Paul Konerko and Carlos Lee have snapped out of slumps to lift the White Sox back into contention. Dan Haren has suddenly emerged as the Cardinals’ number-two starter. Ramon Nivar has turned into a new man for the Rangers. These and other news and notes out of Chicago, St. Louis, and Texas in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
The Astros don’t improve at the trade deadline. Scott Podsednik is making Brewers fans forget about Alex Sanchez. Jose Guillen takes his huge year at the plate to the A’s. All this and more news from Oakland, Milwaukee, and Houston in this edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
I’m not writing tonight. [Editor grumbles and points to contract.] I’m just not. I just got ESPN HD and I’m watching the Giants spank the Reds. I’ve been to Great American Ballpark and I’ve seen the Giants up close, but this is so realistic that I don’t think I’m ever leaving the house. [Editor roughs Will up a bit and reminds him that with his laptop, he can watch and write.]
OK, I guess I AM writing. Still, let me highly recommend high definition TV. Once you see it, you’ll be ruined for regular TV, whether it’s Barry Bonds staring in against Jimmy Haynes or a rerun of The Sopranos. As much as I hate Comcast, I love them for bringing me HD sports, movies, and high-speed internet.
Red Sox players seem happy with their front office; J.P. Ricciardi wishes he had a bigger budget; Mike Hargrove is forced to say goodbye to one of his favorite players; Alex Rodriguez would possibly consider a trade; and Jarrod Washburn thinks won-lost records are overrated for pitchers. All these and many more pontifications in the newest edition of The Week In Quotes.
Apologies for my absence as of late, especially to those adoring fans who actually noticed that I was gone (both of you… Hi Mom! … ah, who’m I kidding, my mom doesn’t read Baseball Prospectus). That said, unlike the majority of AFTH columns, this edition isn’t prompted by a reader question, but rather my own interest in a baseball anomaly.
I’ve been interested in “hitting for the cycle” for some time. Though it’s primarily a novelty achievement (having each of the four specific types of hits), it does represent a an admirable feat. It has happened 79 times between 1972 and 2002 by 74 different batters. Five batters managed to do it twice: George Brett, Cesar Cedeno, Frank White, Bob Watson, and Chris Speier.
The novelty aspect of hitting for a cycle has led to interesting situations, such as whether a batter who already has a double, triple, and home run should stop at first on a would-be double to get his name in the footnotes of baseball history. Clearly, a game with two doubles, a triple and a home run is a more valuable accomplishment than a cycle, and so, while acknowledging the uniqueness of hitting for a cycle, I’d like to introduce a term for having a game at least as good as hitting for the cycle.
Last night, the White Sox moved into a virtual tie with the Royals for first place, waxing the Mariners 12-1 at Safeco while the Royals were getting pounded by the Devil Rays, 9-6. Since July 17, the Sox are 13-1, the Royals 5-9. (For the sake of completeness, the Twins are 9-5 in that time, and stand 3 1/2 games out.) The boys in blue haven’t fallen under .500 yet, but at 57-50, are as close to that mark as they’ve been in weeks.
How did this happen? After beating the Mariners 7-1 in their first game after the break, the Royals had a 7 1/2 game lead in the division. Their edge was eight games over the Sox. While I didn’t think they’d hold on until October, I certainly thought they’d make it to August 11, when they begin a key two-week stretch against the Yankees and the Twins, 13 games I’d pegged as the key to their hopes.
The Royals have been lousy across the board. Over the past 14 games, they’ve have scored 62 runs and allowed 87. While their offense is off by 17%–down from 5.3 runs a game to 4.4–the real collapse has occurred on the mound, where they’re allowing more than six runs a game. [I will now write perhaps the most incongruous sentence of my career.] If not for Jose Lima, who has thrown 10 1/3 innings, struck out nine and allowed just one run in two starts, both Royals wins, they’d be in even worse shape. Jeremy Affeldt (2.13 ERA) and Darrell May (4.22 ERA) have also been reasonably effective. In fact, it’s not the rotation that’s been the problem.
The Expos are benefitting from one of the best trades of the year; the Giants have some youngsters developing in their system; and the Blue Jays will wait another year before beginning their assault on the AL East. All this and much more news from Montreal, San Francisco, and Toronto in your Friday edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Alex Rodriguez is one of the best players in baseball. He’s also the best compensated. He left Seattle as a free agent to sign a deal with Texas that’s been so widely reported as 10 years and $252 million that it feels futile to protest. As a result, he’s become a pariah of greed. This week, Alex made some comments to the press about maybe, possibly, wanting to be traded from Texas. “If the Rangers found they could be better off without me, whether now or a year or two down the road,” he said, “I’d be willing to sit down and talk.”
Today, as I write this column, I see he’s quickly backed off his comments, trying to calm everyone down.
Frankly, I find this ridiculous. Rodriguez is not a greedy player with a heart made of coal. Articles written about him and his alleged self-indulgence at the expense of his team–calling for him to volunteer for a pay cut and what not–are bitter pieces written by the envious, looking for an easy column in which they can act holier-than-Alex and decry the money-grubbing nature of athletes all at the same time. Have any of these columnists been offered three times their current salary to work in a comparable situation, giving them the ability to fund all of their favorite charities and live comfortably and provide for their children?
I didn’t think so.
Well, the deadline has passed, and it looks like Chris Kahrl has his work cut out for him with all the deals that happened. As I worked the phones yesterday (and had my phone worked), the interesting stories weren’t the trades that got made, but the ones that didn’t for whatever reason. There were some big names and big teams that were working hard, while others did almost nothing to improve their team for the stretch drive.
