Test Post

One of the features of the new Blogger is that you can post from any
email address if you know the secret address (that you, the blogger,
sets up). I'm testing it out here to see if it works.

If this does work, it's simply brilliant, and further evidence that
Google is taking over the world as we know it.

Amusement and Scary Things

I'm sure this will come as a great disappointment to y'all today, but I don't have a heck of a lot to say. Yes, the recent performances by the Marlins are disappointing, but it's late May and they're solidly in second place, only one game out of first, so it's hard for me to complain. I honestly didn't expect that they would be in this good of position at this point in the year, so on the one hand I'm pleased, but on the other, given how they've looked at times this season (and of course last year), you could easily argue that they should have a commanding lead in the division right now.

That said, there's a new Joe Morgan chat wrap on Mike's Baseball Rants. Be sure to check that out. I also found this story from a link on Baseball News Blog, which is quite distrubing. Keep reading below and you'll see that this isn't this fellow's first post on the Toronto Blue Jays' waitress. Granted, I have seen a few Blue Jays' games this year (and many more in prior years), but the waitresses have never particularly caught my attention. Maybe I'll have to keep a closer eye on them this time...

G

I have seen the new way of the world, and it is Gmail. Unfortunately, I don't think most of you can use Gmail quite yet, but I can and it's awesome. Learn more about it here. Also, if you're using an old address to contact me, please update your address book and send to my new Gmail address.

Things I'd like to see

A week or so ago what I would have used to head up this list would have been something along the lines of seeing the Marlins use Dontrelle Willis as a pinch hitter. Well, we saw that this weekend, and while the results weren’t great (he grounded out), it was exciting nonetheless. Here are some other things that I would like to see sometime soon, but probably won’t. Please feel free to suggest your own via email or the comments section.

1. Derek Jeter dropped in the Yankees lineup and moved to second base. Jeter isn’t having much luck at the plate this year; he’s much more of a hacker than a hitter. Since the Yankees are likely to be in a tight race for the playoffs all season, it doesn’t make much sense for the Yankees to let him work himself out of his season long funk at the top of their lineup. Move him down in the order Joe, and give those at bats to someone who is actually going to get on base.

It is also probably time to move Jeter from shortstop to second base. Yes, I’m well aware that Jeter’s fielding percentage is amongst the league leaders so far this year. But by that same logic, I haven’t made any errors at shortstop this year, and I’m sure that some of you would argue that I – in poor shape and not having taken a grounder in years – have as much range as Mr. Jeter. Defensive statistics such as zone ratings and range factors are limited and imprecise, but they consistently (over the years and this year) come back saying that Derek Jeter is not a great shortstop. Plus, the best shortstop of the modern era, and possibly of all time, ARod.com, is playing in the same infield as Jeter, so let ARod.com play short.

In addition to all of this, the crop of potential new second baseman for the Yankees was severely diminished recently when Expos’ second baseman Jose Vidro signed a four year contract extension. There has also been talk recently that former Yankees’ third baseman, and off-season basketball player, Aaron Boone may be healthy enough to return this year. Sure, Boone could play second base, but signing him and playing him at third would free up ARod.com to play short, which then allows Jeter’s lack of range and defensive abilities to be hidden at second base (question to Yankees fans – would you rather have a 2B-SS combination of Alfonso Soriano and Derek Jeter or Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez? Too bad Alfonso Soriano and Alex Rodriguez isn’t an option).

In addition, since Boone is likely to be relatively affordable to sign when he’s healthy enough to return, this will keep additional dollars available (c’mon – at some point the Yankees have to at least blink when they’re talking about this kind of money – have you seen what they contribute to revenue sharing?), which could likely be applied to the acquisition of Royals’ super-star center fielder Carlos Beltran. While I’ll be sad to see the Yankees add another All-Star to their star studded lineup, I will be glad to see Beltran leave the AL Central Division (assuming of course that the White Sox can’t find a way to acquire him).

2. The Florida Marlins should trade Josh Beckett. Yes, Beckett is the reigning World Series MVP and was a star throughout the playoffs and late last year during the regular season. He’s young and was a high draft pick (2nd overall) not that long ago.

He’s also relatively expensive (making somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 to $2 million per year) in Marlins terms and his salary will only increase as he approaches free agency eligibility. He also owns a .500 winning percentage to date for his career. My mother would likely compare Josh Beckett to the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When he’s good, he’s very, very good, but when he’s bad, he’s very, very bad. The problem with Josh – sometimes he’s great and sometimes he’s a lot less than great, but you never quite know what you’re going to get. That isn’t really a reason to trade Beckett though.

The reasons to trade Beckett are much deeper than the performances Beckett has actually delivered on the field. It’s about his potential. Beckett is 24 years old and is a prototypical fireballer, even straight to the Major Leagues, just like Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, and Kerry Wood before him. Scouts look at Beckett and drool. Opposing managers and general managers do the same. The consensus around the league is that Beckett has the potential to be a top of the rotation, number one starter for the next decade or so, possibly even the better part of the next two decades (if he’s able to sustain Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens-like health).

What that means is that other teams will be willing to pay to acquire Beckett. In many ways, this could be a smart move for the Marlins, particularly because Beckett has, at least so far – sans the 2003 post-season – lived up to the hype that surrounds him. Typically teams wait until a player is in a free agent year (or approaching free agent eligibility for the first time – as would be the likely case with Beckett) before they start to consider trading the player (or offering a long term contract). The problem with this strategy is that by that time, other teams already know that you’re in a bind. They know that you’re about to risk losing this player in free agency, at which time every team will have an equal shot of negotiating with said player. What typically happens when such a trade goes down is that a high caliber player, such as Beckett, is usually traded for less than their fair market value because the acquiring team almost sees it as a rental situation (or the team holds onto the player, loses him in free agency, and is compensated with a highly speculative draft pick in the next year’s amateur draft). They’re getting the player’s services for the remainder of the season, but they have little or no guarantees after that. If the Marlins were to trade Beckett in such a scenario they could expect to receive some journeymen and/or so-so prospects in return.

By trading Beckett now, when the acquiring team would have the opportunity to use Beckett’s services for more than part of one season (actually, for nearly three seasons) before he became eligible for free agency, the Marlins are much more likely to be able to acquire value in return for him. This will help the Marlins to stave off the likely result of eventually losing him (since he will one day command a top dollar, long term free agent contract – which for a pitcher is rarely a good bargain, at least from the team’s perspective) and would allow them to receive players in return who would allow them to be competitive now and in the future.

In short, Beckett’s trade value will probably never be higher. I’m also not convinced that his ceiling is really higher than what we’ve seen of him so far in his career. If he’s going to be a .500 pitcher for the rest of his days in the majors, the Marlins might be best served to trade him, since a .500 pitcher is generally available in the farm system, via free agency, or via a trade. Trading Beckett especially makes sense if another team still sees the top of the rotation, build your team around this guy type of potential in Beckett that so many (including the Marlins) apparently have over the years.

3. Move the Expos to New York. This analysis will be sufficiently under-developed, but I think that most of you will understand my point. Moving the Expos to Northern Virginia, the DC area, Portland, or Mexico is not significantly better than just leaving the team in Montreal. If the team was run by an owner with deep pockets and was run well, the baseball product could work as well in Montreal as it would work in any of the potential relocation sites.

Better than any of that though would be to move the Expos to New York. Although it’s before my time, way back when, back when New York was smaller and when there were fewer teams in the league, New York supported three viable major league franchises (the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers). Sure, the Giants and Dodgers left town, but that was more because of opportunities out West than a lack of support in New York. New York City is the biggest city in the country, and as evidenced by the Yankees and Mets abilities to continually spend money lavishly on players, there’s plenty of fan interest. Adding a third (and possibly even a fourth or fifth) team to the New York metro area would reduce the Yankees dominance (at least in terms of acquiring players if not in terms of World Series rings of late) and would help restore competitive balance (in terms of each team’s ability to acquire players) throughout the league. This wouldn’t make the Yankees or the Mets a poor team or the equivalent of a small market team – not by any stretch. It would simply put them more towards the stratosphere of the Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, White Sox, Phillies, and Braves in terms of resources. This would, essentially, be good for everyone except the Yankees and Mets.

Another proposal, launched half in jest I think on ESPN.com's page 2 last week (which I unfortunately can't find a link to), was to sell the Expos as a public company. This is possibly the most fabulous idea that I have heard to date. I haven’t run the numbers, but I think this would make sense for the greedy owners who are collectively running the Expos currently (as the IPO could be set up to make them obscene profits) and would likely turn the Expos (or whatever they’ll be renamed to) into one of – if not the – most popular team in all of Major League Baseball (besides, then all of us regular people could become like George Will and sign our tax returns each year as “Baseball owner” for our occupation). Think about it – you’d probably buy a few shares. That would be a nice little certificate to buy and hang up on your wall. Only a few teams are publicly held today – the Green Bay Packers and Boston Celtics come to mind – and I don’t believe any of them are in Major League Baseball. Make the Expos a publicly owned company and relocate them to Las Vegas and I think you’d have something pretty interesting.

Perfection

In case you missed it last night, Mike Hampton pitched a pretty good game last night for the Braves. He went all nine innings and gave up only two runs. All 23,381 fans who were in attendance in Atlanta last night probably gave Hampton a standing ovation as he left the field after the top of the ninth last night in appreciation of his outstanding performance.

Well, they would have (maybe) if Randy Johnson wasn’t in the midst of throwing a perfect game. You probably already knew that by now. It’s all over the news, other blogs, etc. That’s pretty much to be expected. In the history of major league baseball, last night’s gem by The Big Unit was only the 17th such occurrence. So it’s pretty rare to say the least.

In case you weren’t able to see the highlights, Johnson’s performance was all around ridiculous. To set the stage, Randy is 40 years old, way past his prime for any ballplayer (supposedly) and certainly so for a 6 foot 10 inch power pitcher; he’s surrounded by a team of has-beens and might-never-bes. Despite this, Johnson went out and threw a complete game, with no hits, walks, hit batsmen, or errors, in 117 pitches (along with 13 strikeouts for good measure).

What was even more impressive than Johnson’s stat line was how those stats were earned (granted, I didn’t watch the whole game, but I saw TBS’s at-bat by at-bat wrap up at the end, and I did watch the last two innings live). Rarely have I ever seen a major league batter – even a pitcher – swing and miss by as much of a margin (even once) as Braves’ hitters did against Johnson last night. His slider was particularly nasty, appearing to almost go from the left handed batters box to the right handed batters box from the time the ball left his hand until it reached the catcher’s mitt, and almost always sweeping across home plate just in time to be called a strike. Truth be told, Diamondbacks’ catcher Robby Hammock probably deserves almost as much acclaim as Johnson, because Hammock didn’t drop any third strikes which might have allowed a runner to reach base, thus costing Johnson his perfect game.

In other anomalies last night, the White Sox won a game. Hooray! And in an even bigger shock, “closer” Billy Koch earned the save in the game with one solid inning pitched (zero hits, three strikeouts, and thirteen pitches).

Oh, and my theory with He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken completely fell apart last night as the Marlins were trounced by the Astros, who could quite possibly be the best team in the National League. I’m not sure what I’m going to do now about writing about my favorite current ballplayer. I suppose I’ll start writing about him again.

The week in Preview

After struggling through another week on the road, the Marlins return home for six games this week, followed by a three game set in Cincinnati, and then back home for six more games. This is a relatively winnable stretch of games for the Fish, well, once the Astros leave town after Thursday’s game. The Diamondbacks (this weekend’s opponent) are struggling, have lost last weekend’s series at home to the homeless Expos (lost in recent news was the encouraging signing by Montreal of Jose Vidro to a 4-year, $30 million extension; it’s rare for the Expos to be able to keep one of their superstars, particularly when their future is so uncertain).

After four games with the D-backs, the Fish will play three against the Reds and then quickly return home to play three with the Mets and three more against the Reds. The game on the 28th against the Mets will, unusually, be the Marlins first game against a division opponent since April 25th.

