis and scouting, or as Dayn Perry famously put it, beer and tacos) regarding 20-year-old San Francisco Seal Joe DiMaggio. While suffering from a knee injury, Joe D. was nonetheless tearing the cover off the ball when the scouts came around. Only by combining the two views could a team — the Yankees — justify signing the future Clipper.

The latter part of the article is where Goldman really shines. Shifting gears, he writes:

Unfortunately, the reaction has put many baseball writers in the untenable position of denying facts that are probably true. The vastly overstated Beane/Moneyball/sabermetric bias against scouting is a red herring, as is the macho derision of sabermetricians. The truth is, while statistics provide the evidence for most of the new theories of the game, most of the ideas advocated by the so-called statheads can be explained by plain old common sense.

Hearkening back to an earlier Pinstriped Bible piece, he revisits some of the lessons he’s learned in his 20 years of watching baseball, breaking down a great deal of sabermetric wisdom into simple numbers and concepts without relying on the alphabet soup of advanced statistical analysis. Among the nuggets which he explains:

* It’s how often a player reaches base that’s important, not batting average, not RBI.

* Remember league and position averages: numbers have meaning only in context.

* The main function of the batting order is to distribute plate appearances.

* A strikeout is just another out.

* The 27 outs of a ballgame are precious. Managers should not give them away lightly.

None of this is new, but Goldman’s ability to simplify this stuff without condescending and remain entertaining all the while is reminiscent of a pretty fair country writer named Bill James. In fact, his laundry list reminds me of the points from the Other Bearded One’s valedictory “Breaking the Wand” essay in the 1988 Baseball Abstract. Whether it’s to send to your local representative of the hackocracy along with a “Dear Jackass” letter or to introduce your skeptical pal to a whole new way of looking at baseball, this is an article you’ll want to clip and save.