Friday’s column never happened.
Had I written a Friday column, I definitely wouldn’t have talked about how MLB hadn’t rescheduled a Diamondbacks/Royals rainout yet, because they have (September 4), travel nightmares be damned. I certainly wouldn’t have alluded to a Marlins/Braves matchup in the Division Series, which can’t occur. There’s no way I would have insinuated that the Mets and Rockies wouldn’t play Friday night, because that would have been silly.
But I didn’t write a Friday column, so none of that happened.
Having played the first half of his career before the Second World War, Joe DiMaggio is not eligible to be on Albert Pujols’ PECOTA comparables list. However, there’s little doubt that the Yankee Clipper would place high atop the table if he had been born just 10 years later. The similarity scores at baseball-reference.com listed the pair as the best age-based likenesses for one another entering the season, and the events of this year are only likely to enhance the comparison.
DiMaggio won his first batting title and his first MVP award in 1939–at age 24, he was one year older than Pujols is currently listed. DiMaggio, unlike Pujols, had been heralded as a top prospect from the time he was a teenager playing in the PCL, and was coming off of a fine triplet of seasons in the big leagues. But 1939 was his coming out party, much like 2003 has been for Pujols.
Conveniently enough, DiMaggio, limited by a foot injury that he suffered in April, played in just 120 games that season, almost exactly the total that Pujols has accumulated up until now. Compare DiMaggio’s ’39 against Pujols’ current campaign, and the similarities are striking.
The White Sox need to drop their ticket prices. A closer look at the Cardinals bullpen. The Rangers have a slew of options for the outfield and first base. These and other news and notes out of Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
The DiSar Awards haven’t been clinched just yet–I’ve learned better than to make an official announcement before the season is over–but they do appear to be in safe hands, at least in the American League. And no, it’s not Rocco Baldelli’s mitts holding the Golden Crutch.
I announced the contest to pick the 2003 award winners this spring a little bit late, not getting to it until a few days into the season. Because of that, the vast majority of the entrants selected Baldelli, the free-swinging Devil Rays rookie, as the eventual AL award winner. Baldelli made a nice run, reaching 60 at-bats before his first walk, but he only held the top AL mark for a few days, getting caught by Deivi Cruz soon afterwards.
Cruz didn’t hold on, either; his 70 at-bats were passed by Matt Walbeck in July, but The Walbeck couldn’t even garner this much glory. A week ago, he, too, saw his total of 75 walkless at-bats to start the season eclipsed. Walbeck was passed by a player who received no votes in the preseason balloting, although his brother was one of the most popular candidates after Baldelli.
J.P. Ricciardi doesn’t like giving away outs. Maury Wills thinks speed is underrated. Lloyd McClendon thinks he’s victim of an injustice, and that doesn’t even count having to manage the Pirates. Tom Martin just does his job, and Julian Tavarez likes ’em old, fat, rich, and dirty. All this and many more quips in this week’s edition of The Week In Quotes.
The Astros’ farm system has started to dry up. The Brewers’ future could take a while to unfold. The A’s made a puzzling move by designating Adam Piatt for assignment. These and other news and notes out of Houston, Milwaukee, and Oakland in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Last season brought us the worst-kept secret of the draft, when the Braves selected Jeff Francoeur and bought him out of a football scholarship to Clemson University.
Francoeur is the prototypical Braves prospect. Besides being born and raised in suburban Atlanta, he’s a tremendous athlete who could excel at multiple sports. The Braves covet players with physical skills, trusting their player development personnel to translate the natural abilities into baseball productivity. While many organizations have attempted to copy this philosophy, few, if any, have managed to pull it off. Regardless of the lack of success of their imitators, however, the Braves have held firm to their beliefs. The high-risk, high-reward philosophies instituted in the early 90s helped produce the crop of homegrown talent that led to 11 consecutive division championships. While one could argue that there are more cost-effective ways to develop talent, the Braves certainly have reason to feel vindicated in their methods.
He’s compiled a line of .286/.322/.451 this season, with a .272 Major League EqA. That line reveals the major flaw in Francoeur’s game though. In 455 at-bats, he has managed just 22 walks, impatient even by the Braves’ standards.
Terrible performance and tons of playing time has made Endy Chavez a giant drag on the Expos’ offense. The off-season’s Ortiz-for-Moss deal wasn’t as bad as you think for the Giants. Kevin Cash is the latest catcher-of-the-future for the Blue Jays. These and other news and notes out of Montreal, San Francisco, and Toronto in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Yesterday’s Giants/Mets game almost certainly will not be made up, given that the Giants have a big lead in the NL West and the Mets won’t need to play the game to determine their draft position. The cancellation does bring to mind that one game that appears very relevant has yet to be made up. The Diamondbacks and Royals have an interleague contest that hasn’t been rescheduled yet, and share just one highly inconvenient off day for the rest of the season.
I like chaos, and the idea that the two teams might have to play on September 29 to determine who does or does not go to the playoffs–or better yet, who goes to a one-game playoff, or who’s in a three-way tie–is just a delicious notion. I’m picturing the Marlins watching the game in an airport bar, bags packed, with plans to fly to Arizona if the Snakes win, and Atlanta if they don’t.
In general, baseball won’t be affected by the power outage. The Tigers, Yankees and Blue Jays are on the road. The Indians are home facing the Devil Rays, a series that can be cancelled as a public service. The Mets face the Rockies at home. Now, the Rockies are a fringe wild-card candidate at best, and are scheduled to be in the city through Monday. It’s possible that the teams could make up cancellations tonight and tomorrow–I’d imagine powering up a ballpark is low on the priority list–with doubleheaders Sunday and Monday.
For those of you who haven’t noticed, we are debuting several new statistical reports this week that will be updated daily throughout the season. All of these reports are currently available as a free preview at our Statistics page. Some of these reports, however, will be offered as part of Baseball Prospectus Premium in the coming weeks and months.
Adam Riggs gets a well-deserved shot with the Angels. The Braves aim to avoid the mistake made by the ’93 Phillies. Neal Cotts could end up being the prize in the Koch-Foulke deal for the White Sox. The Royals and A’s designate Febles and Piatt for assignment, drawing mixed reviews. These and other transactions, Chris Kahrl-style, in this edition of Transaction Analysis.
In the July 25 edition of Transaction Analysis, Chris Kahrl critiqued the trade of reliever Mike Williams from the Pirates to the Phillies: There are other cranky topics, particularly the re-failure to acquire talent for Mike Williams in this year’s Williams deal. Certainly, if it reflected any new appreciation for the interchangeability of closers beyond the top few personalities in the field, that would be nifty, but instead, it seems that people (appropriately) don’t take Williams particularly seriously as a commodity, so the Pirates got things bad both ways, in terms of plugging in a replacement-level talent in the job, enriching him, and then not enriching themselves when the time came to deal him. Kahrl’s analysis could be applied to the entire trading history of the Pirates franchise, a three-handed process in which the hometown GM extends a good player with one hand, accepts his return with the another, and pinches his nose shut with the third. The top 10 list of best trades in the history of the franchise remains virgin territory, while the worst-10 list provides for an overstuffed buffet of empty calorie choices. This article is a compendium of self-inflicted wounds suffered since the acquisition of the franchise by Kevin McClatchy. After the institution of the amateur draft in 1965 democratized (at least on paper) talent acquisition, a broken franchise, particularly an impoverished broken franchise, could right itself through a combination of smart trading, free-agent signings, and the rewards offered to losing teams by the draft. Over a long span lasting at least since the waning days of Barry Bonds as a Buc, the Pirates have consistently failed at all three.