Also of note, given the relative struggles of the pitching staff of late, yesterday was the Marlins last off day until June 7th. Beginning today, the Marlins are scheduled to play 20 games in 20 days without an off day. Optimistic forecasts have former ace A.J. Burnett returning to the fold around the time of that next off day. Burnett is scheduled to pitch in a single-A game in Jupiter today. Hopefully his arm will hold up for that performance.

Looking at just the games for this week, the Marlins appear to be catching a break in that Roger Clemens will not be pitching for the Astros while they are in town. Unfortunately for Fish fans, the Astros will put Roy Oswalt on the mound Thursday night, where he likely will face Marlins ace Josh Beckett. Whether good Josh or bad Josh pitches that night is still questionable.

Over the weekend, Marlins fans will likely be treated to an appearance by Randy Johnson on Sunday. Last year, Johnson faced off against a Marlins rookie lefty in a memorable matchup that drew a huge crowd, including a huge walkup. By the way, that same pitcher, you know - HIM, pitches again tonight.

That Guy Whose Name I'm Not Saying

Lately I've been hyping the starts of a certain 2003 National League Rookie of the Year Award winner prior to his starts. I was trying to do my little part to make sure that all of you around the globe were tuning into Marlins games when this exciting young phenom took the hill.

I didn't do this early in the year; early in the year this pitcher started out 3 - 0 with a 0.00 ERA and a 1.000 batting average. Statistics that were simply sick. Then I started hyping him; then he started struggling. Now, I'm not a superstitious sort of a guy or anything, but some things are just bad luck.

And after last night's performance, especially where He Who Must Not Be Named (at least on this site) comes out and pitches a complete game (91 pitches!) against arguably the best offense in the National League, when I didn't mention a thing about it before hand, I'm really forced to think that my hype is working against this potential runaway trained. So we're going to take a "Harry Potter" style approach here and not refer to my favorite pitcher by name for a while and see how he does...

Prepare yourself

Blogging will likely be light for the next few days, as I will be away from my computer. While this is good for my eyes, it is probably sad news for those of you who have come to count on my always witty commentary and analysis of current events. Ha! Well, at least I amuse myself – that’s what my mother always says.

Seriously though, on a non-baseball related note, I am very curious to see “Supersize Me” when it comes to movie theaters in Miami. So far I haven’t seen it scheduled anywhere, but I am eagerly awaiting its release. For those of you who don’t know, the film is a documentary about a man who eats all of his meals at McDonald’s for one full month. During that time he gains about twenty-five pounds and starts to develop some health issues. This move could probably be considered a horror film in some respects, but for people like me, who think nothing of driving through a fast food joint for a meal on the run, it could be a real eye opener.

I also hope that this movie explores the issue of McDonald’s chicken, or chicken like products? Am I the only person who is genuinely disturbed by the distance between “white meat” and “chicken” in McDonald’s new advertisements for their new and improved McNuggets and Chicken sandwiches? I am sure that this is not just some clever marketing ploy, but something inspired by the company’s legal department which surely knows that reasonable people would assume that the “white chicken meat” (if it was written or described that way) would imply to people that the sandwich contained meat that came from a chicken. The way their products are worded though makes me think that they might actually contain “white meat” from some kind of animal with some “chicken” also mixed in. That’s just my opinion though, and is in no way meant to construe that McDonald’s is doing anything less than something on the up-and-up. I’m not going to be eating any chicken there though anytime soon though either.

Why would you though? Other fast food places have plenty of good new options. Burger King has their new chicken sandwich on the corn crusted bread, or whatever they’re calling it. Wendy’s has one too – and it’s grilled, not fried – plus it comes with some tangy sauce.

Ok, that’s all for this post for now. I’m disgusted with myself for writing about chicken sandwiches.

Flat Earth Society Membership Offer Extended to Mike Mordecai

On my ride in to Sunday’s game I heard super-sub Mike Mordecai being interviewed by the radio team. Mordecai was asked how concerned he was about the team’s recent struggles (going into Sunday’s game, the Marlins had lost six of their last eight games). Mike responded with the typical cliché of “baseball is a marathon and not a sprint.”

He went on to add to this statement with what could become the theme for the Flat Earth Society. (Now I’m paraphrasing here, but) Mordecai, who has “Sweet Home Alabama” played prior to his at bats, used a quote from former Alabama football coach Bear Bryant to explain his take on the team’s woes: “You can’t win a game in the first quarter, but you can lose it; you can’t win a game in the second quarter, but you can lose it; you can’t win a game in the third quarter, but you can lose it; you can win a game in the fourth quarter.”

On the surface this is a nice quote. I’m sure that it has inspired many a member of the Crimson Tide on to victory on the football field. Mike Mordecai also probably finds it to be a motivational tool when he’s mired in a slump or the team isn’t playing up to expectations.

But if you dig into it a little, the saying doesn’t really make much sense at all. Let’s just look at the first part of the statement: “You can’t win a game in the first quarter, but you can lose it.” Here, and throughout the rest of the statement, the speaker presumes that you (Team A) cannot win a game in the first quarter, but that Team A could lose the game (through errors of their own). By default, this statement implies that Team B can win the game in the first quarter, if only because of mistakes made by Team A that will force that team to lose the game in the end. This is obviously not a true statement; in equitably played games, both teams have an equal shot at achieving victory at all times. If Team B can win in the first quarter (inning), than so can Team A. Sure, the results won’t be official until the end, but if you’re able to put a few runs on the board early, your odds are better than not.

I’ll be forwarding this comment on to Joe Morgan and Harold Reynolds, chairpersons of MLB’s Flat Earth Society.

Homestand Slide, Donuts, and Barry Below .400

Yesterday concluded the Marlins third homestand of the 2004 campaign. This six game set was not the Marlins most successful of the season – they won three games and lost three others. Many fans have been quick to note that the Fish should have won Tuesday night’s game against the Dodgers (which they lost in extra innings after at least three defensive miscues) and Saturday night’s game against the Padres (lowlighted by three strike outs in a row in the sixth inning with the bases loaded).

There were, however, a number of highlights during the week: Alex Gonzalez and Ramon Castro hit well during Sunday’s game, possibly indicating that both are poised to break out of their (so-far) season long slumps. A few more games like they had yesterday and Gonzalez and Castro may get out of I-95 and Mendoza line territory.

Other than that, there were Krispy Kreme giveaways twice this week (each time the Marlins record 12 hits at home, everyone with a ticket gets a free dozen donuts). I was fortunate enough to partake in this after yesterday’s game. Although, I must admit that I felt a little guilty about it. The Marlins ended up with a total of exactly twelve hits, and the twelfth came on a Juan Pierre ground ball to the second baseman which was thrown into the Marlins dugout. The official scorer credited Pierre with an infield single and Juan took second base on the throwing error. This was questionable at best, and simply playing to the “we want donuts” chanting crowd at worst. The Marlins had eight hits through the first two innings and at that point the donuts seemed like a lock. But they only managed four hits over the last six innings in which they batted, and for a long time were stuck on eleven for the game.

Despite the disappointing homestand, the Marlins are still 18 – 13 with a two game lead over their Eastern Division foes. The Phillies are surging right now and the Marlins are struggling, relatively at least. I suppose it’s still early to tell whether the Marlins are playing below their abilities and the Phillies are playing above them, or if the trends we’ve seen over the past two weeks are indicative of what we are likely to see over the remainder of the season.

This week should be another challenging week for the Marlins, with visits to Houston and St. Louis on the schedule (interestingly, the Marlins will not face an Eastern Division rival until the Mets come to Miami beginning on May 28th. By that time, the Marlins will have gone more than a month – since April 26th – and will have played 29 games since matching up against and intra-division foe). The marquee matchup of the week comes tomorrow night when new Astros ace (or possibly co-ace) Roger Clemens faces off against Brad Penny. For the Marlins and Clemens this is a rematch from last year’s World Series, where Clemens pitched well, but where the Marlins prevailed.

In other areas around baseball, the White Sox were swept over the weekend by the Blue Jays in Toronto. While the Sox remain tied for first place with the Twins, this is probably a little misleading. To date, the Twins have suffered numerous injuries and have played a relatively tough schedule. The White Sox have also been extraordinarily lucky – winning ten of eleven one run games. It is highly unlikely that the Sox will continue to be able to win one-run games at such a pace (particularly if Billy Koch continues to pitch like the Billy Koch of 2003 and not the Billy Koch of 2002 or earlier).

You probably also noticed that Barry Bonds was noticeably absent from baseball headlines, or at least the superlatives, last week. To recap the week’s Bonds highlights: Bonds missed a few games with a sinus infection, and then ran off an 0-for-15 stretch at the plate. Barry also managed to work in some unusual interviews where he talked about retiring, advertising on the bases, and other subjects (although I must admit that I preferred Phil Mushnick’s take on the Spiderman flap; Phil pretty much said it was silly – that the kids who could see the logos on the bases at the stadium would obviously be superheroes – with extraordinary vision – or aliens, and not the traditional target market that these advertisers would be looking for). He was still walked 14 times during the 0-for-15 stretch, which was as much a testament to his other worldly abilities as the ineptitude of the men that surround Bonds in the lineup, giving him an onbase percentage of .483. Incredible.

What was lost in this cold streak by Bonds recently was that his batting average has now dipped, for the first time since April 11th, below .400. A few weeks back, many people were writing that Bonds was a near lock to hit .400 for the season. The most commonly cited reason for this was that Bonds was locked in and would need a record low number of hits to accomplish the feat (since he is walked so much). While true, this analysis often failed to mention that the downside to being walked so much – in terms of it improving your ability to hit .400 – is that a fairly small number of at bats can quickly bring your average below .400, as the 0-for-15 slide did to Bonds over the weekend. Sure, Barry could still hit .400 for the season – another tear like he started the year on and we’ll probably be talking about if he can hit .450 or .500 and not just .400.

Spiderman Program Explanation Defies Logic

I've stayed out of the fray on the Spiderman issue since it's been pretty much covered to death everywhere else. I thought it was interesting though how MLB talked up the program as a way to reach out to kids... but they're getting paid for it. If baseball wanted to reach out to kids, wouldn't a more traditional marketing approach be to actually get your product in front of kids somehow? You know - send ballplayers to schools or parks around town. Something like that. Yes, it costs money, but that's what businesses generally have to do in order to generate interest and revenue.

More power to baseball if the Spiderman following is so strong that small children will encourage their parents to buy baseball tickets and merchandise because they've seen Spidey logos on the on-deck circles and on the bases. If MLB was able to generate interest and sales by getting another company to pay them for it, more power to them, and they must be much smarter than I (and most of the rest of you) give them credit for.

I don't think that's what happened though. This was just a money grab, and that's the way of the world today. Someone just reacted and half-thought through the reaching out to kids statement.

Marlins let stadium deadline pass again

The May 6th deadline for a stadium financing plan, the latest deadline the Marlins have given, has passed. I guess this now means that we are in the scary sounding "or else" phase of the stadium negotiations. I know that I swore that I wouldn't talk about this sort of stuff anymore, but it looks like everyone else did that too, since I haven't seen it covered anywhere since the 6th. That's probably because other things - like Iraq and the Spider-man thing - have taken over the news, but still, I thought it deserved comment here in this little portion of the universe.

A little more than a week ago, David Samson promised to jump off of a bridge if the stadium deal wasn't put together. So far I haven't heard anything about this either, although it wouldn't be the saddest news I could hear today. It will probably turn out that David was just talking, as he was with all of the other deadline talk, etc.

The team I'd pay to see

One major website recently published an article about players who hustle. That was interesting, but not that meaningful, in my opinion, because like the author of another article stated (paraphrasing here) “everyone can hustle, even I hustle in my own beer league.” Recently though, I had been thinking of putting together a fantasy lineup of guys I would pay to watch (not that that is much of a stretch – I pay to watch baseball plenty often). What was interesting to me is that a good portion of my lineup and the hustle lineup overlap.

