MLBeat

Opening Day: Second Deck added

2009-04-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

We are not counting last night's Atlanta victory over Philly as anything more than a glorified exhitbition that happened to count in the standings. Today is Opening Day.

First game: Reds hosting the Mets, Harang v. Santana.

First major radio advertiser: Bud Light, continuing the "Real Men of Genius" series. New installments in the form of "Mr. Rolling Cooler Cooler Roller" and "Mr. T-Shirt Cannon Inventor." Good to have them back; one does figure beer would be recession-proof. (Although let's not forget who owns the Budweiser monolith now. "America is not for sale, and neither is her beer.") I've always found the Real Men of Genius ads to be half a dash smarter than the usual beer commerical kitsch. Maybe it's because they play better on radio than TV.

First baserunning blunder: Edwin Encarnacion. Strayed too far off first on a liner to right that Ryan Church bobbled but still caught. Mental mistakes are supposed to be the perpetual thorn in Encarnacion's side, and here he is already playing into the caricature.

First run, first RBI, first home run: Daniel Murphy, top 5th off Harang. Reds play-by-play man Marty Brennaman calls him Dennis Murphy.

First pinch-hitter: Micah Owings, bottom fifth. Announcers rationalized that Dusty Baker was using Owings as their first pinch hitter to save his "good" pinch-hitters for the late innings. Left out of the discussion was the possibility of Owings actually being any "good" himself. Santana strikes him out swinging.

First reliever: Daniel Ray Herrera, top sixth. Promptly allows double to Luis Castillo, walks the pitcher Santana, walks Reyes on four to a chorus of boos.

"Definitely not the Herrera we saw all spring training."
"But as Dusty Baker said, once they put a second deck on the stadium everything changes."

Brief mound visit from Dick Pole, whereupon Herrera calms down and gets Murphy on an RBI groundout. But still he suffers the indignity of being removed mid-inning in his first appearance of 2009, and the Mets have widened the lead to 2-0.

[Over to Rockies at Diamondbacks, where our ace Brandon Webb is taking the hill. There follows half an hour of technical glitches, after which we find that only Spanish feeds are available. MLB Gameday Audio and I are still working out some kinks.]

Spring 2009

2009-04-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

The year's most daunting challenge is to confront how much the sport of baseball means to each and every one of us.

Shouldn't have to expound on this, but let's just say that in times like these it can feel surprisingly hollow to dissect Jeff Francoeur's bounceback potential, Tom Glavine's last hurrah or the Braves' playoff chances overall, And what could possibly have suffered from worse timing than the unveiling of two lavish New York ballparks that weren't really necessary in the first place (as new ballparks so rarely are)?

In spite of all the analysts furiously rushing to call the bottom to Depression '09, we still have yet to see several dominoes fall as a result of the crash. One of those dominoes is MLB attendance this year, particularly luxury box attendance, particularly in weaker markets such as Kansas City and Pittsburgh. Bill Simmons wrote a great piece recently on the NBA's fiduciary woes and how that's affecting the product on the court. It may not be surprising to see Detroit's baseball franchise start to crumble along with the rest of the city. But even if Miguel Cabrera isn't pawned off for pennies on the dollar to the Red Sox in June, far and away the most fascinating subplot of the season is to see what effects occur as a result of this pandemic of Sudden Onset Poverty.

Generally there are two ways to predict what's going to happen to baseball this year. The half-full view says America will need entertainment now more than ever in these troubled times. (Look for that article to be popping up on ESPN.com and its counterparts right around Opening Day.) The half-empty view says America has more important things to worry about than whether this year's Johnny Breakout is chemically aided, or whether his team's push for the wild card is heroic or hopeless, or whether to spend good money finding out. Considering that virtually every institution in the nation has suddenly found themselves woefully short of cash in the past nine months, we are putting our penny on the latter.

Yet another pressing uncertainty: MLBeat is not sure how it is going to adequately cover the 2009 season. The ol' employer has not only discontinued its Giants season tickets in reaction to the crisis, it has laid off yours truly (and has taken many more severe measures than that to avoid having to shutter up altogether). So when it comes to forking over any portion of the pittance that was Yon Severance Check on Giants tickets, A's tickets, the booze that inevitably accompanies a trip to either stadium, MLB.tv, digital cable, and several other options, well...apologies to you, faithful audience.

Instead we're going with a Cost-Effective 2009. This means using my newfound spare time to manage the living daylights out of four different fantasy teams, as well as running one of the leagues. (Co-author John has finally joined the league this year, so perhaps he will see fit to add his own perspective on the Smokey League experience.) Only my league has an entrance fee, and it goes towards a pot that I intend on winning with -- recurring theme alert -- all my newfound free time. This approach will not only save money but also represent a deeper headlong dive into the realm of following a sport exclusively through its fantasy component. This has worked for me and fantasy NBA for years.

And maybe, just maybe, if we cut enough corners and discover an extra $15ish burning a hole in the pocket, we'll consider springing for a season's worth of MLB Gameday Audio. Baseball via audio is one of the last few remaining throwbacks to the olden days, and it can be a refreshing tonic to the swooshing animatronic graphics or the self-fulfilling manufactured drama of Fox or ESPN. We have long wanted to go around MLB and produce a summary of the best and worst radio announcing teams. Perhaps this will be the year.

1100/1520

2008-08-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

          Choices at midnight
include The Tribe in extras
  or Dodgers/Giants
                     in Hollywood.
        If baseball is dead
        it rises late at night
        to haunt the vacant airwaves.
            Would Cliff Lee
                   cough up a seven-run lead?
The Indians and Tigers tied at 12.
              From Blake Dewitt's hometown
              of Sikeston, Missouri
              a Midwest miracle:
   the Sound of Vin Scully late at night,
   telling me where Ramon Troncoso is from.

Why Ask Why

2008-07-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

Fairly sloppy and uninspiring game. It was Lincecum's first start since his hospitalization for "dehydration" aka "flulike symptoms" aka a massive hangover during the All-Star break. His control was a tad off and the resulting high pitch count probably fatigued him to the point of allowing Ryan Braun's backbreaking three-run homer in the seventh -- he had already topped a hundred pitches through five and arguably shouldn't even have come out for the sixth -- but I'm way more interested in the reluctance of the sporting media to report something along the lines of "Tim Lincecum Too Trashed to Play in All-Star Game," even if it's a completely open secret.

Here's what Will Carroll wrote in BP yesterday for one of his little throwaway daily notes, notable because it's the closest I've seen anyone come to just saying it:

If anyone tells you that Tim Lincecum will be affected in the second half by his All-Star illness, don't believe them. And next time someone mentions the way that the media deals with players now, versus what they did with Mickey Mantle, don't believe that either.

Point taken -- but why does it have to be this way?

Anyhow, the Brewers dispatched the Giants in workmanlike fashion to complete a three-game sweep. The talent disparity on the field seemed noticeable, particularly when Braun and Corey Hart hit homers that had a way of feeling like impossible feats for a lineup featuring Eugenio Velez in left and someone named Ivan Ochoa at short (Brian Bocock having been reduced to but a memory). In front of us sat two friendly Brewers fans who were shocked to learn that the Giants do not feature even one player who could be counted upon to hit twenty homers in a full season's worth of playing time. Rowand, maybe...Bengie Molina but that's kind of a stretch...and yep, we're all done.

Other inexplicable events from this day included: a Mets fan two rows behind us (dead ringer for Bobby Valentine when he wore the fake mustache) who unfortunately proved louder and dumber than the entire rest of our section combined; a Giants fan two rows behind him who thought one solitary noise clapper, if employed incessantly for three straight innings, would somehow get everyone fired up rather than extensively annoyed; and the Giants' decision, during the postgame Picnic in the Park for season ticketholders (always a favorite event of ours due to free beer and hot dogs), to feature zoo animals including a baby camel, boa constrictor, and whatever in the world this is:

But the most unanswerable question came from the nice middle-aged lady sitting next to me about a third of the way into the game. She patiently waited for a break in between innings so that I wasn't occupied, then asked, "I really don't mean this in a sarcastic way, but why do you do that?" She was pointing to my scorebook.

I get this every time I come to a Giants game. Usually it's from someone just obnoxious enough who says they can't understand why I would, to which my stock reply is that I don't really understand the people who don't keep score. But this woman was not only kind, but completely serious and totally deserving of a real response.

I trotted out the usual reasons: to have as a keepsake, to help me pay more attention to the game, and as a sort of homage to the old-school way of doing things. But none of those are good enough reasons on their own, really. She wasn't convinced. Then I realized, I wasn't convinced either. Why is it exactly that I do this again?

Laverne and Shirley

Full House

Drinkin' Game

2008-06-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

Well Oliver Perez certainly didn't have it tonight. If being yanked in the first inning is the ultimate insult for a starting pitcher, then being yanked in the first inning against the Giants is something worse than that. As for being yanked in the first inning against the Giants with the pitcher coming up....

It always gets interesting in our little corner of the world when the Mets come to town. The man most responsible for our company having the season tickets that I manage to hog each year is one of those rabid, beyond-all-reason Mets fans. He's also one of those types who seems to--well let's just say Teh Alcohols seem to follow him around particularly when it comes to such momentous occasions as the Mets' only visit to San Francisco all year.

But that's not the only reason this was a Drinkin' Game. For one, it was another one of those cold and windy nights at the Call Center that I frankly don't see any way of enjoying/tolerating/surviving without a healthy dose of booze in the bloodstream. For another, my bottle of Johnnie Walker Black had been confiscated by security at the turnstile the day before, so I was out for revenge. (Always carry it on your person if you can; nobody has the time or inclination to pat down 40,000 doughy baseball fans.)

One flask of Beam and one large bottle of Suntory later, mission was accomplished. All of this is a roundabout way of saying, mistakes were made on the scorecard.

Brian Horwitz and Co.

The Ollie Apologists

The Padres Might Be Worse Than the Giants

2008-06-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

Tactical error by Bud Black ended this one: with runners on the corners in a tie game in the bottom of the tenth, Trevor Hoffman ran the count full to Jose Castillo with one out. Randy Winn had good speed at first so you knew he was going to be running on the pitch, and yet the Padres did not draw the infield in from double-play depth, a critical mistake Black may not have realized until Castillo hit a routine grounder to short that Edgar Gonzalez had no choice but to eat while the winning run scored.

This game was notable for its quick, clean tenor and the abrupt change thereof in the final inning. Lincecum and Randy Wolf tossed the kind of pitcher's duel that seemed to have more to do with the ineptitude of the offenses involved than with anyone's blazing stuff (Franchise tallied only two Ks in seven mostly easy innings). The Giants in particular did not appear likely to be able to muster more than one run at any point, but when Hoffman came in to protect a two-run lead in the tenth the base hits started coming faster than I could write them down. The gun never read higher than 85 for any of Hoffman's pitches. I wonder if Petco Park's traditional playing of "Hell's Bells" in the ninth these days is just sad in that wistfully nostalgic sort of way. If the Padres were in contention they would have probably found a way to end this particular death march by now.

Oh and one final note: I have no idea who Brian Horwitz and Alex Hinshaw are. Nobody else in the park did either. But this game will go down as a lifelong memory for both of them.

The Fourth-Place Padres

The Third-Place Giants

Radio-Only Game

2008-05-10T14:00:00.000-07:00

Krukow and Kuiper on KNBR make for a decent hometown team, lacking the effortless knowledge and dulcet tones of Jon Miller but notable for their easy rapport and mastery of the play-by-play, particularly the feel of it: so-and-so worked a great at-bat, this guy was taking "spring training cuts," the Phillies were acting reluctant to come to the box against Lincecum (whom they now casually refer to as Franchise).

The first words out of their mouth as soon as the broadcast went on air were "Omar's back!" as if the shortstop Vizquel had finally returned from a six-month pilgrimage in the Himalayas. They described the smile on his face as he took pregame grounders with the genuine appreciation of old veterans who know how it feels to cherish every moment out there on a major league field. "You don't ever want to take the uniform off," they later said referring to Vizquel, Philly starter Jamie Moyer and all of the players on both teams who are reluctant to call it quits.

They show the diplomacy necessary to keep relationships with the players they cover, but every now and then the truth slips out. Jose Castillo "hasn't been playing at an All-Star level or anything close to it," despite his four-hit game today. Jamie Moyer's fastball "comes in at 77 -- that's it. That's all there is." Moyer was gone after four innings in a blowout loss for the Phils.

The hits came easy today for the Giants, and Lincecum mowed down the Philly lineup with corresponding effortlessness (8 IP, 8 K). With Vizquel, Rowand, and Winn all back in the lineup (and Brian Bocock mercifully sent back down to the farm), the Giants do somewhat resemble a major-league team. On days like this it seems I've been a little rough on them. Final score: Giants 8, Phillies 2.

Cold

2008-04-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

This was one of those frigid SF summer nights. We knew it was going to be, and we came prepared with extra scarves and hats and more whiskey than usual, but by the third inning we'd already wrapped up tight and polished off the whole flask and our teeth were still chattering. A close, tense and highly eventful game and yet two of us had left by the eighth, with the other two of us slipping out the door the instant it ended.

Tulowitzki made a charging barehand play in the first inning but the throw popped right out of Todd Helton's glove, the kind of error you see maybe once a year. The Rockies trainer came out to check on Tulo but cleared him to stay out there. Couple plays later he pulled up short of grabbing an easy grounder up the middle: a strained quad.

The Rockies were clearly caught unprepared, because their backup plan was to insert Chris Ianetta at third base, move Garrett Atkins to second, and move Clint Barmes to short. Naturally the Denver nine played flawless defense for the rest of the game, and Ianetta homered off Lincecum in the very next frame, doubled in the sixth and scored the pivotal run in the game.

Every game is like a snowflake, and this one would have been unique even before the Giants ace allowed that go-ahead run in the sixth on a balk. Lincecum had shown another layer of promise tonight by pitching efficiently in chilly conditions and wriggling out of a first-inning jam, but here he false-started his windup with Ianetta on third. Bengie Molina the catcher tried to call timeout before anything happened but Gary Darling was already calling waving the runner home. Molina and Bruce Bochy argued vehemently to the crowd's delight but to no avail.

The Giants fall to 12-16, putting them on pace for a 69-win season. To reach 63 wins and avoid a 100-loss season would have to be considered a moral victory for a squad so thin on hitting talent. But if it's going to happen they'll need to avoid losses like these, where they a) balked in the go-ahead run; b) got picked off first in an unforgivable situation (tying run on third, one out, seventh inning); c) got needlessly thrown out at third on a grounder to shortstop (also in the seventh); and d) wasted a 3-0 count in the ninth with the tying run on second and Fuentes the closer struggling to find the zone by lifting a harmless popup to second (earning the rare 'X' in the scorebook, intended to signify scorn).

Those last two blunders came courtesy of Randy Winn, one of the guys supposedly responsible for the veteran leadership on this team. But so far it's the kids on this team that have shown the most spark: Lincecum, Fred Lewis (2-5, 2 SB tonight), Jonathan Sanchez, Eugenio Velez (a mediocre player but with dazzling speed). And I'll even finally give a nod in the direction of Brian Bocock, a little 23-year-old shortstop who is completely overmatched in the majors but who made a gutsy play tonight in the eighth. Drawn in on the grass with Willy Taveras on third and one out, he fielded a Matt Holliday grounder that came to him alongside the flying splintered barrel of the bat. The projectiles arrived simultaneously and not three feet apart, but Bocock fielded the correct object, looked the runner back to third and made the play like it was a routine Cactus League drill. I've been waiting for Bocock to show us something that separated him from a stranger summoned off the street, and thanks to that one little play I have now seen it.

Aaron Cook and the Mountain Men

Little Timmy and Giants

Picking up KOA in the STL

2008-04-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

1
Cardinals earlier
on KTRS.
Rockies now
on KOA.

2
Tulo's first ribs last night.
A shot over Edmonds' head.
Rockies in Houston tomorrow,
7:30 mountain time.

3
Helton hits one to the track.
PETCO.
Peavy yields few home runs.
25 last year, 2 so far this year.

4
They call Matt Matt it sounds weird
but Albert's Albert.

5
Holliday goes again.
It's his second steal of the game,
third of the series.

Franchise

2008-04-14T00:11:00.000-07:00

In the last recap I made a few references to the Giants' potential this year for remarkable, history book-rewriting badness. I may have taken things a step too far -- they do have some pitching talent with the capability to keep games close -- but not by much.

This game, played on the sort of sparkling Sunday afternoon that almost crossed the line from "balmy" to "kinda damn hot," was an example of how they can win those close games. A number of factors converged to make it possible:

1) The bloopers fall in. Of the twelve hits recorded, at least half were either pop flies with eyes or ground balls with legs. Some days are just like that no matter who you are.

2) Random dude has the day of his life. John Bowker, who had homered in his ML debut the day before, kept his Bo Hart impression going with another dinger and four RBI. His minor league track record suggests no meaningful potential (as can be said for any Giants prospect), but there may something to be said for the strategy of "when all else fails, go through as many different minor leaguers as you can and someone's bound to stick." A full season's and roster's worth of this tactic grows pretty old though.

3) The opposing team runs out the Sunday starters. Troy Glaus and Albert Pujols sat this one out in favor of Rico Washington and Skip Schumaker. Joel Pineiro took the ball for his injury-delayed first appearance this year and showed very little, striking out no one and allowing the Giants to bat around in the fourth. (I still would have taken the Cards, however, over the SF lineup which was sans Winn, Roberts and Rowand.)

4) Franchise is pitching. This was the third time I'd seen Lincecum pitch in person, and I'm still not sure how he does it. He snaps every bit of energy out of his 5' 10", 170 body to get his fastball into the high 90s, but that and his curveball are enough to make a lot of professional hitters look sillier than they're used to. Nine of his eleven Ks were swinging, almost all of them out on the front foot. I know people probably said this about Oswalt and Wagner too, but it doesn't seem like a kid this tiny could possibly last long. The Giants had better hope he does.

Birds of the Midwest

Big Men of the Far West

San Francisco Opening Day Optimist, 2008

2008-04-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

We all know that haters wanna hate, but there is actually quite a bit to like about Giants baseball in 2008:

The weather can actually be quite beautiful for daytime games.
The games will be fast. The Giants' lineup was already prone to the 1-2-3 inning before Bonds left. On this day six of their nine frames lasted the minimum. Only because of starter Matt Cain's control woes did this game eclipse the three-hour mark.
While beer prices may have (unconscionably) risen again, a contraband flask of Jim Beam costs exactly the same as before, which is to say less than one ballpark beer.
To go to a Giants game this year is not to attend one open-and-shut contest, but rather to see a snippet of an endless, undulating string of losing. Hey, wanna go watch the Giants lose for a little while? Today it's to the Padres. It's like asking them to come toss a football in the park.
Everyone in the crowd showed up to the home opener already knowing this. They cheered effort and booed the lack thereof, and beyond that were just there to have a good time. One of the saddest things is a city that really believes its team can win when anyone with eyes can tell you that's not true. But in 2008? This is not that city.
It goes without saying, but good seats are available all season long.
Because sometimes you show up for a game not really thinking about the opposing team and who plays for them this year, and then you show up to the park halfway through the first inning (Giants already down 2-0) because sometimes cabs are inexplicably few and far between in this city and you look up and there's your old friend Greg Maddux, getting ready to take the hill. About to turn 42 and not cracking 85 on the radar gun, he's already hinted that 2008 will be his final turn. Today he mostly seemed bored, possibly because he was facing an SF lineup that featured Bengie Molina at cleanup. I'll let the San Jose Mercury-News take it: "He retired 19 of the last 20 batters he faced to pick up the 348th victory of his career. At one point, Maddux faced 17 consecutive batters without allowing a ball to leave the infield." Tidy little game score of 70 and an easy career win #348.
The game is still the game, and someone needs to be out there paying attention because official scorers cannot be trusted. I simply cannot let transgressions like this go. Jose Castillo hit a fourth-inning Baltimore chop that Khalil Greene was slow to attack, and the short hop ate him up. Should have been an easy play, instead they scored it a base hit. Not in this book they didn't.

Halfway through the game Warms left his seat, returning after about two whole innings with a brand new Giants cap -- all black with the classic SF logo. He comes from Mariners and I come from Braves, but to the surprise of both of us it looked right. If ever there was a year to get in on the ground floor to support a new team with complete immunity from being accused of bandwagonnery, this is that year. I'm going back on Sunday to see them lose to my last adopted team, the Cardinals. I think my own Giants hat awaits me on one of those racks.

Los Padres Grandes

Los Gigantes Pequenos

Dodgers/Giants in the Rain

2008-04-09T20:19:00.000-07:00

I was out in California last week. I happened to be in the Dodgers viewing area for the April 2 Dodgers/Giants tilt. This was that crazy game where Lincecum was supposed to start for the visiting Giants against Billingsley and the Dodgers. Well, both Bochy and Torre decided to "play weatherman" in the words of Immortal Vin and hold off starting their young studs. Eventually, both Billingsley and Lincecum would appear in the game. Long story short, it was a hell of a crazy game.

It started amidst a forecast of impending rain. As the fourth inning began, both managers were having second thoughts. In came Lincecum, then in the fifth came Billingsley. Then came the rain. Amazingly, Lincecum returned after the rain and ultimately won the game. My friend RLW back home in St. Louis was listening to the action on MLB radio. These were some haiku we wrote to record the evening (the first being his).

1

Radar cells active
The grounds crew brings out the tarp
Delayed in L.A.

2

After a
rain-delay edition of the news —
the first pitch.

3

Again at 95,
Lincecum didn't stiffen
in the rain.

Repeat

2008-03-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

thunder.     cecil cooper

        calls on reggie abercrombie

          to take second

              (and third...)

Pitchers with arm or shoulder problems so far this spring

2008-03-03T15:04:00.001-08:00

Shawn Hill, Jason Schmidt, Scott Kazmir, Tom Gorzelanny, Kelvim Escobar, Sergio Mitre, Matt Clement, Bill Bray, John Lackey, Mark Buehrle, Duaner Sanchez, Matt Thornton, Justin Hampson, Jake Westbrook, David Price, Brant Rustich, Joel Piñeiro, Salomon Torres, Fernando Rodney, Brandon McCarthy, Tyler Johnson, Mike Maroth, Troy Patton, Matt Mantei, Anderson Garcia, Micah Owings, Hong-Chih Kuo, Rafael Soriano, Noah Lowry, Scott Olsen, Pete Moylan, Jason Hirsh, Tim Stauffer, Joaquin Benoit, Clay Rapada, Casey Janssen, Chris Capuano, Kris Benson, B.J. Ryan, Andy Pettitte, John Patterson, Scot Shields, Scott Eyre, John Smoltz, Matt Belisle, Brandon Morrow, Kevin Correia.

World Series Thought

2007-10-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

As John mentioned previously, it's quite easy these days to find yourself completely shut out of the MLB playoffs, something that once may have been considered mandatory viewing in these parts. Life without cable is a killer, at least if you have any affinity for watching the playoffs without racking up a bar tab for each game. Throw in some West Coast time difference and a spoonful of My Team Didn't Even Make the Playoffs, and you end up with a guy who spends his TV time getting his heart broken every weekend at the altar of college football.

So we'll limit ourselves to one little World Series Thought as we prepare for what should be a thoroughly watchable championship.

The story as you all know is the Colorado Rockies and their white-hot streak to end the season: they've won 21 of 22 coming into tonight's Game 1. Everyone realizes that the Boston Red Sox are probably baseball's best team overall, but Colorado's got a lot going for them. (King Kaufman lays out the dichotomy pretty well.)

The main thing in the Rockies' favor at this point -- even more so than Coors Field, or the fact that Boston will be putting Manny and maybe even Youkilis in the outfield there -- is that streak. Win something like 21 of 22 games and eventually the streak begins to take on a life of its own. It gets in your head, not to mention your opponent's head, and we all know that ninety percent of baseball is half mental. Game 1 is of the utmost importance in situations like this. Win, and the Red Sox will start to think they are up against something larger than an upstart team in black and purple. Lose, and the spell is broken.

Unless, that is, there is more to the Streak than the Rockies are letting on. Perhaps they're really doing something differently that has led to this unprecedented September-October success. I asked this question in a column I wrote about the postseason years ago, and it bears asking again now: if there were ever any hidden advantage, any bit of chicanery, any discreet edge you could gain with the LCS or World Series on the line, why wouldn't you take it? What would the most effective hidden advantage be? Sign-stealing? Creative groundskeeping? Advanced pitch-charting software? Some sort of humidity-altering device that changes the behavior of a batted or thrown ball? How about a well-documented proclivity towards Christianity in the clubhouse that might lead people to lower their suspicions re: your team's capacity for shenanigans?

