In part one of the current series remembering the 1984 season, You Could Look It Up revisited the champion Detroit Tigers–a phrase difficult to write with any comprehension giving the current decrepit state of the franchise–a team whose dominance came as the result of surrounding a strong core with a large cadre of role players. It’s a solution set that is largely impossible now, due to the prevalence of bullpens bulging with mediocre lefties. At various times in the 1984 season, Bobby Cox, manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, platooned at catcher, third base, right field, and designated hitter. The Toronto bullpen was widely perceived to have been a disaster, yet Cox used 12 pitchers all year long. Truly, we live in a time like unto the dark ages, where the wisdom of the past has been lost and superstition thrives. With no further ado, let’s continue by dropping in on George Steinbrenner and pals during the summer of Wham.
The Orioles are featuring some fresh, new faces. The Rockies are pegged “improve,” but what does that really mean? And the Mets have two of the best shortstops in the league playing in the same infield. All this and much more news from Baltimore, Colorado, and New York in your Wednesday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
By now, you’ve no doubt heard that Barry Bonds’ trainer has been arrested after federal agents raided his home and found anabolic steroids on the premises. What’s perhaps more noteworthy is that agents also seized Greg Anderson’s computer files and a certain manila folder, both of which reportedly contain the names of Anderson’s litany of high-profile clients and their supplement regimens. Without a doubt, months of legal sword-crossings are to follow before the contents of Anderson’s records are ever released, but that fact in tandem with his close association with Bonds means a growth economy for wild speculation.
I’ve written elsewhere about how the dangers of steroids have been wildly exaggerated and how any actual detrimental side effects are likely due to its being illegal in the first place. I think the war on drugs is as feckless and dangerous as anything our government has ever attempted. There are unexamined penumbras of the DEA and our log of federal drug laws that are inherently racist and have led to a gradual erosion of our fourth amendment safeguards. But that’s not my concern today. My concern is the idea–one that seems to be gaining traction in the mainstream sports media–that notable increases in body size are prima facie evidence of steroid use. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Much of what I have to say about the Alex Rodriguez trade shows up in an e-mail exchange between Gary Huckabay and I that was posted here yesterday. We kicked around a few of the issues the trade brought up, and I encourage all of you to check out that piece.
One issue we didn’t really cover was defense. I’m coming around to the idea, which a number of people inside BP have proffered, that the initial announcement of Rodriguez’s shift to third base will be forgotten by Opening Day, and that he’ll soon take over shortstop from Derek Jeter. I think the announcement was a necessary subterfuge to keep the controversy of “who plays short?” from overwhelming the trade talks. As I said on the radio yesterday, I don’t think there’s much chance that Rodriguez plays 160 games at third base for the Yankees this year.
This isn’t a matter that requires a lot of study. It’s not one of those, “six of one, half-dozen of the other” debates that gets stirred up sometimes. This is a no-brainer, complicated only by Jeter’s popularity and the mythology that surrounds him. Rodriguez should be the Yankees’ shortstop, and Jeter should be offered his choice among second base, third base or center field. (If you’re willing to move Alex Rodriguez to third base, then you should be willing to make Kenny Lofton a fourth outfielder and Bernie Williams a full-time DH. For that matter, you should be willing to move Mariano Rivera to left field.)
If you’re not familiar with Baseball Prospectus, here’s what we’re all about: understanding the game better, and innovating in order to do it. Everyone at BP loves the game of baseball with a passion that most people just don’t understand. We feel that this greatest of games is so compelling that we want to know everything about it. We always want to improve our understanding of the game–each player, each play, each pitch, each throw, each hit–what does it really mean? Those arguments that take place in bars about the relative merits of different players? We really want to know the definitive answer to those questions. But we don’t want to kill the joy of the game while we’re looking.
To help better understand what we’re all about, we’re launching a series of articles, entitled “Baseball Analysis Basics.” The series seeks to make our work more accessible to new readers, and to remind those familiar with our work of the underlying concepts. As Keith Woolner’s recently published “Hilbert Questions” article noted, there is much work still to be done.