Players that I would pay to watch possess one or more of a variety of characteristics: super-star level ability, they actually look like they are having fun playing the game, or they are obviously not the most talented on the field, but have worked hard and have succeeded in the game. You also won’t necessarily see the biggest names in the game here – Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and Roger Clemens are not going to top my list – because the biggest names are generally the easiest to see. They are on national television regularly, covered in your newspaper, and on Sports Center so much that it makes you want to puke (and if you do, you can probably buy an ARod.com puke clean up towel on ARod.com because some guys are just that commercial). Without further ado, here are my favorite players that I enjoy watching play the most, by position:

Catcher – Choosing a player for this position was a difficult one. In my time, I’ve seen greats who I have liked (Carlton Fisk) and who I didn’t like (Gary Carter), but for the purposes of this list, I’m sticking to current players.

Ivan Rodriguez would be an easy pick. As sad as I was to see him leave South Florida this off-season, particularly with the way the whole contract negotiation went down, I have very much enjoyed watching him play in a Tigers’ uniform so far this year. Pudge is off to a great start and remains a sure-fire Hall of Famer. I didn’t think I would cheer for Pudge anymore after the way he left town, but I think what he has done for Detroit, so far, has turned me around. If he really does contribute to turning them into a winner, he will go down as one of the all-time greats in my book, given his other accomplishments in Texas and Florida.

My pick though for the catcher that I’d pay to see is Mets’ backstop Mike Piazza. Sure, maybe when the Mets come to town Mike won’t be catching anymore, but that’s all the more reason to try to catch a game with him behind the dish. Mike only has so many games left in those knees and each time you see him you know that you will be seeing one of, if not the, greatest catchers of all time. This is even more remarkable when you consider (as Harold Reynolds pointed out last night) that Mike was a 62nd round draft pick. He was, for all intents and purposes, a courtesy pick by the Dodgers, as then Manager Tommy Lasorda was a family friend. Mike, who played briefly (and at second base no less) for the Miami Hurricanes for one season, was probably not even going to stick with the Dodgers’ rookie team until he volunteered to play catcher late in his rookie year. You know where the story goes from there.

First baseman – Initially I thought that I would pick Carlos Delgado as my dream-team first baseman. Delgado is a largely unappreciated superstar, although he is off to a slow start this season. Upon further review though, I came up with someone else…

Todd Helton is one of the best hitters in the game and he has one of the prettiest swings you’ll ever see. Sure, his numbers aren’t hurt by playing his home games at Coors’ Field, but Helton would be an All-Star wherever he played. Plus Helton just goes about his business, doesn’t get into trouble, and seems to be a decent enough guy (not that you ever really know about any of these guys – and for the purposes of this exercise, I don’t really care. I’m just picking baseball players).

Second baseman – There’s a lot to pick from here: Luis Castillo, Ray Durham, Jeff Kent, Bret Boone, Jose Vidro, and Alfonso Soriano, all of whom would be worth selections.

I can’t pick Kent though because he doesn’t even really like baseball, or so he claims. He doesn’t watch games he’s not playing in and doesn’t claim to be a fan of the game. This just rubs me the wrong way. Lie to us Jeff. You’re making millions of dollars to play baseball and that huge salary you receive is largely a bi-product of fans shelling out their money on tickets, cable packages, internet subscriptions, etc. You were willing to lie about how you injured yourself a few years back – riding a motorcycle during spring training, err… washing your truck, so why not let the rest of us think that you don’t mind playing a game the rest of us would love to play?

Bret Boone falls into the same category with me. He is absolutely a great player (although the late in the career power surge is at least as questionable as that of B.L. Bonds), but his smug personality just does not sit right with me.

While I enjoy Luis Castillo and acknowledge that he is a key cog in the Marlins machine, he’s not my top pick at second base.

This leaves us with a fearsome trio of second baseman in Durham, Vidro, and Soriano. I would be happy with any of the three. Durham is probably more a sentimental pick than anything because I enjoyed watching him play so much with the White Sox in the early part of his career. When he left, I was happy to see him traded to the A’s, another team that I enjoy watching. And now that he’s with the Giants, I see him play quite frequently, because I like to watch B. L. Bonds so much.

Jose Vidro is about the opposite of Ray Durham, in the sense that they are both fantastic players who are exciting to watch, but it is difficult to watch Jose Vidro for two reasons. One, Expos games are just not on television very often – apparently it’s expensive to broadcast from San Juan and their television contract with Montreal broadcasters is not the same as what the Yankees or Braves have, to say the least. Also, if you do find an Expos game on the tube or in person, they are not exactly the most exciting team in baseball. While I can do it, I would think that very few semi-serious baseball fans could name five current Expos not named Vidro, (Orlando) Cabrera, (Livan) Hernandez, or (Crazy Carl) Everett. Few fans could probably even name the recently acquired ex-Yankees (Nick Johnson and Juan Rivera). This does not work in Mr. Vidro’s favor, unfortunately, but he will be a free agent at the end of the season, and once the Yankees overpay for him, Mr. Vidro will not be only unconscionably rich, but he will also be unbelievably famous.

This leaves me with Alfonso Soriano, who is certainly not a bad pick. Soriano couldn’t live up to the Yankees expectations, but he should be a 40-40 (home runs and steals) threat for years to come.

Third baseman – This is another tough position to choose, one that is starting to be filled, after a few rough years recently, with some young talent, including: Troy Glaus, Eric Chavez, Scott Rolen, Mike Lowell, and Adrian Beltre.

Beltre is off the list because his production on the field has never lived up to his off the field hype over the course of a season. Lowell’s not a real candidate both because his career year is probably behind him, and he is as un-flashy as he is productive (kind of like a poor man’s Tim Duncan).

Scott Rolen is a heck of a ballplayer, but really doesn’t do much to excite me. I think his upside is better than Lowell’s over the next few years, but in terms of excitement, they rate about the same, so Rolen is out too.

That leaves us with a So Cal – No Cal match up between Glaus and Chavez. Chavez recently signed a $48 million extension which will keep him with the A’s for a few more years. This will probably keep him hidden away from the game’s more casual fans except for the annual All-Star game and an interview after his team loses a decisive game five of the ALDS annually.

My pick here is Glaus, but for un-compelling reasons. I am sure you could argue that Chavez is an all around better player. I wouldn’t really argue back with you; you would be right. But Glaus can mash and I have decided to pick a guy, who in any given at bat, could hit the ball six hundred feet. His eyesight is reportedly better now too, after off season laser eye surgery, so maybe those long blasts will become a more regular occurrence.

(Oh yeah, there’s that ARod.com guy, but I’m just not picking him because that would be too easy).

Shortstop – The remaining triumvirate of shortstops in the American League (now that ARod.com has been moved to third base) is Derek Jeter, Miguel Tejada, and Nomar (that’s his middle name) Garciaparra (when he’s healthy). I’m not picking any of those guys because it would be too easy.

Coming into the year, the fashionable pick might have been Angel Berroa of the Royals. He hasn’t lived up to his rookie campaign so far this year, so he’s not on my team.

The White Sox Jose Valentin could be the pick here too, although his hands of stone, which are so capable of putting runs on the board when he’s at the plate, are also too capable of putting runs on the board for the opponent when he is in the field.

Instead my pick at shortstop is the Angels David Eckstein. I’ve followed Eckstein for some time now, as he played college ball for the Florida Gators (making his selection to my team that much more painful). Honestly, he didn’t even really stand out on a star-studded Gators team, which was led by current Expos jack-of-all-trades Brad Wilkerson.

This is even more remarkable to me because I know that I must have seen Eckstein play in person ten or so times while he was in college, but I don’t remember him in particular at all. Of all the college players now in the major leagues who I saw play in person, Eckstein is the only one who didn’t stand out and distinguish himself in particular on the field.

Coming into last season and during the post-season of 2002 this was a fashionable pick. Eckstein had a down year last year, or more probably a year that we can more fairly expect out of him regularly. Eckstein played over his head in 2002, as is not uncommon on teams that win the World Series. He’s worth watching though because he’s something like the rest of us in the field. Eckstein’s hands are so small that he has to have a special grip on the ball to throw it and the distance from the hole at shortstop to first base forces him to almost shot put the ball across the diamond. While this is not something many of us would want to admit that we can relate to, we can at least empathize with Eckstein’s limitations as they relate to his major league peers.

Left field – There isn’t really even any discussion here. Yes, at other positions I have eschewed the game’s biggest superstars, but at times, exceptions must be made to the rules. This is one of those times. Barry Bonds is arguably the greatest player of all time. If he is not the greatest player, he is definitely one of the top three or five players of all time. Throw the names of Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays into a hat and you could argue that whichever name you picked out first was the greatest player of all time.

Yes, there are arguments about career longevity and the impact of the changes of the game (expansion, integration, relief pitchers, etc), but nearly everyone will agree that these are the top four players. You might argue that Bonds would not be on this list if it had been proven that he has taken steroids or some other performance enhancing drug, but that hasn’t been proven yet. It may never be proven. It will certainly never be proven that Bonds didn’t take such drugs – that would be impossible. All we have to go on is the lack of a positive test result and Barry’s word that he hasn’t taken anything illegal. That’s all we have on any of these guys (Bret Boone, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa on down), so that’s what we have to go with.

Regardless though, even if you took away the power numbers (which is ludicrous), Barry Bonds is still a Hall of Famer. With more than 500 stolen bases and eight Gold Gloves, Barry is a speed and defense combination with few peers. He will also likely total three thousand hits over the course of his career, which as far as I know is still worth a guaranteed ticket to Cooperstown.

But Bonds does have the power - an unbelievable amount of power. He’s been on a run since 1999 or 2001 that is unmatched in the history of the game. Sure, you might think he’s a jerk or not someone you’d want to date your daughter, but he’s a heck of a baseball player. If you have the chance to see him in person, don’t miss it. I know that I won’t.

Center fielder – Another tough call with lots of qualified candidates, including: Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones, Jim Edmonds, and Garrett Anderson.

I through Anderson into the mix because he is receiving so much hype right now that I think it might be the obligation of everyone who writes about baseball to talk about how great he is. Well, I really don’t think that he is. Yes, he’s a nice player and seems to be a nice guy off the field, but that’s about it. His numbers total up well, I suppose, but that’s an incomplete look at the total picture. Garrett has racked up a lot of hits, but he doesn’t walk very often. His RBI totals are impressive, but again, he hacks a lot and thus has a lot of opportunities that guys like Bonds and Frank Thomas pass up for the good of the team. No disrespect to Garrett Anderson intended here. He’s a nice player on a good team, but he’s not the top centerfielder in the game. He’s not even really a centerfielder.

Jim Edmonds is good for highlight reel catches, some power, and lots of strikeouts, but that’s about it. Edmonds lacks the grace in the field of Andruw Jones, and like Jose Valentin before, he’s a little more advanced in age than the other contenders, so he’s disqualified on that regard.

That leaves us with Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones. Surely by now you’re saying “Juan Pierre? Mike’s a homer.” This is possibly true. Juan Pierre is a poor man’s Andruw Jones, which is something like what I intended this team to be about. But it’s more than that. Pierre is kind of like the shadow to a poor man’s Andruw Jones. Don’t get me wrong, I love Juan Pierre’s game and how his dedication to his craft has made him the player that he is today. He simply just doesn’t have the arm or the power (or a lot of other things) that Andruw Jones does.

Granted, Jones doesn’t seem to work as hard as Pierre does, but it also doesn’t seem like he has to. The game comes easily to Jones – or rather, he is simply, extremely talented – as in, all-time great talented. Jones worked very hard to develop his skills by catching coconuts on the beach in Curacao, allegedly – although that seems like it may be more myth than reality, no doubt, but there is also no doubt that Jones is extremely gifted. He is a pleasure to watch in the field and at the plate, and the Andruw Jones show is definitely one that I wouldn’t want to miss (although I would pass on his show at the Gold Club).

Right field – This is another gimmie position where I probably shouldn’t even waste time talking about the other “contenders.” There is only one – Vladimir Guerrero, now of the Angels. Most casual fans have gone unaware of Guerrero over the early part of his career because he played for the Montreal Expos. Now that he is in Southern California with the Angels, I expect that Vlad will become a household name. His natural abilities are, arguably, without equal. He’s not someone you will see interviewed frequently or written about much, mainly because he is not fluent in English and I don’t expect that he’ll be doing much to learn it anytime soon. This is not because Guerrero is slow or anything like that, but rather just one way for him to ensure that he can keep himself out of the spotlight.

