Sons of Sam Horn, consider this a Roger Clemens fastball aimed right between the eyes:

“Let’s talk baseball. Here’s the deal. I will chat on baseball questions given here, answer as best I can. Now these need to be real, REAL baseball questions. Not what’s your favorite park, city, mound etc.. But serious fan questions on things like pitching in Fenway, strike zones, questec , umpires etc.. To keep this manageable, let me answer a posted question first before someone else posts another question. Got no problem with BDD posting this stuff to his site, but as I have asked before I would ask members of the media to keep this stuff here. If you are in the media and really actually care about this kinda thing then you will have 7 months to actually ask me any of these questions if you want, no problem.”

– Gehrig38, a.k.a. Curt Schilling, January 13, 2004, Sons of Sam Horn discussion board

What I’ve just excerpted above is probably going to generate an angry letter from the moderators of Sons of Sam Horn, a discussion board for rabid Red Sox fans to which marquee acquisition Curt Schilling began paying late-night visits during trade talks back in November. To which I say, BRING IT ON.

A few days ago one of my cohorts in the blogging world, David Pinto of Baseball Musings, ran an excerpt from a post in which Schilling made “disparaging comments about Rob Neyer” [it’s the seventh one down — here it is on its own; those who dare to hyperlink individual posts take note of my technique]:

“STats have their applications in the game, no one knows that more than me, but a media guy who’s writing career is pretty much founded on these new stats and has a legion of followers, a guy like Neyer on ESPN, I tend to have more dislikes, than likes of. I’m not saying he’s wrong, or right, just that he talks about the numbers as they pertain to future performance almost as if it’s an absolute. Oh I know he always inserts the italicized “maybe” and “potentially”, but the tone of his writing suggests his belief lies more in what he is writing to be fact, than just trend and probability. I’ve seen him say things in the past about players, and be so far wrong it’s ludicrous, but you do enough projecting, of enough people, and at some point you’ll be right, or near right.”

For excerpting a quote (I don’t know for sure if I’ve selected the same one but it hardly matters), moderator Eric Christenson, a.k.a. “Lanternjaw,” accused Pinto of unethical conduct and pressured him into removing that quote from his site, on the argument that what Schilling says in that forum is “off the record.”

Think about that for a moment. Someone is posting something somewhere on the Internet, a medium which can be accessed all over the world by any slack-jawed yokel with a computer and a phone line, yet this person is naive enough to believe that his words, which are RECORDED FOR POSTERITY on a publicly viewable site and can be Googled, are somehow “off the record.”

I don’t buy that for a minute, and neither should you. But I’m going to back up a moment and return to the first statement. Schilling aimed his request at “members of the media” who have first-person access to him during the baseball season, not at bloggers or webmasters. Those reporters, who depend on that access to do their jobs correctly during the baseball season, have respected his wishes, so far as I can tell. For better or worse, the blogosphere is not “the media,” and thus Schilling’s statement is not aimed there. So what Pinto did or what I’ve done is not out of line. By the commonly held standards of the Internet, this would constitute fair use. I have not changed the quotation, I have cited its source, and I have hyperlinked it so that others may see its original context, which itself is a matter of public record.

Schilling’s experiment with posting to SoSH is a fascinating one, placing one of the game’s most outgoing and outspoken players in the grasp of its most cyber-savvy fan base. I once rooted hard for him, back when he was a member of the ’93 Phillies, a slovenly bunch of misfits and dirt dogs who nearly won a World Series. But my feelings shifted a few years later when he added the role of locker-room GM to his title, lobbying hard for a trade out of Philly (not that I’m a fan), and turned to downright loathing ever since he wore purple and teal to the 2001 World Series. I hate him even more now that he’s wearing a pair of Red Sox.

But that double hatred — combining all of my schadenfreude into one low monthly payment, as I like to say — isn’t what’s coloring this response. Will Carroll reminded everyone the other day never to “write angry” and I spent much of Thursday trying to resist the poison pen in favor of a more rational response. I used twelve-letter words elsewhere and I’m not so proud of that, but I stopped myself from doing damage to the high standards to which I hold myself here and to supporting a cause in which I believe.

Whether Curt Schilling is ranting about an allegiance to an unpopular political doctrine or calling out Rob Neyer for inaccuracies is beside the point. What Schilling has said is by definition on the record, and for him to expect NOT to be held accountable is hopelessly naive and a perversion of the medium’s purpose. If Sons of Sam Horn wants to keep him “off the record,” they should put him behind a members-only firewall and then bring the hammer down on anybody who violates their terms of service, in the same way that, to use an example, Baseball Prospectus might do if I ran a bunch of lengthy quotes from Joe Sheehan’s latest column or even my own articles there — that’s intellectual property to which they own the rights. SoSH’s content is not behind a curtain like BP’s content is, it’s right out there for anybody to see, and that’s a huge difference. You have to be a member to post there, but you don’t have to be one to read what’s already been written.

