I was as surprised as anyone that Ken Griffey Jr was activated today. There were bound to be some odd roster moves made to get him back active and Ruben Mateo was the first casualty. The Reds have a good reason for activating but not playing Junior, but I’m not able to explain it. The plan with Griffey is to play him and hope he helps the team. Good plan. Tim Kremchek was quoted on SportsCenter (via ESPN Radio) as saying there’s “significant risk of his shoulder popping back out while swinging the bat.” I’d like to see the entire quote and I hope my upcoming article on Dr. Kremchek sheds some new light on him. It’s not news that Griffey (and Jeter) have risk of re-injury, and any injury to a superstar player is significant. Teams take risks all the time and they’re not taking one they think they will lose.
On the other hand, it’s getting painful to watch Barry Larkin. I’ve said time and again that if I were a major league player, I wouldn’t hang ’em up gracefully…you’d need to drag me out of the game. At some point, someone needs to grab Larkin and start dragging. Once again, his calf has betrayed him, just another in a series of parts succumbing to age and tarnishing memories. Once he’s gone, we’ll forget the painful end part and remember a great shortstop. Barry, I think it’s time.
Eli Marrero could be gone for a while, Ken Griffey Jr. could be back soon, El Duque is following in Robb Nen’s footsteps, and Will admits that he soon will Think Different [TM].
If there is any one theme to Baseball Prospectus, it’s that we look at the game in a different way. This is the legacy of Branch Rickey that we all aspire to and hope will change baseball for the better. The stathead outlook is well established, if regularly assailed. The medheads are developing as an offshoot of performance analysis, looking at one new way to analyze things. There is no performance unless a player walks on the field and even then, so many things are colored by health that it is next to impossible to understand performance without understanding health. Kerry Wood throws 141 pitches and we all rail, but he throws zero pitches without the invention of Dr. Frank Jobe and the intervention of Dr. Jim Andrews.
One of the things I’m seeing more and more of–and no, I’m not arrogant enough to take credit for this–is people discussing injuries and their effects on teams and individuals. There’s always been an ebb and flow around big injuries, but I’m starting to see a very subtle shift. There are big debates over pitch counts, discussions with team doctors, and even articles that intelligently discuss age-based overuse. Injury analysis will probably have a slower acceptance curve than performance analysis–and we all know how slow that move has been–but we’re here at the beginning. Pioneers, of a sort. Kinda cool.
I usually try to start off light. I give some fun fact, share a bit of my day, joke about my coffee addiction, or riff on what I like about UTK–that it feels more like me talking to a friend than a big, formal column. Tonight, I’m somewhere between angry, dumbfounded, frustrated, exhausted, and just laughing at it all. As much as injury information and performance analysis is a true disruptive technology–remember that phrase–in baseball, the old school is hanging onto the reins and playing craps with the future of players and teams. Let’s get to the destruction.
I guess PECOTA warned us with the 19.5% attrition rate. I even suggested it might happen. But I sure didn’t see it coming this quickly. After a 28-pitch, breaking ball-filled inning, Josh Beckett was pulled “as a precaution” after complaining of stiffness and pain on the inside of his pitching elbow. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what these symptoms suggest? The Marlins already have Beckett headed to see Jim Andrews. I don’t think Jim gives volume discounts, but he should consider it. The Marlins have treated Beckett with a gentler hand than they did A.J. Burnett. Beckett did cross the 100-pitch barrier in each of his last three starts (6 innings/107 pitches, 7/115, and 6.2/105), but none of these are outrageous counts.
So let’s compare Beckett’s efficiency to that of say, Mark Mulder. Mulder has thrown three straight complete games–a big no-no in the age of strict pitch counts, right? How did Rick Peterson allow this? Simple. Mulder went 96 pitches in two starts, and 105 in the last. Pitch efficiency is looking more and more important. To get back to Beckett, he is headed to Dr. Andrews and we should know more shortly. Until then, try to breathe, Marlins fans. Try to breathe.
Believe it or not–and for people who know me, this will come as a shock–I spent most of Tuesday speechless. At an hour much too early for me to be up, and not having had near enough coffee (or alcohol), I was squeezed into the back seat of an Indy Car today and taken around the track. I can’t begin to describe the experience, but suffice it to say that I came away with a new respect for what athletes these drivers are, how much courage–or stupidity–they have, and the fact that I really, really want to buy one of those when I win the lottery! If you have a couple hundred bucks lying around and you’re near a track when the IRL comes through, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Never mind that Robin Miller of ESPN made fun of me all afternoon, reminding me that I only went 180 or so–racing was a blast.