Vladimir Guerrero is a baseball player pure and simple. He does not wear batting gloves or study DVDs of pitchers. Reportedly, there are times when he reaches the batter’s box (or at least the on deck circle) before he is made aware of whom that day’s opposing pitcher will be. Others have said that Guerrero does his scouting on future opponents by using the Playstation in the locker room. I find this to be a refreshing departure from the over-analysis employed by Curt Schilling and other stars in the game. This is not to take anything away from the accomplishments of others, but it is just enjoyable to watch Guerrero succeed based on his natural abilities. He is simply a fun player to watch because he plays every game with such reckless abandon. Even during a spring training game he is fun to watch, because he always runs hard and is looking to stretch a single into a double and a double into a triple.

I do wonder though how his brand new Angels helmet is already so covered in pine tar.

Designated hitter – I suppose this argument comes down to Frank Thomas and Edgar Martinez. Both are excellent hitters and borderline Hall of Fame candidates. Despite long careers, neither has won a World Series or even done much in the postseason. Frank Thomas has won two MVPs (compared to Edgar’s zero), and if you asked Frank, he would probably tell you that he really deserved five or six awards, if not one for every full season he played.

As I alluded to in the previous sentence, Frank is not widely regarded as a peach of a guy. Given that, and that Edgar Martinez takes batting practice with a weighted bat (usually with a donut or two on an old broken bat), I’m taking Edgar here. I would really like to see Mr. Martinez take batting practice with a weighted bat. You have to be a really good hitter to do that; otherwise I would imagine you could really hurt yourself by mis-hitting a ball.

Starting pitcher – I put this one off as long as I could (you may have noticed that I listed the positions in traditional scoring position order, starting with catcher – going past the pitchers spot). If you’ve ever read this bog before, you know who the pick here will be – no questions asked, no need for other candidates. Dontrelle Willis.

The second year pitcher personifies fun and excitement. He brings a funky delivery to the mound and a solid bat to the plate. For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to watch Willis in person, you owe it to yourself to make it out to the park one night when he’s pitching. Normally he tops out in the high 80s or low 90s with his fastball, or so the radar gun will tell you. Now, I’ve never stood in against Willis, but just from watching him from the stands (and I have sat very close behind home plate for a handful of his starts) it always seems to me that Willis’s fastball gets up on hitters more quickly than other pitchers because of his unorthodox delivery. I have regularly thought that Willis was throwing harder than Josh Beckett or Armando Benitez (who top out around 96 or 97 fairly frequently), only to be surprised to see the radar gun display a speed of 90 or so.

Besides his pitching ability, Willis is also quite a hitter. He’s already hit a home run this year (two in his career) and he runs the bases like an everyday player. More than anything, though, the thing that distinguishes Willis from the crowd is his passion and enthusiasm for the game. He plays the game with the spirit that we would all like to think that we did as children. Most of us probably didn’t, but Dontrelle still does. Whether he’s pumping his fist coming off the mound after a big out or signing autographs for fans before the game, Dontrelle always seems to be having a good time.

Relief pitcher/closer – I thought about making this into two separate categories, but when it comes down to it, non-closing relievers don’t see predictable enough activity, nor do they generate enough excitement with me to warrant me being willing to pay to see one of them exclusively (and I suppose that means that I just don’t have enough disposable income). So that leaves us with closers.

I’m taking current and former Marlins closers off the list for a variety of reasons: Benitez – melt down waiting to happen, Looper – melt down waiting to happen, Alfonseca – meltdown waiting to happen, Urbina – too much post game kissing, Nen – injured, and Hoffman – deserving but just not picked.

That leaves some of the game’s top closers: John Smoltz, Mariano Rivera, and Billy Wagner, to name three. Smoltz and Rivera would be too easy to select, so they’re out. Wagner would make for an interesting pick too, if only because he’s not very tall (5 foot 8) but somehow reaches 100 mph more frequently than Randy Johnson (or at least he did last year). Still though, Wagner isn’t that interesting for any other reason than that he throws heat - big time heat.

The guy I would want to see though, and who I might be able to see tonight (although I hope there isn’t an occasion for him to make it to the mound) is Dodgers’ closer Eric Gagne. I have seen Gagne pitch in person before, but that was a long time ago. Way back in the early part of the millennium when Gagne was still a highly touted prospect as a starter (somehow that endeavor failed). Since then, Gagne has turned into a closer with an unbelievable track record. He has now saved more than seventy (70!) consecutive games without blowing a save. Granted, saves are not the best measure of a pitcher’s ability (as few of the generally accepted pitcher’s stats are), but to have saved more than seventy games in a row is an unbelievable achievement. His presence in the Dodgers’ bullpen effectively shortens each game to an 8 inning affair. That might not seem like a big deal to you, but if you were Dodgers’ manager Jim Tracy it would. You’d be happy if you had 11% fewer things to worry about, wouldn’t you? That’s effectively the situation Gagne has created for Tracy. Figure out a way to get a lead through eight innings and Gagne will take care of the ninth.

Well, except for tonight, hopefully. Hopefully Dontrelle Willis will throw a shutout, hit a home run, steal a couple bases, and score a few runs and we can go into the ninth not unconcerned about who might enter the game.

Conclusion

All in all, that’s a pretty good lineup. It’s not necessarily the way you would assemble it in terms of a traditional lineup. I don’t really have a solid top of the lineup guy, but as you work your way through it, there aren’t any easy outs. Here’s how I’d put it together:

1 – Alfonso Soriano, 2B
2 – Vladimir Guerrero, RF
3 – Barry Bonds, LF
4 – Todd Helton, 1B
5 – Troy Glaus, 3B
6 – Mike Piazza, C
7 – Andruw Jones, CF
8 – David Eckstein, SS
9 – Dontrelle Willis, P

I think you’d win a couple games with that lineup.

Harold Reynolds Unwraps the Mysteries of Baseball

The Marlins won last night against the Dodgers, evening the series at one game apiece. You probably knew that already.

If you were at the game last night, you may have missed “Baseball Tonight” while you rode home from the stadium. If you did, you missed Harold Reynolds’ earth-shattering announcement that he has figured out the keys to beating Roger Clemens. Even if you didn’t hear Harold’s analysis live, you were probably aware that it happened, because there was, immediately, a palpable buzz throughout the baseball world as soon as Harold revealed his news: The key to beating Roger Clemens is three-fold – one, hit his fastball; two, bunt; three, steal.

For obvious reasons, I won’t get into reasons two and three very much. They’re just silly remarks and don’t warrant any commentary. However, Harold’s epiphany about hitting the fastball is truly amazing. I wasn’t able to find Harold’s career totals against Clemens, but I’m sure that if Harold had this knowledge while he was still a player, he would have hit .500 or .600 against the Rocket. We will probably start to see a lot of hitters do that against Clemens now that they’ve been tipped off to this fastball thing.

As I sat on my couch listening to Reynolds’ dissertation last night, I was sure that I could hear a collective “how did I miss that for the last twenty years?” from scouts across the country. I, myself, was thinking the same exact thing. I’ve been watching Roger Clemens for a long time and it never occurred to me that hitting his fastball would be a key to success.

Announcers throughout baseball regularly refer to hitters as “good fastball hitters.” This always makes me laugh. The notion that particular hitters are “good fastball hitters” seems to imply that other hitters are not good fastball hitters. I find this truly hard to believe. There are probably less than a literal handful of players (not counting pitchers) on major league rosters today who are not “good fastball hitters.” Those who are not good fastball hitters more likely have a hard time making it out of Little League than of sneaking their way onto a major league roster.

Obviously, not all major league hitters are good hitters, at least not by major league or professional standards. This is not, at least not very frequently, because they lack the ability to put the bat on the ball. Go out to the stadium early, the next time you have a chance, and count how many outright swings and misses you see in batting practice; if you see one, I will be surprised, and you could probably watch a full week’s worth of batting practice before you see another. Instead, the difficulty in making contact with the ball stems from the fact that pitchers, like Roger Clemens, not only throw fastballs, but they also throw breaking pitches and other off-speed pitches that make it difficult for a hitter to make contact. A batter must recognize the pitch, swing, and make contact with the ball in a fraction of a second. Simple changes in velocity can make that sequence of events nearly impossible to complete. Major league pitchers, however, throw the added complication of breaking balls, pinpoint location, a variety of arm angles, and an arsenal of other acts of deception to make hitting difficult.

To me, saying that someone is a “good fastball hitter” is almost an insult because it sounds as if the hitter is not skilled at identifying or hitting other pitches. If that pitcher facing such a hitter is stupid enough to actually throw a fastball to a “good fastball hitter” he will have to deal with the consequences.

Sadly, we are subjected to such inane commentary on baseball tonight because Harold Reynolds, John Kruk, Jeff Brantley, and crew were at one time major league baseball players, so they obviously know more about the game than the rest of us. I think I’m going to have to start reading more and watching less ESPN. It’s no longer entertaining, and it’s quite often just inaccurate or biased, and more often than not the “programming” is just a clever promotion for another ESPN product (The Magazine, the website, Fantasy Games, another network, upcoming game broadcasts…). I’m going to go be sick now.

Is that Gan-yeah or Gag-knee?

The Marlins lost a tough one last night to the Dodgers. Armando Benitez looked a little bit more like the Benitez most of us feared he would last night – not necessarily with how he through the ball to the plate, but his errant throw to first base was something that most Marlins’ fans did not want to see.

Miguel Cabrera also misplayed a ball in the outfield during extra innings that is becoming more the rule than the exception. Some have speculated that Cabrera is simply not used to watching the game from the right side of the field and is thus having a hard time picking the ball up off the bat. If that’s the case, he may need to get some Lasik surgery. Plenty of other players move from right to left field without issue, and infielders move around as well. Granted, it’s not the easiest thing in the world – picking the ball up off of the bat in centerfield is decidedly easier than picking it up off the bat in left or right, but he’s misplayed a handful of routine balls out there already and we’re not that far into the season. I suppose as long as he keeps on hitting though, it’s really not much to worry about. Yes, it has looked like he has directly cost the team some ball games, but he’s had plenty of big hits earlier in games this year that have allowed the Fish to win at least as many more.

On the flip side, as many fans appear to be back on the Jeff Conine bandwagon as have jumped off of Cabrera’s. To that I have to say “slow down.” Yes, Conine appears to be out of his early season funk, and yes, he has traditionally been a slow starter. But Conine looks old and stiff – much more so than he has in the past. Conine also has feasted on pitching in Colorado (who doesn’t?) and on the Giants (who isn’t this year?). Let’s see how he holds up over the next few weeks. Heck, even Alex Gonzalez looked like a real hitter in Denver last week.

In case you’re still reading this, it must be because you’re wondering if I genuinely am crazy. Well, I can confirm for you that I am. During last night’s game when Eric Gagne entered the game in extra innings I genuinely thought this would be the game where Gagne’s save streak came to an end. It has to end at some point (right?) and the Marlins have been doing the improbable for about a year now, so why not cause the best closer in the game (currently) to blow a save, and maybe even lose the game? Gagne, of course, proceeded to strike out the first two hitters he faced. Juan Pierre, who I love, then came up and singled solidly up the middle – a line drive even. I’m not sure though if Juan had his eyes open for any part of the at bat (just kidding) – I’m pretty sure he just got up there and hacked, and got lucky. In the end though it didn’t matter - Gagne closed it out. Huge shocker!

Hopefully the Fish won’t let the ball get to him for the next two games.

How Championships are Won - Guaranteed, Fool Proof Analysis

Some people will tell you that pitching and defense win championships; those people are wrong. Other people will tell you that a solid lineup of guys who get on base inevitably will score you a lot of runs and that you will win games (maybe not championships, because the proponents of this style usually also argue that the playoffs today are more of a crap shoot, in that they reward a team that is hot more frequently than they reward the best team). Then, of course, there’s the old school camp that will tell you that bunting and stealing bases, and all other things little-ball, wins championships (although this is probably just a subset of the pitching and defense argument – see Morgan, Joe for examples).