When I made this point back in 2002 in re: the St. Louis Cardinals, people thought I was accusing the Cards of cheating. I wasn't, not exactly, nor am I accusing the Rockies now. Just pointing out that there is a lot more going on in a baseball game than you are going to find on the Fox cameras, no matter how many there might be. Enjoy the Series.

Baseball, Where Are You?: The NFL-Drunk Media's Quest To Ruin Baseball

2007-10-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

As baseball's playoffs speed along, I want to stop and reflect on baseball's presence on TV and on the radio.

I am old-fashioned perhaps. I like to listen to baseball on the radio. I am also on a budget, so I don't have cable TV. This has made it very difficult for me to follow the Division Series phase of the baseball playoffs. Especially in St. Louis, where the ESPN radio affiliate, 1380 ESPN (KSLG) has shunned baseball and is not airing but a few of the games.

Owned by Simmons Media Group, a media conglomerate, 1380 ESPN fancies itself a football station. For this reason, the ESPN radio broadcasts of Division series games have been piped through 1380's sister network, 1490 WESL, a Fox affiliate, also under the ownership of the Simmons Media Group. So imagine that. You turn on the FOX affiliate and it's there that you find the ESPN radio crew doing the baseball game. OK, that's bizarre, but here's the problem: the signal of 1490 is extremely weak. This effectively means that I, a St. Louis denizen, cannot listen to the playoffs on the radio. And St. Louis is supposed to be "baseball heaven."

I realize that most people have cable nowadays. I used to have cable—before Charter came through and did an "audit" wherein they realized that my house was not supposed to get cable. So I don't have cable anymore. I could spend $60 more per month but the only time it really seems worth it is when ALL of the Division playoffs are on TBS. What I'm wondering is: why is FOX trying to alienate baseball fans? And, how on earth did Major League Baseball accept an arrangement under which zero of the first round of playoff games would be on broadcast TV. Am I the last person on earth who doesn't have cable, or are there others that are also missing the playoffs? I mean, are you telling me that FOX couldn't have at least bought the rights to the weekend Division series games? Picture me yesterday afternoon—Saturday—when the Cubs take to the field to stave off elimination. The game is not on TV and it is not on the radio. It might as well not even be happening.

1380 ESPN is run by hacks. Fine. Because of contractual obligations, they ran high school football instead of playoff baseball. Playoff baseball would also take second-chair to the weekly LeRoi Glover Show, should the two begin at the same time. I turn on 1380 this afternoon to see if the Red Sox game is on and I get Rams post-game. That's the 0-5 Rams, people.

My friend has this wild theory that FOX continues to buy the rights to baseball because it is trying to ruin baseball. FOX's master-plan is to prove that football is the national pastime, and baseball is just something you might find on TBS. Baseball is like an odd, contagious entity that FOX can't figure out. That's why the NLCS is not on FOX this year. Only the Yankees are good enough for FOX. If FOX really loved baseball, and wanted to promote it, why would it leave Tim McCarver in the booth? Why would it include animated, annoying Sliders explaining what a curve ball does? Why would it give away the NLCS?

I hear every year about how the ratings are way down for baseball. Duh. Of course they're down. The highly interesting matchup between the Rockies and D-Backs will not be on broadcast TV. In St. Louis, I have a better chance of hearing the game on 850 KOA coming out of Denver than I do of catching it on the local ESPN radio affiliate.

I think that the program directors in TV and radio offices have too quickly bought into this notion that baseball is dead and no one wants to listen to games anymore. From what I can tell just by talking to people, baseball is not dead. People still enjoy listening to baseball on the radio. People still want to turn on the TV and watch the NLCS. But no one is going to be watching a game that is practically hiding on TBS. And no one is going to listen to a baseball game that isn't on the radio.

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Baseball

2007-10-01T21:36:00.001-07:00

You knew this one was going to go to extras before it began. The wildcard playoff. Rockies, Padres. This was the best game since Molina took the Cardinals over the Mets, since Dave Roberts took a bag from the Yanks. This game had your national league MVP, Matty HaHa, driving in runs and busting his mouth at the plate with the winning run. This game had your national league ROY, I don't care about Ryan Braun. Tulowitzki is an instant veteran, going 4-for-7 tonight with three runs and a rib, fielding his position oh so well. Hairston puts the Pads up 8-6 in the top of the thirteenth, Hoffman comes on. No one has more saves in ML history, but, hey, Hoffman is out of gas, throwing gas on the fire. Matsui doubles, Tulo doubles, Holliday slams one into the wall for a triple. Tie game! Carroll lines one to right, Giles has the throw, Holliday is coming home, Barrett drops the ball, Holliday is down at the plate—but safe! The Rockies win! Rockies win!

If you've got your breath
Take it away—
Thirteenth inning.

See you in Philly. This team has won 14 of 15. Catch the Rox on KOA 850 AM. I can hear them all the way across Kansas in St. Louis...

Baseball Haiku 16-20

2007-08-21T07:19:00.001-07:00

16

Hasn’t anyone invented lights yet?
Game called
On account of darkness.

17

I want to play forever—
But with cream and sugar in my coffee,
One must go.

18

Whatever it takes
To help this team win—
Deferred compensation.

19

Naked in Birmingham
And I can’t throw anymore?
The grit of rosin on my fingers.

20

Ah, sitting in the dark
Listening to baseball—
Reminds me of childhood.

What I'm Talking About

2007-08-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

(image from Tom Gannam/AP)

It is during times like these--the storybook times, when everyone's carrying it on their front page--that it is crucially important to remind people: we were way into Ankiel, before being into Ankiel was cool.

Ahem. Anyway, please to note the curtain-call nature of that photo above. No doubt thoroughly deserved, and another reminder that they really do treat their players differently in St. Louis. Welcome back, Rick.

756

2007-08-08T02:19:00.000-07:00

We all knew it instantly. Even though it was to the deepest part of the park and just barely made it, we all knew it instantly.

You've all seen it by now. All I can add is that the atmosphere in the park vastly surpassed last night's, even before Barry came to bat in the fifth. Possibly because he was showing signs of life against Mike Bacsik even before that (double in the second, single in the third), but who knows. It just felt like the right time. The crowd seemed to feel it coming, not unlike the infamous cat who could smell death.

When it came, it was not necessarily a more intense experience in the stands than, say, a playoff sayonara, or an Auburn-LSU game, but it came close, and it had the unmistakable feel of being unique. People may assume that A-Rod will pass Bonds eventually, but don't be so sure. We very well may never see another night like this in our lifetimes.

The initial moment of jubilation is going to stay with me forever. As will the attendant who immediately ran out to replace the now-historic bases. As will the fans who leaned over the railing to slap the freshly-placed 756 next to Bonds' name on the brick outfield wall. As will Hank Aaron's videotaped kudos, providing fitting (if reserved) closure to the saga. As will the inevitable straggler who traipsed gleefully in from center field, stopped near second base when he realized the cops had him encircled, and had already began to kneel in submission when he took a vicious-looking pin from John Law. Just as understated an intrusion as the ensuing ceremony itself.

But no curtain calls for Bonds! I've never seen a curtain call out here in San Francisco, come to think of it. In my St. Louisan days I saw curtain calls for McGwire, Will Clark, Scott Rolen, Ray Lankford, Jim Edmonds, and probably Bo Hart at some point too. Perhaps things are just different out here by the Bay. But gosh almighty, wouldn't this have been a good time for one? Or are fans really this happy to see the long march end, and a trudge of fifty moribund and poorly-attended games begin?

Equally surprising to me was the double switch that removed Bonds from the game immediately after the fifth. Bruce Bochy even sent starter Barry Zito back out to throw warmups before jerking him out as part of the switch, but Bonds didn't really get the follow-up ovation he was hoping for because the fans didn't yet fully realize he was leaving the game so early. They responded in kind by vacating the premises; by the ninth the seagulls once again may have outnumbered the crowd. Every Bonds-related managerial move made by Bochy in recent weeks has underscored that these few weeks have been an exhibition, a sideshow that has eclipsed the increasingly impotent main event. But I've harped on that enough already by now.

(Good thing Selig wasn't around to see it. Why spoil an event like this with a man guaranteed to turn all the cheers into boos? In the end Selig achieved the unthinkable: make Bonds appear a sympathetic figure by comparison. Not to mention render himself a mere parenthetical paragraph in the recap.)

I promised not to preach, I promised not to take a side, and then I came home from the Call Center tonight and read the piece at ESPN.com that Gene Wojciehowski apparently had prepared for this moment, and something set me off. There's nothing special about it -- a hack job, you've read several just like it already. But it was something about the way it reeked of the self-importance too many of us sportswriters tend to bathe in - dealing in cliches as accepted truths, lumping in Sammy Sosa with the rest despite no evidence to go on aside from the court of public opinion (and it is not often you will find me defending Sammy Sosa in any capacity), falsely dichotomizing Bonds with Hank Aaron in the exact way this article describes, pumping up the mythical importance of 756 with his rhetoric so that it will sound more shocking and meaningful when he anoints it as tainted, with the ever-insipid asterisk. It's not just him though, of course. It feels like it's everyone. Even my new favorite baseball site The Dugout can't get over themselves. More and more often I am being lectured that what is happening to baseball is Wrong, and I am outright commanded (as Wojciehowski does) to care about it.

But I don't care. Nor can I honestly apologize for not caring. Instead I direct you to local chap Ray Ratto's take over at CBS Sportsline. He gets it right.

No matter how the huddled masses of the sports media world tried to frame the Bonds chase, no matter how many snarky Deadspin commenters or "Rome Is Burning" callers parrot some invective they heard from someone somewhere about Bonds or steroids, no matter how many hacks like Wojciehowski unwittingly associate themselves with the likes of Bill O'Reilly by furthering the ever-growing national perception that San Francisco is somehow a separate cultural island with values alien to the rest of America, they can't change how it felt to see that ball arc softly through the air towards the ecstatic arms of the crowd. If this was your town, and if Bonds had been your team's cornerstone for fifteen years, you would have felt it too.

Away Side: Washington Gener--uh, Nationals

Home Side: Barry and the Barrinas

[Our gratitude to The Big Lead for the link.]

Score That Shit an Error

2007-08-07T01:40:00.000-07:00

Exactly as I'd feared. This game, a Monday nighter against the lowly (but improving) Nationals, had very little else to it besides the Bonds show. Rookies Lincecum and John Lannan matched 7 IP, 1 ER lines but did so with high effort: 24 baserunners allowed between them on nine walks. Sounds exciting enough, but both lineups in the game were sufficiently nonthreatening (Kevin Frandsen, D'Angelo Jimenez, Nook Logan, Ron Belliard, Brian Schneider, etc.) that there was little tension at any point. Not an inspiring performance in the bunch, save for Randy Winn who went 4-5 with four singles, occupied first base in front of Bonds three times, and knocked in the game-winner. By which point 75% of the crowd was already gone.

Besides Bonds' plate appearances, there was no tension in the air tonight, and it was tough for this crowd to ramp up the intensity out of nowhere for one at single bat every couple innings. It was Irish Night at the ballpark and the Irish turnout was noticeable, which produced a much more interesting clientele than usual, not to mention more traditional jigs and bagpipe tunes than usual, but maybe this sort of crowd had acquired its tickets well ahead of time for *that* reason and thus wasn't quite diehard enough to be really worthy of a major night in baseball's history. (How do I measure diehard at AT&T Park these days? By the enthusiasm for Lincecum's every move: there should be a lot more of it these days.) Sure the flashbulbs popped like mad on every pitch to Bonds, just as they did back in the McGwire days, but it had the feel of a night that folks wanted to be able to someday say they were a part of, more so than a night everyone actually wanted to be a part of. That's the way it came across to me at least. Give me a pennant-chase game any day of the week and play two of 'em on Sunday.

Little to say about Bonds tonight. Today's first-inning video testimonial came from Muhammad Ali (his son, technically) and Bonds made very little show of his applause in response. (A couple weeks earlier it had been Joe Montana, which the crowd devoured.) At the plate he tried, but didn't do it tonight. That's really the best thing about home runs in general: they're still rare enough that you can never truly expect them, or at least it's unfair to expect them. John Lannan pitched to him, did so successfully, and he made sure that when he erred he did so on the side of walking him. History won't remember him for that. Job well done.

We'll be back at the Call Center tomorrow. If history gets made, we promise not to pontificate about it. A hundred percent pontification-free zone, this.

Well wait a sec, just let me have this one. A certain pet peeve has been festering within me, spreading and growing moldy patches and tentacles over several years, and one occurrence of it tonight really colonized my colon. Kindly direct your attention to the bottom of the fourth, when Rajai Davis (playing his first home game as a newly-acquired Giant) rolled a grounder to Ryan Zimmerman at third with two out and Lincecum running at first. The Washington third baseman played it nonchalantly, bending to his right instead than making the one shuffle required to get in position, and he booted it. The ball hit him in the glove, then flopped to the ground on his left side, just far enough away that as it came to a gentle rest, Zimmerman had to give up on it.

The official scorer called the play a hit.

Does anyone else feel the error has been completely devalued in baseball over the last few, or last several years? I am but a simple unresourceful blogger with not a crumb of evidence to back me up, but for many years I have been getting the feeling that a play like this, a play that once would have been scored an error, no question, is now scored a hit. I've heard one theory that this trend is real, and it's the influence of the home team to pump up their players' stats -- and Brian Sabean wants Davis to rack up all the hits he can I'm sure, for his own sake. But do agents influence this process as well? Is there a review system in place for official scorers in baseball?

Think of the consequences. Fewer errors keeps a player's defensive numbers artificially better (fielding pct. and total errors), though more advanced fielding stats might still have him pegged. But more importantly, fewer errors means more hits. More hits means better offensive statistics across the board: average, RBI, OPS, VORP, all of the above. They go in the book just as if they were hard line-drive singles to right, and that means better credentials for everyone. Sure, it does mean more earned runs and higher ERAs for pitchers -- and you know some veteran pitchers probably hate it -- but pitchers' numbers are more likely to be evaluated in context of their league and era. How many times have you heard an announcer say so-and-so's 4.50 ERA is actually decent for the American League, or baseball in general these days? How much of that can possibly be steroids?

Well I hate to play the pest, but bottom line -- if a professional major leaguer has a routine play and he doesn't make it, score that shit an error. Some gray area can remain, but on a play like Zimmerman's tonight... I'm sorry but I must insist that my scorecard's interpretation of that play be instated as the interpretation of record. The truth shall win out in the end! Two and two are four! Oceania has not always been at war with Eurasia!

Visiting Side - Washington Nationals

Home Side - Los Gigantes

Y'all Ready for This?

2007-08-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I wrote of Bondsapalooza as if it were to be a furious week-long homestand that saw Barry ramp up his HR rate just in time to pass Aaron before the Giants hit the road again. That was a bit overeager of me. Taking into account Bonds' age and general creakiness, the desire of every opposing pitcher to avoid Al Downing-dom, and the Giants' overall irrelevance which allows those opposing pitchers to handle the Giants' lineup any way they damn well please, it makes sense that the home run march has slowed to a plod while every columnist and blogger savors that one last chance to get that one last sanctimonious opinion in that will surely render the others irrelevant.

But then Bonds finally nudged his way up to 755 over the weekend (courtesy of Clay Hensley, one of many confirmed 'roiders who have escaped any trace of public ire) and now comes home again with nothing in his way but a week's worth of Washington Nationals and Pittsburgh Pirates pitchers. The slate for this week is, well, less than intimidating:

Monday: John Lannan (LHP, two career starts, 5.40 ERA)
Tuesday: Mike Bacsik (LHP, 5.11 ERA in 36 career appearances)
Wednesday: Tim Redding (RHP, 2.43 ERA in 37 IP this year but 4.94 career ERA)
Thursday: Joel Hanrahan (RHP, two career starts, 3.27 ERA)
Friday: Matt Morris (RHP, banished to the Pirates just last week in a widely ridiculed trade...for the Pirates)
Saturday: Tony Armas (RHP, 6.31 ERA this year, 4.57 career)
Sunday: Tom Gorzelanny (RHP, 3.55 ERA, decent pitcher but just coming back from a shoulder injury)

That, friends, is the picture of mediocre starting pitching. Barry breaking the record this week is a shoo-in, a gimme, a mortal lock, sun rising in the east, death and taxes and the government spying on you. Book it.

Oh, and if it happens tonight or tomorrow, then yours truly will have something to write about because yours truly will be in attendance. Going by the standard mores of sports journalism, it will make my resulting opinions on the matter more Right and Relevant if I am actually there while it happens. So I might have that going for me, which would be nice.

Forget Everything We Said

2007-08-01T15:15:00.000-07:00

Braves cut Julio Franco today.

Braves fans have to be thrilled about yesterday's trading deadline bonanza, which netted them Octavio Dotel, Royce Ring and Ron Mahay to shore up the bullpen, not to mention plugged the biggest hole in the lineup with the biggest hole-plugger on the market in Mark Teixeira. Put simply, John Schuerholz realized the highest hopes that every fan has for their team on trading day. No small feat, that. And it was obvious that some roster-jiggling would need to take place to make all the new acquisitions fit.

Still, to cut Papa Julio in favor of the .220-hitting Scott Thorman is not bound to be fruitful, and we know it's not a crowd-pleaser. Franco turns 49 this month, meaning all he has to do is latch on with some needy team for one more year to achieve his stated dream of playing 'til 50.

Barry's Homestand, Day Two

2007-07-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

Took a cab to make this one on time. Twenty bucks from our crosstown office but worth every penny for the diatribe of the cabdriver, who passionately declared his intention to someday visit Bonds' house and volunteer to wash his dishes, do his laundry, clean his house, anything he could to express his gratitude for Bonds' years of service to the Giants. He savaged every other player on the roster and did so by name save, inexplicably, for Pedro Feliz.

Anyway, here were the Braves (click on image for magnified version):

And as for the home nine:

Notes:

-Old Man Franco has started every game at first for the Braves since his reacquisition a week ago. I'm still happy to have Father Time back I swear, but this is not what we discussed! Jarrod Saltalamacchia was just beginning to settle in at his newly won first-base job, and now we have to sit through feeble performances like this on a regular basis instead? The boys at Start Salty cannot be amused by this.

-The Giants did not show so much as a pulse until the bottom of the ninth, which Tim Hudson kicked off by issuing his first two walks of the night. He had been sailing along until then -- check out all the 6-3's -- so Bobby Cox gave him an extra batter or two of slack before going to Wickman, and that cost the Braves. Although Bengie Molina's game-tying single was more exciting, the Feliz double was the big hit and could have been caught by Willie Harris had he not gotten spooked at the last moment by a charging Andruw Jones. Braves fans (still abundant in the crowd tonight) were stunned to lose a commanding 4-0 lead so quickly, and from all the cursing I could detect careening through the pavilion they were putting the blame squarely on Wickman, thus continuing the long and storied tradition of drunken fans always being mad at the last thing they saw.

-Because we here at MLBeat are all about full disclosure, I left after the tenth and scored the last three innings from the comfort of my apartment. What can I say, sometimes you have to weigh the noble virtue of being That Fan With the Scorebook Who Will Under No Circumstances Leave Early, versus the comparably noble virtue of not putting your company through more misery than they've declared themselves capable of handling. And misery it was, beyond a doubt: a freezing July night at the ol' ballpark, wind whipping around with constant abandon from start to finish. You never saw two crankier concession workers than the crochety old ladies who sold me a tenth-inning hot chocolate. Ninth inning, down four, two outs... their bags had been packed.

-Nothing to say about Bonds, except a) he turned 43 years young today and b) he played for the duration which is particularly rare these days even in nine-inning games. Surely he is feeling the pressure; if he doesn't reach 756 this week then he'll have to wait another week before the Giants come back home. And yes, he does have to break the record at home. Not just because of potentially belligerent away fans, but because the chance to see 756 is the only way to placate the home fans. Screw a $9 beer, even that wouldn't alienate a season ticketholder more than if he had to suffer a team so dismal all season long and then watch Bonds hit 756 on the road. In my uninformed estimation Giants fans are suffering their cellar-dwelling team with relatively good humor this year because they know they still have tickets to the big sideshow.

Barry's Homestand, Day 1

2007-07-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

There is little to add to the maelstrom of commentary around what the Braves announcers have been derisively calling "Bondsapalooza," unless you want to see what someone actually thought of, you know, the games themselves. Let's not forget, folks: I lived in St. Louis during the madness of another certain steroid-tainted homer chase, and I know how the baseball experience can be cheapened. Not by the specter of PEDs mind you, but by fans who came to see one thing and one thing only. I remember that scene well, I'm as put off by it today as I was then, and I won't fall victim to the same level of madness.

Fair warning, I tend to have a bare-bones style of score-keeping as you may see, but I like to think the important thing is that I tend to have any style at all. This is a lost art, I tell you.

And for the home side:

(Click on the images for magnified versions.) Some notes:

-Julio did not score a run in the fourth inning; as a potentially tipsy scorekeeper I am allowed one egregious typo per game.

-Speaking of tipsy, a Blue Moon at the North Beach stand used to set you back $8.50. Pretty pricey right? Well, they raised the price to an even $9.00 for All-Star Weekend... and didn't bring it back down once the regular season resumed! Anybody else notice this? Sneaky Giants trying to extract every penny they can from their joke of a season....

-The stars denote great defensive plays. Renteria made a sharp grounder up the middle look easy with a pirouette to throw out Molina in the sixth, and Vizquel ended the top of the sixth with a diving stop and ensuing throw to second for the force out - a play so acrobatic that Vizquel was rewarded for the effort although the runner probably was safe. But the best of all came in the bottom 3rd, when Old Man Franco speared a high-bouncing grounder to start an inning-ending 3-6-3 DP and save Smoltz from a two on, one out, Bonds at bat situation. Play of the game probably, not mentioned anywhere in the official recap.

-Ton of Braves fans in attendance, particularly in our section (134). Not the sort of TBS-transplant California natives you might expect either, but real Southerners. At one point I started to make fun of Chipper Jones for sporting the same silly goatee that every player is apparently required to wear, only to realize that virtually every male Brave fan in my section sported the exact same look. As a TBS transplant from Alabama myself, I can say that these are my people... sort of.

-Matt Cain falls to 3-12 despite being the second-best pitcher on the Giants this season after Lincecum. His talent and determination are evident but it seems he gets screwed in a different way each time out. This time he had to labor hard in the first -- going to full counts on the first four batters -- but had a chance at damage control when Brian McCann lifted a medium-hard liner to left with one out. It can only be scored as a three-run double, but let's just say the urgency with which Bonds ran down that ball fell somewhere between "my alarm clock just went off" and "the paramedic is here to check my vital signs."

-But that's what you're signing up for when it comes to Bondsapalooza 2007. What you get in return are three or four flashbulb-poppy plate appearances where everyone in the stadium actually is paying attention at the same time. Also, when Bonds merely singled in the eighth inning the crowd began streaming out of there like it was the fall of Saigon. Never mind that the single had brought the tying run to the plate in a 4-2 game. Have I mentioned my hatred of the entire human race already in this space?

"The Clockless Game"

2007-07-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes -- too rarely -- you get so happy about a story that you want to sing its praises to the world. Preferably this would express your own delight in some way that was unique yet still capable of identifying with like minds around the globe.

And then you discover someone else who has already said it better than you ever could, and there is nothing to do but tip your cap and wish you'd done more hard drugs as a schoolboy.

Welcome back, Julio.

For You Head-to-Headers in the Audience

2007-07-16T23:26:00.000-07:00

Even though I was fortunate enough to attend last week, there's just not as much to say about the Home Run Derby as I'd hoped. The derby itself is fun to watch naturally, if you can stomach the pre-packaged Product Placementalooza that tends to accompany hype-driven events like this. (Even more grating than product advertisements, which we expect and understand by now, are what I'll call the Personality Placements. At one point between rounds there was an interview of Cal Ripken given by Jon Miller and broadcast over the PA system; Ripken has no connection to San Francisco or to the Home Run Derby, Miller had no real questions to ask that would hint at why Ripken needed to be interviewed, and Ripken had nothing interesting to say whatsoever. Naturally this elicited one of the biggest ovations of the night, and I honestly cannot say why. I actually felt myself stifling a gag reflex.)

In the end this year's edition will be more remembered for a weak final round (Alex Rios only mustered two pokes in his last go, leaving Vlad the Impaler with not much chance for dramatics), a complete lack of balls hit into McCovey Cove (never has a bigger fuss been made over the possibility of hitting a ball into a body of water), and the fact that Barry Bonds could have given us the best Derby storyline of all time by joining in the festivities...but chose not to. All of which is to say, this Derby isn't going to be remembered at all.

