The strained hip should have been a signal. People came out of the woodwork, claiming that Mark Mulder had been experiencing pain for weeks, but again, the leakproof A’s kept the information out of the hands of everyone who follows injury information. Mulder’s injury, as you know, is a stress fracture, not a muscle strain–but what does that mean? The definition of stress fracture is clear cut, but the specifics of Mulder’s acetabular fracture are much less clear. First, we have no clear cut facts from media reports or sources. Second, the information is a bit unclear. Most reports have the fracture in the femoral head, or acetabulum. Most stress fractures of this type happen at the femoral neck. Add in the note from Susan Slusser that Mulder cannot golf and could have “broken his leg,” and the signs point to the neck again.
Bottom line: Mulder is, for all intents and purposes, done for 2003, both regular and post-season. But what does this injury mean to Mulder’s future? Hip injuries are notoriously slow to heal due to poor blood flow in the area, but I haven’t heard anyone trotting out the Bo Jackson comparisons yet, and hopefully they won’t. With proper healing on a normal timeframe, there’s little to indicate that Mulder couldn’t return for 2004 fully healthy.
Anybody else think Russ Ortiz looks a little like Pete Vuckovich?
Ortiz was credited with his 18th win yesterday, which gives him three more Ws than any other National League pitcher. Now, while there can be a lot of legitimate debate about who the best hurler in the NL is this year, Ortiz really shouldn’t be part of any of it. His win total is entirely a function of durability and a great Braves’ offense, which has scored 134 runs in his 179 1/3 innings pitched, good for third in the league in run support. In most other categories, he’s unimpressive: 11th in Support-Neutral Wins Above Replacement, 13th in ERA and 19th in strikeouts (with a poor 121/83 K/BB ratio).
This is a weird year in the NL. The best pitchers in the league by Support-Neutral measures are all lacking in the traditional statistics, mostly because almost all of them have spent time on the disabled list or been hampered by insufficient run support.
The Pittsburgh Pirates have invested heavily in pitching the past decade, including the use of their last six first round draft choices. Since 2000, they have used 14 of their top 20 selections on pitchers. They haven’t selected a position player in the first two rounds since they used the 59th pick in the 1999 draft on Ryan Doumit, a catcher from the storied Moses Lake, Wa. team that also featured B.J. Garbe and Jason Cooper. The Pirates have twice had the number one choice in the draft in the past decade, and twice they have found a college pitcher to use it on. They haven’t discriminated either, drafting high school pitchers (Bobby Bradley and Sean Burnett) along with more polished college arms (Bryan Bullington and Paul Maholm and John Van BenSchoten) and immediately put them on the mound. Though they’re lacking in hitting prospects, the Pirates’ emphasis on acquiring hurlers has paid off in a sense, in that they have a collection of almost-ready major league arms knocking on the door of PNC Park. Lost in the shuffle of the first round bonus babies, however, is a little-regarded right-hander who was known as Ian Snell when the Pirates selected him in the 26th round of the 2000 draft. Now known as Ian Oquendo, since adopting his wife’s name, he has managed to find nothing but success as a professional.
I love day baseball. To me, there are few things better than sitting in the sunshine and watching a ballgame. Better still if it’s a weekday, because it adds that sense that you’re getting away with something, even when you don’t work a 9-to-5 job. Well, a.m. to p.m., anyway. So when I was offered tickets to Thursday’s Dodgers/Expos tilt at Chavez Ravine, I was all over it. Truth be told, I don’t get to as many ballgames as you might think, thanks in large part to the availability of so many games on television. It’s lazy, I guess, but seeing 25-30 teams in one night has a lot of appeal, especially when so many games right now have playoff implications. Like this one. Both teams started the day four games out of the Wild Card slot, having split the first two games of their series. Neither team has been able to get much traction in the Wild Card chase, in part because neither scores all that often. Both are heavily reliant on good starting pitching. The final was 2-1, Dodgers, but to say that the Dodgers won would be overstating things. It was more like they happened to be standing there when the Expos had a ballgame to give away.