None of these arguments are valid though. There is one clear, common thread in the World Series champions of recent years. Ironically enough, it is something, that in the baseball economics scheme of things, is relatively cheap to acquire, yet Billy Beane and other penny-pinching general managers have not yet latched onto this sure-fire ticket to a World Series ring. The common thread, of course, is having annoying announcers.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are visiting Miami this week to face off against the World Champion Marlins in a three game set. The Dodgers, of course, are famous for having one of (if not unquestionably) the all-time best announcers in the game of baseball, Vin Scully. In fact, Vin is so good, that he doesn’t need a color commentator (or two) sitting next to him. Mr. Scully can describe the game all by himself. Part of the reason I buy the Extra Innings package from my cable/satellite company every year is so that I can watch Dodgers’ games and listen to Mr. Scully before I go to bed at night, here on the East Coast. So in thinking about the Dodgers’ visit to Miami this week (yes, I know, I think about weird things), I wished to myself that I could listen to Scully’s broadcast of the games instead of what I will instead be subjected to this week, and for all other Marlins’ games throughout the year.

Marlins’ announcers are cut from a different cloth than Mr. Scully (Boog Sciambi excepted, but they don’t let him talk on the air much anyway, and he’s only on the radio besides). Tommy Hutton, Len Kasper, and Craig Minervini are so grating on my ear drums that this trio actually makes me want to turn off baseball games (or at least to turn the sound down) and go kick my dog (no, I don’t have a dog, so I don’t have anything to kick, and no, I don’t not have a dog because I kicked my previous dog too much – but I hope you enjoyed the double negative). Craig Minervini finds his way around town to just about any sporting event. I’m not so sure though that he actually knows what’s going on at those events; last year Craig borrowed my scorebook to catch up on some of the action that he had missed (I don’t know why he missed anything or why he decided to bother me, but I didn’t exactly want to ask Craig what he was doing other than watching the game either). Craig was keeping his own scorebook (allegedly), but after watching him take a look at mine, I wonder if his book noted hits with a :-) and outs with a :-(. Needless to say, Craig did not strike me as the brightest bulb in the box, and his commentary is nothing to write home about either (but I suppose I’m doing that anyway, so I’ll move on now).

In 2002, the Anaheim Angels (although they’d like you to forget the Anaheim part) won the World Series. In case you’ve never had the pleasure of hearing his dulcet tones, Rex Hudler (yes, that Rex Hudler, the Wonder Dog – could there be any other one?) is a regular in the Halos’ booth. Rex is just plain weird. I suppose if you’re tripping on something or otherwise buzzed, Rex’s analysis might make sense to you. That’s not how I choose to enjoy a baseball game though, so Rex doesn’t really do it for me. He is also probably the only announcer in the history of sports, and quite possibly in the history of announcing, and to be suspended from his job and to be replaced by someone who normally broadcasts in another language (while I never heard any of these broadcasts, I wonder if the work was done partially in English and partially in Spanish).

Prior to the Angels, the Diamondbacks won the World Series in 2001. Thom Brenneman is the DBacks annoying announcer, and quite possibly the most annoying announcer in the history of baseball. Fortunately I haven’t had the dis-pleasure of listening to a game this year broadcast by Mr. Brenneman, but I’m sure if I did, I would hear Thom lamenting the Cubs collapse against the Marlins in last year’s playoffs. Thom sounded more depressed about how things turned out than Dusty Baker or Steve Bartman. I guess he forgot that he’s a journalist, and no longer even an employee (or representative) of the Cubs.

Almost everyone will agree that the Yankees announcers, they of recent World Championships of 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000, are amongst the most un-tenable in the league. Analysis is decidedly un-sabermetric and very much based on hokum and rememberances of “back in the day when I used to play.” Besides that, for the most part, the Yes! team is a bunch of homers who can make even the most mundane play seem like an all-time great play (but at some level, that’s just New York being New York; Derek Jeter and Phil Rizzuto aren’t sure-fire Hall of Famers unless they’re in New York; Harold Baines, on the other hand, would have been).

The major kink in this analysis is the Atlanta Braves, who somehow won a World Series title in 1995. Obviously this was a fluke. Not in the sense that the Braves as a baseball team didn’t deserve it; obviously, they did. The Braves have been in the post-season every year they’ve held it since 1991. Their title is a fluke though in that their announcers are good and enjoyable to listen to. Sure, you’ll probably say that Joe Simpson, Pete Van Wieren, Skip Caray and that other guy who used to pitch are full of as much hokum and old-time tales as the Yankees’ crew. While this is probably true, the difference is in the delivery. Yes, the Braves’ broadcasters are just as much homers as anyone else’s announcers, but they’re less over the top and in your face about it.

Prior to that, I honestly don’t remember who everyone’s announcers were, so I can’t really say what happened back then. Maybe we can call the Dodgers’ playoff curse the Curse of Vin Scully. Hopefully for the sake of Vin, and Dodgers’ fans everywhere, we won’t have to wait for Vin to hang up the microphone before the Dodgers win another World Series or playoff game (the Dodgers haven't won in the post-season since their 1988 World Series victory).

In another, partially unrelated note, the generosity of the Florida Marlins was previously cited in how they provided World Championship rings (estimated value of $44,000 or more) to their broadcasters. This is something that is not always done, particularly when the rings are of such value. Given that the nice thing that was done for the announcers was pointed out, it is only fair to also point out that the Marlins were not so kind to some of their ex-employees (read down about half way to where there’s a “Hard to Take” header). While it’s true that the Marlins fired Jeff Torborg, Brad Arnsberg, and others – and probably deservedly so – it seems unusually cruel to send them knock-off, toy jewelry, particularly after everyone in the baseball world was well aware of how grand the actual rings that the players, front office people, and others received (although this article also points out that the Marlins were somewhat arbitrary in terms of deciding who got the good rings and who got the junk stuff).

It's time again...

... for another laugh out loud-funny Joe Morgan chat-session, as interpreted by Mike's Baseball Rants. Some of the highlights from this week's edition, in my humble opinion, were:

"Al Morgan (Little Rock, AR): Good morning Joe! I really appreciate your expertise and precision on the game of baseball. What do you think the early struggles of the Giants are attributed to? I mean the scores seem to be competitive but never enough to win. Do you think that the organization is going to have to make some more moves this season in-terms of acquiring another bat and maybe a pitcher?

Joe Morgan: The Giants struggles ... they've lost Kent and Reggie Sanders and Renteria. Now it's a one horse team. It's all on Barry's shoulders. I think it's going to be a tough season for the Giants. I don't expect it to get much better."

Ummm . . . I don't remember Edgar Renteria ever playing for the Giants. . .

AND. . .

"Shrevie Wonder (Mesa, AZ): Who was the best shortstop you ever played with?

Joe Morgan: Bailey Concepcion"

. . . no baseball fans, you did not miss out on the outstanding career of Bailey Concepcion. I think we are to infer that Joe is really referring to Davey Concepcion here. Simple mistake. I confuse Bailey for Davey all the time. . .

I also learned two new words, courtesy of Mike, this week: putative and putrescence. While both are interesting, I doubt that I will be able to incorporate either into my daily speech very often.

Barry, Scoring Runs, OBP, and the Demise of "Baseball Tonight"

As mentioned in previous posts (repeatedly, incessantly, too frequently, or however else you would like to classify it), Barry Bonds is being walked too frequently. Ironic indeed that Mr. Bonds initials are BB, the same as the common scoring symbol for a walk. Few folks today are aware that BB (and not “W”) is used to denote a walk, and that it is short for Base on Balls. Given the alacrity with which Mr. Bonds is racking up walk totals, one must wonder if future generations will assume that BB stands for Barry Bonds.

Maybe we should have known all along. This man’s name was meant for walking. Still, the frequency with which Bonds is being walked is unprecedented. To date this season Bonds has appeared in 25 games (two exclusively for one plate appearance, as a pinch hitter, and in both cases he was walked) and has been walked 44 times. At this rate, Bonds will be walked 274 times this season, which would by far eclipse the single season record (held by Bonds) of 198.

The number of walks Bonds is receiving is so ridiculously high because opposing managers fear the damage Bonds can inflict on the score and their pitcher’s ego with just one swing of the bat. In prior years, opposing managers would walk Bonds in situations like a tie game, with a runner on second base, and no one out. This seemed like a risk averse, but understandable move – although it was more questionable in the early innings. This season, it seems that managers are being even more cautious; Bonds has been walked to lead of the second inning of a scoreless game on more than one occasion. This seems to not only show a lack of confidence in the ability of your pitcher, but it also deprives the fans – particularly those in attendance, who have shelled out hard earned dollars to watch Bonds bat – of an opportunity to see a living legend perform live.

Many before me have written about how no one, not even Bonds at his best, is worthy of being walked so regularly. Even on his hottest tear, Bonds makes an out 50% of the time that he is allowed to swing the bat. During more normal stretches, like the past seven days, when Bonds has hit .273, he is even more likely to make an out – probably about 70% of the time. For those of you who are scoring at home, when Bonds is walked – either intentionally or, more commonly, un-intentionally intentionally – he reaches base 100% of the time.

To some of you this is likely an intuitively bad proposition. Putting a runner – any runner – on base, only increases the other team’s chances of scoring runs. With Bonds, the argument is that by walking him and putting him on first, your odds of giving up a home run or a double that drives in a run, are significantly greater. This is true, but please see the point above about the likelihood of making an out; you’re completely removing it by walking him.

An additional point that a walk-inclined manager might make is that putting Bonds on base curtosey of a base on balls is not a proposition that is likely to score a run (or more) for the Giants. This argument is reinforced by the fact that Bonds has the likes of Pedro Feliz and Michael Tucker hitting behind him. San Francisco’s Giants of 2004 are not the Giants of yester-year where an All-Star like Jeff Kent or Matt Williams could be found protecting Bonds in the batting order.

This argument does hold some merit, although it may be too early to tell. Last night, on the increasingly-becoming-unwatchable Baseball Tonight, “analyst” Harold Reynolds opined that on base percentage is overrated and that you need players who can score from first on a gapper. While I’m sure that old-school scouts across America cheered aloud upon this assessment (and may even be adding this as a sixth tool on their 20 – 80 point scales as we speak), this is a bit of a reach. Like double plays and other relative rarities, scoring a runner from first on a “gapper” is not a defining characteristic of a championship ballclub; sure, it happens, but not to the tune of being a deciding factor in ten (or so) games per year. Now, I haven’t gone back and statistically proven this; it’s just my gut feeling on the subject. I suspect that Mr. Reynolds’ analysis is very similar – more based on experience, than an actual analysis of data. I’m sure that someone out there could do such an analysis and prove Mr. Reynolds or myself correct (or find a different conclusion), or that someone has actually already done such a study.

I didn’t and am not planning to, but Harold raised an interesting point during his discussion last night – that it doesn’t matter how often some players reach base because they aren’t as capable as others of scoring. Harold didn’t say it this way, probably because he eschews onbase percentage, but he essentially said that a .450 OBP from Jason Giambi isn’t as valuable as a .375 OBP from Jimmy Rollins, because Rollins is faster (and/or a better baserunner) than Giambi, and is thus more capable of scoring runs for his team.

To some extent, this is an interesting premise because it is plausible that a runner could be so inept on the basepaths that he could do more harm than good. In fact, during yesterday’s Marlins game, the television announcers joked that if Juan Pierre hit a ball into the gap, he might catch catcher Mike Redmond, who was already on the bases.

Reynolds’s point, as well as opposing managers’ proclivity for walking Bonds, got me wondering how frequently Barry is scoring runs compared to what other players do. Typically Bonds ends up amongst the lead leaders in terms of runs scored, but it’s hard not to when you’re on base all the time and you hit a lot of home runs. But if Harold’s point is true, a Jimmy Rollins or Juan Pierre could be just as impactful as Bonds, because their great speed would allow them to score runs a higher percentage of the time than the typical ballplayer.

