It was 9:30 p.m. on a nondescript Tuesday night in April. The Bronx air was a
little damp, a little cool, and filled with tension and frustration. The
Yankees trailed 8-4 to the Oakland A’s in the eighth inning, having watched
their nominal ace blow an early 4-1 lead while pushing his ERA up to 6.55.
Coming off an embarrassing three-game sweep by the Red Sox, this game was
pushing the 8-10–soon to be 8-11–team ever closer to one of those mid-1980s
scenes in which a manager, a pitching coach, and two or three random clubhouse
attendants were fired.
Then Bernie Williams singled. Then Alex Rodriguez singled right behind him. Then Jason Giambi walked.
By a little after 10 p.m., the Yankees had a 10-8 lead and a new lease on
life. That half-hour, in which they beat up Jim Mecir and
Ricardo Rincon for six runs, looks like the most important
moment of the 2004 season. The Yankees won that game, the next seven after it
and have gone 30-9 since then, buring the field on the way to posting, by far,
the best record in baseball. A team that couldn’t score to save its life in
April, that put up an anemic four runs in losing three games to its hated
rival on the last weekend of that month, has hit like a team full of
Jeff Kent clones since then…
I spent about a half an hour today talking with a professional pitching coach about pitching. It was a great experience and he left with my book, but I left with something better. As I meet more people in baseball, I find more who want to make the game better, who are willing to be open-minded about new approaches, new research, and new possibilities. Stories like Dayn Perry’s Beer and Tacos article and Steven Goldman’s on Moneyball started to articulate a foundation for this new school of thought. Instead of the tired old school/new school debate that has become more holy war than revolution, there’s a “middle school” that is actually making inroads in the game. I’m firmly planting my feet there in the median.
Reports have been mixed on Kevin Brown. Early in the day, it looked like Brown’s back injury wasn’t serious. It was described to me as a “slip. His cleat didn’t catch and he overstepped, so his back took the worst of it.” Reports later in the day wavered between caution and fear. Brown will have some imaging and therapy, but there’s no determination yet on how serious the problem is. The Yanks don’t have the pitching depth to absorb an injury well, but there’s always the possibility that they’ll go get an extra arm.
One of the entertaining elements to following the Cubs this year is witnessing just how the city’s reactions have changed in light of the lofty expectations foisted on the team prior to the start of the season. Ordinarily, a 30-28 record during the first 90-degree week of the summer would be cause for celebration. This time around, it has triggered grave concern, as the red-on-blue Cub flag flies feebly beneath those of the Reds, Cards and Astros atop the center field scoreboard at Wrigley. One of the problems, it seems, is not that the Cubs aren’t scoring enough runs, but that they aren’t scoring them at the right times.
It’s no secret that I don’t like interleague play. It’s a gimmick that throws the schedule into chaos for the sake of letting the Yankees play the Mets six times.
If that’s an exaggeration, it’s only a slight one. The selling point of
interleague play is the eight or nine “natural rivalries” that are
played out each season, with the rest of the interleague schedule built around
them. Whatever nonsense is spread about allowing fans in cities of one league
to see the stars of another is just smoke and mirrors, because in some places,
it will take 30 years for the entire other league to make a visit.
I wouldn’t mind as much if MLB would just admit that interleague play exists
for the natural rivalries. Ratchet it down, make interleague just those games
each year and force everyone else into two matchups built around those two
weekends. MLB would rather sell the idea that interleague is hugely popular,
publishing context-free attendance figures–four of six interleague series are
on the weekend again, all are in June, and the natural rivalries will drive
the attendance gains–as part of the perpetual misinformation campaign.
Troy Percival hits the disabled list for the Angels. The White Sox lose Magglio Ordonez for a couple weeks. Eric Chavez breaks his hand, forcing the rest of the A’s offense to pick up the slack. Mark Prior makes his long-awaited return to Chicago’s north side. Milton Bradley gets a four-game suspension for another temper tantrum. And Dos Molinas suddenly becomes Tres Molinas, with the addition of Yadir to the MLB family. All this and much more news from around the league in your Thursday edition of Transaction Analysis.
The Marlins have spent the whole year exceeding expectations. Can they keep it up? Hideki Matsui has turned into a different type of hitter. And the Pirates’ two best hitters share the same last name, but little else in terms of ability. All this and much more news from Florida, New York, and Pittsburgh in your Thursday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Tools Vs. Performance – MWF, 8:00
It’s not often you find a good tools-versus-performance debate among the fraternity paddle crowd (i.e., college draftees)–usually this forms the parameters of the prep-collegiate arguments that have become old hat by now–but there’s one to be found this year in Seth Smith against Dustin Pedroia. Smith, an outfielder for Ole Miss, went at number 50 to the Rockies, while Pedroia, Arizona State’s starting shortstop, was the Red Sox’s first pick at number 65.
Derek Jeter seems to draw more emotional responses than anyone, whether through discussions of his defense or his place in the Pantheon. His recent struggles with his injured groin have taxed my inbox, but the injury is not worth the pixels; it’s as simple as they come, a straightforward strain. Sure the injury is painful, and he’ll miss a bit of time, but it’s also predictable, treatable and healing. People seem to forget that even when they’re emotional about a player, the rules of medicine still apply. Your captain will return, likely on Wednesday.
The Cubs-Cards series is one of those great happenings, but without Sammy Sosa and Albert Pujols, fans aren’t getting exactly what they expected. Both players will miss this series, but both are making progress. Pujols is seeing a reduction in the swelling of his hamstring, enough so that Tony La Russa had him available as a pinch-hitter, but only in an emergency. (Is a 17-inning game an emergency? I’ve never seen a game go this late into the UTK process as the Angels-Brewers epic.) Sosa was able to take batting practice, but remains a week away from returning to the lineup. His back is still tender, but there’s been great improvement.
