Sammy Sosa was ejected from yesterday’s game with the Devil Rays for using a corked bat. The lumber broke on a grounder to second base in the first inning, and after examining the fragment, crew chief Tim McClelland ejected Sosa.
Almost immediately, speculation began that perhaps Sosa was cheating all along, that his 505 career home runs, his MVP award, his All-Star appearances, and his status as a baseball icon were all the result of cork. Like the steroid story that persisted through last summer, it’s just another way for the media to tear down a player, to point and say, “he’s not that good.”
(Ed. note: The following is a reprint of an article that ran one year ago, on the day of the 2001 draft.]
Right now, 30 major-league organizations are making decisions that will impact the success of their franchise over the next few years, and in some cases, for a decade or more. Unlike the football and basketball versions, though, the annual draft of young talent doesn’t receive national television coverage or make men with good hair and strong opinions famous and wealthy.
Interleague play kicks off tonight with 14 mixed matchups. This year, we again have a new set of games, with the AL West taking on the NL East, the AL East playing the NL Central, and the AL Central and NL West hooking up for 18 games.
Mostly, anyway. The odd sizes of the AL West and the NL Central complicate things, for one. Then there’s MLB’s desperate need to schedule the six or seven series for which the whole concept of interleague play exists, so the Yankees will again play the Mets home-and-home, the Cubs will play the White Sox and so on. Some teams will play as many as 18 interleague contests, while others will play just 12.
All of this schedule-rigging trades fairness for a few extra bucks. Of course, MLB already tossed fairness out the window with regard to the wild-card spot years ago, as interleague play and the unbalanced schedule mean that teams fighting for the league’s fourth slot can play wildly differing slates. Most notably, the 2001 Cardinals edged the Giants for the NL’s last playoff spot by two games, benefitting not only from a weaker division, but a much weaker set of interleague games.
Yesterday’s Shea Hillenbrand-for-Byung-Hyun Kim trade is many things, all of which can be summed in one word: Fun.
It’s a baseball trade, one in which the financial considerations are a tertiary concern. It’s two teams getting together to exchange strength in an effort to patch weaknesses, with an eye towards glory this year. It’s a challenge trade: one-for-one, no cash, players to be named or future considerations. I’m not ashamed to say that the deal put a real hop in my step; there are so many angles to the swap, so many facets to be examined, and so many ways in which it could go right or wrong for either team.
One of my favorite sayings–I think I first saw it in an r.s.b post back when I was in college–is “Life is not a meritocracy.” As much as we in America embrace the notion of a Horatio Alger ideal–that anyone can do anything they want to if they work hard enough–the fact is that intractable, and sometimes unfair, barriers to success do exist.
In baseball, we generally call these barriers “service time” and “financial commitments.” Players with the MLB Seal of Approval and guaranteed contracts keep their jobs long past the point of reason, while more deserving younger players toil one level below, doing everything in their power to reach The Show, but get left behind by the conservative nature of dyed-in-the-wool baseball people who would rather watch a veteran be old than take a chance on a younger player.
This column will highlight a number of the bad baseball players who are blocking the progress of better ones.
Some days, you can’t swing a dead cat without running into stupid human tricks.
In Atlanta, Bob Boone demonstrated the death grip he has on baseball strategy of the late 19th century by benching the major-league leader in home runs, Adam Dunn, for the second straight day, this time against right-hander Shane Reynolds. The benching came one day after Dunn popped a pinch-hit grand slam in the 11th inning to propel the Reds to a 7-6 victory.
I don’t really care what kind of rationale Boone pulls out of his nether regions. The fact is, he’s limiting Dunn’s playing time for two reasons: batting average and strikeouts. We’re more than 20 years into a more modern way of looking at baseball, and Bob Boone can’t see far enough past batting average and strikeouts to notice that he’s sitting his second- or third-best hitter.
It’s a little funny that on one of the distinctly American summer holidays, two of the best stories in baseball come from a place where Monday was just another day. The Montreal Expos took five of six on a brief homestand to come into Memorial Day at 32-18, just two games behind the Braves in the NL East. The Toronto Blue Jays? All they did was sweep a four-game series at Yankee Stadium for the first time ever, moving to 27-24 and closing within four games of first place in the suddenly very competitive AL East.
I admit going into this piece that it’s a “write it while you can” job. While the Expos and Jays are currently among the hottest teams in baseball, and right there in their divisional races, I don’t think either will be in such a lofty place in two months. For now, though, each is making noise, and doing so in completely different ways.
The Dodgers won yet another close game last night, holding the Rockies to a pair of runs in a 3-2 win. That’s an offensive explosion by the recent standards of Dodger opponents: The Blue Crew had given up just one run in five
consecutive games dating to May 14. Thanks to Keith Woolner’s latest creation,
“Team
Records and Streaks,” we know that they lead or are tied for the lead
in the number of games won when scoring two runs or four runs, and trail only the Braves in winning games in which they score three runs.
Overall, the Dodgers have allowed a freakishly low 137 runs, 36 runs fewer than the Expos and 18 fewer than the A’s. According to Michael Wolverton’s analysis, which factors in the very good pitcher’s park in which they play half their games, the Dodgers have the fourth-best
rotation and the fourth-best
bullpen in the game.