To assess if this is true or not, I took a look at the number of times randomly selected players scored runs and divided this by the number of times they were on base (hits + walks + hit by pitches) last year and over their careers. Below is a look at the players I selected (ToB equals times on base, Runs equals runs scored, and % equals the percentage of times a player was on base that he scored; Car equals Career – EDIT: table creating skills so poor that I'm adding commentary instead):


ARod.com - 2003 ToB 283, 124 R, 44%; Career ToB 2,166, 1,099 R, 47%
Giambi, J - 2003 ToB 284, 97 R, 34%; Career ToB 2,266, 818 R, 36%
Jeter - 2003 ToB 212, 87 R, 41%; Career ToB 2,137, 926 R, 43%
Maggs - 2003 ToB 256, 95 R, 37%; Career ToB 1,456, 592 R, 41%
Juan Pierre - 2003 ToB 264, 100 R, 38%; Career ToB 803, 324 R, 40%
Jimmy Rollins - 2003 ToB 219, 85 R, 39%; Career ToB682, 269 R, 39%
Kenny Lofton - 2003 ToB 212, 97 R, 46%; Career ToB 2,751, 1,245 R, 45%

Rickey Henderson - Career ToB 5,343, 2,295 R, 43%

Barry L. Bonds - 2003 ToB 291, 111 R, 38%; Career ToB 4,749, 1,941 R, 41%

First of all, this is obviously not a complete, nor thorough, analysis. I picked a handful of well known players: Giambi and Ordonez (Maggs, for the uninitiated) because they are known as mashers, but not particularly as base runners; ARod.com because he is all around (and deservedly) regarded as a great player; Jeter because he is over-hyped, and this (as you will soon see) is another good example of how this comes to be; Lofton, Pierre, and Rollins are all speed guys, who should support Harold Reynolds’s contention of the value of speed in scoring runs; Rickey Henderson is both a run scoring and getting on base machine, so I was curious to see what his numbers looked like (although I felt his 2003 numbers were not really relevant to the story here).

A number of things jumped out at me in first looking at this data. First, maybe Harold is right about Giambi. He certainly doesn’t seem to score as frequently as these other players. That may be due to the fact that when he played in Oakland, most of the talent hit ahead of him, and thus there were fewer opportunities for him to be driven in by the batters behind him in the order (he also didn’t light the world on fire last year in New York). Second, ARod.com seems to score runs an amazing percentage of the time when he reaches base, as does Kenny Lofton. Both of these players are relatively speedy – more-so Lofton, particularly in his prime. What each of these players have benefited from though is being in hitter friendly ballparks and high run scoring lineups for the bulk of their careers. I’m not going to get into park adjusted stats here, but you can either trust me or look it up. For those of you who are more of the Jim Kaat/Harold Reynolds mindset, I’m sure you recall the 1996 Indians and the run scoring machine that they were and the fact that Ken Griffey, arguably the most dominant player of the 90s, and how he hit behind ARod.com before he was ARod.com for many years. Those memories alone should be more than enough for you to just take my word for it.

The speed guys seem to score pretty frequently, but not a great deal more so than the other players. What jumped out at me about Jimmy Rollins was that his percentage of times scoring was low, as were his hit by pitch totals. I’ve never paid particularly close attention to Rollins, but I will now. On the surface, and looking at a very limited amount of data, Rollins doesn’t seem to be much of a hustle guy, in the speak of Mr. Reynolds. On the flip side, Derek Jeter has scored quite frequently, at least relative to Rollins. But if you put Bernie Williams, Jason Giambi, and the crew behind me in the lineup, I’d score a few runs myself (mostly because I’d probably draw a few walks too). I suspect, again, without really digging into it, that Jeter’s sparkling numbers here are more a result of playing in a strong lineup than any super-star level performances by Mr. Jeter.

All things considered, Barry Bonds seems to do a fine job of scoring runs in that he reaches home as often as anyone else on the occasions when he reaches first base. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Not only is Bonds powerful with the bat (and home runs give you one time on base and one run scored), but he is also the best power-speed combination in the history of baseball (being the only player to total 400 home runs and 400 steals – in fact he has more than 500 of each).

You probably noticed though that Bonds scored less frequently last year than he has over the course of his career. Like opposing managers have figured out, this is more a result of the relative ineptitude of the lineup surrounding him than it is a factor of Barry’s increasing age. In 2003, Bonds scored 38% of the time when he reached base. In 2002, when the Giants reached the World Series, this total was 33% of the time. In 2001, when Bonds hit 73 home runs, he scored on 38% of his trips around the bases. To date this season, Bonds is only scoring 33% of the time when he reaches base. So this is likely the root cause of the plethora of walks that Mr. Bonds is receiving of late: he is likely to score others, and quite possibly himself, if you let him swing the bat, but if you put him on base via the walk, he’s likely to get stranded out there.

While this is what the data says on the surface, it just doesn’t make sense if you work out the math and really think about it. Through yesterday’s game, Bonds has a batting average of .463 and an onbase percentage of .704. In nearly 45% of his plate appearances, Bonds is being walked or hit by a pitch (actually, so far this year it means a walk, as he hasn’t been hit yet – knock on wood). For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Bonds gets 600 plate appearances this season. If he is walked in 45% of those appearances, that’s 270 times on base. Given that Bonds is scoring one-third of the time when he reaches base this year, this means that by walking Bonds, managers are giving the Giants about 89 runs.

“No problem,” you say, “those 89 runs are far less than he’d create and score himself if you pitched to him. He’s just too good.” Oh really? Let’s take those 270 plate appearances and assume that you turn them all into at bats by pitching to him. To take it even one step further, let’s assume that he continues to hit at the implausible .463 clip he’s been on to date this season. That would mean that Barry would reach base 125 times. Assuming again that he would continue to score 33% of the time he reached base, that would mean 41 runs for the Giants. So, without accounting for the runs Bonds would drive in, you would save 48 runs by pitching to him.

How many runs would Bonds drive in over 270 at bats? So far this season, Bonds has driven in one run (net of himself on home runs – since we already counted in the runs Bonds himself scores when he reaches base) every 4.5 at bats (54 at bats divided by 12 – 22 RBI minus 10 HR). So in 270 at bats, Bonds would drive in 60 runs (other than himself), meaning that he would create 101 runs – or twelve more than he would score if you just walked him in those 270 plate appearances.

To assume that Bonds will continue with a .463 batting average over the course of the season it ludicrous though. That has never been done before, and I don’t see why it would be done this year. Yes, Bonds is phenomenal, and on a phenomenal run. But he hit .273 last week, and personally, I think he’s more likely to hit .273 over the rest of the season than he is to hit .463. .273 is too pessimistic though. Let’s assume that Bonds hits .345 over the rest of the year (his average, combined, over the 2001, 2002, and 2003 seasons). That seems fair, if not optimistic.

If Bonds hits .345 in those 270 at bats, he would reach base 93 times, score 31 runs, and knock in the same 60 runs (because the runs created is based on his 2004 RBI/AB to-date), meaning that he would produce 91 runs if you let him hit, versus the same 89 runs if you continue to walk him in nearly half of his plate appearances.

To make this analysis more accurate, you could do a lot of things, most notably to assume than in his 600 plate appearances that Bonds is going to get a certain “normal” number of walks. I didn’t do that here, but I suppose it would change the results to some degree. Overall, my point is that you don’t save much, if anything, by walking Bonds so regularly. He’s eventually going to go into a lull, and will then be a much better proposition to pitch to than it is to walk him and allow him to automatically score 33 – 40% of the time. Besides, it would just be more fun for the rest of us to watch.

Pitch to Barry!

Coming Home

Well, last week, as expected, was a tough week for the Marlins. After taking an impressive two of three games from the Rockies in Denver, the Marlins lost three of four to the previously struggling Giants in San Francisco. Yes, going into last week, I said that I hoped the Marlins would come back East with three wins in their games against their NL West opponents; however, that was when I (mistakenly) thought they had six games (two three game series) in total to play. It turned out that the Marlins actually had seven games, so three wins was not quite enough.

Particularly not enough when you consider how the last three losses came. Friday night came after the Marlins blew a 9 – 2 lead and lost 12 – 9. Saturday’s lost came when the strategy of walking Barry Bonds worked out as if they had pitched to him, and he scored the winning run late in the game. Sunday’s loss came without Bonds in the lineup; so the Marlins effectively lost to a glorified triple-A team.

Tomorrow though, the Marlins return home for a six game homestand (yes, I counted this time). Today’s a much needed off day. Starting tomorrow, they play the surprisingly strong Dodgers for three games, and then the red-hot Padres (and their funny colored uniforms) come to town for the weekend.

The Dodgers series should be interesting. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Milton Bradley play; he seems to have awoken the Dodgers’ bats somehow. Hopefully Bradley will play; he say out LA’s last three games with an ankle injury.

I’ll also be curious to see how, if at all, the crowd acknowledges Alex Cora. Some are likely to remember that Cora played shortstop for the University of Miami during the mid-90s. In fact, he was the shortstop for the 1996 College World Series runner-up team; sadly the lasting image in my head of Cora is him collapsing on the infield in reaction to Warren Morris’s game winning blast in the 9th inning that won the championship for the LSU Tigers. When the Phillies came to town, with former Canes Pat Burrell and Jason Michaels, and when the Braves came to town with former Seminole star J.D. Drew, Marlins fans cheered for them, in an apparent acknowledgement of their ties to Florida baseball. I’m not so sure that Alex Cora will get the same recognition, but I hope that he does.

Later in the week, when the Padres visit Pro Player Stadium, I will be most curious to see their sand colored uniforms in person. They appear to be less bothersome on television than I expected them to be (based on the photographs I’d seen in magazines and on the web), but I think they might look a little odd in person. I suppose the sand color fits in today, as it is a bit like the throwback styles that are coming back into vogue; the sand color is reminiscent of the blue uniforms worn by the Cardinals and Royals back in the 80s (well, to some degree). But more importantly, at least on the field, is that the Padres are playing very well right now. It appears that their much maligned plan to build the team up in time for the opening of their new ballpark may be paying off. The Padres are not a club filled with house-hold name superstars, but they do have a solid mix of young prospects and contributing veterans. Those elements should combine to make it a challenging series for the Marlins.

All in all, it will likely prove to be a challenging week for the Fish. They will get two starts from Josh Beckett though, and that should be a good thing. Ideally, the Marlins would take two out of three games in both series, although I suppose that’s what the manager hopes for, at least, going into every series.

Other than that, I hope teams start pitching to Barry Bonds. I understand that it may be sound strategy to pitch around Bonds and to intentionally walk him on occassion. I highly doubt, however, that Bonds is twice a fearsome of a hitter as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, or Willie Mays; although, by the count of the times he’s been intentionally walked this season and in his career, you would think he was (sometime soon Barry will have received twice as many intentional walks as the second and third most intentionally walked ballplayers of all time). By walking Barry so excessively, Major League Baseball is depriving you and I, the fan, of witnessing history in the making.

For the second consecutive week last week, Mr. Bonds was walked in more of his plate appearances than he was able to hit. Barry had ten official at bats last week and twelve (twelve!) walks. The previous week’s totals were even more impressive (or depressing), as Bonds had only nine at bats and fourteen walks. Going into the weekend series against the Marlins, I hoped that we would see a change in the recent trend, and that the Marlins, with their young, successful staff, would go right after Bonds and challenge him more often than not. They didn’t; in the three games Bonds played against the Marlins, he had five at bats (including two hits – one of which was a home run) and ten (ten!) walks. Bonds was walked in twice as many plate appearances as his total number of at bats in the series. If this trend keeps up, Bonds will have more walks this season than at bats. I’m sorry, but no matter how good of a hitter Bonds is, he doesn’t deserve this kind of super-superstar treatment (well, unless the Giants fail to score him when he’s put on base – which they are doing quite a bit lately).

Buy a Pitch to Barry t-shirt and let the world know how you feel.

Giving In

For some time now, many of you have asked how you could get your hands on something a little more tangible to represent your affiliation with The Book of Mike. I am pleased to announce that, as of today, you can now purchase a wide variety of The Book of Mike merchandise. Check out the link on the right side of the page (just below Barry) or click here. And speaking of Barry, make sure to check out the "Pitch to Barry" t-shirts. While watching today's Marlins - Giants game, in which Barry was walked four times, I became increasingly frustrated with opposing managers proclivity to walking the Giants' slugger; while many fans in attendance at games regularly sport signs with the same message as our new t-shirts, I felt that something needed to be done to allow the average fans to wear their feelings on their chests.

