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| Friday, March 1 More March 2002 Archives By Rob Neyer ESPN.com |
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FRIDAY, MARCH 29 According to a report credited to ESPN.com news services, "New owner Jeffrey Loria says he is committed to making baseball work in South Florida, but the trade seemed to indicate otherwise." The trade in question, as you've no doubt heard, sent Antonio Alfonseca and Matt Clement to the Chicago Cubs, and Julian Tavarez and a trio of no-names to the Florida Marlins. The Miami Herald's Jeff Miller wrote, "In dealing Alfonseca, the Marlins -- at least immediately -- move away from another form of commitment, the commitment to winning." When asked if the Marlins were dumping salary, outfielder Eric Owens said, "Obviously it looks that way." Pitcher Brad Penny said of the trade, "I think it's to dump salary." I don't mean to question the wisdom of my colleagues in Florida, but should we really give a slippery banana peel what Eric Owens and Brad Penny think? Well, yes. Because if the players think management is giving up, then some of them may give up, too. But there's a difference between reading tea leaves and objective analysis, and trusting ballplayers is significantly closer to the former than the latter. It's not that players are stupid. Some of them are, of course, but most of them aren't. It's that the great majority of them absolutely lack any sort of perspective. Or as my friend Eddie Epstein likes to say, "Asking a baseball player for the big picture is like asking a tree about the forest." Players want to win, of course. But they often seem to have a tough time understanding that winning might be more likely if one of their favorite teammates became an ex-teammate. (For a good laugh sometime, you should hear Kansas City's players going into great detail on the immeasurable value of the great Joe Randa.) So what did the Marlins really lose in this deal? Alfonseca's a good closer, but he's not that good. And while the Marlins obviously have some young talent, the truth is that they're probably not ready to contend in the National League East. And if they're not ready to contend, then they really don't have any business spending $3.55 million on a good closer who's going to make even more money next year and the year after. Matt Clement is the sort of pitcher who drives you nuts, if you're his manager or his pitching coach or a fan of his team or his owner in a fantasy league. The guy's got all the stuff in the world, but still hasn't quite figured out what to do with it. I'd suggest that Clement is the new Bobby Witt, except by the time Witt was Clement's age (27), he'd already won 56 games and enjoyed one 17-win season. Clement has 34 major-league victories, and he hasn't won more than 13 games in a season. All of which is to say, the Marlins are lucky to be rid of Clement. He's a decent pitcher with a great arm, but the Marlins aren't one of the teams that can afford to spend $2.5 million this season (and $4 million next season) on a decent pitcher who might or might not get better. And what did the Marlins get in the deal? They got Julian Tavarez, who's not even as good as Clement but makes more money. Still, Tavarez brings the added benefit of a contract that expires after the 2002 season. And the Marlins also pick up three of the Cubs' minor-league prospects. Granted, none of the prospects (Jose Cueto, Dontrelle Willis and Ryan Jorgensen) are marquee guys, but all three do rank among the Cubs' 25 best, and it's worth noting that the Cubs are stacked with prospects. Add it all up, and if I were running a team that wasn't likely to contend this season, it's a deal I'd have done. Long-term, I'm not at all optimistic about the Florida Marlins. Dave Dombrowski is out, Jeffrey Loria is in, and if that's not a great prescription for failure, I don't know what is. But this particular deal is a good thing for the Marlins. And I suppose it's a good thing for the Cubs. Kyle Farnsworth is capable of doing exactly the same job as closer that Alfonseca will, but now the Cubs seem to have nearly duplicated the outstanding bullpen depth that helped them so much a year ago. They can certainly afford Alfonseca and Clement, and they can also afford to throw mid-level prospects at any problem that arises. Now if the Cubs could only figure out that Bobby Hill is ready for the major leagues and Corey Patterson isn't ...