Once again, I spent my day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Due to rain and wind, we weren’t able to go out on the track, but we did discover that I will be the one in the car tomorrow morning. We’ll go out at around 200 mph and I’m as scared as I am excited. I’ve seen major league fastballs before, and standing in the pits watching Tora Takagi fly by me at 229 mph was every bit as awe-inspiring. The car rushes down the long straight, sucking up air, whooshes by with 800 horsepower screaming, and then vanishes into a tunnel they call a turn. They’re going to strap me into one of those tomorrow. I’m not sure if I wouldn’t rather face Roger Clemens when he’s cross-eyed and angry.
By the time you read this, it’s possible that I’ll be moving faster than a heater from Roger Clemens or Kerry Wood, faster than Mark Prior or Randy Johnson, or even faster than a Jamie Moyer plus a Doug Jones. How is this possible? In my duties covering the Indianapolis 500 for ESPN 950, I’ll be the backup “driver” for one of the two-seat Indy Cars that are set to take select journalists around the fabled track. I’m still hoping Greg Rakestraw gets the shot he deserves, but after standing on the “yard of bricks” at the start/finish line today, I would be lying to say I didn’t want the chance to go around at speed.
Watching those cars fly by at twice the speed of a Billy Wagner fastball–with some to spare–is truly one of the most amazing things I’ve seen. Here’s a couple of links of what I might just be doing tomorrow. Let’s just hope the next UTK isn’t “Will Carroll smashed into the SAFER barrier at 200 mph, fracturing every bone in his body.” There’s a lot of things I don’t have in common with Jason Priestley and some of them, I’d like to keep that way.
Will Carroll mopes about the A.J. Burnett flap, hopes for a position move for Mike Piazza and a call-up for Jose Reyes, gropes for a cure to Rich Aurilia’s vision woes, and ropes a kick-ass Mark Prior quote.
I got to spend the day at the ballpark yesterday, and was immediately reminded that no matter what happens, nothing can go wrong when the sun is out, there’s a high blue sky, and my refinancing clears so I can have a cold one. I sat in the not-so-cheap seats at Victory Field here in Indy, watching Lee Stevens play his last game. It wasn’t the storybook ending for a player that is the definition of “journeyman hitter.” He might be remembered for his hot streak in ’96, or the three-way deal that brought him to Montreal in 2000 or his freakish contract later that year, but Stevens understood that his day in the sun was over and walked out on his own terms. No walk-off home run, no cheering crowds, and not even a win or a hit–but he had class. If only all of baseball could be like that: perfect days and lots of class. On to the injuries…
If you think tonight’s UTK is shorter than normal, blame it on me. I’ve spent half the day researching A.J. Burnett’s injury, answering email regarding Burnett’s surgery, and writing what is becoming a really long article on Tim Kremchek. The result: my carpal tunnel is acting up more than normal, and I’ll need to try to stop by my chiropractor (yeah, a chiropractor for carpal tunnel…I never would have believed it either) some time this week. For now, please bear with me in this less verbose edition.
The worst-case scenario came true. As Jim Andrews peered into A.J. Burnett’s elbow, he saw a completely torn–by some accounts, “shredded, destroyed”–ulnar collateral ligament. The ligament was replaced and the clock started. We’ll see Burnett again in about six months and he should be back to his old self in 2005, just in time for free agency. By then, he should have a new manager, but for the Marlins’ sake, I hope it’s much sooner than that.
Thanks to everyone who emailed their congratulations on the one-year anniversary. As I told many of you, what makes this fun for me is meeting readers–both in and outside of baseball–and getting to know them. There are great people in baseball: People who love the game like Peter Gammons and Rob Neyer (who has a kicking new Modesty Panel website); people like Alex Belth, Lee Sinins, and Jamey Newberg; people like the guys at BP that I’ve read for years, not to mention new friends like Nate Silver and Ryan Wilkins. People like…well, I can’t name the various players, trainers, and doctors I’ve gotten to know, but you know who you are and I know you’re reading. So thanks to you…each one of you.