Still, that is not even the issue which made my blood boil on Thursday. What did so was Christenson/Lanternjaw’s request. Pinto decided to comply with it and is apparently content to let the matter pass without further public comment so as not to draw more attention to SoSH.

But some things are wrong and deserve to be called out rather than quietly dismissed, and intimidation in the name of censorship is one of them. Always. Whether it’s regarding the exposure of corruption in the halls of government or a trivial discussion about baseball, nobody has a right to tell me what I can’t write or say so long as I’m not committing libel or plagiarizing material. The writing in question is publicly viewable and is fair game for fair usage, and Pinto’s site, or mine, are beyond the jurisdiction of SoSH. I challenge them to find a lawyer who would tell us otherwise. If Steven Goldman didn’t have to take his Schilling quotes off of YES in his latest Pinstriped Bible, then I can guess that the Yankees counsel isn’t too worried, and they understand the laws about this far better than I do.

I would rather see the Schilling experiment ended and SoSH go down in flames or have them pay somebody to install a closed system than to see ANY BLOGGER told what we can and cannot link to so long as it is done within the spirit of fair use and other ethical standards. On this I am uncompromising, and I make no apology for standing up to those who would try to prevent me or any of my peers from doing the same.

As I’ve said before, I think the Schilling experiment is a fascinating one, and I hope that he’s just the first of many players to delve into such contact. But that said, he must play by the same rules the rest of us do, and if he can’t do that without fanboy thugs bending over backwards to zealously protect their exclusive access by intimidating others, then he and the site which is hosting him should take their ball and go home.

Here’s some wishful thinking: when your team is combing the Census Bureau records of deceased persons to winnow the list of possible lefties to whom you might extend spring-training non-roster invitations, you’d hope that the front office could dredge up one whose last good, injury-free season was more recent than 1996. But Donovan Osborne has drawn an invite despite a 9-15, 4.77 ERA in 209.1 innings over the past seven seasons. Hey, he was lights-out for about a month in Arkansas six years ago, but Elizabeth Taylor was quite a looker back in the day, too.

Big Red Cliff has a quick ID of the other bodies who washed ashore, including Joe Girardi, a member of the Amazing Torrealba Backstop family, and the man with the all-time greatest name in baseball history: Homer Bush. Cliff points out that the Yanks DFA’d Fernando Seguinol, who would have made a better complement to Jason Giambi than Tony Clark, and that a 25-year-old cornerman named Jeff Deardorff might be a sleeper in the Brian Myrow for Third darkhorse race. Some interesting projections from Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA weighted mean spreadsheet for AVG/OBP/SLG:

Clark     .239/.317/.415

Seguignol .255/.324/.461



Deardorff .245/.307/.440

Myrow     .241/.340/.409

Veddy interesting, though obviously that’s just one system’s opinion. When I first posted this stuff absent the PECOTA data, Cliff drew my attention to the fact that he was advocating Clark over Seguignol. But that’s typical Proven Veteranitis thinking which has left the Yankees with a craptacular bench for several years now, and I’d rather see them give the unknown a shot for a change. As for third base, my preference would be for the OBP guy, but Deardorff couldn’t possibly be worse with the leather than Myrow, could he?

Rob McMillan has been a great resource for those of us covering the Dodger sale lately, and I’ve quoted him here recently. Now he’s taking it one step further in the form of his own blog: 6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers Double Play Blog. Note to self: “You see what happens when you encourage these people?”

About the odd name, Rob has this to say:

Really, it had nothing to do with being clever, and a lot more to do with being up at 3:00 am with stomach flu. There is such a thing as a 6-4-2 double play, but they’re damn rare. I wanted this to be 6-4-3 but mistyped a key and didn’t catch it until this morning. By that time, I realized there already was a cobwebbed blog here with that name. Anyway, Jon Weisman figured it works at two levels: first, 6-4-2, given that the coverage is of two teams, and a 6-4-2 double play — rare but very exciting. Whether “rare but very exciting” ever describes this blog remains to be seen, but here I am, world.

Score a point for originality, and another for chutzpah; it’s not every fan who feels comfortable talking about both teams in the same town without complete disdain for one. But Rob’s story is one to which yours truly can relate: he grew up on the Dodgers of Tommy Lasorda and the Longest Running Infield, but lost interest at some point (for him it was before the ’88 miracle) and then watched them sink into the mediorcrity of the Fox era. Meanwhile, he was re-energized by the Angels’ championship run in 2002, bought a ticket package, and voilà — now he’s got a pair of teams to keep tabs on.