So in lieu of that, allow me to veer into the minutiae of fantasy baseball for a moment. Despite my ongoing and even deepening fantasy baseball love affair I've shied away from discussion of it in any forms. It's a conversation-killer, a business to be conducted privately through email and the written word rather than over lunch as three of your female coworkers roll their eyes in boredom.

That said, fantasy baseball rules my life regardless and thus the All-Star Break is an unwelcome interruption to my daily fix of box scores. This was the case last year too, when I got to fiddling around with Yahoo's Head-to-Head Stats page and bemoaned the fate of my underachieving team, The Oddibe McDowells. Anyone familiar with head-to-head fantasy baseball knows the pain of putting up a solid week of production, only to be overwhelmed by a team having the best week of its life and limp out with a 10-2 defeat. In this case, I realized that if our league had been of the roto variety I would have been leading the league in OPS, but instead I had gone only 6-8-0 in that category head-to-head.

Seemed pretty unfair, right? Well, it turns out I am the type who will go the extra mile when it comes to making excuses for lackluster performance, so within a couple hours I had devised the Lucky Bastard Factor and calculated it for each team in each of my three head-to-head Yahoo leagues. The LBF is not a remotely rigorous stat to be held up against the likes of VORP or WXRL, but it can be a fun little toy to kill some time during the All-Star Break doldrums.

Here's how it works: The Oddibe McDowells were #1 in overall OPS but only went 6-8-0 in that category, the seventh best such record in the league. (1) - (7) = -6, or an unlucky bastard in OPS. Conversely, a team that manages the fifth-best record in stolen bases despite putting up the tenth-highest SB total will be (10) - (5) = 5, or a lucky bastard in stolen bases. Add all the categories of your league together and you have the team's total LBF. In the case of ties always round up, so if four teams tied for fifth at 7-5-2 than they all get credit for fifth. This will make the numbers skew positive a bit in what would otherwise probably be a zero-sum game. Exact totals and ranges will vary according to the specific type of league (# of teams, # of categories), but usually the fickle nature of a head-to-head schedule will leave you with a pretty decent snapshot of some luck and unlucky teams.

Your team's LBF says less about the performance of your team per se than it does the variance in the competition you've faced. If you've played right to your expected spot in the standings based on your theoretical rotisserie score, your LBF will be zero. If your LBF is in the negatives, then you can expect your head-to-head record to improve in the second half without making any changes (assuming constant production from your players, naturally a big if). But should your LBF be particularly high -- and this doesn't always correlate with the teams in the top half of the W-L standings either -- then you've been overachieving and should probably make some moves or at least conjure up some improvement from somewhere, lest you risk dropping off.

As it happened, the Oddibes had the lowest LBF in the league at the break: -14 in a twelve-team, twelve-category league. And aside from landing Brett Myers in a fortunate steal of a trade, there were no wholesale changes or panic moves required to lift the Oddibes from tenth place to a lofty third by season's end. I'm just sayin'....

Your Real 2007 All-Stars

2007-07-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

A buddy and I sat down and crunched numbers and picked the REAL All-Star team. Here are the rules. Instead of 32 players, we limited our team to 30 per league. We kept the notion of one player from each team, which made things hard in the AL but not in the NL. And we remained loyal to the Fans' popular vote, meaning that we were picking only back-ups and pitchers. Here is our team, followed by some notes concerning particular selections.

NL

C   Russell Martin, Bengie Molina
1B Prince Fielder, Dmitri Young, Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard
2B Chase Utley, Dan Uggla
SS Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Edgar Renteria
3B David Wright, Miguel Cabrera, Chipper Jones
OF Barry Bonds, Matt Holliday
OF Carlos Beltran, Carlos Lee
OF Ken Griffey Jr., Eric Byrnes, Adam Dunn
SP Jake Peavy
P   Chris Young, Brad Penny, Ian Snell, John Maine
RP Jose Valverde, Takashi Saito, Francisco Cordero, Billy Wagner

AL

C   Pudge Rodriguez, Victor Martinez, John Buck
1B David Ortiz, Carlos Peña, Justin Morneau
2B Placido Polanco, David Roberts
SS Derek Jeter, Carlos Guillen, Jhonny Peralta
3B Alex Rodriguez, Mike Lowell
OF Ichiro Suzuki, Grady Sizemore
OF Gary Sheffield, Torii Hunter
OF Magglio Ordoñez, Alex Rios, Curtis Granderson
SP Dan Haren
P   J. Guthrie, J. Santana, C.C. Sabathia, J. Verlander, E. Bedard
RP J.J. Putz, Eric Gagne, Pat Neshek

Notes

That's it. Easy enough, even with a 30-man roster instead of the 32 currently employed. Really the only wrangling arose in the AL when we had to put a Royal, a Blue Jay, and a Ranger on the roster. Buck became the Royal because Meche did not stand up to the host of other AL starters. We called on Gagne because Michael Young has been just OK this year and despite Sosa's 63 RBI he is not deserving as an AL outfielder. Carlos Peña was our Devil Ray, Rios our Blue Jay. The AL pen is odd-looking but the numbers of Putz, Gagne, and Neshek are very good. It was hard leaving Youkilis and O. Cabrera off of the roster. Simply put, Youkilis is a 1B/3B hybrid who loses out at both positions. Orlando has great numbers but does not beat out Guillen or Peralta. Our roster manages to get Byrnes and Young and H. Ramirez and Bedard and Guthrie into the lineup. They are all deserving but did not find spots on the MLB roster.

The Bonds conspiracy and Young/Byrnes/Bedard/H. Ramirez snubs merited about one day on sports talk radio before the conversation settled once again on offseason NFL and NBA talk. Our roster strives to show that the All-Star selection process is "whack" and that 30 roster spots is plenty.

Signed, Sealed

2007-05-24T22:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the night John Smoltz finally, definitively, won himself a key into Cooperstown. He became the first pitcher in MLB history -- that's right, first ever, HoF voters love that sort of stuff -- the first pitcher ever with 200 wins and 150 saves. Read the recap: It basically makes the case for him by prominently mentioning his other alltime record, that of postseason wins (fifteen against four losses). It's also filled with quotes from teammates like McCann (whose current vocabulary apparently doesn't extend beyond "amazing" and "awesome") and veteran opponents like Shawn Green that begin to obliquely refer to him as one of the alltime greats. Smoltz and Curt Schilling will probably walk hand in hand to Cooperstown, being very comparable pitchers and both well-known for postseason heroics.

But seriously people. No matter what JAWS and anyone's bedrock pitching statistics say, John Smoltz is a Hall of Famer. He showed up before the latter-day Atlanta dynasty began, became the team's ace immediately, took a backseat for a few years to Glavine and Maddux but re-emerged as the Cy Young winner in 1996 and the team's ace closer in the early 'aughts. He and manager Bobby Cox are the only ones remaining from the dark ages of the eighties, they're still going strong, and they won't be gone until it's over. For what amounts to a 17-year run, there aren't many players in history who can say the same. And if it is ultimately the numbers you are compelled to come back to, don't forget to tack on a postseason career that basically amounts to a full season of Cy-caliber pitching against the absolute toughest opposition.

In a beautiful twist, it was the Mets and old friend/foe Tom Glavine he beat, in the sort of classic throwback 2-1 pitcher's duel that both aces used to routinely enjoy in Brave uniforms. A big game, too: taking the rubber match to make it the third two-out-of-three from the Mets in what's shaping up to be a promising season. Glavine's quote ("I'm happy for him personally. I'm not happy it came against us, and against me") seems to contain the minimum praise required for so momentous an occasion, not uncommon fare from one of the least charismatic pitchers in recent memory. He was always the sort who would slip a quote to the press about his grandmother if he thought it'd help him get ahead somehow. No matter, this was Smoltz's night anyway, and Glavine falls to 3-11 against Atlanta. Ooh...that has to sting a little bit.

Also note the repeated mentions of it feeling like a "different" game throughout: that's the effect of the crowd, which from time to time has gotten a bad rap in Atlanta. (Sometimes from yours truly.)

[Since Deadspin was kind enough to link to us, we'll do the same since they can always use the traffic boost, ha ha.]

"This Game's Had Everything!"

2007-04-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

So gushed Rockies FSN broadcaster Drew Goodman as this Sunday afternoon Coors Field slugfest rolled into extra innings. And he was right:

•Diametrically opposing starts from Atlanta's Kyle Davies and Colorado's Aaron Cook. The former "needed a map and a GPS tracker to find the strike zone" (said Goodman) as his control problems handed the Rockies a four-run second inning, while Cook was turning in the usual efficient, workmanlike stuff we've come to expect from him. But Cox showed faith in Davies, who recovered and got through five innings on a day when Atlanta's bullpen would dwindle down to tumbleweeds; meanwhile, Cook imploded as a sixth-inning hit parade tied the game back up at 5-5.

•A breakout day for Scott Thorman: 4-for-4, home run, 2 R, 4 RBI, and a ground-rule double to lead off the tenth against a tough lefty, Brian Fuentes.

•A tight situation in the seventh inning, with the game tied 5-5 and Chipper Jones batting with runners on first and second, no outs. Chipper is working hard to get to a full count, laying off some tough sliders from somebody named Zach McClellan, and when the runners Johnson and Renteria take off for the payoff pitch, Chipper shoots a liner up the middle, normally an easy single but this time catching Troy Tulowitzki the rookie shortstop right in stride as he comes over to cover. Catch, force out, tag out: ladies and gentlemen, you have just experienced the rarest documented event in baseball, the unassisted triple play. Only the thirteenth in major league history, don'tcha know. Having witnessed it in the normal run of play and not as part of a Sportcenter highlight, I can now legitimately check it off from my list of Things I Have Seen in Baseball. My life is officially slightly fuller, richer, and more complete than it was just a moment ago.

•Stellar relief work by the Braves, right up until Wickman waddles in for the ninth to protect a 7-5 lead. Wickman has been the picture of okay since coming over from the Indians last year, but today he's got the yips and issues two walks, a hit batsman and a couple of dink hits to cough up the lead.

•A big moment in that ninth with Garrett Atkins up, tying runs on first and second, no outs. A mound visit from Roger McDowell, immediately after which Goodman starts wondering aloud, in a tone betraying near disbelief, why Ryan Langerhans is playing straightaway left-center and leaving nearly a third of the outfield wide open to a right-handed pull hitter. Well, Atkins puts a charge in the second pitch he sees and the crowd reacts as if the game is about to be won...except that the ball lands in Langerhans' hans, without any running required.

•A tough call from Bobby Cox on when to pull your closer in such dire straits. He opted for bases loaded, two outs, tie game, winning run on third, Clint Barmes the batter. Out goes the shaky Wickman, in comes the uninspiring Tyler Yates. Barmes lines the second pitch he sees into right for what would almost always be a game-winning single, but Jeff Francoeur comes streaking from the right field line to make a diving, twisting, rolling, game-extending catch. Francoeur is currently tied with Pedro Feliz atop my list of most frustrating players to watch on account of their hammerheaded plate approaches, but in the interest of equal time I will admit that Francoeur is on fire the last couple weeks and when that's happening, he can carry a team (none of which is true for the dismal Feliz).

•Thirteen walks and two hit batsmen by Atlanta pitchers, a disgusting total only slightly evened out by their batters outhitting the Rockies 16-8. But even going back to Atlanta's middle-innings comeback, you got the feeling they were living on borrowed time at an usurious interest rate. So when Matt Holliday drove a fastball off Steve Colyer (who?) in the eleventh, the resulting 9-7 final was cause for exhalation and resignation as much as anything else. The Braves have always hated coming to Coors and seeing their pitchers get completely worn out -- baseball here is plainly just harder than it is anywhere else -- so stealing this game and completing a weekend sweep at Coors would have really exorcised some long-running demons and given another major burst of momentum to a team that's already starting to resemble a contender. Failing that, we march on regardless. Rockies 9, Braves 7.

Cabrera v. Burnett

2007-04-20T16:48:00.000-07:00

Pitching matchup of the week is tonight. So dubbed because it potentially decides my fantasy matchup this week vs. the Pimply Backs, with wins, strikeouts, ERA and WHIP all still in play. The classic bittersweet fantasy dilemma of owning two pitchers who are starting against each other is in effect. This is written in real time as we go. I'm coming in during the second inning.

Between opening up my laptop, learning of the 1-0 score and booting up the MLB.tv browser, it's already become 2-0 and the first thing I see is Cabrera nailing a batter in the asscheek. With Cabrera's two earlier stellar starts to begin the season, this is precisely what we hoped we'd never see again from the promising young pitcher, although we knew the other shoe was bound to drop sooner or later. "Someone's gonna have to come out here and calm him down," laments Gary Thorne, not noticing that Leo Mazzone has already skipped over the foul line and has made his way to the mound, lecturing Cabrera quickly and firmly, waving his hands frantically trying to express that everything is still all right. Cabrera calmly retires the side four pitches later.

Bottom 2nd: A. J. Burnett gets a 1-2-3 inning, which is good to see. Both these pitchers have better stuff than location, both tonight and in general.

Top 3rd: Cabrera nails Overbay on a classic Maddux two-seamer that backs up under the batter's hands on the inside corner. Only Cabrera throws it about six mph harder than Maddux ever did. That's the Mazzone influence right there, if it turns out DC (which I now dub him to save precious typing time) can master that deadly pitch.

Bottom 3rd: Ended before I could finish typing that last inning's summary, which was meager in itself so I guess that's what we're hoping for today: 18 two-sentence entries with no time for wit. This is exactly what I wanted to see out of A.J. Burnett tonight. Thorne, dutifully: "Burnett has faced the minimum nine as we come to the end of the third inning."

Top 4th: DC's having trouble keeping the ball down, which results in Aaron Hill sitting on a 3-1 cookie and calmly driving it to the opposite gap for a double. Then he gets ahead of Adam Lind -- who is currently a pending waiver claim of mine -- and is able to blow him away with the same recklessly high fastball that Hill could afford to lay off by being ahead in the count. An unlucky infield dink puts runners on the corners with two out, but then a laser right at the second baseman ends the inning. Luck evened out quickly for DC there, which doesn't always happen in games.

Bottom 4th: Burnett's fastball control is shaky horizontally, as opposed to DC's. He gets unlucky when a topspinned chopper skips right by Overbay at first. Outrageously, they score it a hit in a blatant act of homecooking that breaks up the perfect game to boot. I mean, Overbay whiffed on the grounder and they call it a hit! How can Thorne not even mention this travesty? The death of honest official scoring in baseball is a tragedy and borderline scandalous! There, I said it. Anyway, Brian Roberts proceeds to steal second and third in rapid succession, and Melvin Mora jacks one out to left, tying the score at 2-2. Oh shit. Burnett tried to go up and in with a full count, but his heart wasn't in it and he got punished by Mora. This is not good: I want both pitcherse to do as well as possible, but one of them needs to get the win and a tie score is decidedly suboptimal. Burnett's rattled now, slinging the ball all over the place, but his stuff is so good that all he has to do is find the corners two or three times per batter to get a pair of groundouts and a soft lineout to end the inning relatively uneventfully.

Top 5th: DC still coming in at 95, at least until he freezes Rios with a nasty unhittable curveball that nicks the outside corner. That's five strikeouts for Cabrera--oops, make that six as the Maddux fastball again rings up Gregg Zaun. Promising stuff here. Overbay slaps a single to the gap, but DC overpowers Frank Thomas (looking uncomfortable as always, but more so in a Toronto uniform) with the two-seamer running in on the hands. Foul out to third, inning over.

Bottom 5th: Burnett's stuff is very similar to and every bit as nasty as Cabrera's, but has been having trouble putting the hitters away tonight, running Kevin Millar to his seventh 3-2 count of the game (says Thorne) before losing him to lead off the inning. Uh oh, here we go. That's his second walk against zero K's, another bad sign. Aaand just as I finish typing that, Jay Gibbons chases an eye-high fastball to go down swinging. The more disciplined team in general should be victorious tonight. Burnett then goes 3-0 for the first time in the game (an odd juxtaposition) to Corey Patterson and eventually walks him as well. Pitching Coach Arnsberg out to chat, departs with a soft pat on the ribcage. And next up in this clutch situation? Paul Bako. Ha! He hits a soft topper to first for the second out. Brian Roberts, with two outs and ducks on the pond, tries to charge one but can only manage straightaway centerfield. Inning over.

Top 6th: Matt Stairs with the first-pitch flyout. I've said it before and I'll say it again, that is a pitcher's best friend, particularly if the pitcher is struggling with control at times. Aaron Hill poses no challenge, Adam Lind more so until DC backs him off with a 1-2 chin-scratcher, leading to a 3-2 count. DC attempts to get yet another strikeout with the Maddux special but leaves it up and over just enough for Lind to fight it off into the deep LF gap for a double. That Lind is a good looking player and a player I'm happy to be condiditonally claiming. Even his foul balls were commandingly hit and came against some pretty tough pitches. Royce Clayton kills the inning though, with a feeble wave at a curve in the dirt. Should be seven Ks for DC, though Thorne says six.

Bottom 6th: Burnett has learned his lesson and is staying away from Mora, but again loses his advantage in the count and walks him. Starting the next batter (Markakis) with a pitchout seems like a questionable decision, no? Shit, now it's 2-0, here we go again...3-0, and then 3-1 before Markakis lashes an easy single to right, bringing up Tejada who is sitting dead red and goes down swinging on three pitches, fastball curveball curveball. Burnett's second K and a big one. Aubrey Huff hits one to the absolute deepest part of the park for out number two, unluckily for him. Kevin Millar ropes the first pitch he sees but right at the third baseman (who is Jason Smith?), and again we see how lucky a pitcher has to be to succeed while walking twice as many as he strikes out. AJ has one inning left, tops.

Top 7th: Pitcher's worst enemy? How about the four-pitch walk to lead off the inning? (I suppose a 17-pitch full-count walk would be worse for the pitcher, but you get the idea.) Alexis Rios strikes out trying to chase that same outside curveball he watched for strike three last time, only this one was impossible to reach. Gregg Zaun however fists one into LF for a single, so two on and one out for Overbay with two pitchers cranking it up in the Baltimore bullpen. DC starts Overbay off with a curve for strike one (ballsy), and the resulting advantage leaves Overbay off balance when he pops out on the next pitch. That's good pitch calling and good command paying off right there. Frank Thomas always intimidates of course, but he's 0-2 and under the Mendoza line so far on the season, so...ugh crap he's walked him. Bases loaded, two outs, and that's the end of the night for Daniel Cabrera. He's been great tonight and racked up the K's, but pulling him right now rather than allowing himself means some lefty named Parrish makes the difference between a no-decision and a loss, not to mention the difference between a positive start on the ledger for my fantasy team (Teen Girl Squad) and a borderline disaster. But also a win for Burnett in the process! This is a blunder by Baltimore, even though I understand they were trying to protect Cabrera's confidence, because Vernon Wells can now enter the game as a pinch hitter for the lefty Stairs and I would much rather have had the latter matchup. Sure enough, he rifles a shot off a diving Mora's glove into left and two go-ahead runs score. Aaron Hill grounds out to end the inning, mercifully, but Burnett is now poised to be the victor.

Bottom 7th: Burnett stays in and immediately gets some luck in the form of a diving catch by Lind along the LF line. Did I mention I'm happy to be potentially owning Adam Lind, if I become fortunate enough to do so? Corey Patterson bails Burnett out by popping up a 2-0 pitch to Hill at second base. Another full count, this one to the ever-feeble Paul Bako...and another walk. Jay-sus! Bako may be the worst hitter out there! Fortunately Brian Roberts cannot take advantage, as his frozen rope to center poses no threat to Vernon Wells.

Top 8th: And there's Shane Marcum warming up in the Toronto bullpen. Seeing as Cabrera and Burnett are no longer in the game, my rooting interest has waned and thus my recapping work here is done. Welcome to MLB fandom in the twenty-first century, bitches.

Final lines:
Burnett 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R (2 ER), 5 BB, 2 K
Cabrera 6.2 IP, 8 H, 4 R (4 ER), 2 BB, 7 K

Gotta run, Hudson's shutting out the Mets....

[Postscript: Burnett left in position to win but Jason Frasor blew the save and the game for the Blue Jays...reeling from this mediocre dual no-decision, Teen Girl Squad were annihilated by the Pimply Backs in Week 3 by a score of 11-1-0...my waiver claim of Adam Lind was successfully processed, though he hasn't cracked the starting lineup yet.]

And People Say Things Were Better in Yogi Berra's Day

2007-04-12T01:02:00.000-07:00

Second week of the 2007 season and already we have the quote of the year, from Ichiro re: the prospect of facing old rival Daisuke Matsuzaka in last night's game, which by the way was an incredible pitching display:

I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger.

Nothing more to add here, save for King Felix's Game Score: 89.

Who Wants to Be My New Favorite Pitcher?

2007-04-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Back in 1992 the Braves, looking to temporarily patch the back of their rotation down the stretch of an August pennant race, had called up Armando Reynoso, who had been signed a year before from Saltillo of the Mexican League, to take the mound against the San Francisco Giants. I remember watching Reynoso take his warmups as the TBS announcers reeled off the impressive list of pitches he commanded: four-seam fastball, two-seam fastball, curveball, slider, splitter, knuckle curve, probably a changeup somewhere in there too.

I was twelve years old, just becoming a pitcher myself, and this was fascinating stuff. I'd spent a year and a half getting sucked in by the pitching stylings of Leo Mazzone's Braves by that point, and now all of a sudden here was a guy who commanded more pitches than Avery, Glavine, Smoltz, or Liebrandt. This was gonna be great! And I didn't even know what a knuckle curve was! (Still don't, actually.)

"Dad!" I turned around. "You gotta see this guy! He's got a four-seam fastball, a two-seam fastball, curveball, knucklecurve, slider, splitfinger...."

Dad came over reluctantly from the next room. I think he may have been brushing his teeth. He took one look at the screen and started laughing.

"He's also got two runners on base with no outs and a 3-1 count," he scoffed, spitting toothpaste foam in tiny puffs.

I looked back at the TV: So he did. Reynoso had instantly become lodged in what would come to be known as his trademark predicament: at least two runners on, one or no outs, behind in the count on everyone, unable to get any momentum going which is what you really need before you can start impressing anyone with a wide repertoire of pitches, forced to pick runners off if he wanted to regain said momentum. (Turned out he also had one of the greatest pickoff moves ever for a righthander thanks to patience, persistence and quick footwork, although online evidence of this is sparse. And that second link is a PDF so be warned.)

Point is, Reynoso lasted a few years in the majors but never as anything resembling an asset, and ever since that day I've lusted for someone who can command the endless pitching arsenal and really, truly make it work. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you this guy.

As you can see, this is the real thing. This dude can make a ball move just about anywhere from two o'clock to eight o'clock, with speed and with command. He has that cocksure body language, too, of a guy who knows he has about two or three more weapons at his disposal than he even needs to make you look incredibly silly. Minus the pickoff move, he is the Armando Reynoso that my inner child never had.

No doubt you've heard of him by now. In fact, the Daisuke Matsuzaka bandwagon is already enormous right now and it will only get worse as he continues to succeed. So we're left with two options. The first is to enjoy Matsuzaka's starts, each and every one of them, and meanwhile manage to abstain from all other baseball coverage on ESPN, ESPN.com, Yahoo, CBS Sportsline, BP, and all the rest. (If it helps, YouTube has quite the treasure trove of his outings, going all the way back to his high school days.) That way it'll be possible to feel as if the Matsuzaka phenomenon is somehow still all your own, much in the way that it was possible, say, for me to enjoy RJD2's "Ghostwriter" right up until it stared appearing in commercials, big-budget movie trailers, sports arenas, etc.

(Bonus link: Here's Daisuke in the 1999 Asian Championship. Japan wins the game, but check out Jun-Nan Tsai, the guy going for Taiwan. Must make Ismael Valdes feel like he's wasted his whole life.)

Pat Venditte: Switch-Pitcher

2007-04-06T06:03:00.000-07:00

This story about Creighton's Pat Venditte, who can throw left OR right, is amazing. It appears Venditte could be a late-round pick in this year's amateur draft. Not only does he foil a LaRussa-esque righty-lefty-righty-lefty but it takes twice as long for his arm(s) to get tired! Makes me wish I would have worked on my left-handed delivery a bit more growing up.

waiver wire

2007-04-04T15:48:00.000-07:00

my throat is scorched

dig up one hitters

from the curb

find me someone

'take a bag

Bold Yet Tasteless

2006-10-31T14:35:00.000-08:00

Suppose you attended a festive party over the weekend where people dressed up in their Halloween costumes. Suppose at the party you saw a Flava Flav, an Ali G, a Che Guevara, and a Raggedy Ann, in addition to the usual Halloween gaggle of pirates, French maids, and so on.

Now suppose you saw a Cory Lidle.