THURSDAY, MARCH 28 Because that day I was -- and I'm embarrassed to admit this -- hysterical. So hysterical that I probably should have typed the entire column in capital letters with lots of exclamation points. I can't quote myself because at this moment I don't have access to that column, but essentially I predicted that if Murdoch gained entry into Major League Baseball, he'd buy every good or great ballplayer available, the Dodgers would win every World Series, cats and dogs would start living together, etc. And of course, very little of that happened. True, the Dodgers did give Kevin Brown what looked like a crazy deal, and they did give Darren Dreifort what actually was a crazy deal. But the Dodgers have won exactly zero National League West titles since Murdoch forked over $311 million, and today it occurred to me that they're still very, very far from dominating anything other than the greater Los Angeles area. What happened? Still away from home and using a borrowed computer to search for column topics, I ran across this link on our baseball page: Camp roundup: Dodgers name Izturis starter at short. "Well, that's not really so bad," I thought. "After all, Cesar Izturis may not be much of a hitter, but the young man can catch the ball and he's young. It's nice to see the kid get a chance." But then I clicked on that link, and as I read the headline -– "Izturis wins shortstop job, could bat leadoff" –- and then got into the story, my eyebrows kept arching higher and higher until they ran into my hairline, where a truce was declared. Because in that story we learned that the Dodgers plan to employ the following combination of players, in some fashion or another, in the top two spots in their batting order:
Career OBP
Cesar Izturis .279
M. Grudzielanek .328
Marquis Grissom .318
Dave Roberts .292
Granted, Izturis is only 22 and that .279 career on-base percentage was compiled in only 46 games. But the fact is that Izturis has done nothing in his minor-league career to make us think that he's capable of doing much better than .279, at least not now. When Izturis was 20 years old, he posted a .253 OBP in Triple-A. When Izturis was 21 years old, he posted a .310 OBP in Triple-A (and that .279 OBP in the majors, with Toronto). There's little reason to think that Izturis is ready to play in the majors, and there's absolutely no reason at all to think he's ready to be remotely productive with the bat in the majors ... and yet Dodgers manager Jim Tracy is actually thinking about putting Izturis at the top of the batting order. Failing that, Izturis is slated to bat second, leaving the leadoff slot for ... Marquis Grissom and Dave Roberts, both of whom are horrible miscast as leadoff men because both of them are unlikely to reach base even 30 percent of the time. Well, OK, if strictly platooned they'll do better than that. But not better enough to justify their jobs. Oh, and it's said that if Izturis doesn't win the leadoff job he'll slide all the way down to the No. 2 slot, where of course he'll do almost exactly as much damage to the Dodgers as if he were batting leadoff. I've written more than a few times that batting order doesn't matter, and I'm not changing my tune today. Still, all this does say a couple of things about the Dodgers, and neither of them are positive. First, while it really doesn't matter so much who bats where, you'll still find that organizations with a working knowledge of on-base percentage do tend to put high-OBP guys at the top of the order. It may be a small edge, but why not take the small edges where you can? And second, the real problem isn't that Izturis and/or Grissom/Roberts and/or Grudzielanek are going to be listed at the top of the lineup. The real problem is that they're all going to be in the lineup. Reading the story and seeing those names -– along with others like Alex Cora and Jeff Reboulet –- and I'm thinking, "Wait, these are the Dodgers, right? Pete Reiser and Jackie Robinson and Junior Gilliam and Maury Wills and Davey Lopes and Steve Sax ... the team that essentially invented "On-Base Percentage." I suppose that it's too early to pass judgment on Dan Evans, the Dodgers' new GM. However, we can safely say that he's not a miracle worker. Evans was presented with an overpaid, undertalented roster when he signed on with the Dodgers, and that's still essentially what he's got. Worse, there's very little help in the minor leagues, and there won't be for at least a few years. All that said, the Dodgers could win the West because there's no obviously outstanding team in the division. If Brown and Andy Ashby somehow stay healthy all season and Kazuhisa Ishii is as good as advertised, the Dodgers could actually win 88 games. And that's going to be enough for first place.
MONDAY, MARCH 25
Baseball players say silly things every day, but Chipper's got the early lead in the 2002 Silliness Sweepstakes. It's always been harder to find a quality third baseman than a quality left fielder (and I use left fielder because that's what Chipper's going to be). Well, perhaps not literally always. The natural ebb and flow of baseball talent has quite possibly resulted in a brief stretch where talent at third base was deeper than the talent in left field. Then again, maybe not. You can find productive left fielders easier than you can find productive third baseman for the simple reason that there are a lot more baseball players who can play left field competently than baseball players who can play third base competently. Getting back to Chipper's original quote, what's really humorous is that the Braves did not get a quality third baseman to replace him. Just looking at the list of regular third basemen last season, I count about a dozen who I would consider "quality," if by that term we mean significantly above replacement level. Troy Glaus and Aramis Ramirez (and Chipper Jones) are "quality," but Joe Randa and Shea Hillenbrand (and Vinny Castilla) are not. I'm not sure what to think about Chipper's switch to left field. Last year, he made 2.14 plays per nine innings at third base, which was the worst rate among major leaguers who started at least 50 games. And yes, I know that Range Factor (plays per game) doesn't always tell the whole story, but in this case it does. The plain truth is that if Chipper were a good defensive third baseman, the Braves wouldn't be moving him. Because no matter what he might think about the relative scarcity of quality outfielders and third baseman, virtually every baseball executive does know that third basemen are harder to find than outfielders. And while I don't consider Vinny Castilla a great player, he is a better hitter than B.J. Surhoff, who Chipper replaces in left field. So on balance, if Chipper can handle his defensive duties with any sort of skill, this is a good move for the Braves. Now, getting to those notes ...