He’s not just keeping tabs, he’s running up the tab; Rob’s racked up 15 entries in two days, apparently without sleeping: he’s got posts at 2:36 AM, 3:10, 3:44, 4:16… Either he’s an insomniac or he hasn’t fixed the time setting in Blogger (or maybe he’s just pretty sly and doesn’t want his boss to catch him posting on company time, wink wink). Most of the entries are short, but he’s got some interesting notes on Dodger GM Dan Evans’ plight as Frank McCourt takes over the team, including his ill-fated pursuit of Vlad Guerrero. Under the gracious McCourt, Evans is now interviewing to keep his own job, which is patently ridiculous given how well he’s rebuilt the Dodger farm system and operated with at least two limbs tied behind his back in the form of predecessor Kevin Malone’s biggest mistakes.

On the replacment front, the A’s aren’t letting presumptive favorite Billy Beane interview for the job, and ex-Mariners’ GM Pat Gillick is content to counsel former Angel and Dodger exec Bill Bavasi as he undoes what good Stand Pat did in Seattle. Other names surfacing are ex-Red GM Jim Bowden, Expo GM Omar Minaya (who can’t get permission to interview), Texas assistant GM Grady Fuson, (ditto) and A’s assistant GM Paul DePodesta, often hailed as the next Beane. Rob fears the latter’s candidacy: “I would be nervous about a Beane disciple in the Dodgers henhouse as it gives Beane another dumping ground for his failures.”

Scanning the Dodger-related headlines, there’s been news the past couple of days that the team is in the mix for Greg Maddux, which would probably be a huge enough coup for Evans that he might save his job. Maddux isn’t the same pitcher he once was — his 3.96 ERA last season is almost dead-on with his DIPS ERA of 4.00, but in Dodger Stadium that would probably shrink back down to its normal size. Just as importantly, it would give Evans some depth from which to deal a pitcher — perhaps Odalis Perez — for a live bat.

A few more things to mention…

• Speaking of Dodger fans of my generation who lost the plot and now find their loyalties dispersed elsewhere, Michael Hirota’s got a new blog called The Sports Retort which covers (as you would guess) more than just baseball. Mike’s on the other side of The Great East Coast Rivalry now, but we had a nice long email exchange, and he’s awright too. It’s nice to know my work can connect across that rivarly, because right now, I’m spoiling for a fight over this.

Mike’s got an interesting perspective on the Sox pickup of Ellis Burks — who was drafted by them 21 years ago and played his first six seasons in Beantown — as a bat off of the bench or for platoon play. The guy can surely hit. But there’s another angle, too, one that Alex Belth astutely picks up on: Boston’s notoriously sordid legacy of dealing with black players vis-à-vis Howard Bryant’s book Shut Out. For what it’s worth, my take is that the move is more numbers-oriented — Theo Epstein doesn’t strike me as a crusader — but I think the story behind Burks’ treatment in Boston is one worth re-examining.

• Another new blog comes from Tom Gorman, who I met at the Winter Meetings in N’awlins. Fog Ball is actually a joint effort of Gorman and three other diehard Giants fans. Right now they’re raging against out-machine Neifi Perez while lauding his defensive efficiency and using Win Shares to sort it all out. Check it out if you swing from that side of the plate.

• Last night I had the pleasure of my second appearance on Baseball Prospectus Radio, hosted by my man Will Carroll. This time the topic was a roundtable on New York baseball, though the slate was decidedly Yankee-themed: Joe Sheehan of B-Pro, Steven Goldman, who writes Pinstriped Bible for YES, Alex Belth of Bronx Banter and myself. One of the other guys commented that our twenty-minute conversation could have gone on for eight hours, and I quite agree; it’s hella fun picking brains with those guys. The spot will air this weekend and hopefully I’ll have better luck getting a link to it than I did my first segment.

It’s all about the Benjamins today…

• No sooner had I done my Yankee payroll update than the news about Drew Henson started trickling in. It’s a done deal now; the Yanks have released Henson from his contract, saving themselves $12 million over the next three years for a third baseman who wasn’t even an option when the team stared its sudden roster crisis in the face. Henson showed plenty of power in his tour of the minors, but his inability to master the strike zone or the hot corner made even AAA Columbus a stretch.

The move, which was smoothly and classily handled by both sides– no buyouts, no penalties — allows Henson to pursue his NFL career and chase the two Super Bowl rings earned by former Michigan teammate Tom Brady. Say what you will about the wisdom of the Yanks letting Henson chase his pinstriped dream in the first place; the six-year/$17 million contract was constructed in a way that kept them from real damage:

2001: $1.0M (+$1.0M signing bonus)

2002: $1.0M

2003: $2.0M

2004: $2.2M

2005: $3.8M

2006: $6.0M

I’d say they got off pretty light compared to what’s gonna happen when the rent comes due on the aged Giambi, Posada, Jeter, and Sheffield in 2006 ($64.5 mil right there).

• On the topic of Yankee third basemen, loyal reader John Chu asked about Angels third baseman Troy Glaus, about whom the notorious Phil Rogers floated a ménage à trois trade balloon the other day. Rogers’ deal (which smacks of severely-addled wishcasting) would send Glaus to the Yanks in exchange for B- and C-grade prospects (which describes most Baby Bombers), while the Angels get infielder Jose Valentin and the Sox get Darren Erstad and Jarrod Washburn or two cyborgs resembling them.