Would you laugh at that? That's the question I'd been putting to myself, dear readers, and every time I asked myself the answer came back unwaveringly: I would laugh pretty hard.

Although I've always thought of myself as a relatively wholesome and well-rounded citizen, I must admit that I would laugh at a well-executed Cory Lidle Halloween costume without any noticeable pangs of remorse. Blame my friends, blame my parents, blame the TV that helped my parents raise me, but that's just the way I seem to have turned out. Combine my apparent "moral flexibility" with what I've come to recognize as an annual inability to come up with thoughtful and clever Halloween costumes, and I decided, yessir, Cory Lidle would be my costume for Halloween '06.

Now. Is this the greatest joke ever told? Probably not. But I've seen a lot of moralizing over the past week, including from sources whose tastes I've come to know and love, regarding what makes a good Halloween costume and what crosses the line. Eventually it struck me that the consensus on dressing as Cory Lidle has been something approaching a hundred percent negative.

At which point said to myself, fuck that. A hundred percent? That rang awfully hollow for some reason. I decided I was sick of being told which subjects are taboo and which aren't. I want to live in a country where someone will make the Cory Lidle joke. Not everyone is going to laugh, but that's not the point. Ten percent might laugh. And that's a ten percent I wanted on my side.

One other factor bears mentioning. I have a tendency, as you may know, to develop an affinity for pitchers I identify with. I can't claim to have personally been a diehard fan of Cory Lidle before he died, but let's run down the list of what we do know about him:
1) Pitcher who relied on control, smarts and a big breaking curve to compensate for a lack of velocity? Check.
2) Pitcher who mixed stretches of brilliance with stretches of futility that arose from lapses in pitch location? Check.
3) The butt of many jokes for his love of ice cream and junk food, not to mention the accompanying pudgy-ish build? Check.
4) Occasionally shat upon by former teammates because he wasn't perceived as having the pack mentality of a McEwing-esque "team player?" Check.

That's right, if you traveled back a few years in time and talked to the former high school pitcher incarnation of myself, he could tell you in all truthfulness: I am Cory Lidle. So this costume would be at least partly a tribute. And really, the "costume as joke" and "costume as tribute" angles are not mutually exclusive; many of the best things in life were not intended to provide any one specific reaction. It was when I realized these things that the deal was truly sealed.

So I hoofed it to eBay and bought myself a readily available Yankees-edition Cory Lidle jersey t-shirt. Other standard baseball attire lingered in my closet from glory days of yore: pants, socks, pitching sleeves, belt. A trip to a handful of San Francisco storefronts yielded an old-school leather aviator's helmet and a large picture frame that could double as a window pane to hang around my neck. Some posterboard and cardboard, mixed with duct tape and elbow grease produced a makeshift airplane wing to hang like a sash to one side, complete with turbine engine and Yankees logo on the wing's end. (To incorporate an Icarus theme with tunic, sandals, and bow and arrow would have been a guaranteed winner, but it occurred to me too late to do the idea proper justice.) Total cost: about fifty bucks, not much more than the ready-made Peter Pan costume sold at the Halloween store on Haight Street.

For the sake of disclosure, the original idea actually came from a coworker whose lack of seriousness in the suggestion, combined with her general tendencies towards all things black humor, should have tipped me off as to the viability of the idea. Despite my own enthusiasm, every single friend I told of my plans either visibly or audibly winced. Nevertheless, I had won myself over, and I remained undeterred in a way that had many of my friends mystified.

Due to the constraints of the workweek schedule, my Halloween fell on Saturday 10/28, the night of the Galactic concert at the Fillmore. The same band had played the same venue at the same time last year, and when I had attended sans costume I'd felt a bit left out. I had vowed then and there not to make the same mistake this year. (My eventual costume last year was Klaus from The Life Aquatic: also part joke, part tribute.) My compatriots were impeccable renditions of a Viking, Che Guevara (wearing a t-shirt of himself), and Zinedine Zidane. The plan for going out post-show remained hazy, due at least in part to what I later learned to be uncertainty as to how my attire would be received.

But it wasn't until the cab ride en route to the Fillmore, when Zidane made yet another reference to protecting me via headbutt if someone tried to fight me, that my faith finally began to shake. He was starting to sound serious. Zidane had been probably my only unwavering supporter from the beginning, the only one who had laughed freely and instantly upon hearing the original idea.

"Do you really think anyone's going to cause trouble over my costume?"

His reply sounded reassuringly doubtful, except with the qualifier that I could run into someone particularly drunk or crazy. Pretty much an implied qualifier in San Francisco, no matter how you're dressed. I felt better.

He paused. "Or you could run into a family member, or someone who knew him."

My stomach sank. Those people would be completely justified in beating my ass on sight. I probably would even go so far as to help them do it, because meeting them would have made me feel terrible too. I wasn't setting out to hurt anyone's feelings, at least those who would justifiably have been hurt. I spent the rest of the cab ride trying to figure out how many friends Cory Lidle would have made during his two-year stint in Oakland, and how many of those would be at the Galactic show on this night. Probably none, I guessed with no conviction whatsoever.

Approaching the venue I decided, with a the help of a now-queasy stomach and some prodding from my fellow travelers, to jettison the makeshift airplane wing. It wasn't a hard decision, as the cord/sash was digging into my neck pretty relentlessly. My friends were more worried about its extra potential to offend. Plus I think with one wing you are only technically supposed to move about in wild and unpredictable arcs, depending on how true you want to remain to the spirit of the costume. So it worked out.

I also decided I would be keeping a tally of any positive versus negative feedback from any strangers who mentioned the Lidle costume to me unsolicited. The rules were particular for a reason: friends or acquaintances were more likely to take it easier on me, and mere overheard remarks weren't enough to divine a person's true reaction. Also, I can't read minds.

Almost immediately upon concocting this scoring system I had my first encounter, with an old Chinese man pushing a grocery cart down the sidewalk. He stopped and called out slowly: "Hey...did you win the...World Series?"

Ah, he's joking with me. I relaxed. "Ohh, no I didn't, and I'm very sad about it."

"Wait...is it Saint..Saint Louis in the World Series?"

"Yeah, Saint Louis won."

"Saint Louis is tied, two--"

"No, Saint Louis won. They won the Series yesterday."

"Oh." Pause. "So it's...3-3 then?"

"Huh?"

"It's 3-3 then?"

Huh? Oh, um, right. This is San Francisco after all. "Yep, 3-3."

He smiled, repeated "3...3" one more time, and resumed pushing his cart down the street. I concluded that, nervous as I may have been, this constituted neither a positive nor a negative review of the Cory Lidle costume, so the score remained 0-0.

At the gate, Fillmore security personnel quickly deprived me of my remaining extraneous prop, the empty window pane hung around my torso. The disbelieving look on the frisker's face was sufficiently embarassing, but it was more out of disbelief at my ridiculous appearance than it was due to any knowledge of the Lidle saga, and anyway he promised to hold it for me until I left so it was an even trade. Having arrived early, we sat down smack in the middle of the parquet floor up front, noticing quickly that only a quarter, maybe a third of all concertgoers had even bothered to dress up. Bad sign.

It was maybe five minutes before I felt the presence of a guy leaning over me from behind. "Hey man, I just want you to know I love your costume." I turned around and here was a guy dressed as the Dude, complete with bathrobe, fake goatee, sandals, sunglasses, and White Russian in hand. Thank god for the Dude. I couldn't contain my relief to hear this, and I let him know it: "I like yer style, Dude." Positives get on the board with an early 1-0 lead.

Later, as the opener got underway (Stanton Moore Trio, a nifty showcase for Galactic's ace drummer), I took a trip to the bar, where another guy paid me another mighty high compliment. Apparently he'd gone one year dressed as John Denver...also with a broken plane wing as an accessory. Say no more my friend, it's 2-0. Going by my original stated goal of ten percent, I would now have to suffer 18 consecutive setbacks to drop back down to par, so at this moment the curve had been broken and anything looked possible.

In the thirty-minute gap between the opener and the main act we stepped outside onto the streetcurb, where I encountered no resistance until going through security on the way back in, when an inebriated outgoing fan started loudly asking me a question I couldn't understand. I had to ask him three times to repeat the question before I realized my error, flipped up the left earflap of my aviator's hat, leaned over, and asked him one more time, to which I heard: "HAVE YOU GOTTEN ANY SHIT FOR THAT?" I shook my head no, which technically by the rules of my game was the correct answer. However, the way he asked the question suggested that he might have wanted to do some shit-giving of his own. I was in a charitable mood so I counted this as a negative, bringing the count to 2-1.

Zidane's girlfriend, arriving late from a play, joined us at about this point in the proceedings. A quick aside: Zidane, his girlfriend and I all hail from the same Southern hometown, where her dad holds the position of Scary Authority Figure. He's a great guy, don't get me wrong, I'm just saying he could probably have me killed with total impunity if he so desired. I've known this to be true since about high school or so. Anyway, she made no secret of her own doubts about the costume, but she happily informed me that she'd told her dad about it...and he thought it was hilarious. This was excellent news! I promptly declared a new rule: her dad's vote counts, and it counts double. I may not have properly explained the rationale for bending the rules here, but if you've read this far down then you might as well just trust me on this one. What have you got to lose? A comfortable 4-1.

Another setbreak, another trip outside for some much-needed fresh air. On the way back in, I was spotted by a cute girl with a drink in one hand and the other wrapped around some guy. She was what San Francisco folks might call a typical Marina girl: former sorority sister, just a touch too primped and made up, a touch too rich-looking for her surroundings. (Either that or she was dressed as one for Halloween.) She flung her arm at me to point in loud accusation: "Oh, THAT is not a funny costume!"

Fortunately, defeating a Marina girl in argument is as easy as convincing her that she may not be a member of the comfortable majority she imagines for herself. Without breaking my stride I turned around and held up six fingers: "That only makes the score 4-2!" Her face instantly scrunched up in frustration, and I knew my work here was done.

Skipping ahead to the exit from the show -- a break from confrontations was just the tonic needed to enjoy a spectacular second set and encore from Galactic -- I ran into my friend Hans, who was leaving with another friend (yes, you may call him Franz), a friendly sort who did not hesitate to heap praise upon me for the costume idea, combined with the flawless execution. That made it 5-2, though I must note that Hans himself conspicuously did not venture an opinion. I'll have to get clarification from him on that later.

Unrelated logistical concerns quickly limited our aftershow plans to a relaxed evening spent in our backyard, free at last from the relentless eye of society. But undaunted, I kept the costume on for one last late-night venture around the block, spent in a vain attempt to find an open corner store at three in the morning.

I only made it half a block before being greeted with a "Hey, I like your costume!" I'll be honest, I don't think there was much else to this interaction, and I don't really remember anything about the guy. But I'll be damned if it didn't happen, and now I was just running up the score Spurrier-style, 6-2.

Lastly, but not leastly, two drunk girls walking down Valencia Street about five minutes later, the last people I met that night. A prototypical pair of girls retreating from a night out on the town: one blonde a little bit more hammered, the other a slightly overprotective friend. We were still about ten feet apart when Blonde Hammered Girl stopped and pointed accusingly: "BOOO! YANKEES SUCK!" At this I could do nothing but laugh, then patiently explain that I too hated the Yankees, but that this costume was supposed to be a specific Yankee who had died in a tragic plane crash that had been all over the news. At which point -- to my surprise -- she cheered and gave me a full-body embrace. "For David Little," she proclaimed. Good enough for me. Final score, 7-2, vindication attained.

[Thanks again to Deadspin for the link.]

'Nother Log on the Fire

2006-08-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

Anytime we come across a thoughtful piece on the subject of steroids we'll do our best to help echo-chamber it. We don't always necessarily agree with Jason Whitlock, but today's piece in the Kansas City Star is worth a look at the absolute least.

The latter-day incarnation of the steroids issue is one of the more fascinating topics to come through the sporting mill in a long time. It may be impossible to determine why such a fuss is being made about performance-enhancing drugs now, as opposed to a decade ago; why baseball is subjected to the majority of the overly preachy coverage, as opposed to any other sport; why Barry Bonds is suffering the brunt of the public's aggression, as opposed to the slew of other players that have been implicated directly or indirectly of steroid use; and similarly, why the federal government has gotten involved, as opposed to spending their resources on any number of more practical issues.

So many unanswered questions. Would it be giving our president too much credit to suggest that he started the whole thing with his highly random and unexpected mention of steroids in the 2004 State of the Union?

700 WLW

2006-08-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

It’s AM 700, the Reds Station. I am picking it up in St. Louis, sitting here listening to the Reds play a late game in San Francisco. There’s something magical about hearing this Cincinnati broadcast, this late at night, on a tiny hand-held Walkman. Especially when the outcome of this game determines whether the hometown Cardinals will be co-owners of first place in the NL Central, or still atop the division by their lonesome. If the Reds win this game, they will have caught the Cardinals after many months of second place.

When I tuned in, it was 3-2 Giants with the Giants batting in the sixth. But now the Reds have returned to the plate in the seventh. There’s a Ken Griffey, Jr. two-out single. And now Easy Ed Encarnacion has doubled him in. This is a tied game, folks.

Milton has come back out in the bottom half. He gets two quick outs. He’s
only thrown 78 pitches through six and two-thirds. True, he’s given up a couple of gopher balls (Winn and Feliz) but not a bad outing. There’s another hit for Winn. Three hits for him tonight—the quintessential second-half player.

A game like this, finding me from across the entirety of Indiana. From across the Wabash. Leaping over the RCA Dome. Marty Brenneman and company. There’s something reassuring about free baseball late at night. A little static makes it real. Oh, how I love West Coast baseball and its two-hour delay. Sure, I could switch over to a local station and listen to frustrated Cardinals fans lambast Jason Marquis and wonder out loud why Chris Duncan wasn’t pinch-hitting for the woeful So Taguchi with two-outs, runners at second and third, and Roberto Hernandez on the mound in the top half of the seventh at Shea, the Cards trailing 5-2.

Winn to third on a single by Vizquel. Now Shea Hillenbrand. Narron outta the Cincy dugout. He’s lifiting Milton. On comes Ryan “Don’t Call Me Wayne” Franklin in relief.

This is one amazing feature of being in the Midwest. With my simple Walkman I can pick up a handful of broadcasts after sunset. In the comfort of my own home I’ve heard: The Rockies on KOA 850; the Cubs on WGN 720; the Reds on WLW 700. And if I’m lucky I can pick up the Brewers on 620 WTMJ and the Indians on WTAM 1100. You used to be able to get the Braves on 750 WSB but they moved to 640 WGST, which I can’t get up here in St. Louis.

Hillenbrand grounds out 6-4 and the Reds get out of a jam. Ryan Franklin does the job once again out of that revamped Reds ‘pen.

David Ross has just jacked one! The Reds are up 4-3! He’s got 17 home runs now, if you can believe that. He hits ‘em long and deep. He hit one offa Izzy in Cincy that never came down. It’s out there campaigning to take Pluto’s place as the ninth planet. Todd Hollandsworth is gonna bat and there’s gonna be a pitching change. Felipe Alou and Jerry Narron are spinning the wheels here in Frisco.

I’m sitting here drinking some Whitehorse Scotch and reading The Cantos of Ezra Pound.

Todd Coffey just gave up a single to Durham. Bonds got on after Cormier walked him. Now Feliz is batting and Benitez is loosening up in the Giant pen. Two on for the Giants, nobody out.

Double play Reds! De la Rosa, running for Bonds, stands on third. Another pitching change. Out with Coffey in with Schoeneweis. This Whitehorse is some decent scotch. It’s a blended whisky with Lagavulin at its core and also containing some Talisker malt. A Diageo product. It’s the single best Scotch for the money, period. A bottle is $13 or so. You can drink it neat, on the rocks, or with Coke. Sure, you can do that with Johnnie Walker, too. But not at $13.

Benitez has ceased throwing. Stanton is now getting loose for SF. Steve Finley bats with two outs. Three Cincy pitchers in this the eighth inning. Eliezer Alfonzo on deck. Finley is a switch-hitter. He walks. Weather is warm in the Cincy pen but Narron’s gonna leave Schoeneweis in to face the SF catcher. Alfonzo fans.

To lead off the ninth, the Reds have Freel, Hatteberg, and KG. In the bottom half, the Giants will have a pinch hitter, Winn, and Omar. Now Freel fans looking and he’s arguing with home plate ump Chris Guccione. Narron runs out to get Freel off the field. He’s their best defensive outfielder. Did you see that catch he made against the Cardinals a few weeks back? The Giants go with Stanton.

Stanton gets Hatteberg swinging. Now Griffey, who walks. Easy Ed loops a rainbow over Omar, and Griffey, moving on contact with two outs, has made it all the way to third. The Reds are threatening with two outs. Here’s Adam Dunn. They’re gonna walk Dunn to face Juan Castro.

And Castro hits a bases-loaded two-run single! This sends many fans to the exits. Reds lead 6-3. Here’s Brandon Phillips, who strikes out swinging.

Who will it be for the Reds to close this thing out? Weathers. How’s the Weather? Bad for Mark Sweeney, who strikes out looking and takes issue with the call, jawing with Guccione. This could be Weathers’s first save in months, May 7 in fact—when Narron decided it was Coffey time. Of course, that was just a cup of Coffey for Narron.

Two strikes on Winn. Franklin is in line for another win. Winn is down on strikes, although he does not argue with the call. Vizquel is the last hope. He flies out and the Reds have a come-from-behind victory to step into a virtual tie with the Cardinals in the NL Central! They win this first game on their 10-game road-trip.

Goodnight from Cincinnati, San Francisco, the White Horse Inn, and St. Louis.

Tal's Hill

2006-08-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

Willy T. made a catch last night where he was waiting at the top of Tal's Hill, just left of dead center, to catch a ball right at the wall. I've never seen that play occur before, where the outfielder caught a ball on the hill's warning track—though I figure someone has seen this, that it's happened before. The only plays I distinctly remember involving Tal's Hill are: (1) Andruw Jones going up the hill on back-to-back plays but failing to make the catch both times; (2) The Edmonds catch from this year, where he caught a ball over-the-shoulder while going up the hill; and (3) This Taveras play from last night. There must be others. That Wiki link has several including a Berkman catch and a Biggio biff.

Why We Love the Internet

2006-07-16T03:12:00.000-07:00

Friday night's Braves vs. Padres game was one for the ages, a classic barnburner wherein Atlanta blew four separate leads and still won in 11 innings. Those who stayed up late to watch the West Coast thriller can count themselves as lucky. Words, especially those as crudely crafted as we here at MLBeat tend towards, cannot describe it.

But maybe this chart can.

Bring Fantasy to the All-Star Game

2006-07-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

Major League Baseball was happy to hear this week that ratings for the All-Star game were up 15% this year, the largest year-to-year increase in 24 years. This is good news for baseball. But the ratings would be so much higher, and the game so much more interesting, if the companies running commercial fantasy baseball leagues (ESPN, Yahoo!, MLB, etc.) would allow All-Star game statistics to count towards each player's season stats. Imagine the delight of David Wright owners if his home run counted; of Carlos Beltran owners if his bag were tallied. Imagine the dismay of Trevor Hoffman owners!

And why shouldn't these stats count, especially now that "It Counts"? I submit the idea as a perk for fantasy owners. In the midst of a three-day span when there are zero box scores that matter, imagine if that Tuesday night game could give you a slight edge in the standings heading into the second half. Making All-Star game stats count toward fantasy totals would bring higher ratings to the game and lend to the enjoyment of fantasy owners who watch the game. Why not?

The Run, R.I.P.

2006-06-21T01:57:00.000-07:00

When the Atlanta Braves lost Sunday night to the Red Sox the end of an era was made official. It was the Sunday night ESPN game, it was Smoltz v. Schilling, and the eyes of the entire baseball world were on Turner Field. The Mets, who after many years of trying have finally succeeded in throwing together a cohesive All-Star team without apparent weaknesses, have won approximately 67 of their last 51 games, opened up a double-digit lead in the standings and shown few signs of slowing down. It was going to take a massive turnaround to make a race out of this, and Smoltz knew he was going to have to be the guy who sparked it.

He wriggled out of a bases-loaded, none out situation with only one run allowed, gutted out seven innings on 123 pitches, and left with a 3-2 deficit that became a 5-3 lead in the bottom of the seventh when Jeff Francoeur cranked a dramatic three-run homer on the first pitch thrown by new (old) reliever Rudy Seanez. It was rejuvenating for the Braves fans to see Smoltz suddenly eligible for the hard-earned win, as if they could feel the veil of futility finally starting to lift, but it dropped right back down in the next half inning when Bobby Cox entrusted the two-run lead to his bullpen.

Half an inning, six runs and two additional pitching changes later, the morale-boosting victory was a spirit-crushing defeat. The loss was the Braves' seventh in a row and seventeenth out of twenty, it dropped them to last place in the NL East and fourteen games behind the Mets, and it capped a week that had seen losses to Wandy Rodriguez, Ricky Nolasco, Jon Lester, Taylor Tankersley, Josh Johnson, and quite possibly the Marlins batboy somewhere in there. On top of all this came the symbolic value: Smoltz, the team's big kahuna and the last link to the Braves of the late '80s, the last Braves team to truly know failure, the guy who has pitched like a warrior week in and week out for two decades, on an elbow now being held together by metal pins, silly putty and baling wire, was clearly reaching back for a little extra. He knew the magnitude of the game, toughed it out and was good enough to win until he was knifed in the side by a supporting cast not worthy of his effort. Close your eyes and it felt like 1989 all over again.

So if there was any doubt before that game that The Run had ended, it is long gone now. As a Braves fan going back to the Dale Murphy, Zane Smith and Ken Oberkfell days, I am hereby finally mentally ready to concede the division, the first time I have said so out loud in public since David Justice's rookie year in 1990. Braves radio man Joe Simpson, assessing the situation during the second pitching change in the sixth-run eighth, actually said he hoped would "see some things being thrown in the dugout when this half inning is over," in a tone that suggested a desire to be down in the dugout doing some of the throwing himself. The rest of the announcing crew too, as loyal and steady as any other bunch over the past two decades, have never been as down on their team as they were Sunday night. "At some point you begin to realize that maybe you're just not that good," said Pete van Wieren, with the geniune surprise of a man who hasn't had to say that in many years. And despite the halfhearted protests afterwards from some Braves trying to stay optimistic, by early Monday eulogies for The Run were popping up all over the place. (No, I won't be linking to them. I will, however, link to Rob Neyer, who gets credit for jumping on the bandwagon a couple days early, if such an act is worth anything anymore.)

We've all known the Braves were going to lose the NL East eventually, but I'm pretty sure that 2006 was not the year that most pundits had in their office pool. It's been an unprecedented run in baseball history, and truth be told the team is still young and talented and not far off from contention in the years to come. We're saying R.I.P. today to an achievement more so than to the team that currently wears the jersey.

(Also, it's worth mentioning that the wild card is still an available option in mid-June, with the Cincinnati "Over Their Heads" Reds eight games ahead of the Braves, and the Braves' biggest hole potentially fixed with a relief acquisition or two or three, but that's not what this post is about. To water down The Run to "Consecutive Years in the Postseason" would be getting into St. Louis Blues territory, a toothless boast. Forget it.)

More concerning is what's become of the Atlanta Braves as a franchise in the years since 1991. Constant national exposure on TBS used to help make the Braves a top-drawing road team, and the Cinderella season of 1991 consolidated many of those fans and made them a phenomenon truly deserving of the Turner-bestowed label "America's Team." This effect, along with the advent of the dreaded Tomahawk Chop (which had been swiped from FSU), held together for a few subsequent years including the 1995 World Series championship. But now TBS carries fewer and fewer games each year, and anyway cable and Internet technology has improved to the point that teams other than the Braves and the Cubs are remote-accessible. Atlanta has always been much maligned for its overly casual fan base, and while that hasn't always been deserved, recent showdowns with the Mets have featured significant enemy contingents in the stands, and that gets depressing to see after awhile. (Here I must confess that, as a child of TBS, I've never lived in Atlanta and have actually attended more Braves road games than home games over the years.) To listen to Sunday night's game on the radio, one would think the game was taking place in Fenway based on the fan reactions. Failing to sell out playoff games is a minor and understandable P.R. nuisance, but having your home park repeatedly taken over by hostile fans is a gaping wound in the franchise. The Braves' intense scouting focus on prospects from the Southeast, and Georgia in particular, is an interesting strategy and somewhat effective so far on the field (producing Francoeur, Macay McBride, and Brian McCann among others), but we have yet to see a more loyal local fanbase blossom as a result.