Homo sapiens emerged from Neanderthal man about 38,000 BCE. It took another 31,500 years or so for the Sumerians to invent the wheel. There were 315 centuries of watching stones rolling downhill, fallen trees being pushed aside, dates falling off the table, before experience and observation could be transformed into principles (Hey! Round stuff rolls! Round stuff that rolls might be useful to have!) and those principles then put into practice (We should try to make round stuff that rolls!). Of course, as with all good ideas, some people never bought in. The Western Hemisphere did without the wheel until the Europeans showed up. Either the locals were too busy eating the corn to roll the cobs or they just didn’t think much of wheels.
As with the wheel, so too with the amateur draft, which kicked off in 1965 as a way to finally bring down those annoyingly persistent Yankees. Many of the lessons that have been taken away the draft–high school pitchers are riskier bets as college pitchers, don’t draft high school catchers, etc.–were there to be found after the first few drafts, but it took several more years before experience hardened into a set of principles.
In Baseball Prospectus 2004, our authors ranked Devil Rays farmhand B.J. Upton as the No. 8 prospect in the game, while Baseball America on pegged him at No. 2 on their preseason list. Since then Upton’s done nothing to make those rankings look foolish, and at the tender age of 19, has already found himself playing shortstop every day at Triple-A Durham, where he’s currently hitting .315/.422/.565. Since being taken second overall in the 2002 amateur draft, Upton has been covered by John Sickels at ESPN.com and by David Cameron here at BP.
Baseball Prospectus caught up with Upton before a recent home game against the Syracuse Skychiefs, where we discussed tough pitchers, being a role model, and what it takes to improve defensive performance.
High school or college, position player or pitcher, the one constant in the
amateur draft is that no one seems to like Scott Boras’ players.
That was rarely as evident as it was yesterday as two Boras clients, each
considered the #1 draft prospect at one point during the college season, fell
to #12 and #15 on a draft day marked by an all-out search for pitching.
The Padres, picking first, passed on Florida State shortstop Stephen Drew to
instead take local high schooler Matt Bush, who signed almost immediately for
$3.15 million. Bush was probably only the second-best prep shortstop prospect
in the pool, and joins Adrian Gonzalez has a recent overall #1 who holds his
spot in history more for financial reasons than talent ones. Drew, who was
rumored to be the Padres’ choice as late as Friday, slipped all the way to
#15, where the Diamondbacks ended his torment. Given that the gap between #15
money and #1 money has range from $2-$3 million over the past few years, a
heck of a negotiation awaits Drew and the Snakes.
The first day of the draft has come and gone, while the baseball world spun around it. Instead of immersing myself in it, I stayed on the move, Nokia in hand, and got to spend a nice day at the ballpark. Jim Rushford and the Red Barons were in town. With a blue sky and a slight breeze, it couldn’t have been a better night at the ballpark.
On to the injuries…
Randy Wolf will head to the DL as the Phillies activate Billy Wagner. The team doesn’t seem overly concerned about the injury. Wolf had similar problems a few years ago and came back quickly. The Phillies think the problem is simple inflammation, and rest (and medication) will correct it, allowing him to miss only a couple starts. Ryan Madson will likely take the starts, while Larry Bowa is asking for a look at Gavin Floyd.
The Mariners’ ineptitude knows no bounds. The Expos have a gem in Nick Johnson…when he’s healthy, that is. And the Indians recently took a chance on former-Rockies hurler Scott Elarton, claiming they’re not worried about his lack of effectiveness at Coors Field. Well, perhaps they should pay attention to how ineffective he was in other places as well. All this and much more news from Cleveland, Seattle, and Montreal in your Tuesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
I’m tired of everyone focusing on the positive. Who’s going to be elected to the All-Star team. Where the close races are. I’m more interested in the best of the abjectly bad. Who gets in only because there has to be a representative from every team?
I want the teams where not only aren’t there any near-misses, but managers are going to have to stretch to make any selection at all. Who’s the most likely of the least deserving to get recognized this year?
Time was that the baseball amateur draft was held in relative quietude, unnoticed by fans and media alike. In the past few years, that has changed dramatically. While still not as over-the-top as its football and basketball counterparts, baseball’s drafting of schoolboy and collegiate talent gains more notice with each passing year.
In spite of the increased scrutiny, there are still a large number of young men out there who escape notice in the days and weeks leading up to the draft. Baseball Prospectus presents here a few of those players more deserving of national attention.
“Guerra, which is Spanish for war.”
Before I get to talking about the actual players or any of that stuff that you’re actually here for, I want to thank someone. Tommy Lasorda, thank you. I agree with Rob Neyer that the MLB draft just doesn’t have the sort of short-term impact on the game that would justify making a big NBA-style production number out of the first few rounds. As it turns out, though, the teams seem to go out of their way to make the event as dull as possible, with a host of mid-level functionaries, some with decent TV and/or radio (OK, Internet audio, but you know what I mean) presence, and some decidedly without, all opening their statements with a nondescript five-digit accounting number. Then there’s Tommy, whose announcements, even for a seventh-rounder who’s going to be out of the system in four years, have the character and enthusiasm of a state delegate to a national political convention. He, along with the occasional oops moment with a mike left open, provided all the entertainment of the day.
Anyway, on to the players. Here are the season numbers with a few comments for all of the senior college players drafted in the first two rounds. The first thing you’ll notice about these lists compared to last year’s is that they’re longer; the trend toward drafting college guys has definitely snowballed.