It was supposed to be easy. But Pena's 1 for his last 20, and Hatteberg's been hitting like he's a first baseman rather than a catcher. Also, USA Today reports that Pena "has been careless at times in the field." If you're the A's, you don't want to just hand an everyday job to Pena, who's new to the organization and needs to prove himself, at least a little, to his coaches and his teammates. That said, there's nothing wrong with Pena that two or three home runs won't cure. Also, this isn't exactly an either/or situation. There's always the DH slot, and there's always platooning. Scott Hatteberg can be a useful player, but if he's playing every day in June, it's bad news for the Athletics.
Well, that's it for the notes. Either they're not nearly as interesting as they were six years ago, or I'm not nearly as interested in them. So let me close with this .... With all due respect to Commissioner-for-Life Selig, I'm going to suggest that anybody reading this column should make every effort to avoid Selig's so-called Town Meeting over at MLB.com. I promise you that in the astronomically unlikely event that Selig says anything that's at all interesting, you can read about it later. But personally patronizing this charade will send the wrong message, the message that you're actually interested in hearing the company line once again.
FRIDAY, MARCH 22
I share your skepticism, and I think MLB is really going about this the wrong way. I don't think they can ask guys to risk injury, to change what they've been doing for years. But they should say, very bluntly, "Get hit on the armor, and you don't get a free pass to first base." In other words, issue a directive that Rule 6.08(b)(2) applies to anyone still in his stance and hit on the armor, as a matter of rule. It'd be rather straightforward, and the guys really concerned about their health could continue to wear the armor. Todd McComb As I said, I see this suggestion all the time; more than 50 readers suggested it just this week alone. And in a perfect world, I think it's close to a perfect solution. However, baseball is an imperfect world run by imperfect people known as "umpires." And this modification to the rules simply isn't practical, because it would result in asking the umpires to make a great number of judgment calls. "But that's their job!" True, it's their job to make judgments. But they don't like making judgment calls, because each judgment call is another chance to be wrong (and thanks to instant replay, when they're wrong everybody knows about it). And given the location of the plate umpire relative to the batter, and the distance separating the base umpires from the batter, they would make a lot of incorrect judgments, because it wouldn't always be clear whether the baseball struck armor or arm. Or both. Frankly, the goal should be to assign the umpires fewer judgment calls, not more. Other readers have suggested that batters should be allowed to wear whatever they like, but if you wear it while batting you have to wear it while running. Right. If you're a shortstop, do you want Barry Bonds barreling toward you with a Kevlar gauntlet on his right arm? I think that MLB is doing, or at least promising to do, nearly all that can be done. Nobody should wear armor unless there's a medical reason, and even then the armor should be more of a pad than a gauntlet. But if MLB is serious about shifting the balance between hitter and pitcher, why not set the batter's box three or four inches farther from the plate? Players today are generally huge compared to their counterparts from 50 and 100 years ago, yet they're still playing with a layout that was invented in the 19th century. Does that seem strange to anybody else besides me? Of course, there's another way to back hitters off the plate.
Monday you wrote, "Now, let me ask you, how many times have you seen a player do little but blink as a piece of low-90s cheese came whizzing toward him? And how many times have you seen an umpire say, 'Son, I'm afraid you made no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball. Return to the batter's box and continue your efforts at reaching base.'" When Pedro drilled Brady Anderson in the back two seasons ago, he was doing his part to point out this problem that the umpires have allowed to fester for years.
Take care, Let me be very clear about this: I do not condone head-hunting (or back- or butt-hunting). However, it's a fairly logical strategy for pitchers when the umpires 1) allow hitters to set up with their feet in illegal positions (that is, outside the batter's box) and 2) allow hitters to trot down to first base when they're hit by a pitch that they made no real effort to avoid. Or rather, it would have been a logical strategy 20 years ago. It's not so logical today, because umpires simply don't tolerate intentional plunkings. You can do it once, but if you come close again, you're outta there. And this is yet another reason why pitchers sometimes feel completely helpless to stop the rising tide of home runs that is swamping the game.
As a contract lawyer, I would urge the Pirates to file a grievance against him for "anticipatory repudiation" of his contractual obligations -- declaring his intent not to use his best efforts, which is required either explicitly by the contract or implicitly (through the legal doctrine called "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing"). I don't know if they could win the grievance, but they would at least make Bell sweat a little about whether or not he'll ever see his millions -- and they might send a message to some of the other clueless idiots out there. David Nix Given the history of player grievances, I think it's highly unlikely that the Pirates could win a grievance against Derek Bell. Over the years, any number of players have made threatening comments similar to Bell's -- though rarely with quite so much flair -- and I don't know of any who had their contracts canceled as a result. And when it comes to grievances, precedent plays a big part in the process. If the player's agent can demonstrate that teams haven't ever done this before, he can probably convince an arbitrator that they can't start doing it now. |
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