I wrote a whole column last Thursday about how players don’t owe it to their teams to waive their no-trade clauses. One weekend later, Randy Johnson comes out and says that if, maybe, he were to think about leaving Arizona, well… “The only way I’d probably want to leave is if a trade would benefit the Diamondbacks by my leaving. And maybe the way to do that is if they wouldn’t have to pay my salary and it could go to some other players that would help them–and if I got to a situation that was going to work for me.”
Randy’s now saying he’d require that:
The Diamondbacks wouldn’t have to pick up his salary
They would have to get players back who’d help them
His new team would have to be contending
Sure, there are players who have emotional ties to an organization and a city such that they’d like to see their soon-to-be-old team do well. Some players have tried to make sure that their new team doesn’t give up too much. The most obvious example of this was Ken Griffey, Jr, who when demanding a trade from the Mariners to the Reds seemed to be actively involved in who’d be traded for, which is kind of weird since he instigated the whole thing. It’d be cool if us average people could do that for our jobs. (“I’ve decided you’re going to offer me $125 grand to watch baseball and drink beer in the comfort of my house, and you’re going to pay for the recliner.” “Remember not to put your breakable mugs on the bottom of the box when you clean out your desk, because you’re fired.”)
The Red Sox wade through the darkness of bullpen troubles before the eventual dawn (i.e., the return of Scott Williamson and perhaps BH Kim). The White Sox lose Frank Thomas on the heels of watching Magglio Ordonez go down. Kerry Wood comes off the DL for the Cubs. Ken Griffey Jr. makes his annual trip to the DL with a bum hamstring. Eric Chavez returns to Oakland, and not a moment too soon. And the dismantling in Seattle continues with the release of Rich Aurilia. All this and much more news from around the league in your Tuesday edition of Transaction Analysis.
One of my favorite columns is my All-Star
Diary, where I watch the game and take notes as it happens, letting events
lead me where they may. Let’s see what unfolds this year…
The Mariners say goodbye to Rich Aurilia, as the dismantling continues in Seattle. Josias Manzanillo recalls what it was like to be ‘destroyed’ by a line drive. The Red Sox deny stealing signs. Derek Jeter thinks that highlight reels have affected major-league hitters’ willingness to bunt. Drayton McLane denies that Roger Clemens will be traded, and points to ‘The Tonight Show’ as evidence. Mike Lowell thinks it’s all those rotoheads who kept Juan Pierre out of the All-Star Game. And Ken Griffey Jr.’s hurt again. All this and many more quips from around the league in your Monday edition of The Week In Quotes.
Why the heck is the Futures Game scheduled for Sunday afternoon, when MLB
games are still being played? I caught bits and pieces of yesterday’s contest,
held at 3 p.m. Central at Houston’s Minute Maid Field, but was too distracted
by the great finishes in Philadelphia and Boston to pay it too much mind.
Having missed three innings, I was never able to get fully into the game.
It’s as if MLB wants to bury the Futures Game by putting it up against
regular-season games. Speaking mostly for myself, I would much rather the game
be, say, this afternoon, than have it be up against the last few games of the
first half. Having the Futures Game on Monday creates a practical issue–how to
have the Game, the All-Stars’ batting practice, and the Home Run Derby in the
same place on the same day while selling tickets to either one or two
sessions–but that can be dealt with by either moving the Futures Game to a
different location or truncating the day’s BP sessions.
The Home Run Derby is a turgid two hours that exists largely because no one
seems to know how to stop getting corporate sponsorship for it. Making the
Futures Game the centerpiece of All-Star Monday would make the day shine,
while giving the players in it a proper stage for their skills.
It’s really not even funny anymore. Sure, I’ve made my share of jokes at Ken Griffey’s expense, but just at the stage where he was finally getting some recognition for how good his career has been and revitalizing his present, his hamstring gave way. It wasn’t a particularly taxing play, but it doesn’t take much to split his chronically weakened hamstrings. I’d feel worse for Griffey if I hadn’t seen him stretching before a recent game. Like too many other players, he seemed to coast through the warm-ups. I’m not sure if there are other stretches he does, perhaps in the training room, but just the example he set didn’t help. Forget the kids in the stands, the kids on his team were watching and emulating him. Griffey is likely out a month, and with his condition, it could stretch longer. In his absence, the Reds will find out what Wily Mo Pena can do (two homers yesterday brought his season total up to 10, his season line to .270/.314/.491…PECOTA’s had him pretty well pegged so far). They’ll also see if John Vander Wal can come back from ACL surgery in just six months.