The A’s pushed Mark Mulder onto the DL while he rehabs a strained hip. As with Randy Johnson’s knee, this is Mulder’s right (plant) leg, which understandably takes a lot of impact and torque in the pitching motion, even with great mechanics like Mulder. Mulder will miss at least two starts while on the list, but since he will be able to keep his arm loose, he shouldn’t need much work before jumping back into the rotation. Expect the A’s to be aggressive but smart with his rehab.
Trevor Hoffman is headed to the Cal League, which should be interesting to see. If he starts a game–as is often the practice for relievers in the minors–will the Storm play “Hell’s Bells” at the beginning of the game? How menacing will Hoffman look with the eyeball lid? How will Hoffman look pitching against Casey Kotchman on Saturday? These are all questions that we should know by next time we meet. The plan on Hoffman is two “starts” at Lake Elsinore, a couple more at Double-A Mobile, and then back to San Diego sometime after rosters expand on September 2.
Giants starter Jesse Foppert left last night’s game with numbness in his fingers due to a nerve problem in his elbow. You’re right, that sounds bad. Reader Loren Jones did the research and thinks it’s cubital tunnel syndrome, which is correctible, but not unheard of in pitchers. Foppert will have tests and we’ll know more by the weekend.
Casey Blake isn’t quite as good as the Indian front office thinks he is; Paul Lo Duca has hit the wall; and the Mariners and the A’s share similar schedules down the stretch. All this and much more news from Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Seattle in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The Astros got a dose of Mark Prior on Wednesday, but they also got some good news regarding their ace, Roy Oswalt. Oswalt, torn groin and all, threw on Tuesday with a “minimum of pain.” He’ll take the mound on Friday to test the leg, and if all goes well, he could be back in the lineup sometime the following week. I can’t imagine a scenario where Oswalt could stay healthy for an extended period of time, but the Astros have managed to convince him to take on the risk.
Another day, another diagnosis for Curt Schilling. The injury to his knee is now described as a bone bruise, but trainer Paul Lessard has been quoted as saying there is no structural damage. As before, the symptoms don’t match the diagnosis well, and if the femur and tibia impacted, one would expect some damage to the meniscus. A torn meniscus’ most common symptom? Locking, which is how Schilling described his injury when it occurred. Keep your eye on Schilling’s next start.
The Expos have shut down Tony Armas Jr. and Orlando Hernandez for the remainder of the season. It’s unclear how both fit into the plans of the Homeless Expos in 2004, but both are likely to need relocation services in one form or another. The bigger question is what type of team would take a flyer on either of these types of pitchers–the young but injury prone hurler on the downslope of potential, or the wily veteran with the Hollywood story but questionable age.
In early August, the Mariners demanded money for their playoff strips. You get to pay up front for every possible home game, plus a non-refundable handling fee (a ridiculous $35). In the past, I’ve complained about this a little, particularly the absurdity of having to pay for hypothetical one-game playoffs at the end of the season. It’s all part of their plan to get your money earlier and earlier, and what they don’t take in in non-refundable fees, they stick in a bank and rack up interest dollars. With seven teams in each league able to hit their fans up for playoff money with a straight face, that works out to be a lot of money.