Glaus, who hit 88 homers and drew over 200 walks in 2000-2001, is still just 27 (three years younger than Aaron Boone) and he’s a year away from free agency (2004 salary: $9.55 million), but he’s coming off of a rotator cuff tear which wasn’t surgically repaired. The injury, which hurt him both at the plate and the field, ended his season last July. If healthy his offensive metrics compare favorably to Boone:

OPS+: Glaus 118, Boone 103

EQA: Glaus .281, Boone .278 CIN/.261 NYY

BRARP: Glaus +20 in 243 outs, Boone +30 in 445 outs

However, on defense, Boone gets the edge on a less-than-100% Glaus, and even the edge on a healthy one:

FRAA (2003): Boone 13, Glaus -5

Rate2 (from BPro, career normalized rate at 3B, with 100 at average): Boone 107 (seven runs better than average per 100 games), Glaus 100 (average)

It should be noted that since those two monster seasons, Glaus hasn’t fared well; his 2003 line (.248/.343/.464 looks a little too close to his 2002 (.250/.352/.453) for comfort.

Injury Pro Will Carroll tells me that he doesn’t have a recent report on Glaus, but he says that in early January the shoulder was “shaky” and he “wasn’t throwing to first well”. Until Glaus proves himself healthy, for the kind of moolah the Yanks would have to pay, I think he’s a no-go. Valentin’s probably a better and more realistic short-term option, but that’s a story for another day.

• Over the past couple of days, several readers who saw my salary piece on the Yankees pointed me to Dugout Dollars, a blog by Michael Srihari devoted to payroll details — and I mean down to the nitty-gritty — for all 30 teams. Since the MLB Contracts page hasn’t been updated in a few blue moons, this new site is a nice addition to the ranks. Srihari runs separate tabs for each team’s salary-cap… er, luxury-tax calculations (which are based on average annual value, a bullshit way of penalizing the Yankees for backloading several contracts) and actual amounts, adds estimated benefits, and computes total payroll based on these figures. I wonder if he can pull those obscured revenue-sharing figures out of Bud Selig’s ass.

Turning to the Yanks, Srihari and I differ on certain minor details, mainly in how we divvied up the bonus money; MLB Contracts provided details that distinguished lump sums from prorated payments, and I don’t know that Srihari has done the same, but that’s a minor quibble. A more major one is that because he’s porting spreadsheets from Excel, his site is very difficult to see unless you’re using Internet Explorer (which I try to avoid whenever possible). Even in IE, it’s often necessary to view text at a smaller size than your browser’s default. Srihari tells me he’s “moving to something more robust and browser-independent like PHP over MySQL” once the flurry of offseason activity dies down.

• Speaking of the following the Yankees, I’ll call your attention to a relatively new blog called Yankees, Mets, and the Rest which provides some wise(acre) commentary focused primarily on the two New York teams. I’ll give the floor to resident Yank fan Scott: “This may be the most sensible deal any team and player have ever made,” he says about the end of the Henson contract.

• Meanwhile, Scott’s partner in crime, Vinny (who does the Mets), gets points for calling my attention to this Bill Madden piece in the New York Daily News about agent Scott Boras. I had stopped reading Madden last season because I found his frothing at the mouth over Sammy Sosa’s corked bat so over-the-top (“Selig must order X-rays for the four bats… that he donated to the Hall of Fame. And, if it turns out any of those were corked, Sosa should be banned from baseball for life and all his home runs be expunged from the record…”). Give the guy a freakin’ rabies shot already…

But Madden does a nice job of laying the lumber on one of pro sports’ most distasteful characters, pointing out how Boras has cost his high-profile clients big money with his bluster, scaring away good, winning teams that were inclined to sign them to realistic contracts. Note that Greg Maddux is still homeless, that Pudge Rodriguez is going from first to worst by signing a historically disadvantageous deal with a club that threatened all-time infamy last year, that A-Rod languishes in last place as a prisoner of the most lucrative deal ever, and that several more Bore-Ass clients had to grin and bear it when the new economic realities smacked them across the forehead like a two-by-four. Madden also points out that Boras has lost nine out of his last 10 arbitration cases. Talk about consolidating all of your schadenfreude into one low monthly payment.

• I’ve mentioned a couple of new blogs today, and they seem to be poping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm lately. Aaron Gleeman has an insightful look at how the blogosphere has changed in the 18 months since he started, and some of the positives and negatives associated with the phenomenon.

• If you’re like me, you probably spend hours a week looking up the stats of baseball players. Finding which site to go to for which measure is a fine art that can save essential minutes when pulling together a numbers-heavy piece or quickly refuting somebody else’s argument. The boys at Batter’s Box have put together a brilliant, comprehensive survey of the landscape called “The Where’s Where of Baseball Stats” that’s worthy of a permanent bookmark (I’ve already added it to The Roster at left). My only quibble is that they left Retrosheet out of the picture. Where else are you going to get old box scores and historical splits?