Buy the t-shirts for yourself, for your girlfriend, for your wife, for your dog, and buy them for your baby. Maybe a grassroots movement will actually get the man some strikes.

Resignation

I don’t care anymore. I simply don’t care. David Samson can comp Joe Arriola as many front row tickets as he wants in exchange for financing for a new baseball stadium, and I won’t care. I won’t think about it; I won’t write about it. Obviously, there’s a business side to baseball; I’m just choosing not to partake in it anymore.

I don’t care if you think that ball players are paid too much money. I haven’t seen a club go out of business because of the high salaries recently. If you’re hear reading this, you’ve probably contributed to it a time or two by paying much more than you used to go to a game. I do it too – all the time, and I don’t have a problem with it. Actually, I quite enjoy it and I find it to be a pleasurable way to spend my disposable income and leisure time.

I also don’t care anymore if you think that $8 for a beer and $4 for a bag of peanuts is too much to pay for food at a ball park. If you were stupid enough to pay your hard earned money to watch me work, I would charge you at least that much for a beer and peanuts. Actually, I would probably charge you more because you’re obviously a sucker and you have plenty of money.

I do have a problem with charging exorbitant amounts of money for water at the stadium, particularly when you are not allowed to bring in your own water, since it’s necessary for people to consumer water when they’re sitting in the hot sun, but I’m letting that go now too.

Baseball is fun and it’s a leisure activity. It’s not life and death. It’s not something that should stress you out or bother you. It’s fun. And I’m going to make sure that it continues to be that for me because I’m not going to let the annoying things off the field issues bother me anymore. I’m probably going to even stop reading about them.

Think of all the benefits this will bring to me: chief amongst these benefits is that when I come upon diminutive Marlins President David Samson in the bowels of Pro Player Stadium next time, I will have much less reason to worry about him approaching me, jumping up in front of me, and punching me in the shin, because I will have eliminated my opportunities to offend him on this site. This alone is of immeasurable value to me. David Samson is one of the most annoying figures in sports that I can remember encountering in my lifetime. Luckily though, he is not the general manager and appears to have little, if any, input into the product that is put on to the field. Yes, I’m sure he plays a large role in establishing budgets, but I don’t think he has much of a say as to who will be called up from AA or AAA, or who should be taken in the first round of the draft. For this, I am grateful.

Instead of wasting my time worrying and wondering about whether the Marlins will receive financing for a new baseball stadium in Miami, or if they will have to perpetuate rumors about leaving town, or if they are able to secure financing which schools and hospitals will ultimately receive less funding because of it, I am just going to enjoy baseball. In case you missed it, there are lots of wonderful things going on this year: the World Champion Florida Marlins have the best record in baseball, Barry Bonds is redefining what it is to dominate a game, new palaces of baseball were opened in Philadelphia and San Diego, and by my estimation, competitive balance is at a relative peak.

There are lots of fun things going on in baseball right now and I’m going to enjoy them. If you want think baseball is “big business” I’ve got news for you. Yes, there’s “big” money involved, but it’s all relative. Relative to real industry, major league baseball is small potatoes. Even to the owners of major league teams, the transactions involved in their baseball organizations are often small change compared to the mega-conglomerates they run and the personal fortunes they manage. If you enjoy reading about the business and politics of baseball, there’s plenty of interesting news to keep up with that includes bigger numbers followed by dollar signs and more intriguing commentary, as these operations are generally better and more professionally run; so, instead of keeping up with business in the sports pages, check out something like this.

Oh, and by the way, in case you missed it yesterday, the Giants did pitch to Barry. Well, sort of. Bonds batted in the second inning yesterday (leading off the inning) and singled). He was also walked twice, once intentionally. During another at bat, with no one on, Bonds homered on a curveball from Brad Penny. Granted, it wasn’t a great pitch, but it wasn’t a hanger either. Penny’s pitch was over the heart of the plate, but Bonds hit it as if he knew it was coming. Hopefully the Marlins will challenge him again tonight. That should make for some exciting baseball.

More on Bonds

Some of you, who can read as fast as I type, will probably like the title of this post.

Maybe he is human. In his last five games, he has only managed a total of two hits, and both of those were singles. Granted, he only has a total of nine at bats in those five games, and he has been walked ten (ten!) times during that span, but it may be possible to say that Barry Bonds is in a bit of a slump. Well, maybe not a slump, but he has appeared to be mortal over the past week or so. You might be particularly quick to jump to this conclusion if you saw last night’s game against the Braves.

After being intentionally walked in his first plate appearance of the game, Bonds was called out on strikes in the 3rd. This in itself is a rare feat. After being walked intentionally – again – in the fourth, Bonds grounded out weekly in his next at bat in the fifth (yes, he did single later in the game). But that fourth plate appearance last night was the most interesting Bonds at bat that I have seen in quite some time. Bonds is revered throughout baseball for his strike zone judgment (thus taking the called third strike in the third inning was so unusual) and his nearly unflinching discipline at the plate, despite the constant barrage of balls and unhittable pitches that are offered to him. Last night though, Bonds flinched. He swung at two pitches from Antonio Alfonseca that were undoubtedly balls. After the first two pitches missed by a significant margin, Bonds swung at the third pitch (and missed). On that swing, Bonds looked more like me than himself; his hips flew open, his head pointed towards the dugout at the end of his swing, and the pitch was the better part of a foot off the plate. The swing he put on the second pitch he offered at was not much better, but he managed to foul the ball off.

The point here is not to say that Barry Bonds is anything less than the best player of the game; the point is that for the first time in years, Barry Bonds looked last night, at least to me, as if he suffered from a mechanical and mental lapse. His swing looked un-Bondsian and his approach to the at bat was far less than the controlled and disciplined plan that we have so come to expect – regardless of how many unintentional intentional walks he receives. I have been waiting to see Bonds take a few hacks like he did last night for years now. If I were Bonds, I would have started swinging at marginal pitches a long time ago – well either that or I would have seriously considered retiring. But for the betterment of his team, Bonds has not really done that to date. He has accepted his walks and taken his trips around the bases, constantly hoping that his teammates will come through with timely hits. This year though it seems that the timely hits will not come to be very frequently; Bonds is not surrounded by the lineup that he has been in the past.

Maybe that caused Barry to swing at a couple pitches that he shouldn’t have last night. Maybe that has opened up some holes in Barry’s swing that will take a day or two to tighten back up. All of this comes at an interesting time for the Florida Marlins. During last year’s NLDS, the Marlins pitched to Bonds. This came as a great surprise, myself included, as most people expected the Marlins to go by the conventional wisdom and to “not let one guy beat you.” But the Marlins played with fire and won. Barry did a little damage, but did not homer in the series, and the Fish went on to win the series three games to one (you know the rest).

Had the Marlins – Giants series taken place a week or two ago, nearly everyone would agree that it would be best to walk Bonds in just about every circumstance. Yes, I have seen the research that proves that even for the best hitters, it makes sense to pitch to them because they will still get themselves out 60 – 70% of the time, and that walking such hitters only gives the opposition more opportunities to score runs. But that analysis was run with “normal” superstars and assumed they were surrounded by normal major league lineups. Bonds and the Giants are neither – or at least they weren’t a few weeks ago. Bonds looked to be on a tear far more fearsome than anything we had seen before in baseball, and he had a four year hot streak and career long track record to back it up, and make you think it would continue indefinitely. The remainder of the Giants lineup was, and is, inept, at least by major league standards. Thus, walking Bonds nearly every time he came to the plate seemed to be a fairly risk-free proposition. You could pitch around the game’s most dangerous hitter and let those who bat after him make outs.

Padres manager Bruce Bochy put it well though when he said that there’s almost an “obligation” to pitch to Bonds – by not doing so you’re impacting history; he went on to say that “Babe Ruth only became Babe Ruth because someone pitched to him.” While technically Bochy’s statement is not correct – Ruth would have continued to be himself regardless of his success or failure on the baseball field, that’s just basic science – his assertion is correct. By continuing to walk Bonds, be it intentionally or with the now more common un-intentional intentional walk, baseball is potentially being deprived of the greatest show that we may ever see.

And now that he appears to have returned to super-super-star levels from the previous high that he was on, I hope that we see the Marlins pitch to him in the three game set that begins today in San Francisco. Brad Penny, a man whom the Marlins turned off the stadium radar gun for last year – because he always looked at it and tried to throw harder, would surely like to challenge Bonds. That is just him and his personality. Tomorrow night’s starter, Dontrelle Willis, has had a relative amount of success against Bonds. Most of Willis’s experience against Bonds came against the Giants in last year’s playoffs where Willis received one start and also came out of the bullpen, specifically to face Bonds. Darren Oliver will face Bonds in the third start, and depending on how the series has gone to that point, I hope Jack McKeon lets Oliver go after him. I’d rather see Barry really bat than have the Fish improve their chances for a sweep on Sunday. Yes, I’m getting ahead of myself to be sure, and that one game may matter at the end of the year, but I’ll see another pennant race before I see another Barry Bonds. Pitch to Barry.

Books and Books

I suspect that many of you, like me, can read. Because of this, and because I would like to make some extra money, I decided to post a list of some of my favorite books in hopes that you would buy them too. If you do buy them, I get a small cut of the gross price you pay. Plus they are some really great books if I do say so myself. Even if you don’t like these books, feel free to follow this link to Amazon and buy to your heart’s content. I will get money for you doing so.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorites:

Moneyball – A must have for any serious baseball reader. This is the current generation’s "Ball Four".

Angels and Demons – Dan Brown’s sister work to the more popular "The Da Vinci Code". Both are very similar, I just prefer "Angels and Demons". Both are great thrillers and great reads.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves– Frequent Readers of this blog will surely be able to tell that this is a book that I personally need to read. Well, I have read it, and my grammar and punctuation are still horrendous at times. I like to think that this is because I usually fail to proof my work before it is posted. Still, I regularly fear that Mrs. Reynolds (7th and 8th grade English teacher) or Father Glynn (Sophomore year of High School Religion teacher and summer English tutor) will find their way to my merry blog and find fault with my writing and send me a marked up print out correcting my work. "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" is a great read though – full of funny stories and simple reminders of how to use grammar and punctuation just like we all learned back in school. Trust me on this one, it’s better than it sounds.

Deception Point– another great thriller by Mr. Brown. I prefer "Deception Point" to "Digital Fortress", but again, you can’t go wrong with either.

More to come…

Potty Talk/Environmentalism

One thing that has been on my mind (for more than a year now actually) that I’ve never really spoken of, is the urinals at Pro Player Stadium. Granted, this is a weird subject – probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever written about on this blog (well, maybe the Mr. Google person still wins). Pro Player Stadium has urinals that I think I have only seen in one other place (at the Port of Miami). These urinals are completely flush free, which is a weird concept at best, and a disgusting concept/reality at worst. Others before me have questioned how hygienic this sort of a set up actually is, as evidenced by the lengthy FAQ on JMG’s website (JMG is the maker of this product).

The benefit, of course, to this flush-free set up is that it saves water (there are also other benefits, but you’ll have to check out the FAQ yourself to learn of them). As many of you know (well, those of you who have looked down at a urinal or two in your day), it’s not uncommon for a urinal to use one whole gallon of water per flush. At somewhere like Pro Player Stadium this can add up to quite a bit of water over the course of a baseball game or a football season or a year. But these self-flushing urinals (or whatever the technology is called) proudly proclaim (it’s on the top of all of them) that they save 40,000 gallons of water per year because of their efficiencies. After checking out the website for these urinals (yes, it’s now official – everyone and everything has a website), it appears that this 40,000 gallon water savings per year is their standard estimate. In my mind this is too high. I can’t imagine the average urinal gets that kind of use.