I want baseball to be healthy. Other sports are edging ahead of baseball when it comes to outrageous fees (you might get to pay to stay on the waiting list for season tickets, for instance). So in the interest of keeping my favorite sport ahead of the times, I’d like to present my bill for the 2010 Seattle Mariners playoff strip, presented to me by a time-traveling me (who annoyingly refuses to give me betting advice, stock market tips, or even to travel further back in time and give high-school Derek a particularly important piece of information on one of my/his/our girlfriends that would have prevented a lot of misery all around):
Only twice during the free agent era have the Pirates signed a player of sufficiently high profile to warrant draft compensation to the team he departed (although why this was the case with 1979 signing Andy Hassler is unclear. He had no profile). Until 1998, Pittsburgh free agent signings were of the superannuated veteran, high-risk/low upside variety. As such, the Pirates paid for the last 53 games of Gene Tenace’s career, the last 40 games of Amos Otis, and the last 72 games of Sixto Lezcano. Only the 1979 signing of outfielder Lee Lacy, an undistinguished part-timer with the Dodgers from 1972, paid dividends. Lacy was not blessed with great power or plate judgment, but in six Pittsburgh seasons he was a consistent .300 hitter. Even he, though, must be marked with an asterisk as he was, allegedly, one of the narcotics abusers infesting the Pittsburgh clubhouse at the time. Then again, drugs in the clubhouse didn’t bother anyone in Pittsburgh at the time, so perhaps it isn’t worth mentioning.
In both the 1997 and 1998 off-seasons, the club once again sallied into the free agent market. Pitcher Mike Williams was signed after going 6-16 with a 5.52 ERA from 1996-1997. The following winter, Mike Benjamin, a utility infielder with one of the all-time weak bats (.224/.275/.337 in 507 games through 1998) to a four-year, $3.25 million contract. For a franchise that claimed to have limited resources, Benjamin was a disastrous addition and a clear sign that the owner and his general manager (still Bonifay) did not understand that baseball had entered the age of the two-way infielder.
The Diamondbacks are killing themselves on the basepaths. The Royals can’t beat their division rivals lately. The Phillies have received a banner year from Placido Polanco. These and other news and notes out of Arizona, Kansas City, and Philadelphia in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Barry Bonds’ prolific mashing has pushed him in to a shot at the major league lead in career home runs. All this attention has neglected some other possible feats in career achievement. There are two historic baseball records under assault, and no one seems to care. When players threaten to break the single-season strikeout record, they get benched. We’ve seen it happen even if they’re having productive seasons, like with Jose Hernandez when he was with the Brewers. Andres Galarraga passed Jose Canseco on the career strikeout list this year, taking over position two on the list. Galarraga’s not a full-time whiffer, though, and we have to look further down on our list to find our next great hope: Sammy Sosa. Sluggin’ Sammy had 1,834 Ks going into this season, and he reels off 150 a year. Plus, he’s only 34, and should have a few more fine years left in him. He and Galarraga could be two-three after this season, and after that you’re looking at Jim Thome (who stands about 30th all-time right now) as the only non-Sosa candidate to challenge the long-standing reign of K King Reggie Jackson. Jackson’s 2,597 strikeouts are the Mt. McKinley of career marks to the Everest and Kilimanjaro of home runs and hits.
Among contenders this season, it was the Dodgers who most resembled Sisqo. That is, they were fleeting, not possessed of the skills necessary to persist, and ultimately inconsequential. And no hit single to make the ladies squeal and shake it either. Not so long ago, Joe Sheehan did a crackin’ good job of deconstructing the Dodgers’ flaccid offense, so I won’t belabor the point. But I will add that the Dodgers’ run-scoring problems aren’t a recent phenomenon. In fact, for much of their history, they’ve been less offensive than a Billy Graham knock-knock joke. The Dodgers haven’t finished in the top five in the NL in runs scored since 1991, and they’ve led the senior circuit in runs scored exactly twice since moving to Los Angeles prior to the 1958 season. Additionally, they’ve been one of the worst organizations in baseball in terms of identifying and developing hitters. The lineage of highly productive, homegrown Dodger hitters runs from Mike Piazza (himself a nepotistic afterthought when tapped in the 62nd round of the 1988 amateur draft) to…Pedro Guerrero? If I’m in a charitable mood I’ll throw in the merely decent Raul Mondesi and the so-far-so-good Paul Lo Duca, but you get the idea. So why is that?