I said yesterday that people were reading this column, but I said nothing about everyone being able to learn the lessons. Jack McDowell certainly doesn’t get it, and we’ve known for a while that Jeff Torborg and Brad Arnsberg don’t get it either. I’ll say it again: There are certain factors that make a pitcher more likely to get injured, and when a pitcher exhibits signs of injury or overuse, it is the responsibility of the manager and pitching coach to use that pitcher in a manner which will keep him healthy while retaining the maximum amount of value.
That said, it seems quite apparent that both Torborg and Arnsberg knew that one of their players was injured, but rode him hard nonetheless. This is absolutely inexcusable, and both men are–flat out–to blame for the loss of A.J. Burnett. Scalies fans, your manager and pitching coach just cost you at least two wins in 2003 (per his PECOTA projection) and a staff ace for the better portion of two years. For a team with serious financial issues this is simply untenable, and if anyone in that front office has the remotest of clues, that person needs to fire both men. Do it now, before Josh Beckett or Brad Penny gets badly hurt.
Burnett looks like he’s headed for Tommy John surgery, though the final determination won’t be made until Jim Andrews has his elbow open. Count A.J. out for the year.
I’ll start today with thank you. It’s been a year since I started publishing UTK, first as a stand-alone and now as a part of BP. I’m nothing without my readers and–love me or hate me–people are reading.
In one year, I’ve covered an average of 12 injured players per day, written an average of 1900 words per day, had my first radio appearance, started my own show, gone from three subscribers–who really didn’t ask for it in the first place–to over 3000, gone from an email I hoped I could get 100 people to read to a spot on the Baseball Prospectus’ staff. I’ve gone into clubhouses, met players, GMs, doctors, trainers, and even some of the hangers-on that populate the world of baseball. I’ve made mistakes, said things that were stupid and things that bordered on prophetic, and everything in between; but the one thing I’m proudest of is that I’m starting to hear people talk about injuries. They discuss them as something similar to on-base percentage–that if we teach the players the right things, the game can be improved.
If Dr. Tim Kremchek sends me a bill for the two hours he spent out of surgery today–discussing everything from his love for the game to the ins-and-outs of building a world-class medical facility with everything from an MRI on site to an indoor field where Bill Doran and Tom Browning offer instruction–I’ll be more than happy to fork over the cash. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean.)
That said, my talk with Dr. Kremchek was really enlightening. There will be a feature coming next week, but I’ll say in this forum what I said to Dr. Kremchek today: much of what I’ve written about him may have been an incorrect interpretation of information. Given the proper context, Kremchek’s work can be taken a completely different way without changing the basic facts.
Even when I try to be “short and sweet”–tough for a guy who’s six feet tall and arrogant as hell–it seldom works. What I don’t say in UTK often ends up in emails, and since I have this near pathologic need to answer every email, I skipped some yesterday. (I apologize if one of yours was one of them.) One reader challenged me to expand on my “Tony Gwynn is full of crap” statement–and I’ll agree, what I said was abbreviated and had the bare minimum in the way of explanation. To fully say what I think, though, I would have to deviate further from my format as a Gammonsesque “notes” column, and end up with literary loose bowels.
Now, does the situation deserve a more full account? Yes. The drug situation does not need knee-jerk reactions. When I helped write the piece on Steve Bechler’s death, I stayed as far away from the mainstream coverage as possible, trying to take as many factors as possible into account to get to the facts of the situation. I’ve taken on the use/abuse of creatine since the genesis of this column. Now, my take on drugs in baseball is moving from something I can’t ignore to a feature and potentially something in a longer format. Ideally, it will come out later this year or even perhaps as a BP2K4 piece. Yes, the issue demands a proper response…so please give me time to do it right.
Normally, I open light and breezy. I talk about coffee, beer, or even the heavy stuff (NyQuil–and I’m feeling much better, thank you). UTK is my way of talking to a bunch of people all at once, and anyone who’s met me knows that I talk and talk and talk. Today, however, I’m going to say that Tony Gwynn is as full of crap as Jose Canseco or Ken Caminiti, and simply leave it at that.
The word “steroids” is becoming de facto shorthand for performance enhancing drugs, both legal and illegal. It’s also becoming de facto way for lazy journalists to point at a game and players they’ve come to loathe and besmirch it with an air of community service. Buster Olney is a really good writer (with a very interesting interview over at Bronx Banter), but he’s fallen into the same trap as many before him: Find an ex-player with an agenda, find someone within the game willing to back him up for an unquestioned reason, and play at public perceptions that baseball players really aren’t more talented than you or me–they’re just on drugs.