And if it's not too blasphemous to say, even The Run itself has changed in nature over the years. The addition of a third NL division in 1994, while probably helping to extend The Run, also cheapened it by asking less from John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox to win the division each year. Since the championship year in 1995, the team has needed to win more than 95 games only once to take the East (when the Mets won 97 as the runner-up in '99), and the race has never been particularly suspenseful down the stretch (again '99 is the exception). But since the AOL-Time Warner ownership megalopolis took the helm from Turner, the team has been visibly constrained by mandated payroll restrictions, forcing Schuerholz to try to keep the team good enough to make the playoffs without allowing him to build a powerhouse strong enough to legitimately contend in the postseason. It's a financially motivated strategy, but it's also a good way to contribute to the corrosion of a fan base.

But we'll get back to this subject later, and anyway we can't go out on a down note like that. We must step back for a moment and pay respects to The Run, the greatest of its kind in baseball history and a last remaining link to the days when winning a division meant significantly more than it does today in any sport this side of the Atlantic.

1991. The Cinderella Year. In which Atlanta magically leapt from last place the previous season to World Series Game 7. It is safe to say that nobody in the world saw it coming. Smoltz and the Cy Young-winning Tom Glavine had been coming into their own for a couple years by this point, but Steve Avery was a sudden Dontrelle-level pheenom, Lonnie "Skates" Smith and a young Ron Gant patrolled the outfield with varying levels of grace, Otis Nixon stole bases by the truckload until a coke bust got him suspended for the stretch run and postseason, and Terry Pendleton stole the MVP with a year of strong defense, clutch hitting, and a league-leading .319 batting average. They stayed legit in the postseason, playing the Twins to the limit in Game 7 of that rare Series that is remembered for Mark Lemke, Jack Morris, and constant tenacious competition between two underdog teams, more so than for who actually won. Key Game: 10/1 against the Reds, who took a 6-0 lead in the first on an unlikely Joe Oliver grand slam, only to see the Braves chip away until a David Justice two-run homer off Rob Dibble in the ninth won it for Atlanta, 7-6. The Braves ran the table afterwards and clinched the NL West over the feisty Dodgers four days later. (Honorable mention goes to Game Six of the NLCS in Pittsburgh, a thrilling 1-0 victory that featured Andy Van Slyke striking out to end the game with the tying run on third. It had been a marathon plate appearance with a full count and several additional foul balls, until Alejandro Pena floated a changeup down the middle that completely froze Van Slyke. It was the only changeup Pena threw the entire season.)

1992. The Year We Realized We Weren't a Fluke. You could really see the swagger start to emerge this year, from both the body language of the players and the actual language of Skip Caray and his fellow announcers, who were clearly beginning to enjoy themselves. Fell down early by seven games to the Giants in late May, but after a torrid second half this was not as suspenseful a race, ending with 98 wins and a comfortable eight-game cushion over the Reds. A thirteen-game winning streak in July really was the knockout punch. Another thrilling postseason which featured the Francisco Cabrera Game and the agony of watching Jeff Reardon succumb to the mighty power of Ed Sprague in the World Series. Key Game: The last game of the July winning streak, a 1-0 classic over the nemesis Pirates whose only two dangerous seasons since The Stargell Time would be foiled each time by Atlanta in the NLCS. Danny Jackson only allowed one Atlanta hit, an opposite-field homer by Justice in the second inning, but Charlie Liebrandt made it hold up with some of that vintage Liebrandt craftiness (actually quite entertaining at its best), and Otis "Overdrive" Nixon saved the game with one of the best defensive plays of the entire decade, scaling the large right field wall of the old Fulton County Stadium in one unbelievably smooth motion to rob Andy Van Slyke of a game-winning homer. Check it out here at www.otisnixon.com. Still think I was exaggerating? (Of course all anyone cared about was that Bonds went 0-4 with a strikeout. Ah, I keed.)

1993. The Year of The Last Great Race. The free-agent signing of Mad Dog was the tipping point to making the team a sho-nuff National League Dynasty and monopolist of the NL Cy Young. That and the July acquisition of Fred McGriff from the Padres, which propelled the Braves to a .740 second half (!) and the victor's role in the last truly great pennant race: 104 wins to the Giants' 103. Bullpen retread Greg McMichael became the unlikely closer for the pennant drive, relying on a funny throwing motion and a changeup that couldn't break toilet paper. A truly miraculous season, sadly ruined in the NLCS by the ragtag Kruk 'N' Dykstra Phillies, who frankly got what they deserved thereafter in the Series against Toronto. Key Game: July 20, the famous McGriff Trade / Press Box Fire Game, which I guess is pretty self-explanatory from the title. Crime Dog hit the ground running in Atlanta, hitting the homer that sparked a rally from 5-0 to 8-5 over Rheal Cormier and the Cardinals. The Braves were ten games back at the time. Of everyone ever to play for the Braves during The Run, McGriff probably remains the most underrated contributor. Well, there's Juan Berenguer too I suppose.

1994. The Strike Year. This lends a little extra mystique to The Run, as they were actually in second place when the strike hit. Who knows how it would have played out? The Expos were a fantastic team and had amassed a six-game lead with 48 games to play when the strike happened, but anyone who tries to insist the deficit would have been insurmountable clearly hadn't been paying attention the previous three years. Key Game: None for obvious reasons, but we'll go with this 5-0 win over the Expos in May, featuring vintage Maddux besting a young Pedro Martinez, time of game 2:18.

1995. The Year of Unnnhh Ohh Yeah! Simply glorious. When Marquis Grissom caught that final out in deep center to win the World Series, Bob Costas declared, "The team of the Nineties has its championship!" He was absolutely correct at the time. Backed by Grissom in his prime in center, Justice in his prime in right, McGriff in his late prime at first, Mark Wohlers in his prime as a closer, the pitchers who led the NL in ERA for the third straight year, and the formative seasons for Chipper Jones, Ryan Klesko and Javy Lopez, this edition was not quite as powerful at the plate as some of the others but didn't need to be with all that pitching. The forgotten hero from '95 was August acquisition Mike Deveraux, the MVP in a series against the juggernaut Gant 'N' Sanders Reds team that turned out to be one of the more lopsided NLCS in memory. Honorable mention goes to Pedro Borbon Jr., who got a crucial save in Game 4 of the World Series. Key Game: the last one. Duh.

1996. The Year of the Coulda Been Dynasty. Another strong team, this one overlooked because of the World Series choke. This time it was Smoltz's turn to snag the Cy Young from Maddux with his strongest campaign to date. The season was a cakewalk, exemplified on this game in August when Andruw Jones, who had just debuted the day before as a 19-year-old, hit his first big league home run off Pittsburgh ace Denny Neagle, illustrating just how blessed from above the Braves had become. The next day, John Schuerholz acquired Neagle for the forgotten Ron Wright just because he could, as if to drive the point home. (Lost in my analysis was the debut of Jermaine Dye, who homered in his first AB and enjoyed a brief stretch of Francoeur-like heat before eventually falling out of Schuerholz's plans.) The NLCS comeback from a 3-1 deficit against St. Louis might look remarkable in retrospect, but in reality it was virtually expected to happen at the time, such heavy favorites were the Braves. Andruw's two homeruns in Game One of the World Series were shockingly great, and everything was looking peachy. At that point anything looked possible -- two rings in a row, three, four? When would it end? Well, turned out it ended two games later with Jim Leyritz's dagger of a three-run homer in our Key Game: Game Four. Many have forgotten about the classic Game Five duel (Pettite def. Smoltz 1-0), but in retrospect [cue Behind the Music voiceover] Game Four was when it all came crashing down. Remember the swagger I mentioned that started gaining steam in '92? Series participants on both sides described the Braves entering the showdown with that swagger and leaving without it. (SI described it, and I wish I had time to find the link.) That was the crest of the wave right there. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Fuck you, Jim Leyritz.

1997. The Year of Continued Coulda Shoulda. Major offseason shakeup sent David Justice and Marquis Grissom to Cleveland for Alan Embree and Kenny Lofton, the latter of whom teamed up with a young Michael Tucker to revitalize the top of the batting order, at least until Lofton pulled a groin, stopped stealing bases, and left town in a huff the following year. It was really the first major shakeup of The Run, setting a precedent for Braves teams to come that would come to be borderline unrecognizable compared to their predecessors. (It was also the first salary dump, which would become a recurring theme as well.) The Florida Marlins were one of The Run's stronger second-place teams as they would show in the playoffs, but even they didn't seriously challenge the Braves, who were now getting solid pitching from Denny Neagle in addition to the Big Three. Unfortunately Wohlers had his meltdown after an oblique strain early in the year, a disaster that got unfairly blamed on the Leyritz homerun from '96, but it didn't matter in the end. Key Game: It's been mentioned recently in the press due to the unfortunate demise of its namesake, but the Braves were simply stabbed in the back by the home plate umpire in what has become known as, well, the Eric Gregg Game. I am still unable to talk about it rationally.

1998. The Year of the Big Cat. The big acquisition here was Andres Galarragga, who enjoyed one of the many great peaks of a rollercoaster sort of career. Although no longer as nimble around first base as his nickname suggested, the 44 homers were nonetheless a welcome addition to a suddenly homer-happy offense featuring Cat, Chipper, Andruw, Javy, and the Klesko-Gerald "Ice" Williams platoon in left. The pitching staff was still in its prime, with Glavine enjoying a mild renaissance to capture his second Cy Young, and rookie Kevin Millwood began to establish himself as well. Neagle was OK, and he had his own unique variation on the Tom Glavine pitching approach, but he would be sent to the Reds in the offseason as part of the Bret Boone trade, marking the last time Atlanta featured a legit Fab Four. Meanwhile Andruw Jones was cementing his reputation as the greatest defensive CF since Willie Mays with his propensity to be calmly waiting for fly balls that other outfielders would have to dive for or simply chase to the wall. Despite a dominant 106-win campaign, the NLCS went to Kevin Brown and the Padres. This was when Schuerholz first began to wrestle with the problem of not having the pitching edge in the postseason. Key Game: putting up a fight in the NLCS by winning Game Five. A great game, partly because it finally derailed Kevin Brown, who had been lights out all October and was appearing here in relief just because Bruce Bochy felt he could. Also because it featured the critical blow from Michael Tucker, the one bright shining unimpeachable accomplishment from his maddeningly inconsistent tenure in Atlanta.

1999. The Year of Chipper and the Chipperettes. At first glance one of the strongest teams of The Run with 103 wins, but actually one of its weakest, relying on an MVP season from Chipper and slightly reduced brilliance from the usual suspects in the rotation. Meanwhile this was the year they began to realize they could win the division despite carrying major weaknesses, such as a middle infeld of Walt Weiss and the despicable Bret Boone, with an unsuccessful Jose Hernandez acquisition for good measure. MIA was Galarragga, who sat out the year with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in his back. Also lost to season-ending injuries were Kerry Ligtenberg, Javy Lopez, Odalis Perez and Rudy Seanez, not that it mattered. The hero of the rotation turned out to be Millwood surprisingly enough, who went 18-7 with a 2.68 ERA in only his second full season. This season also marked the rise of John Rocker, the only player in baseball history to be ruined by an SI article. Key Game: The showdown with the Mets on 9/21 at Turner Field. Chipper was white-hot down the stretch, playing like an MVP with the sort of momentum you knew was going to be unstoppable. This game played out like it had been preordained, with a solid start from Smoltz and a solo Chipper homer from each side of the plate in a 2-1 game that didn't feel that close. The Braves went on to take five of six from the Mets in that crucial September home-and-away, and later roll past the same Mets in the NLCS. Chipper tried to reprise his heroics later in the World Series by jacking one for a 1-0 lead in Game One against El Duque and the Yanks, but it was simply not meant to be. This marked the first time the Braves had been obviously outmatched in a playoff series, which would become a trend.

2000. The First Year of Scraping By. This was the first year the vultures began to mistakenly circle overhead in anticpiation of The Run being over. Smoltz missed the season with Tommy John surgery, Galarragga made a remarkable comeback from cancer but wasn't quite the same, Schuerholz had traded Boone and Klesko to San Diego in the offseason for Quilvio Veras and Reggie Sanders, a move that looked great on paper but played out poorly as Sanders struggled horribly and Veras blew out his knee. As compensation we were introduced to a stellar rookie season from Rafael Furcal, whose .295/.394/.382 line belies the fact that he caused approximately 1,761 opposition errors with his blinding speed. He's still fast in Dodger Blue today but trust me, he was a freak of nature in his rookie year. The final one-game margin over the Mets wasn't quite as small as it looks, and anyway was rather anticlimactic as the loser was assured the wild card anyway. Bud Selig, the blood of regular season baseball is on your hands. Key Game: The final game of the regular season in Colorado. After inheriting a two-run lead from a choice Millwood start, John Rocker had the save in hand, but a two-out throwing error by Chipper on a routine play opened the floodgates for a six-run rally. The East was already clinched, but the loss cost the Braves home field advantage against St. Louis and left a bad taste in everyone's mouths that plainly contributed to the ensuing defeat in the NLDS for the first time during the Run (that would also become a trend). Honorable mention goes to the next game, the playoff opener against the Cardinals aka the Rick Ankiel Game, which saw the destruction of a player you all know to be near and dear to my heart. A rare day when everybody lost. Ghastly series, that, and a Pyrrhic victory for the Cards.

2001. The Lean Year. Not sure how this one happened. Atlanta finished 13th in the NL in offense and still managed to win the division by two games. It was the Phillies' turn to play runner-up this time, and the best they could do was 86 wins in a season when the East was there for the taking. Smoltz's return from Tommy John wasn't all that smooth, leading to the grand and largely successful John Smoltz As Closer Experiment, as opposed to the completely unsuccessful Ken Caminiti as First Baseman Experiment which was also this year. The team's ace in '01? John Burkett, with a smoke-and-mirrors 3.04 ERA. Key Game: a 2-1 win on 8/17 over Livan Hernandez and the Giants. Chipper's sixth-inning triple gave Maddux the win and set the table for Smoltz's first save.

2002. The Year of Leo. Gary Sheffield had been acquired for Odalis Perez and the overrated Brian Jordan in a classic sharp Schuerholz trade, but Sheff didn't really take until 2003 as he struggled periodically with an injured wrist and vanished in the NLDS against the Giants. I've gone this far in the post without once mentioning Leo Mazzone, but this year was really his opus. The Braves posted the best ERA in the league for the ninth time in twelve years and won the East by a whopping 19 games over Montreal. Millwood had one of his schizophrenic "good" years, Maddux had a 2.62 ERA, Glavine won eighteen games, Damian Moss peaked in his rookie year and Smoltz set an NL record with 55 saves despite being statistically the weakest link of a bullpen that featured Mazzone reclamations Darren Holmes (1.81), Mike Remlinger (1.99), and the remarkable Chris Hammond (0.95). The line of pitchers who excelled under Mazzone and faceplanted after leaving Atlanta goes out the door and around the corner. Mazzone's departure is an obvious choice for the biggest factor in the 2006 collapse, and it may well justifiably be so as the current reclamations don't look so hot any more all of a sudden (Ken Ray, Chad Paronto, Mike Remlinger II). Leo Mazzone, I raise my beer to thee. Key Game: Game Four in the NLDS against the Giants, when Glavine got rocked for the second time in the series, crippling Atlanta's chances. A doubly damaging series because a) it lent more urgency to the need to go find some new ace starters, and b) it made the Braves front office think Russ Ortiz was capable of being said ace starter.

2003. The Year of the Heavy Artillery. For the first time the Braves won the division on the strength of their offense rather than the pitching. Strong seasons all around from Lopez (43 HR), Sheffield (39 HR), Andruw (36 HR), and Chipper (27 HR, .919 OPS). This was also the long-awaited breakout season from Marcus Giles, a scrappy little sibling made good and far and away my favorite latter-day Brave for his cerebral hitting approach and excellent defense. A joyous season until the Division Series rolled around and the starting pitching was exposed by the Cubs, who had incredible aces Prior, Wood and Zambrano and also had a date with fate in the NLCS. Watching the wild-card Marlins blow past the Yankees in the World Series this year didn't sit too well, either. Key Game: NLDS Games One, Three and Five, in which Wood and Mark Prior outclassed each of the Braves' three top starters: in order, Russ Ortiz, Maddux and Mike Hampton. It was the second of three consecutive years in which the Braves would fail to get past the rubber match of the NLDS.

2004. The Year of This Is Getting to Be Fucking Ridiculous. This is when the season summaries on the official page start beginning with the phrase "Proving the critics wrong...." Analyzing the Braves' chances in the division each offseason was getting pretty close to wishcasting by this point, but against all odds Schuerholz's moves somehow kept working out. Here's how ridiculous it got: A year prior, Maddux had made the surprising decision to accept arbitration and stay for one more expensive ($16M) year past his peak. The Braves had been expecting him to sign elsewhere, and the resulting payroll increase led the new and more tightfisted AOL-TW ownership to force Schuerholz to panic and deal Millwood to archrival Philly on short notice rather than pay him $10M to help give the Braves another top-notch rotation. It was the most blatant salary dump in Braves history because all he could get in return was AAA catcher Johnny Estrada, and it caused an uproar among Braves supporters...until Estrada began tearing it up in Richmond and batted .314 in Atlanta the next year with several clutch hits, all this while Millwood flopped in Philly. Going into 2004, after a winter in which Lopez, Sheffield and Maddux (finally) had all been allowed to walk to greener pastures, there was no way to look at the roster and expect it to be threatening unless there somehow was a miracle in the form of the unthinkable, a fully healthy season from new acquisition J.D. Drew. And lo and behold, it came to be. Early in the season Drew took off an extra game or two with one of his signature "pulled this" or "tight that" or "sore the other" excuses, and reportedly Chipper, the team's clubhouse leader ever since his MVP year in '99, took him aside and made it clear that shit wasn't going to fly anymore. Drew's final line: 518 AB, 31 HR, 118 BB, .305/.436/.569, borderline MVP numbers in a non-Bonds world, and the perfect bait for his subsequent $50M contract from the Dodgers. (Looking at Drew's log from '04 the alleged episode may have come in the first week of May.) Jason Marquis may have helped out the Cardinals over stretches and Adam Wainwright may well turn out to have a long career, but Schuerholz yet again got exactly what he wanted out of this trade. Key Game: 5-2 over the Cubs on 4/10. Only symbolically a key game because it contained the signature moment of the great Julio Franco's reawakening in Atlanta. Kyle Farnsworth had come in to protect a 2-1 lead in the eighth with the bases loaded, and with two outs he and Franco locked horns in a thirteen-pitch epic battle until Franco finally came through and doubled in all three runs. The highlight of the season despite happening in the first week, and the crown jewel of Franco's second career.

2005. The Year of the Youth Movement. Perhaps the most remarkable East victory of the entire bunch, and if indeed it was the last, it was an appropriate conclusion to The Run. This is recent enough history that I don't have to go into too much detail here, but basically the team struggled mightily until rookies Francoeur, McCann, Langerhans, Johnson, and Boyer all arrived at about the same time and gave the team a shot in the arm. Also notable was Andruw for his long-awaited MVP-caliber season. The award went to Pujols and should probably have gone to Derrek Lee instead, but an argument could be constructed in Andruw's favor based on the timing of his immense midsummer hot streak, which came exactly when all the other major contributors were on the DL and the team was fading in the standings. Players, managers and announcers were unanimous in agreement that it was the single most thoroughly enjoyable and fulfilling year of the run. The sentiment was genuine, but it betrayed the underlying feeling we'd all become accustomed to, that any postseason success from the Braves would just be a bonus. Key Game: Yet another tough NLDS loss, this one coming in Game Four in eighteen innings to the Astros. Expectations had been uncertain because of the largely new cast of characters, but there's no doubt they had the talent on hand to make a deeper October run than this. The goat this year was Farnsworth, acquired for the stretch drive to fill the gap at closer. He had been up to the task until this game, when he tragically surrendered homers to Lance Berkman and Brad Ausmus (!). The second one especially was a punch in the gut, and the nine extra innings that followed the meltdown simply delayed the inevitable.

And that's The Run, ladies and gentlemen. This all took way longer to compile than I expected, but there's still quite a bit of forgotten lore remaining. There are numerous players not mentioned here that contributed enormously to The Run: Rafael Belliard, Mike Bielecki, Jeff Blauser, Alejandro Pena, Brian Hunter, Ozzie Guillen, Pete Smith, Damon Berryhill, Andy Ashby, Jeff Treadway, Eddie Perez, Charles Thomas, Dennis "El Presidente" Martinez, Dave Martinez, Greg Colbrunn, Mike Stanton, Mike Cather, Jerry Willard, Greg Olson, Kent Mercker, and so many more. Nor did I mention the controversy over Maddux's never-properly-explained refusal to pitch to Lopez, or the time Cox pulled Andruw Jones out of centerfield during an inning in '97 (?) for lollygagging, or Walt Weiss' beautiful diving play on Astroturf with the infield drawn in that saved the 1999 NLDS against Houston, or Deion Sanders giving Tim McCarver a Gatorade bath in the Atlanta clubhouse. There's way more of this stuff in the past sixteen years, and this is the stuff that makes following a team over the years a worthwhile pastime.

Anyway, this brings us to 2006, the intolerable present. We hope for more success of course, but the franchise is certainly coming to a crossroads. Next time we'll take a look at what needs to be done going forward.

[And many thanks to Deadspin for linking to this. You're with us.]

Braves at Cubs

2006-05-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

Make yourself comfortable, we're gonna be here awhile today. A long home run from La Roche, as I'm sittin here on a Sunday listening to Pat Hughes and Ron Santo on MLB Audio while watching the game on WGN. The Audio is two pitches behind.

Now Langerhans hits one, as did Renteria, and the Cub lead is cut to 4-3. Ron says, "It's a tough, tough day." I should get back to studying, to drinkin iced coffee, to waiting for Mark Prior to get healthy. What is it he's got, a bad arm? A bad wing? A bad shoulder, elbow, forearm — and Beckett blisters? Holy shit, he's ready. Send him out for a rehab start. At any rate he'll throw better than Jae Kuk Ryu.

Now Pratt and Smoltz have gotten hits. Ryu can't get anybody out, open up the bullpens, it's a reliever stampede. Smoltz's hit was off the vines and the fans are getting restless. On Howry, on Eyre, on— Holy shit! Marcus Giles just hit a three-run homer! Hah-hah, the Braves are up 6-4. Rusch can't get warm fast enough. Oh man, Renteria just got a hit, oh boy oh boy, Neifi and Barrett out to the mound, it's almost like batting practice.

Ok. Here's Dusty. Phew. That was brutal. Chipper will face Rusch.

(The Braves went on to win 13-12 in eleven.)

And Apparently We're Off!

2006-04-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

It appears the regular season kicked off last night, with the White Sox clubbing the Indians 10-4 in a game that featured a three-hour rain delay and nine walks by Cleveland pitchers. We're sorry we missed it, but still, we get excited just typing the words. Fortunately that drubbing was underhyped in the midst of Final Four activity and the ongoing steroids scandal. Plus Wrestlemania was yesterday, or so we heard.

Anyway, today is the real Opening Day. Thus, the First Annual MLBeat Official Season Team-by-Team Improvised Capsule Preview Extravaganza Spectacular, or FAMOSTICPES for short. Catchy, huh? We've got our MLB TV up and running at work -- should be a great summer. Here we go, in no particular order:

AL Central

Chicago White Sox. If recent history tells us anything, it's that the White Sox have little chance to repeat as champions. Of course, listening to recent history -- Arizona, Anaheim, Florida, Boston, Chicago White Sox -- what's the next team in that progression, Cincinnati? There's no telling. Point is, we shouldn't listen to recent history, not so much as we should listen to the Sox's seven-deep starting rotation, plus their choice acquisition of Jim Thome. Verdict: The Sox will be in the thick of the division race again, though they may have a different adversary....

Minnesota Twins. If baseball was really 75 percent pitching, then these guys would be the easy favorites. Longtime GM Terry Ryan has plugged a few gaping holes in the lineup, so they may end up being favorites anyway. One twinge of bad news: rookie phenom Francisco's Liriano DUI arrest a week ago. The Twins faithful over at BatGirl seem eager to forgive, but anyone who's driven drunk (or rode shotgun with someone who has) knows the line between a Liriano and a Leonard Little can be pretty fine. Hopefully it's not going to come to that. Verdict: Will get locked up in one of those multi-team division/wild card races where even the loser wins and everyone's confused.

Cleveland Indians. Misguided as it may be to draw any conclusions from a single game, Fernando Cabrera's disastrous outing last night (1 IP, 6 ER) puts the bullpen at a potential disadvantage. Cabrera is supposed to be one of the glue guys, a young kid with great stuff and the closer in waiting, but relievers tend to be streaky, and if he's going bad then a lot of other things will have to go right for the Indians to avoid a summer's worth of late-inning implosions. Their lineup should still be fine, though the MLBeat jury is still out on top prospect Andy Marte because someone with his pedigree shouldn't have been traded twice by now. Verdict: A disappointing third.