It’s been awhile since I updated this, so I decided to crunch some numbers with my morning coffee. Here are the Yankees’ payroll obligations for 2004 and beyond. Much of the info comes from the MLB Contracts Page which hasn’t been updated in quite awhile. I’ve done the best I could do to raid the various news sources for yearly breakdowns of this winter’s signings (Yahoo! Sports Canada was especially helpful), and was able to find such information for everybody except Tom Gordon.

All amounts (except where indicated) are actual dollars rather than averages over the life of the deal (without deferrals), although signing bonuses have been prorated according to the best information available. Parentheses denote players no longer with the team whose salaries the Yankees are paying, at least in part. An “m” after the amount denotes a minor-league deal, which has been included in the total although it’s not guaranteed. When two figures are separated by a “/” that means the club holds an option with a buyout; year-by-year totals include those buyouts and not the optional salaries.

2004: Jeter $18, Brown $15, Mussina $14, Sheffield $13, Williams $12, Giambi $10, Contreras $9, Posada $9, Vazquez $9, Rivera $8.89, Matsui $7, Soriano $5.4, Karsay $5, Gordon $3.625-est, Lofton $3.1, Quantrill $3, (Weaver $2.6), Lieber $2.45, Henson $2.2, Heredia $1.8, (Hammond $1.2), A. Hernandez $1.0, Sierra $1.0, Cairo $0.9, Houston $0.9-m, Flaherty, $0.775, Clark $0.75, Wilson $0.7, Bragg $0.4-m Total: $161.69 million

Not included: Boone ($5.75, likely to be terminated), White (arbitration), Bush (minor league deal)

2005: Jeter $19, Mussina $17, Brown $15, Sheffield $13, Williams $12, Posada $12, Giambi $11, Vazquez $11, Contreras $8, Matsui $8, Lieber $8/$0.25, Karsay $5. Henson $3.8, Gordon $3.625-est, Lofton $3.1, Quantrill $3, Heredia $1.8. Total: $146.575 million

2006: Jeter $20, Giambi $18, Mussina $17, Williams $15/$3.5, Posada $13.5, Sheffield $13, Vazquez $12, Contreras $9, Karsay $6.5/$1.25. Henson $6.0. Quantrill $3.6/0.4, Heredia $2.5/0.2. Total: $113.85 million

Not included: Gordon (option/buyout?)

2007: Jeter $21, Giambi $21, Mussina $17/$1.5, Sheffield $13/c.o., Vazquez $13, Posada $12/$4. Total: $60.5 million

Not included: Sheffield (buyout)

2008: Jeter $21, Giambi $21. Total: $42 million

2009: Jeter $21, Giambi $22/$5. Total: $26 million

That’s over half a billion dollars ($550.615 million to be exact) in guaranteed payments, with $388.925 million committed beyond 2004. It’s only money…

Frank McCourt’s controversial bid to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers came to an end Thursday when the sale of the ballclub was unanimously approved by the other 29 (oops, 28) team owners. I’ve said all I could say about this issue, mustered perhaps more passion for the franchise than I have been able to in the seven seasons of my exile from Dodger fandom. After glimpsing a faint hope that the right owner could rescue the franchise from the despair and disrepair of the News Corp. era, restoring the luster to all things Dodger, I now feel that the franchise is only going to be dragged further down the road to bland mediocrity, or worse.

McCourt’s very presence, particularly via the potential abandonment of Dodger Stadium or hanging of a corporate moniker upon it, poses no less a threat than the utter rape of the once-visionary franchise. How long before the Dodgers become a ramshackle squad of faceless ballplayers wearing head-to-toe teal uniforms in a domed mallpark? The time just drew a lot closer.

For what it’s worth, the new Dodger owner claimed yesterday that the former was not an option:

“We have no plans to do anything but play baseball in Dodger Stadium.”

Asked if that is his way of dispelling rumors that McCourt is scheming to build a new Dodgerplex downtown, he said, “Yes, it is.”

Asked again later, McCourt said he had “zero intentions” to condemn baseball’s best ballpark and the city’s social Stonehenge.

However, the stadium name may be in play:

…McCourt does not work for the Historical Preservation Society. He seemed quite open to the idea of selling the naming rights to Dodger Stadium.

You know what? That’s not so bad. Officially it can be known as Cadillac Stadium or Arco Stadium or even Preparation H Stadium. None of us will ever call it that, and McCourt will get the money to reduce his debt.

I’m going to have to agree to disagree on that front. Dodger Stadium, like Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, and scant few others, holds a special (dare I say sacred?) spot in the minds of fans, names and places attached to great events in baseball’s rich history. Who besides some purple-and-tealed yahoo is going to recount the glorious moments of Randy Johnson in Bank One Ballpark? And while I’m yapping about NL West ballparks, I’ll ask the Giants fans what they’re going to do now that Barry Bonds is no longer hitting homers in Pac Bell? Dodger Stadium remains a bastion of purity in that department, and sacrificing that is like auctioning your virgin daughter to the highest bidder — icky to the nth power.

