Who needs starting pitchers? They’re like the pace car at Indy: They get the thing in motion before the real guys come along to finish up the job. At least, that must be the rationale around Yankee Stadium these days. Only three teams in all of baseball find themselves in the predicament in which the Yankees are in–their best starting pitcher has a lower VORP than their highest-ranked reliever. The Yankees actually go this one better in that their two best relievers are rated higher than their best starter.
Everybody had something to say about the weekend’s biggest trades, from Nomar Garciaparra to Paul Lo Duca to Doug Mientkiewicz. All that, and Felipe Alou’s words of wisdom, in The Week in Quotes.
Division leaders the Twins, A’s and Cardinals all have key players working their way back from or playing through injuries. Will Carroll provides updates on these guys, as well as UTK regulars Andy Pettitte, Ken Griffey Jr., and Austin Kearns.
In a wild weekend of trades, a number of contending teams sat on their hands. Why, and what might change for them in August, in Joe Sheehan’s Monday morning column.
If there’s one thing George Steinbrenner has always been good at, it’s hiding his money. Whether it’s starting his own cable network to keep
his broadcast revenue out of the reach of his fellow owners, as he did in 2002, or paying himself a “consulting fee” to negotiate his own cable contract, as he did in the 1980s, The Boss has always been at the cutting edge of creative accounting, helping him evade attempts by fellow owners to force him to share the bounty that comes from operating the most lucrative franchise in baseball.
With his recently revealed plan to build a new $750 million stadium in the Bronx, though, Steinbrenner may have hit upon the biggest scam of his life.
One young-gun GM made his team better this weekend by focusing on what matters. Another made his team worse by losing sight of the same. Those two teams’ deals, and all the rest of the trades, inside.
The Cubs take a big step toward making the playoffs. The Red Sox make a deal for the wrong reasons. The Expos and Devil Rays land nifty prospects for expendable veterans. The Giants fail to help themselves much. These and many more trade deadline happenings in a special weekend edition of Transaction Analysis.
The Dodgers made big headlines and the Mets made big mistakes, but the real winners on Friday were two teams you’d never expect. Joe Sheehan covers a busy day of trades.
The calm before the storm, as bad teams make minor moves involving players your local beat writer has never heard of. That, and Francisco Cordero gets financial security for life.
Will covers the injury angles of yesterday’s big deals and checks in on UTK regulars Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi and Mark Prior.
Who’s the best prospect in the game: B.J. Upton of the Devil Rays or David Wright of the Mets? A look at their minor league numbers might unlock the answer. Dayn Perry anoints his top prospect in all of baseball in Friday’s Can of Corn.
Keith Osik has met his destiny in the Tampa Bay organization, while Scott Erickson has gone from top-line starter to designated for assignment. This news and more in your Friday edition of Transaction Analysis.
Last week, inspired by the well-timed thievery of the 2004 Mets, we discussed the teams with the best stolen base percentages in recorded history. This week, we look at the other side of the coin– the teams with the worst percentages that the game has ever seen.
Do you think Jack McKeon gives Larry Bowa his ass back after the Marlins play
the Phillies, or do you think he just keeps it all the time?
Vaughn should have been solid for 1911, but a number of things were working against him. Hal Chase, the gambler, was the player-manager and is presumed to have subverted many games. Vaughn missed a month with an “illness,” and didn’t pitch well when healthy. He opened 1912 the same way, and manager Harry Wolverton–the New York Americans were going through a manager a year in those days–decided to send him to Providence of the International League. Vaughn balked, saying he would refuse to report unless given a small cash bonus and part of the sale price.
This simply wasn’t done in those days. Players were expected to accept their place as chattel. The Yankees waived Vaughn and probably expected him to drift back to the minor league fringes, but Clark Griffith, now managing the Washington Senators, put in a claim and added Vaughn to his staff. Griffith still liked Vaughn’s stuff and thought that Hilltop Park, home of the Highlanders, might have worked against the pitcher. Whether that was the case or not we will never know, but Vaughn found himself in Washington and was never lost again, though it took the scouts a while to figure it out.
Now that we’ve gotten to the 100-game mark on the season, I decided to take a look at how the park factors were shaking out so far in ’04. Park factors are noisy pieces of data–that’s the reason why we use three-year averages in the first place–and I expect that some of these 100-game factors will change significantly between now and the end of the season.
That caveat aside, let’s take a look at how pro baseball’s parks–from the majors down to A-ball–are playing.