Detroit Tigers. One of those teams with a bad case of false optimism. It's really pretty cruel to the fans to string them along like this. When September rolls around and they have another losing record, it will be tough to explain why people were so jacked up about Magglio Ordonez, Todd Jones (who is already on the DL) and Carlos Guillen in the first place. They'll always have the Pistons, at least. Verdict: Consistent with the mediocrity.

Kansas City Royals. Doesn't a crew this awful usually surprise us at least a little bit before fading back to the cellar for good? Maybe a Rookie of the Year or an unexpected ten-game winning streak? No, you say? Okay, I believe you. Verdict: Only relevant in that they will play against contending teams from time to time.

AL East

New York Yankees. It's easy to look at their starting pitching and predict a total collapse, but that would be underestimating the front office's extreme impatience when it comes to struggles of any kind. If the Yankees are to fail this year, it will be because the acquired replacements failed, and then the replacements for the replacements failed, and so on. Verdict: Someone will succeed in pinstripes, enough at least to make the playoffs again.

Boston Red Sox. Just like the Yankees, they've become a thoroughly detestable team in their propensity to go out and get whatever they need to fill whatever hole they have, and yes, please throw in Mike Lowell if you must, thank you very much. Their fan base is less accustomed to this state of affairs than the Yankees', which helps explain why a host of scientific studies have concluded that Red Sox fans are now neck-and-neck with Cubs fans as the most annoying in baseball. Hey, don't look at me...it's science. Verdict: Likely wild card.

Baltimore Orioles. This will be Leo Mazzone's greatest challenge yet. So many eyes are on the hallowed pitching coach in his new environs, eager to overanalyze his influence on the Orioles' impressionable young staff. In situations like these, the first two months are everything. A hot start like last year's will sustain itself longer than last year's did, but an early slump will lead to undue frustration, hot-tempered explosions on the mound and the drawing and quartering of Bruce Chen, meaning the ongoing struggle to remember which team Chen is pitching for will finally achieve gruesome closure. Verdict: Hot start, 85 wins, a failed run at the wild card and excessive optimism for next year.

Toronto Blue Jays. Quick, name the last team that bought themselves a World Series. I'll give you a minute to think about it...no, I meant besides the Yankees. That's what I meant. Point is, it doesn't happen too often. The Jays did make some improvements in the offseason, but not a hundred million dollars' worth, and none of it will be worth as much as having Roy Halladay back for a full season. Don't they know the teams they're going up against in this division anyway? Verdict: Out of the race by August.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Clearly the team of the future, with hot prospects such as Delmon Young, B.J. Upton, Rocco Baldelli, and Scott Kazmir. The brand new front office is on the hot seat in '06, as they have to clear logjams in the infield and outfield, while focusing on adding pitching and more pitching. Borderline contending teams should keep Tampa Bay on speed dial all season long. It's been said for a few years now that the Devil Rays are a couple years away; if they make the right moves this summer it'll finally be true. Verdict: Last place again, but Carl Crawford and Joey Gathright team up to steal 100 bags.

AL West

Oakland A’s. Never has a team inspired more bullheaded punditry than the A’s of Billy Beane. The anti-Oakland sentiment from basball people, particularly its old guard, has been so consistently wrongheaded over the past several years that we wonder what to make of the fact that the A’s are now considered the consensus favorite in the division, if not the entire American League. It doesn’t seem right. Something tells us Milton Bradley is going to find a way to throw a wrench into this, but we are going to try and ignore that something. By the way, has anyone properly explained how Beane was able to acquire Antonio Perez, who will be one of the better utility infielders in the game, as a throw-in alongside Bradley? That was just unfair. Verdict: West champs, and first taste of playoff success since the Canseco days.

Anaheim Angels. They're in a tight spot this year. The A's look better on paper, unless the Angels decide to rush up some of their top prospects, like Howie Kendrick, Brandon Wood, Jeff Mathis, and Dallas McPherson. If they play their cards right, they'll have a shot this year but surely be stronger in the years to come; play them wrong, and you've set back the careers fo some promising rookies by burning their confidence, Solomon Torres-style. While we're on the subject, did anybody watch K-Rod last year in the playoffs against the White Sox? He got burned in some key situations throwing nothing but slider after slider, without even a single fastball to keep the Sox honest. Either he was hiding an injury, or he'd lost confidence in his fastball. The former seems much more likely -- our arm hurts just watching the guy. Verdict: Valiant run at the wild card, but K-Rod injury too much to overcome.

Seattle Mariners. They seem to be a consensus pick for the cellar in this tough division, but we're not seeing it. They're set to improve at many positions, including catcher (Japanese emigrant Kenji Johjima), starting pitching (having King Felix Hernandez around for a full season), third base (Adrian Beltre can't be worse than last year, right?), and center (ditto for Jeremy Reed, right?). Verdict: They'll make a little noise before fading by the dog days.

Texas Rangers. They were set as an all hitting, no pitching squad...and that was before Adam Eaton went down with a torn middle finger tendon. Now they'll be all hitting and disastrous pitching. Might be tough to tell the difference. Verdict: 800+ runs scored, which is a lot for a last-place team.

NL East

Atlanta Braves. We are long past the point of evaluating the Braves on their merits, instead giving our attention to The Streak and whether it can continue. John Schuerholz et al have been threading an extraordinarily narrow needle: it has been at least five years since Atlanta’s had enough premier talent to be considered a serious postseason threat, yet winning the NL East hasn’t been a challenge for at least as long. One factor to consider in ‘06: the team is up for sale, meaning there is not likely any chance of a quick-fix payroll boost to plug any gaps at first base or the starting rotation. Still, plenty of options remain within the system to use as needed. Verdict: Make it fifteen, with the lack of other NL powerhouses providing a chance at playoff advancement.

Philadelphia Phillies. Paying millions to Tom Gordon to be the closer is one of those moves that looks doomed from the start. Ineffectiveness is a distinct possbility for any 38-year-old closer, but that fat contract dictates he'll keep getting chances even if he falters. Phillie fans have to hope for either surprisingly solid performance or an injury, nothing in between. Also, trading for Aaron Rowand is going to look pretty dumb if Jim Thome cracks forty homers again. Verdict: Puncher's chance at the wild card.

New York Mets. If it weren’t worth a lot of money to ESPN and the other major outlets to get New Yorkers excited about the Mets every spring, we probably wouldn’t have to deal with all this hype. Look, the Mets have some serious holes, including the middle infield and in the rotation. Trading Kris Benson and Jae Seo for bullpen help was shortsighted and could likely prove disastrous come June when some combination of Steve Trachsel, Pedro Martinez, and Victor Zambrano are on the DL. Still carrying Kaz Matsui around betrays a refusal to admit error that could only be called Bushian. At least they have the prospect of a new ballpark to look forward to in Toilet Meadows. Verdict: A disappointing third.

Washington Nationals. We've discussed the Soriano debacle enough, but we haven't mentioned Jim Bowden's trade of Vinny Castilla to San Diego for Brian Lawrence, who is now out with a torn rotator cuff. Can't wait to see what comes next. A John Rocker sighting, perhaps? Verdict: Will lock horns with Florida for last place, a battle the Marlins will enjoy much more.

Florida Marlins. The working assumption for a blown-up team such as the Marlins is that they’re going to lose 100 games. It may not be my place to disagree. But between Jeremy Hermida, Scott Olsen, Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez, Eric Reed, Josh Willingham, and all their rookie buddies...that’s a lot of unknown quantities. Some of them are bound to break out. Don’t act surprised when it happens. Meanwhile, owner Jeffrey Loria has made quite a case for himself as baseball’s reigning Mephistopheles (as opposed to the Beelzebud who runs the show), having run the Expos into the ground and now doing the same to a team that won a World Series for him only three seasons ago. Now he’s meeting with San Antonians about a possible move. Any potential suitors should check out the 2006 Marlins as a sneak peek at the inevitable valleys of supporting a Loria-run team. Verdict: Last place, Willingham and Olsen rise to the top of their class, Dontrelle Willis spends at least two months on the DL.

NL Central

St. Louis Cardinals. Still the easy favorites in the division, despite fielding a lineup with Larry Bigbie and Juan Encarnacion starting in the outfield corners. Pretty mean, actually, to be toying with your opponents like this. It's like playing a game of Monopoly wherein you spot your opponents Park Place and Boardwalk. A cakewalk of a season for the Cards, and in a fancy new Busch Stadium to boot. Verdict: World Series champs, and another Pujols MVP.

Chicago Cubs. I’m one of those fantasy owners who can’t resist the siren song of Mark Prior. In a head-to-head league, I can overpay for him and leave him on the DL in hopes that he’ll be back in form by September, when I’ll just be getting to the playoffs. (This strategy has paid off a sum total of never, in case you were wondering.) In real life, ninety percent of the league doesn’t make the playoffs, and the Cubs can’t afford to wait around for Prior and Kerry Wood forever. It’s too bad really, because Cubs fans would probably be sooo much fun to be around if their team ever did make a Series run. Verdict: Outsiders in the wild card run, Dusty Baker begins updating his resume.

Houston Astros. Irrational thoughts overwhelm us when it comes to the Astros. Quite frankly, they deserve punishment for their performance in last year's World Series. It's one thing to be low-scoring, another entirely to be completely futile. Game Four in particular could have gone about 36 innings without even the threat of Houston crossing the plate. That wasn't baseball, people. That wasn't even soccer. Karma will repay the Astros in the form of Roger Clemens' departure, Jeff Bagwell's retirement, and another long summer of anemic offense. Verdict: Passed in the standings by the Cubs.

Pittsburgh Pirates. I'm watching right now as Oliver Perez, the Pirates' Opening Day starter, is slinging the ball all over the place against the Brewers. That's a great way to your season is DOA: your alleged ace can't even find the plate on Opening Day. They should just call it quits right here. Wait...Jack Wilson just bailed him out with an incredible play, pulling a double play out of a ball deep in the hole. Maybe there's hope after all. Such are the dangers of making preseason predictions when the preseason is over. Don't try this at home, kids. Verdict: Stretches of competence, resulting in a season-long Tango De La Muerte with the .500 mark, after which Pittsburgh will learn that it is somehow carrying the .500 mark's child. It is the mystery of the dance.

Milwaukee Brewers. The new brain trust in Milwaukee has done well for itself, with hot prospects Prince Fielder, Rickie Weeks, and Corey Hart all arriving at once to supplement a veteran cast including Corey Koskie, Carlos Lee, Doug Davis and Chris Capuano. Conventional wisdom has the Brew Crew taking a big step forward this year, which means the call here is going to be quite easy. Verdict: Fifth place, Ben Sheets can't stay off the DL, and Fielder does some time of his own with a pulled fat muscle.

Cincinnati Reds. Their ace is Aaron Harang, and their closer is David Weathers. Need I say more? Okay...how about, because they assumed Ken Griffey Jr.’s relatively healthy 2005 means he has completely vanquished his injury demons, they traded away fourth outfielder Wily Mo Pena to Boston, getting Bronson Arroyo in exchange because Eric Milton, their last flyball-pitcher acquisition, worked out so well. We don't see any possible way this could go wrong. Verdict: Not just last...dead stinkin’ last.

NL West

San Francisco Giants. Probably the team with the largest potential for variance in all of MLB, because Barry Bonds is the player with the highest potential for variance in all of MLB. Factor in the extreme age of Moises Alou, Omar Vizquel, Ray Durham, Steve Finley, Mike Matheny et al, and you're left with a team that nobody would want to face if the playoffs started tomorrow. But that's neither here nor there, and in the meantime there's this whole steroids thing. Maybe you've heard about it. Fortunately the ESPN series Bonds on Bonds begins running tomorrow, and that ought to clear the air of any wrongdoing whatsoever. At that point, ESPN will be the ones who owe us an explanation. Verdict: Strong chance at the World Series...if they can just make the playoffs.

Los Angeles Dodgers. This is just an odd team. The rotation features Brad Penny, Odalis Perez, Jae Wong Seo, Derek Lowe, and Brett Tomko, all of whom are as likely to have Chavez Ravine-aided strong seasons as they are to crash and burn, Kaz Ishii-style. And Nomar playing first base remains one of those things we won’t really believe until we see it in person. [Ed. note: Nomar missed the opener with a strained ribcage. Whee!] Is this really how the third act of his career is supposed to play out? This team has no significant strengths, but no glaring weaknesses either. In this weak division, that may be good enough. Verdict: No wild card, but the division race will come down to the final weekend.

San Diego Padres. Still essentially a one-man pitching staff with a doubles offense. That was good enough to take the division last year, while at the same time only being good enough for a .500 record. Unless new second baseman Josh Barfield turns out to be the second coming of Rogers Hornsby, the Fathers will not likely improve on '05, and .500 can't possibly be good enough to advance two years in a row, can it? Verdict: No, it can't.

Arizona Diamondbacks. New management team inherits a work in progress. The BoB may represent the promised land to blocked prospects Chris Young, Stephen Drew and Conor Jackson, but it's probably the Isle of Elba for the likes of Orlando Hernandez. Welcome to "Perspectives." I'm your host, Lionel Osborne. Verdict: Spotty results while the lineup shakes out, but the clear division favorite a year from now.

Colorado Rockies. Those who argue that Coors Field is too extreme an environment to field a competitive team forget the 1995 Rockies, which featured a fearsome lineup and made the playoffs before falling to the eventual champion Braves. Too bad Todd Helton does not make a fearsome lineup all by himself. Also, too bad for Dan O’Dowd that more free agent hitters don’t look at Coors in hopes of rejuvenating their careers. Shouldn’t Juan Gonzalez, Ben Grieve, or J.T. Snow have rolled through town by now? Verdict: another ugly season, but Byung-Hyun Kim impresses enough to be traded to a contender for the stretch drive, setting up another traumatic fall for our favorite submariner. Well, second favorite after Kent Tekulve.

Staying Tuned

2006-03-31T16:20:00.000-08:00

No, we haven't died yet. We just decided there's no better time than March to duck out for a quick Mozambique getaway to refuel for a long and glorious MLB season. (Actually there were many better times and no Mozambique, but what's done is done.) The day when we can quit our nine-to-five jobs and focus on MLBeat full time, steadily approaching as it may be, has not yet arrived. Until then, a natural lull in the postings is often a possibility as the dreaded "life events" warrant. Such are the quirky charms of the amateur sports blogosphere.

Fear not though, for on tap are such heavily anticipated items as a recap of the much-ballyhooed World Baseball Classic, an update on the ongoing Cheater Chronicles, and of course our full-on 2006 Preview, but in the meantime we owe it to you to at least gloss over some of the best of March's happenings:

The Soriano flap. This has actually worked out well as possible for the average fan. It's been months since Nationals GM Jim Bowden, in a classic case of How Not To, traded for Soriano to man the outfield. Right away Soriano complained, but the rest of the winter was apparently a game of chicken: neither side budged, and Soriano apparently didn't even bother learning how to play his potential new position, judging by his spring training mishaps. Soriano has never had any leverage in this saga, but that doesn't make Bowden any smarter for bringing him on board. But highlight-addicted fans will surely enjoy the escapades of a man primed to make the outfield look much harder than Ryan Klesko or Lonnie "Skates" Smith ever did.

The annual onset of Mets pessimism is late in coming. Just pointing out that the pundits are more hopeful for the Mets than any year since the 20th century, as much a function of the Braves' numerous question marks as anything else. But let's stay prepared for the inevitable April losing streak -- perhaps coinciding with their early jaunt out here to Telephone Park -- and remain confident that by July the only remaining mystery will be how long until Philly blows it again.

Steroids. Chances are you've heard about this suddenly urgent issue. It's much ado about...well, not nothing, but at this point it's unclear what exactly. We all know Barry Bonds has been established as a juicer, certainly, but at this point much of the media focus seems to be on the prevalence of steroids amongst the witches yet to be hunted in the league, mixed in with a certain degree of resignation because Bonds still appears to be the only man who can stop himself from playing this year. Meanwhile, a great debate is stirring up as a Bud Selig investigation (a phrase which ranks up there with "diet bottled water" in terms of potency) gets underway, spurred by the hesitance of major sponsors like Pepsi to underwrite any hypothetical Aaron-surpassing celebrations. But Bonds plans to play, and his 2.000 spring OPS leaves little doubt as to his expected effectiveness when he does take the field. Frankly, if Game of Shadows is to be believed (which it is), and if Bonds has never tested positive for anything more than general assholery (which he hasn't), then there's not much reason to think he'll be off the "shit" this year, despite all the self-righteous concern swirling about him.

Bronson Arroyo thrown under the bus. Poor bastard had it all: rock band idol status, a spot in Boston's rotation, the coveted status of being one of the fewer and fewer remaining 2004 postseason heroes, a fresh contract extension, a team that looked like it was really going to need him in '06, plus...well, I guess those cornrows were once appealing to somebody out there. Now, despite recent asurances of a future in Boston, he's been banished to Flyball Pitcher's Hell along with Eric Milton and Co.

I sign up for five fantasy leagues. Thus shattering my previous single-season best of three. Look, you don't understand, okay? I don't have a problem. There's no problem. You're the one with the problem. Shut up! I hate this family! ::Runs upstairs crying::

Ankiel hits another bump in the road. Now there are rumors of knee trouble, but not all is lost. Apparently the Cardinals are looking for a way to push Ankiel through waivers so that, once unclaimed, he can return to the minors to start the season, and reports of a knee injury will certainly help scare teams away. I guess this is because Ankiel is out of options. Have you ever looked at the rules for options? I'm pretty sure someone is making them up as they go along.

Jimmy Rollins prepares to hit the ground running. At least until he goes 0-for-4 in the opener, thus ending his 36-game hitting streak and dissolving the suspense. Soak it in, Jimmy, while it's still there.

Retirements. Al Leiter, master of the cutter and hopefully a future broadcaster. Tuffy Rhodes, a name forever synonymous with Opening Day glory. Marquis Grissom, onetime basestealing wizard turned late-career platoon asset. And last but not least, the baseball world can finally bid adieu to Anna Benson, before she even got a chance to have a Morganna phase.

ESPN does some things right for a change. We like to rip on them, as does much of the outside commentariat. And frankly, they deserve it, for reasons too numerous to mention. But they still have some strong columnists on staff, and a couple of recent pieces in particular deserve mention. This one, by Page 2 editor David Schoenfield, bitterly bemoans the tragic fact that baseball fans still drink the competitive imbalance Kool-Aid. And this Insider-only piece by Buster Olney addresses the ongoing steroids charade with such damning vitriol that anything else we were going to say on the subject has been rendered moot.

Everybody Breathe Regular....

2006-03-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

Okay, so the full naked exposure of Barry Bonds has finally happened. Welcome, 2006 season, here's your dominating lead story before we even can get started. Great. Since everyone will now be forced to discuss steroids all year long -- again -- and since we can see no feasible way around it, we have a smattering of thoughts and predictions for the fallout:

-It bears repeating: baseball in 2006 just got a lot less fun thanks to this 8.7 earthquake of a story. It's an inevitability anytime politicians decide to involve themselves, and you can cue the self-righteous invective from John McCain in 5, 4, 3....

-This is sort of a tragedy in the ancient Greek sense, because the same thing that helped infuse Bonds with such greatness proved to be his undoing. But even sadder for baseball fans is the fact that Bonds was already a Hall of Famer before 1998, when his jealousy of Mark McGwire reportedly drove him to start using. Nobody will remember this. He was already the hitter I least wanted to see coming up in a tight situation against my team, the toughest out in the game, tougher than Ken Griffey Jr., Tony Gwynn, Albert Belle, or anyone else. But jealousy and ambition wouldn't let him be content with that. Tragedy.

-On the bright side, it's about time that Pedro Gomez started to reap dividends from his relentless shadowing of Bonds over the past--oh wait, you mean he didn't even get this story? It was a pair of SF Chronicle reporters instead? Oh.

-The most sickening aspect for me so far? That amidst all the bravery of this grand expose, Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams are either unable or unwilling to name any of the other seven NFLers and four MLBers implicated in this scandal by their apparent involvement with Greg Anderson, Victor Conte et al. Why not? What honor are we trying to protect here? Whose agents have had to go how far under the table to prevent the naming of their clients? I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it.

-Hopefully the Giants do not escape their share of blame here. Their complicity in this whole saga, up to and including their spin of Bonds as a gentler, rehabilitated personality in the midst of his home run chase, is as damning as if Peter Magowan had just injected Bonds himself. Already their 2006 season looks doomed -- not that Randy Winn and Matt Morris were going to lead them to glory anyway -- and we can expect ticket sales to take a nice precipitous drop. Everyone knew that the post-Bonds Giants were going to be a disaster area; that process may have started ahead of schedule.

-It looks like Hank Aaron will now be safe at 755 HR, which is another nice unintended consequence. Too bad though, because allowing The Cheater to set the new record would eventually set the table for Alex Rodriguez to come riding in on his white horse (a horse of no particular national affiliation). If anyone was asking the question of what it would take for A-Rod to revive his limpid image, this would have done the trick, albeit a decade later than he and Scott Boras might like.

-Bonds may be stricken from the record books -- although I'm not sure it should happen -- but nobody will ever be able to take away the TV ratings, ticket sales, World Series appearances (where Bonds' OBP was only .700), or that ungodly May 2001 series against Atlanta, when Bonds homered six times in three games. Nobody will be able to take away the feeling of seeing Bonds come to the plate and knowing, in a sport where a 60% failure rate is wildly successful, knowing that Bonds was either going to launch a homer or be walked. It was exhilirating to see, and at the same time the natural order of baseball was thrown completely out of whack. The commentariat began floating proposals for altering intentional walk rules to allow baserunners to automatically advance a base. We got to see the very fabric of the game being altered in such a way that it *had* to be unnatural. Not the sort of thing we're likely to see ever again in our lifetimes.

-Until the next cheater, that is. And there will be one, if there isn't one already, if not several dozen. Human growth hormone is still practically undetectable, as are at least ten to twelve designer drugs that you and I don't even know about yet. Try not to think about it. Hey, how about that World Baseball Classic? U-S-A! U-S-A!

Peace

2006-03-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

As a Braves fan, Kirby Puckett attained Natural Enemy status for me in the 1991 World Series with his famous Game Six-winning homer off Charlie Liebrandt. There he stayed, his jovial face adorning a WANTED poster in my mind alongside the likes of Jim Leyritz, Ed Sprague, Eric Gregg, and every New York Yankee since 1996. So all the stuff I'd read about Puckett's infectious personality rolled right off my shoulders. Even when it was reported this afternoon that he'd passed away, I felt nothing.

Until I went here.

I've sung the praises of this particular site before, but this collection of Puckett testimonials is truly amazing, to say nothing of the shocking quickness with which they have acculumated. Now, finally, I begin to understand what all the fuss was about.

(The richness of this link doubles as a tribute to the website itself, and to the fact that one's readership is half the battle. Yeah, we should maybe try to work on that.)

Posted At the Risk of Pigeonholing Ourselves

2006-03-06T16:05:00.000-08:00

That Deadspin's Will Leitch rose early this morning to take some cuts against John Rocker is impressive, inasmuch as Leitch's job is to entertain and this, well, is a damn entertaining premise.

That Leitch uses his lengthy recap of the experience to work in the question, largely unasked in today's sports media, of why Rocker remains such a vilified character because of his comments in an article that ran in Sports Illustrated seven years ago...that's impressive as well. (The answer, you ask? We need demons in the public eye to make us feel better about ourselves and our own, milder prejudices. For Exhibit B, see last night's Oscar winner. Oh, and it doesn't help that Rocker may be one of those guys who is just a little hard to like, but we digress.)

More impressive than that? If you look at the pictures, you'll notice that Leitch, an avowed St. Louis Cardinals fan, showed up in a Rick Ankiel jersey. If we weren't drooling with admiration for all things Deadspin before, suffice it to say we are now. (Envy, too, since we've always wanted one of those, or more specifically one of the batting practice t-shirts that are way more reasonably priced, and here Leitch is, parading it around like it's nothing. But we digress again.)

For kicks/archiving purposes, here's a link to what appears to be an old New York Times piece on the post-meltdown Ankiel. Our unhealthy fascination with the life of a once-talented pitcher with Steve Blass syndrome shows no signs of remission. That is all.

ESPN Anti-Advertisement, Part II

2006-03-01T23:41:00.000-08:00

The message boards for ESPN Fantasy Baseball leagues are shifty, as no person is allowed to keep more than one message posted at a time. So I took it upon myself to record for posterity the text of our particular league's message board (the league is called 24-Hour Procrastination Center), as it stood at the date and time of posting. Come tomorrow morning it may well look completely different, but the overall tone is likely to be the same.