Alex Rodriguez is a Yankee, and his timing is awful. It wasn’t two weeks ago the Rangers had a little song-and-dance routine that named him their captain after the botched attempt to get a trade done that would have sent him to Boston. Alex said the right things: “This is kind of like a double crowning for myself and my family. I feel very, very excited and very honored; one, at being recognized as the MVP of the American League and representing the Texas Rangers team, and almost equally important, if not more important, to be named the captain of the Texas Rangers and Mr. Hicks’ team and Buck Showalter’s team and John Hart’s team.” And he started to break out the lines the lines we’d heard in Seattle: “I definitely hope I’ll be here for at least seven years and hopefully I’ll be knocking on Mr. Hicks’ door and asking to do a little renegotiation to play here into my 40s.” In accepting a trade to the Yankees, Rodriguez makes a liar out of himself. Back when he was a free agent, he said this: “I would like to sign with another team and help dethrone the Yankees–they’ve won too much already.”
After the introductory edition of this column appeared last week, I received a couple of messages from–if Star Trek fans are “Trekkies,” what are BP fans? Beepies? Beppies?–readers asking why we were bothering to take notice of the 20th anniversary of the 1984 baseball season, with a week-long series no less. Nothing special happened that year, they said. Actually, 1984 was a case study in baseball problem solving, as executives were faced with difficult decisions, like, “If my entire starting rotation retires at once, what do I do?” “How do you react to an aggressively restructuring team who happens to be leading you in a close pennant race?” “If one-10th of my 40-man roster is arrested for attempting to obtain illegal drugs, how many of them should I retain?” and many more. Call the year a Choose Your Own Adventure book for managers and GMs, not to mention little pubescent proto-sabermetricians and performance analysts nationwide.
John Burkett says goodbye. The Twins win their arbitration case against Johan Santana. The A’s sign Chad Bradford for another year. Oh, yeah…and apparently the Yankees and Rangers traded infielders or something.
We’re back in the saddle again with a double-barrelled edition of Prospectus Triple Play. The Red Sox are engaging in an arms race for the ages. The Reds are looking two years down the road. The Marlins have the potential to burn up on re-entry. The Yankees have quietly made a deal or two. The Pirates continue running in place. And the Padres are gearing up for a brand new season in a brand new stadium, with a number of fresh faces in the lineup.
Gary Huckabay: OK, the deal’s not finalized yet, but just for a second, let’s assume that the worst possible parameters of the deal (from the Rangers’ perspective) reported in the media are true. The Rangers get Alfonso Soriano, a minor leaguer from a list of five, and pick up $67 million of the remaining money owed to Rodriguez.
Do you see any way to justify this deal from the Rangers’ standpoint?
Personally, I don’t. Soriano’s not going to be exceptionally cheap himself, he’s not close to being the ballplayer A-Rod is, and even if you assume–which I’m not comfortable doing–that A-Rod’s contract is anomalous and an organizational albatross, there’s certainly some real and non-negligible cost associated with this specific dump.
Depending on the financial details of the deal, it’s possible this deal could end up costing the Rangers money–when you factor in the $67 million, the contract Soriano will likely end up with after a year of puffy stats at The Ballpark in Arlington, the lost goodwill, and lost broadcast rights money.
This is the very first installment of You Could Look It Up. The title, with its
old-time, pulp feel, is meant to evoke a portal to anywhen in the history of baseball, to flannel times and polyester times, lilywhite Washington Senators uniforms, rainbow-striped Houston Astros uniforms, all coming together, a great overlap of Ruths and Ryans and A-Rods. You Could Look It Up is a gateway to varied, hectic, multihued yesterday, a vantage point from which we might discern truths that have been lost to common knowledge, human stories that still evoke laughter or tears, and unrestful ghosts in black and white photographs who still haunt our own forcibly uncomplicated, Manichean times.
Hey–don’t turn away just yet. We ain’t talking any of that mushy “Field of Dreams” poetastry. Ray Liotta’s right-hand-hitting, city-slick Joe Jackson is not to be found in these pages. But it’s here that on any given day you might find Shoeless Joe, hand extended for a dollar or a fly ball, as Leo Durocher steals grounders and his teammates’ watches, all the while trying to do his best imitation of Rabbit Maranville, whose beltline basket catch was necessary because the sheer whiskey content of his exhalations could divert the flight of the ball above chest level. There’s Joe McCarthy, a manager who never ripped a player in public…until the day he did; Casey Stengel, who always ripped his players in public and ripped them in private too, but was given to numerous, unpublicized sentimental gestures; and his protégé, Billy Martin, who said that a winning manager knew that some ballplayers were mules and some racehorses, and you could beat the mules all you wanted and they would never be racehorses–yet beat both the mules and the racehorses. All of these people have something to say to us, because of what they did, and, as importantly, who they were.
