Darin Erstad’s hamstring is not just failing to heal on a normal timetable, it’s actually getting worse. According to team sources, the strain (and remember that a strain of any type involves tearing) is near the very bottom of his hamstring. A cortisone injection is very uncommon for this type of injury and there may be no comparable injury in baseball. A physician from the UTK Advisory Board said: “They’re acknowledging that they’re going way out, that the tendon could be damaged by this injection, but the next step might be surgery. Given that, a bit of thinking differently is worth the chance.” Erstad is at best still weeks away and the chance continues to increase that he may lose a very significant portion, if not all, of the 2003 season. That extension he signed late last year is looking like a bad deal for the Angels.
Orioles fans haven’t had much to cheer for so far, but the play of Jerry Hairston Jr. has been solid in the leadoff slot. One foul ball to the foot later, Hairston is lost for eight weeks. The fracture of his fifth (outside) metatarsal bone should not affect him long-term, even with his speed game. In the scheme of things, a fracture is the most easily projected injury –bones heal properly in almost every case and unlike muscles, tendons or ligaments, they leave little changed in their wake.
The Dodgers won yet another close game last night, holding the Rockies to a pair of runs in a 3-2 win. That’s an offensive explosion by the recent standards of Dodger opponents: The Blue Crew had given up just one run in five
consecutive games dating to May 14. Thanks to Keith Woolner’s latest creation,
“Team
Records and Streaks,” we know that they lead or are tied for the lead
in the number of games won when scoring two runs or four runs, and trail only the Braves in winning games in which they score three runs.
Overall, the Dodgers have allowed a freakishly low 137 runs, 36 runs fewer than the Expos and 18 fewer than the A’s. According to Michael Wolverton’s analysis, which factors in the very good pitcher’s park in which they play half their games, the Dodgers have the fourth-best
rotation and the fourth-best
bullpen in the game.
Don’t get too crazy about this idea, but the Dodgers are on pace to allow just 482 runs this season. That just isn’t done. In fact, just three teams in the last 10 years have allowed fewer than 600 runs in a full season: the Braves of 1997, 1998 and 2002. The last team to break 500? The Orioles (430) and A’s (457) did it in the strike-shortened season of 1972. (The A’s missed
seven games and may have turned the trick anyway; the Orioles missed eight,
and would certainly have stayed under 500 in a full season.) Four teams–the
Cardinals, Mets, Orioles and Tigers–did it in the last year of the modern dead-ball era, 1968. Even if the Dodgers can’t maintain their pace, they’re well on their way to being one of the top run-prevention teams of my lifetime.
In my first Breaking Balls column, I wrote about how to run a team to avoid revenue sharing (and in the process, make your team a net drain on the system, rather than pay in). It didn’t take long for a team to find a way to do this that I hadn’t thought of.
The Chicago Cubs, who already do the undervaluing-your-media-rights thing for their superstation, have opened up a whole new avenue I hadn’t even considered.
The Cubs sell tickets at cost to “Wrigley Field Premium,” a ticket broker down the street. Premium sells these tickets for an outrageous mark-up. Greg Couch, of the Chicago Sun-Times, has written some great columns on this I’d recommend if you’re interested. He reported that while a Cubs-Yankees game was sold out (“Obstructed view only”) from the Cubs, Wrigley Field Premium was selling them for insane markups–$1,500 for a primo $45 seat.
The Cubs and WFP are the same company: A Cubs VP is the President of WFP. The Cubs are contracted to do the books for WFP. And WFP gets to return tickets they don’t sell.
The Angels have help waiting on the farm. Dusty Baker wrestles with pitch counts. Jeff Bower could hit cleanup for the Tigers and no one would notice. Plus more news and notes out of Anaheim, Chicago, and Detroit.
Holes isn’t just the movie you see begrudgingly upon discovering that The Matrix Reloaded is sold out on all 17 screens at the Springfield GooglePlex. No, “holes” are also one of the big concepts in Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, and not just as a part of Billy Beane’s vernacular. Rather, Lewis contends that every hitter (excepting Scott Hatteberg, Pickin’ Machine) has a hole in his swing, and that the hole will inevitably be discovered and exploited in repeated trials. Unless the hitter is able to make adaptations of his own–retooling his swing, standing in a different place in the batter’s box, taking more pitches–the hitter will not be able to survive in the big leagues for long, and will join Kevin Maas and Joe Charboneau in baseball purgatory.
It’s a nice concept. Game theory hasn’t been this sexy since Russell Crowe played the genius/lunatic somewhat resembling Princeton scholar John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. But is it real? Can it be tested? Does it hold its sabermetric water?
Let’s use Reds slugger Adam Dunn as a test case.
Ruben Mateo elicits crickets, Kevin Witt gets a nod from Ken Phelps, the Astros have rotation issues, and who the heck is Miguel Ojeda? News, notes, and witticisms on 21 major-league teams.
The injury is serious, but there’s an amazing amount of wrong-headed and ignorant information out there about the injury suffered by Mike Piazza. Even the AP report that ran on ESPN.com contradicted itself. As we speculated, Piazza has an incomplete, Grade III tear of his adductor muscles, commonly known as the groin. While one or more of the muscles is torn completely and has lost structural integrity, the description of “rolling up like an accordion” isn’t accurate.