(We promise to take it easy on the fantasy baseball stories in '06. We here at MLBeat know of the potential resemblance to rambling on about one's golf game or one's NCAA tournament bracket. But we consider ourselves to be performing an important service in this case, and we can't promise we won't indulge ourselves in future, less-important cases.)

A brief backstory: One team, suspected to be the JNLV Tigers, has anonymously protested every single accepted trade since the league's inception a year ago. The protested trades have gone to ESPN's monolithic review board, which then ruled to veto at least fifty percent of the time (a conservative estimate). The league's managers, who represent decades of collective fantasy baseball experience, have detected no rationale for which trades make it through the system. Various appeals and inquiries to ESPN have gone unheeded.

LEAGUE MESSAGES

Scott W, Pawtucket Redwolves Wed, Mar 1, 3:15 PM
Do you think ESPN ever looks at leagues message boards and knows what people think of their games?

Taylor U, The Mission Magicians Wed, Mar 1, 10:02 AM
interesting post, dan. you make it sound like ESPN is going the way of MTV, which would be unfortunate if true. but sports can be such a huge market on their own without the glitz/glamour, so yahoo and CBS are more than happy to step in to fill the void.

------

it appears the dissatisfaction with ESPN's service is more than justified and well on its way to unanimous in this league...except perhaps for our lone protester / s h i t h e a d. unfortunately i'm not sure what to do next, except for maybe hacking into JNLV's account and committing an act of fantasy baseball terrorism.

because i'm all about accountability, i must take this opportunity to apologize to everyone i personally convinced to pony up $50 for this league, myself included. i'll still be showing up to compete this year, just a little more reliant on the waiver wire than usual i guess, but it'll be a cold day in hell before i recommend ESPN over the myriad alternatives again.

Daniel Z, Agents of Fortune Wed, Mar 1, 6:39 AM
It was pretty plain to see the writing on the wall when ESPN decided to make sports akin to Hollywood. Everything is flash and no substance...it's a sad state of affairs in sports all around. It seems media types like ESPN are more interested in who went to what party and who they were with rather than focusing on what their bread and butter really want...sports. It's filtered down to staples like their fantasy sports and sooner than they think they'll be wondering what happened and how do we fix it. But it will no doubt be too late...we will all have moved on to greener pastures. ESPN has gone the way of the DoDo bird and broadcast news....irrelevant and hardly noticable anymore.

Patrick F, No Hope of Redemption Wed, Mar 1, 6:39 AM
Yeah... I would much prefer a league that, when my 800th trade attempt is vetoed, would at least tell me why. I am really tired of having to go through 3 days of review each time and then having proposals rejected without knowing which way they feel the trade is tilted unfairly. Half the time I can't even figure out what the logic is behind the review. It's killing me. How are we supposed to trade if we don't know what the standards are for review? (esp. when we KNOW it's going to be protested!).

Mike S, OSU BEAVERS Sat, Feb 25, 7:04 PM
ESPN sucks. Each year I have bought around 20-25 teams in each sport. This year I have zero baseball teams other than this adopted dead team. I am sticking to CBS where I can make money and I dont have to put up with the crap of ESPN. Their service has gone to hell over the past couple years.

Joey R, Kevin Brown,To The Glue Factory Fri, Feb 24, 10:52 AM
i'm wondering the same thing. after this league finishes up, remind me to avoid espn fantasy leagues like the plague. why i spent $50 on this is beyond my comprehension.

Gabe W, (Pay)dro Martinez Sun, Jan 15, 4:32 PM
I agree. I will be on vacation from the 9th to 16th, and I very much would like to be there for the draft this year.

Bobby G, Unbeatables Fri, Aug 26, 12:28 PM
Tigers just moved Randy Johnson onto his bench for his start today despite the fact that he has less than half of the maximum allotted starts for the whole season with just over a month to go!

Marc D, The Odeon Panthers Sat, Jun 18, 3:43 PM
Upheld. It's all good. Given the recent rash of injuries to my team and the thin availability on the waiver wire, Guillen and Thome (with precieved upside) were more of a gain for this season's production. Cabrera will be missed, but Edgardo will not. Besides, you know I'm a sucker for Thome every year, Dan. He usually doesn't disappoint. No acrimony and no bad vibes. Let's play on!

The Feel Good Story of Right Now

2006-02-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

Along with the merciful onset of spring training comes the inevitable wave of STOBS (an MLBeat-coined acronym for Spring Training Optimism Bull Stories). Entertaining as some STOBS can be to read, and as eagerly as baseball fans, deprived of any updates for the previous four months, devour them like starving junkies, the acronym exists for a reason. There's an unusual amount of fluff to sift through, even for sportswriting. Barry Bonds will not play in '07, unless he does. Everyone has shown up to camp in the best shape of their careers. Barry Zito is hitting 103 on the radar gun. It is hard to resist the siren song of excessive optimism, but we must try.

Except for this one, though, because faithful MLBeat readers know that Rick Ankiel is near and dear to our hearts. Regrettably the article is Insider-only, but MLBeat is bringing you the executive summary of this Ankiel-related STOBS if for no other reason than Rick Ankiel stories, not to mention Peter Gammons articles in general, should be for everyone.

Ankiel, in his attempt to reinvent himself as a hitter, managed a .859 OPS between A and AA in 359 ABs last year. He is out of options, meaning he is likely to get a shot with the big club in '06, meaning someone at MLBeat is likely to spend a late-round pick on him in a fantasy draft to be determined.
Alan Benes, who along with Ankiel is attempting a comeback in Cardinals camp, recovered from his umpteenth shoulder surgery to finish 2005 at AA Springfield, where he scrapped together a 5.79 ERA in fifteen relief appearances.
According to Gammons, we mere mortals "can't fully understand" why Ankiel and Benes would keep trying to play baseball for a living, despite no longer being Cy Young contenders.
They keep trying because they love baseball. I know, I can't fully understand it either.

Who Let the Cat Out?

2006-02-17T16:32:00.000-08:00

Every now and then a sportswriter not only gets something right, but also decides on a whim to make it a part of the public record. Check out this piece by Rotowire's Christopher Linn, published recently on Yahoo Sports, titled "The Fundamentals of Baseball Analysis." Not a sexy headline, you might say, certainly not as sexy as, say, "Scott Erickson Signs Minor-League Deal with Yankees," but to this particular Internet scavenger, it was straight smokin'.

Linn's timing is immaculate: we've got eight solid months of baseball ahead of us, and now three-quarters of all baseball analysis in the civilized world has now officially been rendered superfluous. It's not that any of his conclusions are remotely revolutionary, just that they are all conveniently located here in one place, as opposed to each one unraveling into a 2,000-word Jayson Stark column.

As Linn mentions in the intro, the piece was originally intended for his Rotowire team as a general primer, not unlike the literature the MLBeat crew used to compile and disseminate back in our Studlife days. (Question, however: how did someone land a job at Rotowire without knowing all this stuff in the first place?) A brief sampling from the buffet:

"Batting average is just one component of on-base percentage, and RBI is but one component of advancing oneself and others around the bases." True.
"Essentially, that someone HAS BEEN on a tear or HAS BEEN SLUMPING doesn't make it more or less likely that they will streak or slump in the future." So true. For many people this is Statistical Fallacy Number One.
"Triples are just doubles for fast guys. When young players have a lot of either, they often develop home run power as they get stronger physically with age." Mostly true, although triples aren't always that likely to become homers, as Deion Sanders and Cristian Guzman could probably tell you.
"Studies have shown that for the most part BALLS IN PLAY AFFECT EVERY PITCHER THE SAME WAY. Essentially, there is a 30 percent chance that a ball in play off of anyone (whether it's Aaron Sele or Pedro Martinez) falls in for a hit." Ohhh, yes! True! So true, in fact, it's also become known as Voros' Law.

I've taken it upon myself to run a fantasy league this year, one of those cheap Yahoo jobs that I've stocked with novice managers. The idea is to reunite with some old friends, help introduce them to the labyrinthine world of fantasy baseball, and open up a can on them in the meantime. I can't imagine a better starting point for them than Linn's article. Here's hoping none of them stumbled upon it.

The National Squad Calcifies

2006-02-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Finally, ballplayers are showing up in Florida and Arizona. And finally, we are starting to see answers to our many offseason curiosities.

For example, the American WBC Roster? Right here. Thirty players, fourteen pitchers...and, due to the pitch-count limits, only four starters: Roger Clemens, Jake Peavy, C. C. Sabathia and Dontrelle Willis.

-That leaves us with a bullpen of ten relievers. Let's just say that you don't want to be trailing the Americans after the fourth inning, because then it's a quick lights out with Chad Cordero, Brad Lidge, Huston Street, Joe Nathan and Billy Wagner sealing the deal.

-You would think our proud nation could produce a better starting outfield than Johnny Damon-Vernon Wells-Ken Griffey Jr., but fret not, compatriots, as they're being capably backed up by Randy Winn, Jeff "Freedom" Francoeur and Matt Holliday. (Huh? Bobby Higginson wasn't available?)

-On the other hand, the U.S. infield is a veritable melee of marquee position battles. Third base: Chipper Jones or A-Rod? Shortstop: Derek Jeter or Michael Young? Second base: Young or Chase Utley? First base: Derrek Lee or Mark Teixiera? MLBeat predicts these skirmishes will be won or lost on that ancient battleground also known as the cell phones of their respective agents. Fire 'em up!

-Seems we will be employing the Official Bobby Cox-Approved Strategy of Carrying Three Catchers for Some Reason. Michael Barrett may well get a look on the days Jason Varitek sits, while Brian Schneider should go ahead and invest in a nice and stupid deck of cards.

Caribbean Series

2006-02-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

Ok, here's another question. Can America expect to win the world baseball classic when the Venezuelans and Dominicans are staying in prime shape whilst battling each other in the Caribbean Series?

For instance, when was the last time Dominican star Miguel Tejada hit a three run home run? Yesterday.

When was the last time Michael Young hit one? September 23, 2005.

Unfortunately, the powers that be have rigged the WBC by setting rules limiting pitch counts. Who does this help? The U.S. Who does it hurt? The Caribbean League studs who have been throwing all winter and could easily stand in tomorrow and throw 120 pitches. Too bad for them, the final round limit is 95. Why the handholding?

And one other thing. What is with this Chinese Taipei bullshit? I challenge you to look on a map and find me Chinese Taipei. As far as I know, the country's name is Taiwan.

All I can say is: George Dub better get his ass down to Florida to start a little mini camp to get Brett Myers and company back into shape. Or else Hugo Chavez is gonna kick his ass from here to...Chinese Taipei.

Five Questions for a Slow Week

2006-02-02T14:59:00.000-08:00

1. If it's true that the Mets traded Kris Benson to Baltimore to be rid of his provocative wife -- not an entirely unreasonable assumption, since Benson is way more valuable than Jorge Julio even if he remains a league-average starter -- then have they forgotten that sports is primarily supposed to be entertainment, and that few things are more entertaining than waking up in the morning and discovering the latest Anna Benson headline?

2. Can someone assign an all-access camera crew to Jeff Bagwell's upcoming spring training tryout with the Astros? It would make quite the documentary, complete with a heartrending final shot of Bagwell weeping softly as they cart him off to the glue factory.

3. Did nobody tell Tim Hudson that he would need to be ahead of his regular preseason schedule to be ready for the World Baseball Classic?

4. Since the death of substance abuse in MLB has been greatly exaggerated, as Buster Olney points out in this Insider-only piece, can we make the argument that anyone who gets a 50-game suspension next year deserves it on boneheadedness alone?

5. Um...how about that World Cup draw? Come on, I told you it was a slow week.

Consumer Reports, Fantasy Baseball Edition

2006-01-26T23:51:00.000-08:00

member: taymasterj
league: 24-Hour Procrastination Center

Hi, I've written a number of times with questions/complaints about your fantasy game, particularly your trade review system. One of our teams anonymously protests every single agreed-upon trade and has done so since our league began. Annoying, yes, but I could live with this if ESPN's trade review process was less monolithic and inscrutable. A couple of offseason trades were vetoed this morning, as were several of our trades during last season, and as an experienced fantasy player I can honestly say I have no idea why ESPN decided they should be overturned. No explanation is provided. Many of the trades in question were described by your auto-reviewer--I'm guessing it's a machine--as "too imbalanced to maintain the integrity of your league," but looking at the players involved I simply couldn't tell which side was supposed to be favored. I have been playing fantasy baseball for 8 years now and have never seen anything like this. We are left with the feeling that it will be impossible to improve our teams via trade, which is a significant part of the enjoyment of fantasy baseball. That I actually spent money so I could endure this frustration makes it much worse. What exactly did I pay for?
I apologize for the lengthy email, I know it probably isn't fun for you the ESPN employee to read, and I know I am supposed to make suggestions, so here we go: Improve the trade-review apparatus. Have real humans inspecting the particulars, not merely algorithms or statistical projections. Give a real, non-automated reason for vetoing a trade, so we would know how to make it more fair. Give us guidelines for what types of trades will be vetoed (I can promise you there are no attempts at collusion in our league.) Allow our league to turn off trade review with a 75%, or even 80%, majority, as our lone protester isn't about to help us achieve a unanimous vote. Maybe most importantly, give a human response to complaints, so that we the paying customers feel that we have actually paid for something.
I try to be fair and reasonable in situations such as these. If our league's situation hasn't changed by the start of the '06 season, then I will have zero basis for recommending ESPN Fantasy Baseball to any of my friends in the present or future. Surely some or most of you have participated in, or at least seen, CBS Sportsline or Yahoo leagues. I can't be the only one that sees the Grand Canyon of a quality gap at this point. Most of the explanation I've received in the past for similar complaints pointed to the sheer volume of email and league activity you have to deal with; all I can say is that if these deficiencies continue then the volume will become less and less of a problem. I sincerely hope this email gets into the hands of someone who can help. Thank you for reading it.
Taylor Upchurch

The Myth of the Heretofore Uniformly Distributed Record Book

2006-01-19T23:15:00.000-08:00

So Terry Frai tries to write a column for ESPN.com wherein he defends the NHL's drug situation in part by hiding behind the drug situations of other sports:

(a) 27 strikes and you're out -- and such belated implementation that records should be divided into "juiced" and "non-juiced" eras;

Let's stop right there. Are records divided into "dead-ball" and "non-dead-ball" eras? How about "raised mound" and "regular mound" eras? Do we sort the all-time statistics for triples to account for the huge Forbes-ian fields of yesteryear, or for the ongoing love affair with Astroturf that has only recently begun to fade? Did we wipe all the slates clean when the league became integrated? Or when Baltimore's Camden Yards ushered in a phase of new ballparks built with significantly smaller dimensions? What about when the spitball was outlawed?

Major League Baseball has never been the same and it never will be. It is a centuries-long novel, surviving on a cast of thousands that arise out of the dust, only to inevitably break down and return to it. It is older than the United Nations, the airplane, and the Spanish-American War. Where in that novel is it written that records are required to be equal-opportunity across generations? Did you know that twelve of the top twenty single-season batting averages came before 1900, and that you have to go all the way to 37th to find a season after 1950, and even that was Tony Gwynn in a strike-shortened 1994? Are people really going to put the book down because the most recent chapter was mildly unsettling, or are they going to turn the page and read the next one?

Benedict, Part II

2006-01-17T22:19:00.000-08:00

Looks like the new answer is Choice F: Alex Rodriguez is now an American again. Unbelievable. If the World Classic were pickup basketball, this would be the guy who waits until four guys have made their "entry" free throws before taking his turn, so as to align himself with the squad that's shaping up as more talented. At what point do the U.S. and Dominican organizations say screw it, kick him out entirely, and replace him with David Eckstein / Manny Alexander?

Benedict

2006-01-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

Less than two months now until the ballyhooed World Baseball Classic finally gets underway. As for the question of how we got all these marquee names to sign up, we can guess that they fall under one of these categories: 1) playing for pride and national glory, or 2) convinced to participate by the Players Association.

Oh, and there is a third category, reserved exclusively for the Worst Best Player of All Time:

A-Rod: 'I want to say it out loud: I am Dominican' (ESPN.com, 7/14)
A-Rod leaning to Dominican team in Classic (ESPN.com, 12/14)
A-Rod says he'll sit out World Baseball Classic (ESPN.com, 12/16)
Report: A-Rod to play for U.S. (ESPN.com, 1/4)
A-Rod on Dominican roster, not sure he'll play (ESPN.com, 1/17)

All you IQ test-takers out there know the next headline in this sequence will be:
A) "A-Rod to sit out Classic...again"
B) "A-Rod reaffirms intent to suit up for D.R., but mistakenly shows up to press conference in U.S. jersey"
C) "A-Rod to apply for Japanese citizenship"
D) "A-Rod announces intent to leave Yanks, play for St. Louis Cardinals in '06"
E) "Dominican Republic to become 51st U.S. state, A-Rod says"

Five Reasons Why Baseball is Better than the NFL

2006-01-15T06:23:00.000-08:00

(1) Injuries.

Cause guys don't lie on the field, motionless, for dozens of minutes at a time, while medical staff and players block camera shots. In baseball, major injuries occur only a few times a year (e.g. Garciaparra's muscle tear or Robin Ventura's broken leg). In the NFL, nary a game goes by without a player being carted off (e.g. Carson Palmer, Ben Roethlisberger). Major injuries slow down the NFL, and baseball is better off without them. Baseball remains entertaining without the need to have guys run into each other all the time.

(2) Celebrations.

Granted, baseball's hop is the silliest, most awkward game-ending celebration in all of sport, paling in comparison to the simple but elegant cold Gatorade bath. But, NFL players celebrating such trivial plays as sacks, tackles, pass break-ups, and first downs are unfortunately ubiquitous during the course of NFL games. And the little dances they do? There's the Sheriff, who twirls his six-shooters on his fingers before holstering them, and also the winged bird man who swoops across the field of play after tackling the kick returner. Please! How annoyingly incongruous to the underlying play. Does tackling the kick-off returner really merit a little dance at the 25 yard-line? Why not have pitchers just round the bases after a sacrifice bunt?

And those jumps into the stands. It used to be neat when only one team was doing it (the Packers I think?) But now it's gotten lame. In baseball, players don't charge into the stands hoping to be groped by fat, bearded strangers.

And, for the record, the uprights aren't made for dunking. Hey, NFL, how about this: Fuck the extra points and the two point conversions. Let's just give the scoring team two PATs if the guy who just scored can dunk it through the uprights. Extra-point kicks are so perfunctory anyways.

(3) Instant Replay.

I need only two words to make my point here: Instant Replay. What do I mean by that? Are you unconvinced? OK, wait ten minutes (while I duck under a dark sheet and make out with a tiny television) and I'll have an answer for you. What are you supposed to do in the meantime? I dunno, watch some commercials with Howie Long and John Madden in them. Or, re-read what I've just written—over and over and over and over and over.

(4) Flags.

Just another means by which the NFL game slows down. To think that I hear people complain that baseball is "too slow." At least in baseball we don't wait a minute while the officiating crew gathers to find out what the hell just happened on the last play. The only time we care about flags in baseball is when they're blowing out.

(5) FOX/CBS/DISNEY.

At least for baseball games, fans don't rely on the exclusive trio of FOX, CBS, and DISNEY to broadcast the games.

How To / How Not To

2006-01-04T00:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the pilot episode of How To / How Not To, brought to you by the makers of MLBeat's Offseason Player Movement Chart. "The Offseason Player Movement Chart: It's Keeping-Track-tastic!"

In today's episode we take a look at Positioning Newly Acquired Players.

How Not To. Nationals trade OFs Brad Wilkerson and Termel Sledge to Texas for 2B Alfonso Soriano. Nationals GM Jim Bowden, who already has Jose Vidro at second base, announces that Soriano will play the outfield, while also confessing that he hasn't actually spoken to Soriano about moving to the outfield, a proposition Soriano has openly resisted in the past. (And a misguided resistance at that, given his history with the glove at second.) Soriano not only flatly refuses to move, he indicates his preference to sign with an American League team as soon as his contract expires in the winter, citing his own comfort level playing in the junior circuit. Result: Bowden must trade Soriano again to avoid saddling his team with a disgruntled, pitching-park-depressed sieve for a second baseman, and the only available options are now American League teams, further reducing the chances he gets fair value in return.

How To. Astros sign OF Preston Wilson to a one-year contract:

"Right now, it's unclear where Wilson will play.
Wilson has played primarily center field, where Willy Taveras started last season. [Taveras] batted .291 and stole 34 bases, finishing second to Philadelphia's Ryan Howard in the NL Rookie of the Year voting.
If the Astros keep Taveras and play Wilson, they would have to move either Lance Berkman or Chris Burke out of left field or Jason Lane from right.
Purpura said manager Phil Garner will make those decisions."

That's all for us today, folks. Tune in next time for How To / How Not To, as we discuss Placing Neifi Perez in a Big League Batting Order. Happy January!

Open Topic: Mets or Yankees

2005-12-31T14:04:00.000-08:00

Look, I really hope we don't have another Subway Series. If one loomed, I would lobby the NYC transit union to strike and block it. But I have to accept that at this point, if the Yankees get one more decent starter, it is a possibility.

So I ask: Who wins this series?

The Yankees have a dynamite lineup, right? But don't the Mets, too? Let's say the Mets do get Manny. We know by this point in the season that the Mets can get star players whilst trading only prospects (cf. the Delgado trade). That would give them a lineup looking something like:

Reyes, SS
Beltran, CF
Ramirez, LF
Delgado, 1B
Floyd, RF
Wright, 3B
Whoever, 2B
LoDuca, C

Also starring:

J. Franco, PH
V. Diaz, 4th OF
En. Chavez, PR
X. Nady, Maybe

Then the pitching staff would be:

Martinez
Glavine
Seo
Trachsel
Benson/Zambrano

Then the bullpen has some question marks. Wagner closes, the Mets might trade Heilman for Baez (even though Heilman is awesome), but past that I don't know who half these guys are:

Heath Bell
Chad Bradford
Bartolome Fortunato
Tim Hamulack
Juan Padilla
Royce Ring
Mitch Wylie

These guys have some unbelievable names. I mean Royce, Mitch, Bartolome, Heath? Wow, but can they pitch? Answer is: Juan Padilla had a pretty good year last year, with 1.49 ERA and 1.02 WHIP over 36.1 innings. But Fortunato wasn't even in the league last year and Hamulack has a career ERA of 23.14 in 2.1 innings. Mytch Wylie is a pure rookie. Chad Bradford was OK for Boston in 23.1 IP last season. Bell has a ways to go. He threw 46.2 innings last season, which is probably his best stat. He had a 5.59 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP with a not-bad 43 K's. That about does it. Even if they trade Heilman for Baez, that still leaves them short in the bullpen. Maybe they could trade an outfielder for another arm.

Nonetheless, they have decent pitching and a lot of hitting. They could make the Series.

The Yankees look like this:

Batting:

Damon, CF
Jeter, SS
Rodriguez, 3B
Sheffield, RF
Matsui, LF
Giambi, 1B
Posada, C
Williams, DH
Cano, 2B

Posada and Williams would be left out of other lineups, but as for the rest.... The bench is a little scary, as it usually is:

Miguel Cairo
Bubba Crosby
Kelly Stinnett
Melky Cabrera
Andy Phillips
Kevin Reese
Felix Escalona

The starting five will come from:

Johnson
Mussina
Pavano
Wright
Small
Wang
Chacon

The Mets probably have a better one through five. But the Yankees bullpen is fully stocked, perhaps not with the best—but each player has a role:

Sturtze: middle innings, maybe 7th inn.
Villone: middle innings, spot starts, lefty
Proctor: middle innings, mop up
Small/Chacon: middle innings
Myers: lefty
Dotel: late innings, once healthy
Farnsworth: set-up man, closer if Rivera's hamstring/groin acts up
Rivera: closer

Because the starting three are iffy past Johnson, this bullpen is going to get a lot of work. Dotel and Farnsworth are much better when not closing. If Rivera is around, this pen will hum.

It could be a high-scoring series. Because the Yanks have a better bullpen at this point, I'd take the Yanks in seven.

News from the Winter Leagues

2005-12-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

Except for the days sandwiching the Major League All-Star Break, there is good baseball being played in North America just about every day of the year. Today is no exception. There are numerous major leaguers who do not stop taking swings and throwing strikes when October rolls around. These players make their way down to the Caribbean to play in the Caribbean Winter League.

The baseball action in this league is interesting for a number of reasons. There are a lot of young, up-and-coming major leaguers in this league, including highly touted prospects like Andy Marté and Fabio Castro . Plus, it's not just for Hispanic or Latino players. For example, Luke Scott of the Astros, Aaron Heilman of the Mets, and Michael Restovich of the Pirates are all playing (and playing well) in the Caribbean this year.