The Orioles have too many lefties making too much money. The Expos give BP’s favorite first baseman of Italian descent since Roberto Petagine a shot at a steady job. The Mets inexplicably sign James Baldwin. The Devil Rays inexplicably sign Fred McGriff. These and other news, notes, and Kahrlisms as Transaction Analysis resumes its regular schedule.
The health of the “Big Three” starters is still the key to the success of the team. Hudson, Zito, and Mulder have put up big innings as relatively young pitchers, and should be moving into their best seasons. But only healthy pitchers win championships. For Hudson and Zito, they are as healthy and strong as ever. Their teammate, Mark Mulder, is the question mark, but please note that none of the questions are about his arm. Mulder returns from a fractured hip (femur, near the ball of the hip to be technical) suffered due to a faulty mound. Call it random or call it the fault of the Phillies’ grounds crew, but there has never been a pitcher that has returned from this type of injury. While the A’s and Mulder have insisted that he could have returned for last season’s ALCS, there is no evidence to back this up. I don’t want to say that Billy Beane, Larry Davis, or Mark Mulder were lying, because I simply have no reason to believe that, but I also know the A’s often seek any competitive advantage they can. In the absence of objective knowledge that Mulder can pitch–either last October or this February–I’ll continue to be cautious. It’s only when Mulder takes the mound in spring training that we will know for sure. His yellow light is based on the lack of any comparable returns only. His arm should be well-rested if possibly slightly rusty for the 2004 season.
Most of the excitement in Philadelphia has to do with an improved bullpen, recent versions of which have been the perceived bane of the city’s existence. So out with Jose Mesa, in with Billy Wagner. Given how much of the blame for the Phillies’ disappointing performances the last two seasons has been placed at the foot of the relief staff, it’s easy to understand why fans, media, and the team itself is so eager to have the hard-throwing lefty closing games. I actually agreed that the move would help the Phillies, although not exactly for the reasons generally given. Closers are overrated as a class, and as great as Wagner is, using him solely to protect ninth-inning leads and the occasional ninth-inning tie is a suboptimal application of his talent. However, I also know that Larry Bowa is one of the most temperamental managers in the game, and I strongly believe that his emotional style has been a detriment to this team over the past two seasons.
Last week’s column got some fine feedback. Let’s get right to it:
“I’m a little confused by the venom directed at the Cubs over their (admittedly farcical) attempt to pretend they’re not simply scalping their own tickets. If they were honest about what they were doing, would it really be that bad? Airlines do similar things with their tickets – they charge more for some tickets (last minute purchases) and less for others (Saturday night stayovers) because they know that business travelers will pay more than family vacationers. Why shouldn’t baseball clubs also price discriminate?”
— SC
The problem everyone has with the Cubs isn’t that they’re selling their own tickets for more, it’s something else entirely: 1) They’re breaking the law for profit; 2) They’re doing it for the express purpose of avoiding revenue sharing with other teams. The second one seems petty compared to the first. That the Tribune Company would construct a giant scheme to scalp their own tickets illegally–with a law on the books that says “Don’t do what you’re about to do”–because it would make them money is appalling. On the spectrum of crime, it’s not as if they’re serving poisoned milk to school-children who don’t subscribe to the Tribune, but it’s still pretty heinous.
One of the more interesting sub-plots this off-season is the Yankees-Red Sox cold war that’s been played out in the transactions wires. In terms of coffers and willingness to spend, the Yankees are still in a class by themselves, but the Red Sox now occupy–also by themselves, it seems–the next highest economic sub-strata. And in this particular Cold War, don’t expect anyone to bust out the glasnost. Metaphor, over.
With the Yankees, we’ve seen what happens when spending prowess intersects with reasonable front-office intelligence. Now, with Theo Epstein as GM and a sporting-gentleman owner loosely holding the purse-strings, the Red Sox have joined the Yanks in this rarified air. The talent both clubs have amassed this winter and in winters past is striking. The Yankees may have frittered away Andy Pettitte and lost Roger Clemens to hometown longing, but they may have actually upgraded the rotation by importing the wholly underrated Javier Vazquez and the still effective Kevin Brown. Additionally, Gary Sheffield has been added to an already potent lineup.