Some might remember the injury to Dean Palmer’s biceps when the muscle did, in fact, retract. Had the muscle retracted, Piazza would be recovering from surgery about now. Where the serious concern is for Piazza going forward is what I’ll term the Ken Griffey Effect; will this injury be the beginning of a cycle that causes a major reduction in value?
If I knew this for certain I’d be the GM of a team, but we can make educated guesses based on position, age, injury history. Piazza’s at a point where his position tends to wear on players, but his injury history is a positive. According to PECOTA, Piazza’s attrition and decline rates are more-or-less inconclusive–yes, they progress, but that’s to be expected for any catcher in his mid-30s. It’s the comp of Johnny Bench that strikes me. At this age, Bench was barely hanging on to league-average status and just a year away from calling it a career.
With Piazza’s lifestyle, economic situation, and Q rating, all he lacks is a championship. He’s a sure Baseball Immortal, but we could be seeing the last of Mike Piazza. I hate to bring this up, but Piazza’s contract is insured.
The Orioles bullpen has been awful, the Rockies can’t hit the ball out of the park, and the Mets get to experience life without Mike Piazza. Plus more news and notes out of Baltimore, Colorado, and New York.
My American League All-Star picks were easier than my NL ones, which reflects
the lack of talent in the AL right now, at least relative to the NL. There are
four or five AL teams who don’t have any player remotely deserving of All-Star
consideration.
First Base: Carlos
Delgado. This was the toughest call. Jason
Giambi has established himself as the better player, but Delgado has
never been that far behind him. Delgado has been the best hitter in the AL
this year, while Giambi has struggled. I can see the argument for either
player; both fit the definition of “All-Star,” and this pick is
admittedly inconsistent with my thought process in filling out the ballot.
Derek Zumsteg chimes in with a handy, dandy guide to identifying your local sportswriter. Not to be taken internally.
Rickey Henderson has a new challenger for the all-time SB mark…Manny. Ken Griffey’s the missing element in the once-predicted Best Outfield Ever. Charles Nagy getting innings doesn’t bode well for the Padres pitching staff. Plus more and notes out of Boston, Cincinnati, and San Diego.
While at Bank One Ballpark Friday, I filled out my first All-Star ballot
of the year. Well, it was probably my only All-Star ballot of the year; I used
to do a bunch of them—-issuing votes for my favorite players, the best ones,
the guys on my Strat team, the Yankees—-but I feel like one is enough now. It’s
not unlike my change in attitude toward cheesesteaks.
Before I continue, I have to say that filling out an All-Star ballot with
friends is one of the great pleasures of being a baseball fan. The
good-natured debates over what constitutes an All-Star are a key part of
loving the game, and getting to go through this process with Rany and Jonah
last week was a lot of fun. The all-Royals and all-Expos ballots were a little
tough to take, but that’s life in a democracy for you.
Anyway, I’ll run my NL ballot today, AL tomorrow. As always, I consider
All-Stars to be the top players at their position, with current stats running
secondary to established performance.
Once again, go ahead and cringe. Mike Piazza is waiting on an MRI for his strained groin, but it was pushed back due to swelling. You almost never like to see the words “swollen” and “groin” in the same sentence, so if we’re trying to figure out the severity of Piazza’s injury, this…well, this tells us nothing. Short term, Piazza wasn’t expected back anyway, but until the results of the MRI come back, there’s not much in the way of new guidance.
Seeing that Steve Karsay was headed back to the offices of Dr. Jim Andrews should have been the first clue, but Karsay is now officially out for the season. He’ll undergo surgery on Tuesday to determine the problem in his shoulder. The guess is that there is a small tear in his rotator cuff, but the surgery is termed “exploratory.” Some Yanks’ fans will no doubt question why surgery wasn’t performed back in April when Dr. Andrews said surgery wouldn’t be necessary. The chance of someone coming back without surgery often outweighs the pain and problems of injury rehab. Dr. Andrews has become quite conservative about opening up pitchers in the last 18 months, a fact worth knowing.
Eric Hinske hit a nice long one last night, but he’s still experiencing some problems with his wrist. Reports now move away from the earlier tendinitis and focus on a “radiating bruise.” The symptomology still sounds like some sort of impingement, but we’ll continue to monitor this. The worst of this is that even in an organization that ‘gets it’ like the Jays, some are still encouraging the ‘warrior mentality.’
My Giants source tells me that Neifi Perez knew the infield fly rule. I suppose that knowing the rules is something, but I’d rather have a player who can actually play the game. Everyone this weekend seemed to lose both their concentration and their cool–and thanks to some unfortunate luck, a number of them will lose some time to injury. Let’s get right to the good stuff…
Whatever its benefits, it’s clear that the unbalanced schedule has made it even more difficult to draw conclusions about teams in the early stages of the season. Schedules are so skewed that you have to consider quality of opponents in any discussion of what a team has done and what it might do going forward.
Take the Yankees. They opened the year 16-3 without Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, inspiring a discussion of whether this team might be as good as the 1998 team that went 114-48. Since then, they’re just 11-13, and not even alone in first place. The difference? They opened the season with the Blue Jays (seven games), Devil Rays (five games) and Twins (seven games)–teams that now have an aggregate record of 65-65. They’ve since spent three weeks playing the AL West, a division that’s 94-77 overall and 56-39–good for a .589 winning percentage–when not playing itself.
Kris Benson is a slacker for not pitching a shutout every time out. Jose Guillen fails to grasp the concept of small sample size. Craig Monroe earns the first complimentary Tigers quote all season. Plus more quotable notables from around the league.