McCourt made more noises yesterday designed to appease the skeptics — employee continuity, a new TV deal which will air every single game, and “a payroll of ‘$100-million-plus’ and ‘in the top quartile’ of the 30 major-league clubs,” according to the aforementioned article in the Orange County Register. But you can color me less than reassured, because I know the folks in his hometown of Boston can talk all day about the man’s promises, promises. The Dodgers are already hamstrung by a winter of inactivity, and once that failure starts to manifest itself on the field, the changes will come — a new front office (which won’t feature Billy Beane), a new sense of (cough, cough) fiscal responsibility and lower payrolls… hell, with a couple of years of sub-3 million attendance, a cry for a new ballpark in spite of yesterday’s soundbites.

Dodger Thoughts’ Jon Weisman, who has done a fantastic job of covering the sale and who’s about 3000 miles closer to the pulse than I am, has his Spidey-sense tingling:

Frank McCourt makes me feel powerless.

He could be the next great disaster for the Dodgers. Or, he could be a hidden treasure of, well, adequacy.

But how disturbing is it that after Thursday’s press conference to discuss his purchase of the team, there is nothing that actually inspires confidence? Every potential positive statement made by or about McCourt had to be qualified.

Whatever the future holds, good or bad … today, the Dodgers really seem to belong to someone else. Maybe this feeling will go away, but they don’t feel like the city’s team right now. They don’t feel like our team.

Literally, they never were ours, but figuratively, they were. Not today.

Consider this: throughout the entire day, I didn’t find a note of celebration that the News Corp. (majority) ownership of the Dodgers was over. Can you believe this? A few months ago, the city of Los Angeles would have held a bonfire of revelry at Fox’s departure. Today, there’s just uncertainty.

Weisman elaborates that feelling by picking apart several statements made yesterday by various principals and pundits. But he also offers a glimmer of hope going forward: “This is a whole new chapter. McCourt’s actions are the key. Does he know right from wrong? Does he know good from bad? No matter how many misgivings have built up to this point, I don’t think there’s a Dodger fan in town who won’t come to like McCourt if he can do the job.”

That’s a pretty big if, from where I sit.

Somewhere Red Sox Nation is cackling maniacally over their voodoo dolls, because the big news here in New York is that Yankee third baseman Aaron Boone may miss the season due to a knee injury which could be a torn ACL. Even Yankee fans who remember Boone’s World Series struggles were less than heartbroken; as my pal Nick wrote, “It says something about my perception of Boone’s value (rather than his actual value), that I’m not too bummed about this.”

Though Boone was projected as the #9 hitter and is arguably the weakest link in the Yankee offensive chain, Yankee fans ought to think twice before unleashing such glee. Boone doesn’t get on base particularly well (.327 last year, .332 career), but his power, speed, and defense are all enough to make him an above-average third baseman. Only seven third-sackers ranked higher in Baseball Prospectus’ Runs Above Replacement Position than Boone, and taking defense into account, Boone ranked fourth among third basemen in Wins Above Replacement Player:

                RARP  WARP1

Scott Rolen     57.5   8.4

Bill Mueller    55.6   7.8

Eric Chavez     44.6   8.9

Mike Lowell     41.7   6.0

Corey Koskie    39.7   6.4

Hank Blalock    38.1   5.3

Morgan Ensberg  32.2   5.6

Aaron Boone     28.9   6.9

Adding insult to the injury is that Boone admitted to suffering it while playing basketball, an activity which Yankee GM Brian Cashman pointed out was strictly verboten: “Concerning his contract, I can confirm that there are certain prohibited activities which include basketball.” Because he was hurt while chasing his hoop dreams, the Yankees are within their legal rights to terminate his one-year, $5.75 million contract with 30 days of termination pay, a situation which former Yankee staff counsel Andrew Baharlias discusses over at Baseball Prospectus:

In a fairy tale world of grand rewards for moral behavior, Boone would get credit for admitting his error without having fabricated some Jeff Kent-style story in which he tore up his knee after slipping off the top of Roger Clemens’ Hummer while polishing the foghorn. Unfortunately, New York is the place where contract language trumps contrition every time out; truth is no defense when you’ve signed on the dotted line.

When Boone signed his contract… it contained language that would have prevented him from performing certain activities during and after the season. That language is the team’s “out” of a guaranteed deal. It is very comprehensive legalese which allows the team to convert a guaranteed contract into one which is non-guaranteed. All guaranteed contracts contain a section that discusses the guarantee to pay and termination rights for the team. In fact, this aspect of a player’s contract is usually what is fought over the most between agents and general managers after the “agreement in principle” is first struck.

