HOUSTON ASTROS
Adam Everett leads the majors with 10 sacrifice bunts. That’s from the #2 hole, which means that Mr. Williams is shortening the innings in which his best bats come up. With slugging and on-base percentages in the threes (OBP low-threes), there’s no reason to keep Everett up there, except for the stubborn belief that he’s “changed.” This concludes this week’s Jimy Williams bash.
Moving from the mundane to the sublime, Roger Clemens is doing something that has very little in the way of precedent. Perhaps it’s an obvious point, but most 41-year-old pitchers don’t perform at this level. Heck, most 41-year-old pitchers aren’t pitchers. The closest parallels are Cy Young, who posted a 1.26 ERA (LERA of 2.39) in 299 innings for the 1908 Red Sox, Ted Lyons’ wonderful “Sunday Pitcher” performance of 1942, Warren Spahn’s last hurrah in 1963, and, most appropriately, Nolan Ryan, who struck out 301 batters in 1989 at the age of 42. None of them had quite the year the Rocket has had to this point… There’s a moment in “Bonnie and Clyde” where Clyde says: “Hi! We’re Bunny and Claude. We steal carrots.” Houston version: “Hi! We’re the Houston Astros. We blow saves.” GRADE: B-
Three days after first getting the news of it, the death of Doug Pappas seems
no more real than it did on Friday. I know that denial is a stage of grief,
but it’s easy to get stuck there when you find your friend quoted in the
paper, as Doug was in yesterday’s Denver Post, the words from an
interview conducted well before his passing.
That Doug would be sharing knowledge even after his death is appropriate. The
man is gone, and we’re all less for that loss, but what remains, what will
remain, is his amazing work. From his efforts as part of the Society for American
Baseball Research to his writing for Baseball Prospectus to his nascent
Weblog, Doug spent much of his life sharing knowledge with others. Without fanfare, every day Doug made the world a little smarter, a little better, and
did so for nothing more than the fact that he enjoyed it.
For years now, the words “Cardinals” and “promising prospects” have seemed as incongruous and unrelated as “concept album” and “enjoyable listening experience.” On a system-wide level, that’s still the case; the Cards remain saddled with one of the weaker stables of minor league talent in baseball. That said, they are cobbling together a promising corps of young starters. In no particular order, let’s take a look at a few of them:
The Dodgers’ offense has cooled in the month of May. The Twins’ rotation has had its ups and downs already this season. And the after trying out third base, first base, and, yes, right field, the Giants will be starting Pedro Feliz at shortstop this week, in place of Neifi Perez. All this and much more news from Los Angeles, Minnesota, and San Francisco in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
The Angels lose Troy Glaus for 60 days, or perhaps the entire season. Walkin’ machine Kevin Youkilis makes his debut with the Red Sox. Sammy Sosa hits the DL, weakening the Cubs’ lineup even more. Carl Everett returns for the Expos. And Raul Mondesi’s contract has been terminated by the Pirates. All this and much more news from around the league in your Friday edition of Transaction Analysis.
It was another day at the Indy Motor Speedway today, where I give hourly updates on nothing. Nothing happens, really. The same cars go out and do laps (very fast), then come in. The excitement is, maybe, a crash, but there was only one of those. Thankfully, no injuries and barely any damage to the million-dollar car. But the funny anecdote is that I was sitting with one of the drivers and he turns to me and says “you’re the baseball guy on the radio, right?” I said, yes. He paused and said “If I got a couple million dollars together, could I get to play for a team?” It took me a second to realize he wasn’t kidding. “No, (name), it’s not like racing. You’d have to go through the minors and all that.” He shook his head. “That sucks. Doesn’t seem fair.” I wasn’t sure if he was joking, but later, his cell phone rang. The ring tone? “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” On to the injuries…
The big story here is the arrival of the young guns. Two catchers who demonstrated strong throwing arms in the minors, Kevin Cash and Gerald Laird, are showing that their ability translates to the major leagues. While Victor Martinez looks like the Next Big Thing at catcher based on offense alone, Cash’s superiority on defense makes up a big portion of the current offensive gap between the two. The same is true for Laird, whose all-around performance makes him a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate despite his recent hitting slump. We wondered in our last catching article who the young heirs to Jason LaRue and Mike Matheny were. It looks like we might have our answer.
The Phillies will miss Randy Wolf for one start and Jim Thome for a couple games. Neither is likely to hit the DL, but it is concerning for the team. Wolf had a “tingle” in his elbow after an outing in Colorado. While there’s no pain the day-after, the team is concerned enough to give him some extra rest. He’ll work on the side while Jeff Cooper and the rest of the staff watch him closely. Thome is dealing with more hand problems; two swollen fingers on his right hand now join his left thumb that has been bothering him since Spring Training. Highlights from Sunday clearly showed Thome wincing as he swung the bat, even when he hit a home run.
The timetable for Dmitri Young has changed slightly. Published reports say that the Tigers expect their slugger back on May 25th, rather than early-June. Why is this? The Tigers are bringing back Young before he’s completely healed. Alan Trammell was quoted as saying that he expected Young to “play with a limp.” It’s not often that a team will rush someone back to help salvage a .500 season, but it shows just how important the improvement is to this franchise.