(By now, if you’re still reading, you must be asking yourself why I care. Honestly, I’m not really sure. This is pretty weird. Not as weird as the post at The Hardball Times where the writer admitted to timing player’s times from home to third on triples. Yes, that’s definitely stranger than what I’m talking about here; especially when you consider the fact that the writer of the article admitted that, in order to provide everyone with valid times for each player’s triple speed, he watched each triple nine times and averaged the times using a fairly complicated heuristic. So I’m not so crazy after all, am I? It’s all relative)

40,000 gallons is a lot of water. To me, it seems like this is a preposterous sum of water to assume that switching from a standard urinal to a water free urinal could save you. At a gallon per flush… let me work out the math here… give me a minute… that would mean approximately 40,000 flushes per year. If you break that down by day, the average old-style urinal at Pro Player (or anywhere else) would have been flushed an average of 110 times per day, every day in order for each urinal to be saving 40,000 gallons of water annually. On an hourly basis, that would mean you would have to flush the urinal 4.56 times per hour, or once every 13 minutes. Keep in mind that this isn’t during normal business hours – it’s 24 hours a day, continuously. I suppose there are places like airports and train terminals that see this kind of activity, but I would have to think that it’s rare even at a stadium.

According to this source, there are 218 flush free urinals at Pro Player stadium. Based on JMG’s information, this would mean that Pro Player Stadium could expect to save 8,720,000 gallons of water every year just by using this fantastic technology.

I didn’t look this up, but work with me here. The Marlins play 81 games per year (not counting the playoffs every few years) at Pro Player Stadium; hopefully, they’ll draw 20,000 people per game, which totals to 1,620,000 patrons this season. The Dolphins play ten home games (including the pre-season and not counting their rare post-season appearance), and with 70,000 fans at each, that brings us 700,000 more fans . FAU football has a handful of games (let’s say 5 games with 10,000 people per, for 50,000 annually, and the stadium also hosts the annual Orange Bowl (another 70,000) and the occasional concert or truck pull (let’s call this 10 events at 50,000 people per – or 500,000 total). This brings the total number of patrons at Pro Player Stadium each year to 2,940,000. Obviously, not all of these folks are male, so let’s conservatively estimate that 75% of the patrons are men (this will make the water saving per person more achievable); our total number of annual men at the stadium is estimated at 2,205,000. In order for these 2 million men to use the urinals frequently enough to save the nearly 9 million gallons of water, each man who attends an event at Pro Player Stadium would need to use a urinal nearly 4 times per event they attend at the stadium (3.95 times to be exact).

We should also probably count the folks who work in the stadium and at the games. Let’s say there are 250 people who work year round at the stadium (all 365 days) and that these men use the urinal three times a day (not only are they always at PPS slaving away, but they are truly fascinated by this technology, so they use it as much as possible). By having these folks use the urinal technology instead of the urinal style we’ve all grown accustomed to over the years, almost 400,000 gallons of water will be saved every year. If you subtract those 400,000 gallons from the 8.7 million gallons the fans attending games would need to save in order to live up to the claims on the urinal, the average man would still need to use the urinal 3.77 times per game/event. This is just not going to happen, especially considering that the average event at the stadium is about three hours.

So what’s my point here? Well, I’m not really sure. This water free urinal technology sounds like a great thing. Apparently it’s clean, odor free, and cost effective – in addition to the water it saves. But the claims of saving 40,000 gallons of water per urinal per year seem to be a little outrageous to me. Is there no truth in urinal labeling? I just don't know what you can believe anymore...

Comments Fixed?

Thanks to many of you who pointed out that the comments weren't working again. I had to reset them for a second time now. Hopefully they will work this time and I won't break them again via my bumbling use of HTML code, or whatever all of this is called. I'm going to test it out with a comment or two.

Pitch to Barry

Although it seems that Barry Bonds has come back to Earth a little bit (last night his average fell below .500 for the first time in awhile, and one would think it will remain there for the duration of the season), in terms of how locked in he is at the plate, I’m still hearing a lot of discussion about where the Giants should bat Barry in the lineup. Felipe Alou has chosen to bat Bonds fourth in the lineup this year, which many people think is not an ideal spot. Others argue that since the Giants lineup is so poor without Bonds that it makes sense to bat him there, because in many cases the 4th batter will lead off the second inning and in instances where he doesn’t, there will be at least one runner on base in the first.

Generally, there are four places in the lineup that you could arguably bat Bonds. Most popular amongst people other than Felipe Alou, is 3rd. This is the traditional place for a batter with power, who also hits for average and in ideal cases, who possesses some speed. Bonds may not have the speed that he had in his earlier days, but he is also not the slowest person in the league either. As you may know, Barry is the only player in the history of major league baseball to have hit 500 home runs and to have stolen 500 bases. Actually, he’s the only man to ever hit 400 homers and steal 400 bases (yeah – I know, I would have thought that Mays was a 400-400 guy too, but I looked it up and he isn’t).

Fourth is also a popular choice for Bonds. It’s difficult to argue with the logic of Felipe Alou, who has been in baseball for a long time, and who managed Barry and the Giants to a division title last year. Batting fourth also gives Barry the best theoretical opportunity to come up with runners on base. This can be a good thing or a bad thing though, at least in a sense, because if runners are on second and third when Barry comes to the plate, he will almost definitely be walked – lately even regardless of the situation. But if he is pitched to, having runners on is exactly the situation the Giants are looking for with Barry at the plate. The downside to having Barry bat fourth is that each spot in the batting order gets about 20 fewer plate appearances than the spot ahead of it over the course of a season (I don’t have any data to back this up, but it seems to be conventional wisdom, at least according to the SABR-L posts I’ve read on the subject). Sure, this isn’t a whole lot (maybe one plate appearance per week, give or take a little), but given the pace that Barry’s been on over the last four years, there’s a better than 50% chance that he’ll reach base somehow or another and that gives your team a good chance to score runs. When you are as run deprived as the Giants are and will be (without an acquisition of some sort) this year, increasing your ability to score runs is of paramount importance.

Others have argued that Bonds should bat much higher in the lineup. Some have suggested that he should bat lead-off. This would guarantee Bonds the most possible plate appearances. It would also present opposing managers with an interesting dilemma at the start of every game – whether to walk Bonds and give the Giants a base runner to start things off, or to pitch to him and risk him reaching base anyway or putting the Giants on the board with a run rather quickly. The downside to this strategy is that Bonds would only be guaranteed to lead off an inning once per game; in the other innings, Bonds would likely bat after the 8th and 9th hitters batted, meaning that there would likely be very few runners on base during his plate appearances. Not having a lot of runners on when Bonds bats isn’t ideal either, as it limits his ability to produce runs.

Based on the premise that it is important for runners to be on base when Bonds bats, others have asserted that Barry should bat second, behind speedy lead-off man Ray Durham. On the surface this strategy appears to make sense, as it would put Barry behind a solid hitter who reaches base quite frequently; on the other hand, Durham is capable of stealing a lot of bases, but this skill would likely be negated with Bonds hitting behind him, because Durham would not want to steal second base and have Bonds walked as a result (since there would be an open base behind Durham). The benefit of getting Barry to the plate 40 more times over the course of the season may outweigh the reduction in stolen base opportunities for Durham. I’d have to run the numbers on that to be sure.

Personally, I don’t like that the Giants are batting Bonds fourth. I think it limits his plate appearances and given the bats that surround his in the lineup, I don’t think it offers him any additional opportunities. There are rarely going to be runners on base ahead of him, and when those runners are on base, it still likely isn’t going to be a situation where the opponents will pitch to him. If I were the manager of the Giants, I would bat Bonds third in the lineup; I would bat Ray Durham and Marquis Grissom ahead of Bonds, although I am not sure who I would have bat first and who would bat second. After those three, the Giants lineup is not very intimidating. If the Giants are able to stay in the race this year, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them make a run at Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Beltran, or another big bat that might be available later in the year. With the start that Bonds is off to this year, it would be a shame to waste a historic offensive performance by surrounding him with inferior offensive talent. So far though this year it looks like that is what is happening.

Mmm... donuts...

In case you didn’t hear, the Marlins had twelve hits on Saturday night, winning a dozen free donuts from Krispy Kreme for everyone in attendance. All you had to do was show up at a Krispy Kreme store within 24-hours of the end of the game to claim your prize (well, and bring your ticket stub too). Unfortunately for the good bakers at Krispy Kreme, there were more than 40,000 people in attendance on Saturday night, meaning that they could potentially be handing out 500,000 free donuts. I can picture dozens of people like the old Dunkin’ Donuts “time to make the donuts” man cringing upon hearing this news on Saturday night. Although today I suppose they get a page or a text message telling them to come in extra early to start baking.

I did not go to try to claim my prize of free donuts, although I heard that many did. Friends of mine went and left after seeing 150 or so people in line. One of the newspapers yesterday showed a photograph of a line around one store at 1 am. It was fun to see folks at the game last night with their boxes of Krispy Kremes in hand (somehow they snuck them past security).

Sadly, that was about where the fun ended for Marlins fans last night. Nearly 30,000 folks were on hand last night to see Marlins’ second year lefty Dontrelle Willis take his 0.00 ERA to the mound on national television against the Altanta Braves, who have won the National League East Division Title every year it’s been awarded in the current form (since 1995) and they also won the last three NL West Division crowns that were handed out (1991 – 1993) – and let’s not get into 1994 for now. Willis was knocked around a little in last night’s game, including a line drive home run that he gave up to Atlanta’s Mark DeRosa. Even before the game started I was worried about Willis, who didn’t appear to be prepared for the long between inning delays due to the television commercials. Before the first inning commenced Willis stood on the hill after completing his warm up pitches for almost a full minute. Soon thereafter he gave up his first earned run of the season. I was surprised that the Fish didn’t hold him in the dugout a little longer before the start of the second inning; Willis was the first Marlin on the field and waited a few moments for Mike Redmond to emerge and catch Dontrelle’s warmup tosses. All in all it was a solid, but unspectacular, outing for Willis, who did not factor in the decision in last night’s loss.

It’s amazing to think that after losing many key players in the offseason that the World Champion Florida Marlins enter the fourth week of the season with a record of 12 wins and 6 losses. While this is a sparkling record – good enough to give them a full two game lead over the second place club in the standings, it is worth noting that the Marlins are 11 – 1 in all games not featuring the Braves and only 1 – 5 against Atlanta. While the Fish are still in first place, they have thirteen games left against the Braves and one would have to think that if they keep up their current pace against Atlanta that they won’t win the division, regardless of how well they play against everyone else.

Traditionally, the Marlins have not played well on the West Coast. While this is hardly a fair predictor of future success, given the roster turnover of West Coast teams and the Marlins, we will all soon see how the Marlins fare against some West Coast foes when they face off against the Rockies beginning tonight and later in the week against the Giants in San Francisco. I am particularly looking forward to Friday night’s matchup against the Giants which should pit Dontrelle Willis against Future Hall of Famer Barry Bonds. During last year’s NLDS Willis pitched well against Bonds both in relief and in starting game four. It will be interesting to see how the matchup goes now when Bonds seems to be as locked in as ever. It also appears to be an interesting week for Bonds as, allegedly, BALCO ringleader Victor Conte may have admitted to supplying Bonds with steroids in the past.

It should be another interesting week. If the Marlins return home with three wins from this road trip, I will be pleased.

Viva Las Vegas

And so it begins. In a surprising lack of keeping up with the details of the story, ESPN is reporting that the Marlins stadium financing deadline is still May 1st. Jayson Stark wrote an article that states that Mr. Loria would like to move the team to either DC or Las Vegas, which the article quotes him as referring to as a "gold mine."

If Las Vegas is a gold mine, why doesn't MLB move the Expos there? Their financial situation is worse. It looks like the politicing has begun. The inevitable is now upon us. The Marlins have put off relocation talk for about as long as possible. Now it begins as we enter the home stretch for financing a new park.

I guess I'm sad about this today for the first time. I don't want to see the team leave by any stretch of the imagination (well, at least as long as I live in Miami). If I was moving (which I'm not) to Las Vegas, I would be thrilled to see a major league team following me out there. But at the same time I'm completely opposed to publicly financing this new park. Unfortunately keeping the team here without public financing is probably an impossibility.

Oh well, I still get to go and see the D-Train in person tonight. I'll keep enjoying that while I can.