… Following this paragraph, one might expect to find approximately three to five pages of gobbledygook that, “relieve[s]…the foregoing guarantee.” In other words, the next set of paragraphs contains specific rules, prohibitions and events which, if they occur, trigger an option for the team to convert the guaranteed contract into a non-guaranteed contract. Examples of these events, rules and prohibitions are: getting injured while playing any sport other than baseball; the commission of a felony; riding a motorcycle; bad LASIK surgery; bowling; frying a turkey on any day other than Thanksgiving; and lots of other stuff that annoying lawyers like me can think up. The sheer exhaustiveness of these lists can lead to odd situations when one player is granted an exception and another isn’t. In the 1980s, George Brett was contractually forbidden to do anything more vigorous than sit in a rocking chair, while his teammate Bo Jackson was permitted to play pro football.

Baharlias points out that one option the Yankees have is to release Boone and then re-sign him to “an incentive-laden Jon Lieber-style deal in which the Yankees pay him to stand by in case they still haven’t found a long-term solution at the position by 2005.”

All of that is well and good for George Steinbrenner’s checkbook, but with the Yankees, money isn’t generally the problem. Boone’s absence leaves a gaping void due to the Yankees’ lack of organizational depth at third base. On the major-league roster, futilitymen Enrique Wilson and Miguel Cairo would make one pine for the heyday of Clay Bellinger, Erick Almonte has almost no experience at the hot corner, and a move of Derek Jeter to third base — pined for by a faction of Yankee fans aware of #2’s defensive shortcomings — has slightly less chance of happening than a Joe Lieberman sweep of next week’s Democratic primaries.

Elsewhere in the Yankees’ system, future quarterback Drew Henson’s been practically laughed out of the room (“He’s not even being considered,” said one club official), while AA third baseman Brian Myrow, who hit an eye-opening .306/.447/.525 at Trenton, isn’t getting much love either. That’s because Myrow’s a 27-year-old non-prospect whose glovework at third is reportedly somewhere south of the Hobson Line. To his credit, newcomer Gary Sheffield, who last manned the third sack in 1993, threw his glove in the ring but was politely rebuffed.

A quick look over the barren hot corner landscape ought to turn a Yankee fan’s stomach further. Other teams’ reclamation projects such as Jose Hernandez (L.A.), Fernando Tatis (Tampa), Tony Batista (Montreal), Jeff Cirillo (San Diego) dot the landscape, along with high-end options such as free agents-to-be Corey Koskie (Minnesota), Troy Glaus (Anaheim) and Eric Chavez (Oakland). About the latter, A’s GM Billy Beane momentarily salivated about swooping in for a kill before claiming, “There’s no one this side of Mickey Mantle we’d consider trading Eric Chavez for. He’s more valuable than anything we could get in return.” As Jim Bouton would say, “Yeah, surrrrrrrrrrre.” Be that as it may, the Yanks have almost nothing to offer in the way of prospects to land an attractive player. Where have you gone, Brandon Claussen? Oh, right.

Another name receiving mention is last year’s model, Robin Ventura, whose bat speed slowed so much that he was shipped out of here and replaced Boone in the first place. Also in that class of flatliners is another ex-Yankee, Todd Zeile, who was ungracious in his dismissal of the organization as he returned to the other New York team: “I have no desire to play again for that organization.” Trust me Todd, the feeling is mutual.

The Yanks did make one move in the past couple of days since announcing Boone’s injury, signing 33-year-old Tyler Houston to a minor-league deal. Houston has a bit of pop in his lefty bat and has hit .285/.331/.442 against righties over the past three years , but his fielding is suspect (BPro’s numbers show him at nine runs below average per 100 games), and he was involved in a high-profile dustup with Phillies red-assed manager Larry Bowa last year which led to his release and to Bowa terming him a “loser.” It takes one to know one. For all of the controversy surrounding him, Houston is actually a useful bench player, good at pinch-hitting (13-for-29 last year) and able to serve as a 3rd string catcher (where he’s played 174 games in the bigs).

Clifford’s Big Red Blog has had strong coverage of the Yanks’ other third base options, including potential trade targets Edgardo Alfonzo and Adrian Beltre, pipe dreams such as Pudge Rodriguez (who has indicated in the past that he may eventually shift positions), and the assorted flotsam and jetsam which may wash ashore. But here’s a tip: if luring Mike Bordick out of retirement is an option worth discussing, then the Yanks are better off doing what BPro’s Derek Zumsteg suggests: “Hire biotech firms to inject Graig Nettles (“Best Yankee Third Baseman Ever for Duration of His YES Network Deal”) with experimental revitalizing serums and see how long before side effects catch up to him in spectacular fashion.” Short of a trade for Alex Rodriguez (which New York Times columnist George Vescey touts today), that’s the best idea yet.