Simi Valley, Calif. native and Long Beach State (No. 5) RHP Jered Weaver sat down with BP to discuss Team USA, superstitions and how he dominates hitters. Jered is a six-time 2004 National Player of the Week, seven-time Big West Player of the Week, a finalist for the Dick Howser Trophy awarded to the top player in collegiate baseball and a potential #1 overall pick in the upcoming June draft. His 2004 line:
W-L ERA IP H R ER BB SO
14-0 1.27 113.1 55 19 16 14 171
It wasn’t so long ago that the Indians, almost by acclimation, were deemed to have the best farm system in the game. That’s a fleeting honor by nature, as great systems are generally loaded with talent in the high minors–talent that isn’t long for the farm. Indeed, mashers like Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner are now plying their trade in Cleveland. Brandon Phillips exhausted his prospect status and the patience of his handlers, but he’s renaissancing in Buffalo this season. The gaggle of high-ceiling arms once in the system is now splitting time between major league duty and the injury docket.
All that said, replenishment is in the offing. The Indians’ High-A Carolina League affiliate in Kinston has been far and away the most dominant team in the minors thus far. At 27-9 (a tidy .750 winning percentage, which translates to 108 wins over a 144-game schedule), the Kinston Indians are playing Chet to the rest of the ‘Lina League’s Gary and Wyatt. All without the transmogrification-cum-comeuppance in the end.
Unless you’re the Giants, success isn’t reducible to one player, but in Kinston’s case it may be reducible to three. So ready yourselves for the “Kinston Trio.”
K-Rod may be the best reliever in baseball. Sammy Sosa’s costly sneeze lands him on the DL. Ben Sheets is having a breakout season. These and other news and notes out of Anaheim, Chicago and Milwaukee in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Matt Mantei hits the DL yet again. The Braves are running out of options as the injuries pile up. The Royals serve up the ultimate indignity: a promotion for Wilton Guerrero. The Expos take a big risk with Jose Vidro. Matt Ginter could be a good sleeper for the Mets. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
Some pitchers’ most readily-identifiable characteristic is their ability to induce groundballs. Indeed, for pitchers like Lowe, Zambrano, and Brandon Webb, inducing groundballs is an essential part of their game plan. Zambrano, for instance, can get away with maintaining a relatively high walk rate because he induces a lot of double plays, and avoids giving up home runs, which are especially costly with runners on base.
I saw perfection tonight. I saw Randy Johnson when he came to the Seattle Mariners from the Montreal Expos as a wild flame-thrower, I saw him refine himself into an ace pitcher, a guy who could throw 200 innings, strike out almost 300 guys, walk about 75, and keep his ERA under 3 in one of the AL’s more notorious launching pads. He threw a no-hitter in Seattle in his early days (1990–8 K, 6 BB). I missed him getting through an inning on nine strikes for three strikeouts in 2001, which is a weird but almost as rare historical achievement, and I’m still mad about it.
Today, I was flipping around watching games while writing something else up when I found the Diamondbacks game. The announcers were talking all about the perfect game he had going and I started yelling “Shut up! Shut up!” at the television. I’m a guy who’ll rail at the stars against astrology, I’ll talk until spoons bend about what a bunch of baloney telekinesis is, I’ll bore you to death about my hatred for John Edward, but when it comes to baseball and a chance to see one of the great games in history, I flip back to the superstitious caveman in a second.
Johnson’s performance tonight was one of the most impressive in baseball history. Thirteen strikeouts in a game is the second-most of the 17 perfect games in the modern era–only Sandy Koufax in 1965 topped him, setting down 14. One-hundred and seventeen pitches isn’t the most in a perfect game, either–David Wells threw 120 in his 1998 perfect game (struck out 11), but it’s the second-highest among the games that offered pitch-count totals.
That must have been one heck of a sneeze. Sammy Sosa’s sneeze strained a ligament in his back, pushing him to the DL. While the injury is both painful and would make playing difficult if not impossible, Sosa doesn’t have any further structural damage and should come back around the minimum. With the Astros and Cardinals on the immediate schedule, this is a bad time to be without the slugger, but the Cubs will try to make do by mixing and matching players like Todd Hollandsworth, Tom Goodwin, and perhaps David Kelton or Jason DuBois.
The injury to David Wells could have been a lot worse. While the rumors and innuendo will only intensify, Wells’ injury consists of simple yet deep lacerations to the hand and a partial tear/laceration of the palmaris longis tendon. This tendon, normally used as the replacement structure in Tommy John surgery, was repaired in minor surgery on Tuesday. Since the tendon has no real function, Wells is expected back around the minimum.
A quiet day on the schedule usually means a pretty quiet day on the UTK front, but injuries, at this stage, are inevitable. Despite teams and medical staffs doing all they can to prevent injuries, things are going to happen. Even if we were able to figure out how to prevent overuse injuries, there would still be freak things or collisions like the Giles vs. Jones natural disaster. I’ve often wished for a day without injuries, but it’s not coming any time soon.
Powered by the mystery of the gyroball, on to the injuries…