It occurred to me as I watched Jayson Stark working his phone and ESPN breaking down all the deals that baseball has managed to do what the other sports have given up–they can make deals that for the most part are based on talent and need, not the calculus of a salary cap. As big as I think draft coverage could be, I think Deadline Day could be even better. Heck, let’s rent out an arena, stick all the owners and GMs in one room, and see what happens. I’d watch that, and I have a feeling a lot of you would as well. “Oh no! Billy Beane has pulled out the hypno-rod and it looks like Kenny Williams is giving him a reliever!” or “Has anyone seen Brian Cashman?” could become great quotes from that show.
Alex Rodriguez, who might as well have the number 252 tattooed on his face a la Mike Tyson, inspired a media circus this week by suggesting he would accept a trade if the Rangers believed it to be in the best interest of the franchise. This was immediately misinterpreted as a request to leave Arlington, and brought out the same yahoos who are going to follow Rodriguez around for the rest of his career, criticizing anything he does short of tossing 225 innings with a 3.10 ERA for the Rangers.
But let’s put aside for a second whether or not it makes sense for the Rangers to make a deal that moves Rodriguez. Let’s similarly put aside any ridiculous, ill-informed tripe that suggests Rodriguez isn’t a team guy, or that “winning obviously wasn’t a priority” when he signed with Texas in 2001. Let’s ignore that the Rangers have done an impressive job of blowing money down the toilet on a number of other players with a heck of a lot less return. And for this exercise, let’s not even admit that the Rangers develop pitchers about as often as TV producers improve a show while it’s “on hiatus.”
I’m rarely as aware of how big a baseball nut as I am in late July. I love the trade deadline, and all the speculation, consternation and evaluation that goes with it. I’ve barely slept all week, spending most of my time with one eye on the television, a second on my computer monitor, and a third…um, my ear…pressed to my cell phone. I look forward to the last few days of the month, anticipating the moves and wondering how they’ll change the look of the races.
Which is what made yesterday such a letdown. The story of the day wasn’t the moves that were made, but the number of teams that sat out the dance. The entire National League East twiddled its thumbs; the Astros and Cardinals avoided adding pitching, which makes the Cubs look more threatening than they should. In the AL Central, the Royals and Twins failed to address their holes, even as the White Sox seem ready to leave them both behind.
Transactions galore: the Yankees practice running in place; the Red Sox beef up their bullpen; the Giants aquire a starter for the postseason; the A’s add a little power to their outfield; and the Reds throw up the white flag, but get some pretty good arms in return. All this and much more news from around the league in your post-Trading Deadline edition of Transaction Analysis.
It’s the last day before the trading deadline, when teams can tilt the world if they’re willing to pay the price, affecting their fortunes for years to come, and no one’s paying attention. My hometown team just lost its brittle shortstop to injury again, and Billy Beane just pulled out a deal to help his team bridge the three-game gap to the division lead. Boston and New York are fighting out a close race in the AL East. In the Central, the White Sox have armed themselves to try and catch the Twins. The National League has a three-way contest in the Central and a secondary race for the wild card spot that includes the Florida Freaking Marlins and a Diamondbacks team that managed to stay in the race while coping with varied injuries and juggling lineups. There are a hundred trade rumors I hear about every day, some of them brilliant and with the potential to change the face of the stretch run. And the front page of the sports section is stuffed with football training camps. Oooh, the Seahawks have a lot of talent on the field right now. Bill Parcells has brought some new…uh…thing…to the Cowboys camp.
Troy Glaus may need a Fame Audit. The Cubs teeter between contention and wait ’til next year. The Tigers haven’t turned it around in the second half. These and other news and notes out of Anaheim, Chicago, and Detroit in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
There’s quite a bit of variance among organizations with regard to how much they value and instill patience in hitters, how much they prioritize a high on-base percentage, how open they are to drafting undersized right-handed pitchers or whether they prefer skills to tools. But every organization, regardless of their prevailing philosophical stripe, covets hitters with power. It’s easy to identify power hitters at the major league level, irrespective of what measure you’re using. The traditional counting stats are grossly overvalued and rife with weaknesses, but it’s rather difficult to, say, hit 45 homers and somehow suck.
Tabbing power hitters in the early gestation periods is a bit more difficult. On the one hand, there was little doubt that Vladimir Guerrero and Alex Rodriguez, even as minor-leaguers, would one day be knocking the ever-loving crap out of the ball at the highest level. But what about Magglio Ordonez or Sammy Sosa, whose minor-league numbers hardly inspired hopes of greatness to come? What can we learn from today’s generation of power hitters?
To begin answering this question, I’ve taken the top 25 active leaders in slugging percentage (as of the end of the 2002 season) and analyzed their minor league power indicators.
I think I’m out of cell minutes. Most of my day today was spent on the phone, talking to people who were in the process of making deals. Just as in last year’s Winter Meetings, some teams came in with a plan, adding another piece to what they’ve been trying to do this season. Others are running around like baseball teams with their heads cut off. The UTK angle on all this is that some of the teams have their medical staffs involved, asking smart questions like, “Is this guy healthy?” which just seem basic, but really are a big step in the right direction. The difference between the smart teams and the others is just getting wider.
Jim Edmonds had a cortisone shot in his troublesome shoulder Monday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This puts him on track–assuming the shot helps reduce the inflammation–for a return no earlier than Thursday. The Cards are desperate to get him back in the lineup as they continue to shop J.D. Drew. Drew was held out of Wednesday’s game at Montreal. Initial reports were that a deal was imminent, but the move was precautionary–no reason to risk a possible deal by letting Montreal’s rock-hard turf claim another victim. And yes, the Cardinals will be on the phone with Kevin Appier on Thursday, whether or not they land another pitcher.