Don’t get too crazy about this idea, but the Dodgers are on pace to allow just 482 runs this season. That just isn’t done. In fact, just three teams in the last 10 years have allowed fewer than 600 runs in a full season: the Braves of 1997, 1998 and 2002. The last team to break 500? The Orioles (430) and A’s (457) did it in the strike-shortened season of 1972. (The A’s missed
seven games and may have turned the trick anyway; the Orioles missed eight,
and would certainly have stayed under 500 in a full season.) Four teams–the
Cardinals, Mets, Orioles and Tigers–did it in the last year of the modern dead-ball era, 1968. Even if the Dodgers can’t maintain their pace, they’re well on their way to being one of the top run-prevention teams of my lifetime.
My American League All-Star picks were easier than my NL ones, which reflects
the lack of talent in the AL right now, at least relative to the NL. There are
four or five AL teams who don’t have any player remotely deserving of All-Star
consideration.
First Base: Carlos
Delgado. This was the toughest call. Jason
Giambi has established himself as the better player, but Delgado has
never been that far behind him. Delgado has been the best hitter in the AL
this year, while Giambi has struggled. I can see the argument for either
player; both fit the definition of “All-Star,” and this pick is
admittedly inconsistent with my thought process in filling out the ballot.
While at Bank One Ballpark Friday, I filled out my first All-Star ballot
of the year. Well, it was probably my only All-Star ballot of the year; I used
to do a bunch of them—-issuing votes for my favorite players, the best ones,
the guys on my Strat team, the Yankees—-but I feel like one is enough now. It’s
not unlike my change in attitude toward cheesesteaks.
Before I continue, I have to say that filling out an All-Star ballot with
friends is one of the great pleasures of being a baseball fan. The
good-natured debates over what constitutes an All-Star are a key part of
loving the game, and getting to go through this process with Rany and Jonah
last week was a lot of fun. The all-Royals and all-Expos ballots were a little
tough to take, but that’s life in a democracy for you.
Anyway, I’ll run my NL ballot today, AL tomorrow. As always, I consider
All-Stars to be the top players at their position, with current stats running
secondary to established performance.
Whatever its benefits, it’s clear that the unbalanced schedule has made it even more difficult to draw conclusions about teams in the early stages of the season. Schedules are so skewed that you have to consider quality of opponents in any discussion of what a team has done and what it might do going forward.
Take the Yankees. They opened the year 16-3 without Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, inspiring a discussion of whether this team might be as good as the 1998 team that went 114-48. Since then, they’re just 11-13, and not even alone in first place. The difference? They opened the season with the Blue Jays (seven games), Devil Rays (five games) and Twins (seven games)–teams that now have an aggregate record of 65-65. They’ve since spent three weeks playing the AL West, a division that’s 94-77 overall and 56-39–good for a .589 winning percentage–when not playing itself.
I’m heading to Phoenix today for an impromptu gathering of BP staffers at Bank One Ballpark. It’ll be my first ballgame there–I did eat dinner at the TGI Friday’s in the park last year–and I’ll be taking it in with Rany Jazayerli, Jonah Keri and Jonah’s lovely wife, Angele. The BOB becomes my first new ballpark since I hit Fenway last June, and I’m fairly excited. I’ll be more excited if Byung-Hyun Kim comes off the DL and throws well, as my roto team needs him to get healthy fast. (ed note: sorry Joe, looks like Miguel Batista or Andrew Good will more likely get the start tonight)
There are cabs to be caught and sheer terror to be had–I’m not a good flier–but before that happens, I wanted to throw out one question:
What the hell is up with Nate Cornejo?
While he hasn’t done it just yet, it appears that Mike Piazza will be spending at least some time at first base this season. The Mets’ initial fumbling of the decision will push things back a couple of weeks, but the transition is coming. Piazza has fought such a move for years, but a combination of factors–including the Mets’ loss of Mo Vaughn and recent surgery that kept an otherwise healthy Piazza out of the lineup because he couldn’t squat–appear to be breaking down his resistance to the idea.
For the second time in a week, Joe dips into the ol’ e-mailbag, this time answering questions about Rafael Palmeiro’s candidacy for the Hall of Fame.
Yesterday, Rafael
Palmeiro became the 19th player in major-league history to hit 500
home runs, joining the club with a three-run blast to right field in the
seventh inning off the Indians’ David
Elder. His achievement has been met with lukewarm response, unusual
for someone reaching such an important milestone. Not only has no eligible
500-home run hitter ever been left out of the Hall of Fame, none have ever
sparked serious debate over their candidacy.
Palmeiro’s accomplishment, though, is being hailed not as the signature feat
of a great player, but as an example of just how “cheap” home runs
have become in the early 21st century. Palmeiro’s qualifications for the Hall
are being questioned, and he’s being lumped in not with Reggie
and Eddie
and Michael
Jack, but with modern DHs like
The weird thing about the standings in the AL so far this season is how closely they match the projected standings based on runs scored and runs allowed. Usually this early there are more anomalies, more instances of division rivals whose positions in the standings don’t reflect the caliber of baseball they’ve played. (Clay Davenport has taken this notion to an extreme, which you can find both in last week’s article and every day in his Adjusted Standings.) Looking just at Pythagorean records, though, the entire American League is lining up the way it should.
The NL is quite a different story. The Central’s four contenders are separated by just two games in the stadings, but a whopping nine games based on runs. The Reds’ sweep of the Cardinals closed the gap between the two teams to just a game, but the Cards have outscored their opponents by 50 runs, while the Reds have been outscored by 48, while the Astros and Cubs fall between those extremes. In the West, the seven-game edge the Giants have on the Dodgers is not reflected in the runs the two teams have scored; the Dodgers have a .596/.592 edge in expected winning percentage.