Alex Ciepley is unique among baseball bloggers — to the best of my knowledge he’s the only openly gay one around. The Brooklyn-dwelling Ciepley keeps a blog called ball talk that focuses primarily on the Chicago Cubs, and not in a “Sammy Sosa is soooo dreamy” kind of way. As passionate and articulate a fan as the next blogger, Ciepley’s recent posts have ben focused on stathead concepts like VORP, SNWRP, and PECOTA. I had the pleasure of meeting him recently, and he’s as starved for hot-stove banter as the next fan.

But Alex is well aware that there’s a chunk of turf that he can call his own, and last night he sent out an email: “I feel its been too long since I’ve actually written anything in my baseball blog that has much to do with gay issues, so I’ve rectified the situation with my look at the top 10 gay icons in baseball. Some people may be horrified, some may be uninterested, but hopefully it’ll be worth a chuckle or two.”

True to his word, the Top 10 Gay Icons article is a howl, as Ciepley rounds up many of the usual suspects (the ones not-so-wittily lampooned by anonymous posters at a certain website) and offers his commentary. Some of it is tart and catty; on Mike Piazza (who I’ve always held doesn’t exhibit enough good taste to be gay), Alex writes: “Some might say the lady doth protest too much…,” and on Roberto Alomar: “Alomar had a wee mustache in his youth, and later sported full-on beards, most notably tennis star Mary Pierce.” Ouch.

But much of Ciepley’s commentary is more incisive. About Billy Bean, author Going the Other Way, he writes:

No OBP-obsessed assistants. No Moneyball props. And no “e” in that last name. Baseball’s other Billy B. spent his career in the closet, even playing in a game immediately following his first lover’s death because he was too scared to ask for leave. Bean wasn’t going to go through that again, and left a mediocre career in baseball to live with his boyfriend in Miami. He’s the current Dean of Out Gay Professional Baseball Players. Not that he has any competition, being the only out player alive.

Ciepley also covers former NL umpire Dave Pallone, who came out in an autobiography in 1990, and Glenn Burke, a Dodgers and A’s outfielder credited with inventing the high five and with being the first former player to acknowledge his homosexuality (alas, Burke died of AIDS in 1995). Pinups such as Brady Anderson and Gabe Kapler are also here; be advised that the linked Kapler picture isn’t for the faint of heart.

Not on Ciepley’s list: Cleveland Indians prospect Kazuhito Tadano, who reportedly appeared in a gay porn movie while in college three years ago — “a one-time mistake.” Bronx Banter’s Alex Belth covers that strange tale as well as some more general commentary from other writers about the inevitability of an openly gay ballplayer. Meanwhile, a reader of Belth’s offered this Bottom 10 Gay Icon list, which features unsexy guys such as Yogi Berra, Don Zimmer and Greg Luzinski, along with notorious homophobes Chad Curtis and John Rocker. To that dubious company, I’ll nominate another loudmouthed bigot, Todd Jones, whose 7.08 ERA could pass for his IQ.

I think there’s a pretty good chance we’ll see an openly gay active ballplayer in the next few years, though I doubt it will be from Ciepley’s Top 10. When it comes about, it will likely be a fiasco at first, and the guy will need a skin as thick and a courage as great as Jackie Robinson’s, but he’ll also have a lot of support behind him, especially in the media, and that will be key. I look forward to that day.

The complete Defense Independent Pitching Statistics for 2003 are now available at the link above. I didn’t invent DIPS (Voros McCracken did), I haven’t improved it (except by using actual Batters Faced Pitching instead of estimating, as Voros did a few years ago), and I’m not here to spend time defending it (I’ll leave that to the discussion boards). But I’ve done the heavy lifting of the data (thanks to a spreadsheet from Baseball Graphs), and the formatting as well, and that gruntwork is my small contribution to the field.

Along with the data, I have provided several new links in my brief introduction, including articles by Tom Tippett of Diamond Mind Baseball, discussions on Baseball Primer’s Primate Studies, a very good DIPS article index by James Fraser, and a way-cool worksheet by Larry Mahnken of Replacement Level Yankees Weblog. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Since publishing the article last night, I’ve gone back and done some correlation testing to compare with McCracken’s results, and significantly revised the article to reflect that.

Aside from commentary on my recent Baseball Prospectus work, the most common subject of my reader email these day is Defense Independent Pitching Statistics (DIPS). As in, when is DIPS 2003 coming? Where is DIPS 2003? Are you publishing DIPS 2003? Why haven’t you published DIPS 2003?

I’m pleased to announce that after focusing my attention elsewhere for several weeks, DIPS 2003 will be up sometime in the next few days [update: it will be up Monday afternoon]. The figgerin’ has been done, and now it’s just a matter of formatting and writing. Not that those are easy tasks, but they’re at least more familiar and enjoyable ones than the less glamorous aspects of Excel spreadsheeting. Who wants to figure customized park HR factors and replacement-level ERAs for the 60 or so guys who pitched for two or more teams?

Insert sound of crickets chirping.

Exactly. Now, back to sorting my spreadsheet…