It is somewhat difficult to find out exactly what is going on in this league. Perhaps this is because most of the information I can find is in Español. So, instead of looking for stats I look for estadísticas; instead of looking to see who is leading in home runs, I look to see who has hit the most jonrones. The ERA leader leads not in ERA but in EFE. Don't even ask me what that stands for.

The Caribbean League is composed of three divisions: oriental, occidental, and comodín. Teams hail from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. I have been pulling up the box scores page for the Tigres del Licey—El Glorioso!—of the Dominican League. From here, I can download box scores from the past few months and go through the names of the players to see which I recognize. The boxscores download as a PDF and include all of the games played on that day. I also go to the central home page for theVenezuelan teams. This page has a pretty good estadísticas section in which there is a link to the líderes for the 2005-06 Caribbean league season. Once you click on this link, you will pull up a PDF document running down the standings and the stats for the batting and pitching leaders.

Keeping up with these stats is an excellent way to stay fit for the upcoming fantasy baseball season. For instance, maybe Chad Gaudin (whom the A's recently snatched from Toronto) could be someone to keep your eye on. He's 3-3 with a 2.19 EFE and 40 ponches in 53.1 innings. Or how about Michael Restovich? He's hitting .337 with 7 jonrones and 34 impulsadas. All of these numbers are league top-ten. Then there's Luke Scott with 9 jonrones. Maybe this is the year he starts hitting in Houston.

In no particular order here are some more names from the Caribbean League:

Henry Rodriguez (Oh Henry!) • Ramon Ortiz • Ronnie Belliard • Hanley Ramirez (traded from Boston to Florida in Beckett deal) • Yhency Brazoban (who is racking up the salvados) • Randall Simon • Jorgé Cantu • Pete Munro • Marcos Scutaro •etc.

Classic Conundrums

2005-12-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

As of 4 p.m. Pacific time today, the World Baseball Classic is still happening. Nations will square off in March for what appears to be little more than vague bragging rights. Major leaguers will be suiting up for different teams, in different alignments, not to mention snazzy new uniforms. ESPN will presumably televise the heck out of it. A-Rod will be nowhere to be found. This is baseball perfection, people.

Here are the current rosters, or at least the contingent of MLB players on rosters thus far. Upon perusing them, questions abound:

We're not gearing up for a 162-game season; the winning team will only play eight times. So why do some of the countries list thirty or more players? The Dominican Republic seems to be carrying 29 major leaguers thus far, and the U.S. lists over forty. Are they protecting themselves against an expected rash of dropouts? Are a handful of MLB all-stars prepared to be cut from the American and Dominican teams? Why did Al Leiter even bother to put his name on the Team USA list?
If someone holds that Dominican lineup to two runs in eight innings, does it immediately jump into the inner circle of the pantheon of baseball's best-pitched games alongside Jack Morris, Kerry Wood and Doc Gooden?
Supposing Team USA goes undefeated and wins the gold, they will play on March 7th, March 8th, and then they will alternate gamedays with days off until the final on the 20th, for a total of eight games. Now let's suppose the Americans settle on, say, Roger Clemens as their #1 starter. For their fifth game, on the 14th, will they run Clemens back out there on five days' rest? Do they go to their "fifth" starter, Mark Buehrle? Or the "seventh" starter, John Smoltz? Do they try to circumvent the concerns about preseason straining of pitchers by going Buehrle-Clemens-Halladay-Peavy-Pettitte-Smoltz-Sheets-Sabathia-Isringhausen in a nine-inning game? Would Barry Zito and Billy Wagner really be okay with "extra-inning insurance" duties in this scenario?
Has it been explained properly why the Netherlands get a team? Is Andruw Jones going to play eight positions at once? And while we're at it, what about Great Britain or Greece? Don't we want to watch a gaggle of Frenchmen trying to learn baseball on an international stage? Can't we be allowed to witness an Angolan player somehow making contact but proceeding to run to the wrong base?
Presumably the countries with only a handful of listed MLB participants (Panama, Korea) will fill out their rosters with local talent unknown to the peanut gallery of baseball fans worldwide. For simplicity's sake I will refer to them collectively as Paco Ruiz. What if Paco has a huge game in the preliminary round and catapults his underdog nation to the second round? Will Paco Ruiz jerseys start selling like hotcakes around the globe? Will the Yankees invite him to spring training to try out for the centerfield job? If Paco wins the job, and goes .330/.410/.500 in pinstripes, does it change the way we think about international scouting forever?
If Ken Griffey declares his intent to suit up for Team USA in the woods, does it make a sound?
If Team Italy makes a surprise run and wins the title behind the arms of Jason Grilli and Matt Mantei and the bats of Mike Piazza and Frank Catalonotto, do we disband the World Classic concept immediately out of shame, or do we insist on trying it again in four years?

All this, and we haven't even come to the Cuba problem yet. As Fidel Castro might say, you can't put a price tag on this.

At Last, We Have Traction

2005-12-12T20:04:00.000-08:00

ESPN.com has made Ugueth Urbina its top story as of this moment (Monday night, before the conclusion of Falcons-Saints). The worldwide leader has seen fit to interview Urbina and fellow Venezuelan Ozzie Guillen and publish the full transcripts (here and here), a tactic previously reserved for Terrell Owens hatchet jobs. The headline is "Urbina's Plight," and the picture is of him speaking into a microphone from behind bars, wearing what appears to be a particularly menacing Florida Panthers cap.

Seriously, stop what you're doing and read the two interviews. This is the best sports story of the year, staring us in the face, because it will be a case study in athletic glory and the way it plays in a serious, sensational, life-or-death situation, and in different countries where baseball is differently valued.

ESPN did well to score these interviews -- although it did take them two months -- and Pedro Gomez seems to cover a lot of bases with his questioning. Gomez was formerly most notable for being commissioned by ESPN to shadow Barry Bonds in the height of the home run record chase and ensuing BALCO scandal, but here we learn he is also ESPN's go-to guy when a major story breaks in a Spanish-speaking country. Not that we expected Jayson Stark or Peter Gammons to be chomping at the bit for this assignment.

It is notable that, earlier this morning, the story sat towards the bottom of the page, under Bill Simmons and "Today's Voices," in the "Must-Read" Section. Now, the Must-Read Section -- which we will no longer refer to in quotes, as it is a cherished household name -- the ESPN.com Must-Read section has certainly run some entertaining and informative pieces in the past.

But their use of the phrase "Must-Read" here is just a trick to get you to read something towards the bottom of a web page. Ain't a thing wrong with trying to get ahead in this newer and scrappier Internet age, but there's only one place to put a real Must-Read story in sports, and that's front and center. ESPN's editors probably didn't realize it until they saw the Urbina story skyrocketing through the most-viewed ranks, but at last, here it sits, right where it needs to be.

Things that are now going to transpire:
1. Urbina will get a fair trial, both from the Venezuelan justice system and the court of American public opinion, due to the severity and unusual nature of the charges.
2. Other sportswriters, such as those at CNN/SI, CBS Sportsline, and so on, will have to start addressing the story.
3. Letterman may or may not refer to the saga in his monologue, but Jon Stewart definitely will (if he hasn't already).
4. We might experience a resurgence in Reservoir Dogs references, trivia, and music, a resurgence that is at least four years premature.
5. Bill Simmons will make some jokes about it that flirt dangerously with being racially insensitive.
6. As someone we're relying on for background info, Ozzie Guillen will come to be more appreciated for his surprisingly well-spoken manner, once that well-spoken manner is translated into English.
7. Michael Vick, who just broke off a twenty-yard naked bootleg to school the entire Saints defense on MNF, will be back atop the headlines before too long. (This is already true on CBS Sportsline, which does not appear to acknowledge the Urbina story at all.)

As for the grand prediction? I may just be another two-bit blogger with more Wi-Fi capability than legal knowledge, but it's hard to see a happy ending for Urbina, especially given the numerous still-unanswered questions. Did Ugie learn about the fracas after waking up in the night or after the police informed him in the morning? Is Ugie "not man enough" to get really drunk and "Reservoir-Dogs" these five other drunk guys, or is he (according to Guillen) capable of beating up everyone else in his jail cell "one at a time?" And why is Ugie's lawyer letting him give such a detailed interview to ESPN (especially in contrast with the tight-lipped "ongoing investigation" language employed by steroid-accused baseballers lately, not to mention the Bush administration)? How does the Venezuelan justice system differ from America's in situations like these, especially in the case of celebrity involvement?

The questions will roll on. We sports fans can only hope the Worldwide Leader recognizes the blockbuster potential here and sees this saga through to the end. One figures they must, if only to satiate the hordes of hot-stove enthusiasts who wonder why their team hasn't acquired enough top-notch bullpen help yet this winter. For now, we only have poetic quotes like this from Ozzie:

PG: What are the chances that Ugueth Urbina will pitch in the major leagues again?
OG: I don't know, because now I'm on the other side of the ring, I'm managing right now. But in this game, a lot of people kill, a lot of people gamble, a lot of people get caught doing drugs, a lot of people get caught beating their wives. A lot of people get caught doing a lot of mistakes. And they have another chance. Just because Ugie fights with somebody out of the U.S., it's different in Venezuela. They don't know how tough Venezuela is, how difficult it is to live in a country going through a lot of difficult situations right now. There's no doubt in my mind he should get another chance, get another shot to perform and help somebody win some games.

2005-2006 Offseason Player Movement Chart

2005-12-07T14:01:00.000-08:00

Steroids in....Football?!

2005-12-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

Say it ain't so, Todd Sauerbrun.

Nice work by unnamed AP reporters in getting this story: Apparently some Carolina Panthers went to a doctor who consulted them on how to beat steroid tests -- namely, by using pure testosterone, which the NFL tests don't detect, instead of manufactured substances like Deca, or Depo, or whatever the cocktail of the day may be. A few arbitrarily numbered points:

1. Athletes cheat in every sport, no matter how supposedly strict the testing.
2. That a punter feels the need to bulk up in this manner should give Leno and Letterman plenty to work with.
3. That a punter feels the need to bulk up in this manner implies quite a bit about the likelihood that, you know, actual position players might feel the need to do the same.
4. This story was up to number two on the ESPN wire this morning; now, at 3:30 PT, it has fallen to sixth, below "Eagles Drop Tampering Complaint Against Cowboys" and "[Larry] Brown brings memories, health issues to Detroit." We can assume that ESPN's story order is based on some combination of the importance placed on the story by ESPN's editors, and the number of eyeballs hitting the page after initial publication.

You are reading about this topic in an MLB forum because of the unavoidable question: Where is the traction on this? The outrage? The congressional hearings? The unexpected mention in a State of the Union address? The asterisks next to Carolina's 2003 Super Bowl appearance in the NFL history books?

In short, could it be that folks don't care about football players juicing up for some reason? Or is it only if those players happen to be Carolina Panthers, as opposed to New York Giants or Dallas Cowboys? Or if they do not happen to be Terrell Owens? What's going on here?

Baseball got into so much steroid trouble because a) grand jury testimony got out, b) star players were involved, and c) records were being broken. Before those three things came together, Bud Selig et al were happy to look the other way. Because this Carolina Panthers story has come up before and no fuss was made, it is fair to assume that the NFL is taking the same approach for now.

Media coverage has an unfortunate tendency to get hysterical and out of proportion to both the importance of a given issue and the rational solution to it, if one exists. Facts get glossed over, reputations besmirched, and rash decisions ultimately made. We're seeing it in baseball now, and it is not without a hint of jealousy that I call for the National Football League to run the same gauntlet, the sooner the better.

Unfortunate Ugie Update

2005-11-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

Our hero still stands accused of brandishing a machete on some of the workers on his farm and threatening to light them on fire. Jerry Crasnick lays out a grisly scene at the jail in Venezuela where once and future ace reliever Ugueth Urbina awaits his still-uncertain fate.

Urbina is a free agent, though "free" may have to be amended somewhat in the near future. The article linked above is Insider-only, but here's your quote of the week, courtesy of his agent, Peter Greenberg:

Ugie has asked me, 'What's the interest?' I've told him, 'We're going to keep pushing every angle, but you have to understand we're kind of handcuffed right now.'

Yeah, kind of.

Classic

2005-11-08T16:57:00.000-08:00

The hot topic this winter? Once the dust clears in the Boston and Los Angeles GM offices, it will be the anticipation of a grand World Cup sort of experience for baseball. The concept has been discussed in back rooms and purely speculative articles for many years, with dreamy-sounding lineups bandied about for the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and many others, and it's no secret that MLB would like to become as marketable abroad as humanly possible. Enrique Rojas of ESPN Deportes is clearly on board, having referred to the World Baseball Classic as "the most important international event in baseball's history." Call it that enough times, the thinking goes, and it will be so.

But as nice as the idea sounds -- and you can count me as one of its supporters for many years -- the folks in charge have been rather skimpy on the details, which is rather scary when you consider that the "folks in charge" are basically just Bud Selig. And now that the offseason GM meetings have commenced, we get this story. The unidentified AP writer paid enough attention to come up with the proper lede:

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- Mike Piazza be eligible to catch for Italy in the inaugural World Baseball Classic next year under eligibility rules being discussed by the commissioner's office and the players' association.

Piazza, by the way, was born in Norristown, Pa. The article points out that the usual determining factors for eligibility, including country of origin and passport status, wouldn't apply to Piazza here, presumably as much as does the presence of a 'zz' in his surname. He's about as Italian as a box of Domino's Cheesy Bread.

It's worth pointing out that the eligibility guidelines mentioned in the article are not definite yet, only being discussed and floated out here for bloggers and columnists to kick up a fuss over. It's also worth pointing out that, at this point in his career, Piazza probably wouldn't even be the starting catcher for Team USA: Jason Kendall, Jason Varitek, Joe Mauer, and Mike Lieberthal would all probably come first, as would Paul Lo Duca if the committee can get past his last name too (he was born in Brooklyn). It has been previously established that American citizens of, say, Dominican origin can decide for themselves whether they want to suit up for Team USA or Team Motherland.

So for a major international tournament that kicks off in four months, remarkably little has been decided. Most star players have not yet committed to one country or another -- or to participating at all -- and may well subject themselves to criticism no matter what they decide (I don't envy A-Rod, for one, if he dominates on behalf of the Dominican Republic and then faces a backlash for choosing against the U.S., where he has lived all his life.) The World Baseball Classic still has the chance to be an exciting spectacle that sparks untapped passion in baseball fans here and overseas, but we need to be prepared for it to suck in 2006. I don't mean to rain on Indian Wells, but anything better would be a pleasant surprise right now.

Trickeration

2005-11-02T12:05:00.000-08:00

The free agent market is thin this winter, unless you're counting general managers. This means the few available star players have the market all to themselves, and what with all the soon-to-be-new GMs in place, plenty of teams will likely be antsy to land a big name and try to win now. So we're looking at some serious payday action for Rafael Furcal, Johnny Damon, Paul Konerko, and A.J. Burnett.

Of critical importance for a free agent is the ability to snag that extra couple million dollars. I direct you to Exhibit A, from yesterday's NY Daily News: "Furcal Could Play 2nd for Mets."

Right away the headline gives you a clue. "Furcal Could Play 2nd" is not a late-breaking development, nor is it apropos of anything really. At no point in the article do the Mets express interest in signing Furcal. The only person talking is Paul Kinzer, Furcal's agent. He says of the Mets, "I think they'll be a player."

Transparent enough. The more bidders we have, the higher Furcal's price tag goes. But one practical question leaps forward: If the Mets did sign Furcal, why would they move him to second base and negate one of his strengths, his Howitzer for an arm? Why not move Jose Reyes to second and keep Furcal at short?

That question, it turns out, is the keyhole through which we can catch a glimpse of the gears turning here. The answer, of course, is the Mets wouldn't move Furcal to second. In fact, they probably won't even sign him, not when they have bigger holes elsewhere on the depth chart, two established middle infielders (Kazuo Matsui not being established quite the way he wants to be, admittedly), and a hot prospect named Anderson Hernandez on the rise to boot. When Paul Kinzer leaks the information that Furcal is willing to play second base in New York, the Mets aren't really listening.

But the Yankees are. Furcal would make a sweet upgrade over Robinson Cano at second, and Cano would make decent trade bait for the starting pitcher the Yankees so sorely need. Of course, New York may not be the ultimate destination in mind for Furcal and Pinzer. All they want is for newly-extended GM Brian Cashman to put in a bid for Furcal, at which point the bar suddenly goes up a couple rungs, Furcal ends up driving a new Porsche with a built-in Breathalyzer, and everyone wins.

The Fox File

2005-10-26T17:06:00.000-07:00

Although I still love and appreciate baseball as much now as ever before, I can no longer bring myself to watch a full Fox baseball telecast. Life is simply too short. Depending on the exact circumstances of the moment in my apartment, if Fox is showing a game I often keep the television muted with music on instead. (Sometimes, in the cheekier moments, I will listen to Television.)

But if it's a big game -- say, the World Series for example -- then crunch time often demands the audio, if only because crowd noise is so integral to such an event. I watched the classic Steve Bartman game in 2003, saw the whole eighth inning develop right before my eyes, even immediately predicted to my friend Paul that the Cubs were doomed to blow the game, and the NLCS after that, now that this idiot fan has robbed Moises Alou of an easy out. And I was right! But I felt no personal connection to that experience, still don't, never really did, all because we were listening to Toots and the Maytals instead.

So when it's a big game, I pretty much have to tune in and pay at least cursory attention to the broadcast. Assuming I need pictures to go along with the audio, I have nowhere to turn but to Fox, and neither do you, and Fox knows it.

Fox's trangressions against fans of baseball are myriad and well-documented. If you are reading this then you're probably a baseball fan, and if you're a baseball fan then I don't have to list for you the ways Fox besmirches the sport with its vapid coverage, nor do I have to list the members of the commentariat -- certified or self-appointed -- who have called Fox out on it...but here's a primer. Call it the Fox File:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10
11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20
21 - 22 - 23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30

This is pretty comprehensive, not in terms of the sheer amount of criticism (impossible task, that) but in terms of the variety of complaints. While compiling the Fox File, I should note, I did run across the occasional mildly positive review of Fox's coverage, or at least certain aspects of their coverage, but a) not very often, and b) never any four-star, two-thumbs up, raving endorsements.

And yet Fox's contract with baseball rolls on. To paraphrase the immortal Bobby Knight, if it's inevitable we might as well relax and try to enjoy it.

From Draft Day to the Bigs, Quicker Than Before

2005-10-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

As I am nervously enjoying the waning days of the baseball season, I am unsure what I'm going to do with myself when there aren't any scores to check. Last year's November was no problem. There was the election to watch. Although the debacled Miers nomination should remain entertaining for awhile, I'm still going to have to fire up the hot stove earlier than ever before.

Is it just me or are drafted players, especially those drafted out of college, making the majors quicker than ever before? As this 2005 season got underway the pre-eminent example was the 40th pick of the 2004 Draft, one Mr. Huston Street, from the University of Texas. Drafted 40th overall in the 2004 Draft as a so-called "sandwich pick," Mr. Street appeared in 67 games for the A's this season, first as Octavio Dotel's setup man and ultimately as the A's closer. Mr. Street put up better numbers than most closers in the league (5-1, 78.1 IP, 72 K, 23 SV, 1.72 ERA, 1.01 WHIP). If teams that drafted ahead of the A's—the White Sox for instance—knew that a legitimate MLB closer was out there for the taking, they probably would have snapped him up with a first round pick instead of letting him fall to the supplemental round. (Interestingly, neither the Red Sox nor the Braves had a pick until the second round in 2004). At any rate, Mr. Street will be a closer in the major leagues for years to come. And for the next few years, his price tag will be quite manageable: in 2005 he made $316,000. That said, he did get an $800,000 signing bonus from Oakland, but all in all, it's still not a bad deal for the Athletics. In fact, he was the lowest-paid player on their team.

Mr. Street is not the only pick from the 2004 Draft to have broken into the big league ranks this season. There's also J.P. Howell, again a four-year graduate of the University of Texas. The Kansas City Royals drafted Howell 31st overall in the 2004 Draft and dropped him right into their starting rotation about a year later. Howell didn't pitch that well for the Royals. In 15 starts he went 72.2 innings and was 3-5 with a 6.19 ERA and a 1.54 WHIP. He did have one excellent outing however, when he no-hit the Twins over five innings on September 26th. Howell got a $1 million bonus when he signed with the Royals. That makes his league-minimum salary of $316,000 look a little steeper as it's averaged out over his first three years, but that's still only $649,333 per year. As a rookie right out of college, he has shown some promise, and his club was willing to give him 15 starts despite the fact that he did not make his way to the big league club via A, AA, AAA. If he wins ten games next year, he is a bargain at $650k.

Likewise Jason Vargas, the 68thpick of the 2004 Draft, who went 5-5 with a 4.03 ERA and a 1.38 WHIP in 17 games (15 starts) for the Marlins in 2005. Mr. Vargas received a $525,000 signing bonus but made onlythe league minimum despite locking up a spot in the Marlin rotation as that team contended for the Wild Card in August and September. Mr. Vargas fits the Street/Howell mold: a four-year college player, graduating from a college baseball powerhouse (Long Beach St.) and started three games for Florida's Single A Affiliate in Greensboro before being called up to pitch for the Big Club.

During the 2005 season, the Red Sox sent John Olerud to the minors. This nixed Olerud from a famed exclusive trio of players who were the only three players since the inception of the amateur draft in 1965 to have made their professional debut in the Major Leagues and completely avoid the minors thereafter. The other two are Dave Winfield and Bob Horner. But perhaps Winfield and Horner will have more and more company as major league teams rely more and more on four-year college players ripe from the most recent Amateur Draft.

Take for instance, Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals and Joey Devine of the Atlanta Braves. Mr. Zimmerman was the 4th pick of the 2005 Amateur Draft on June 7, 2005 and was promoted to the major leagues so fast (Sept. 1, 2005) he wasn't even around to accept the MVP Award his minor league club, the AA Harrisburg Senators, wished to bestow on him. I mean, is Major League baseball going to need three tiers of minor league development if this trend continues?

Look at Mr. Devine, who by this point of the season is best known for giving up the 18th inning homer to Chris Burke in Game 4 of the NLDS, which sent Houston to St. Louis and sent the Braves home for the offseason. But before Devine found himself in that situation, he was the 27th overall pick in the 2005 Amateur Draft. Msrs. Zimmerman and Devine are both 4-yr college players, Zimmerman out of the University of Virginia and Devine from North Carolina St.

Zimmerman, though, is no cheapie. He signed a deal with the Nats worth almost $3m, not including an $800k signing bonus. I am presuming that this deal spans Zimmerman's first three years, at which point he would become arbitration eligible. Averaging the signing bonus out over three years, Zimmerman makes $1.27m per year for three years. That's no league minimum but the Nats will pay him far less than they're paying Vinny Castilla, who made $3m in 2005 and will make $3.2m in 2006. Castilla hit .253 in 2005 with 12 HR, 66 RBI, and a .722 OPS. Zimmerman, in limited time, hit .397 with 6 RBI and a .922 OPS in 58 at-bats. This should have the Nats wondering who gets pinched from the left side of their infield next year: Castilla or Guzman? Zimmerman can also play short, it seems. In the 2005-06 offseason, Mr. Zimmerman will play in the Arizona Fall League.

Mr. Devine, meanwhile, got a $1.3m bonus, although it's not clear what kind of contract he's got underlying that. It might just be a minor league contract, which is worth $52k when purchased by a major league team. The Braves were perhaps in dire bullpen straits as October rolled around but nonetheless had some reason for adding Mr. Devine to their playoff roster. However, his 12.60 ERA over 5 IP in the regular season leads you to believe the Braves simply had no other options. Mr. Devine struggled in three appearances in the posteason, finishing with a 10.80 ERA over 1.2 IP.

Then there's Craig Hansen, a rare young arm on the Boston staff. The Sox took Mr. Hansen 26th overall in the 2005 Draft. He pitched three innings during the regular season, with an ERA of 6.00, 3 K's and 1 BB. He didn't make the postseason roster. But he can reach the mid- to upper-nineties and I wouldn't be surprised to see him closing games for the Red Sox next year. He was, after all, the closer at St. John's. Like the A's with Mr. Street, the Red Sox might have plucked a ready-made-closer from the college ranks. He has signed a four-year contract with the Sox that will pay him $4m over four seasons.

The speed with which these college players are making the major leagues is unprecedented. The dynamics of baseball, including its free agency market, must take note. MLB franchises can now draft MLB-ready players, most of whom have played four years in the college ranks, instead of paying larger salaries to veteran players who might or might not be effective. Major league owners are happy to let the NCAA take over player development for them. Why take a chance that Tom Gordon might be a decent closer next year when you could have drafted one in June the year before?