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again, but what the Yankees buy with all that money is depth. Sure, you look at second base or the front of their bullpen and it may not look like it, but when injuries happen, that’s when the depth shows up. With Mike Mussina trying to pitch on three days rest and stressing his elbow, the Yanks could reach down and pull up a rejuvenated Orlando Hernandez. He played the part of “Good Contreras” today, going five strong innings. He only needs to make a cameo start before heading to the pen since Kevin Brown should make his rehab start on Thursday, then come back to the rotation next week. The Yankees have been extremely conservative bringing Brown back, so he should be ready once he does re-appear. Mussina, on the other hand, is a bit more concerning. Elbow soreness is never a good thing, but team sources sound worried that this is Mussina finally admitting something that’s been going on all season. Expect a DL stint in hopes that rest and treatment will dig up the Mussina that they need come playoff time.
With a stadium that struggles to generate revenue (largely because of its co-football tenants), cash-conscious ownership and ever-stiff competition from other teams, this major league general manager makes tough decisions every year, keeping his team in contention the last few seasons and earning multiple playoff berths along the way. The similarities between Billy Beane and the latest in Baseball Prospectus’ series of GM Q&As mostly end there.
Terry Ryan’s scouting background and the success of his scouting and player development staff have helped the Minnesota Twins build one of the best farm
systems in the game. A staunch proponent of defense, athleticism and aggressive play over power and patience, he strives to tailor the Twins to the quirky
Metrodome and its unique characteristics. Ryan recently chatted with BP about the challenges of running the small-revenue Twins, the importance of makeup in ballplayers, the trade-offs of offense for defense, and more.
The White Sox believe in the power of positive thinking (you’d have to in order to give Freddy Garcia $27 million for the next three years). The Marlins deal with yet another blister for Josh Beckett. The Astros demote Brandon Duckworth as a way of dealing with their slide. The Expos reach into the Magic 8 ball for rotation help. The Giants look to heal their bullpen problems from within. And the Blue Jays continue to hope for Carlos Delgado to right himself and consequently waive his no-trade clause. All this and much more news from around the league in your Saturday edition of Transaction Analysis.
Editor’s Note: Every so often, we lay our hands on a document that was probably not intended for public consumption. We are not at liberty to say how it is we come by these things because we do not wish to compromise our conduit thereto. Suffice it to say, we will continue to make these available to you as long as we can continue to “come by” them.
The last thing Boston GM Theo Epstein needs, other than for Richard Griffin to get a job at the Globe, is my advice. But the best game in recent memory got me wondering about what ails this most engaging of teams. I’m not a Sox fan, but neither do I have any particular animus for them, Ben Affleck notwithstanding. So consider what follows a mission of conscience more than anything else. Like it or not, here’s my three-step plan to get the Red Sox to playoffs…
I can’t recall exactly where I heard or read it–probably in multiple
places–but the catchphrase for the week is that X number of teams, where X is
in the low-20s, are within Y games, where Y is six or fewer, of a playoff
spot.
As of this morning, those figures are 20 and six. Twenty teams are within six
games of a playoff spot as of July 9.
Now, I shouldn’t complain too much about this. It’s positive press for
baseball, the kind of accurate reporting of the game’s competitive balance
that shows that baseball isn’t a wasteland in which four teams have a chance
to succeed and 26 act as a Greek chorus for them. Baseball provides great
races, the kind of thing that the NBA and NHL don’t have, and that the NFL has
largely because its season is 1/10th the length.
Still, I can’t help but have a problem with the sudden discovery that baseball
is competitive. After all, for years now I and others like me have been trying
to make the point, standing on soapboxes and street corners to argue against
the prevailing notion that MLB was hopelessly broken. Now, as if everyone
received the same talking points memo, lines that could easily have been
written by me or Derek Zumsteg are finding their way into beat writers’
columns and color mens’ commentary.
Coming and going, the White Sox are still ruled by the disabled list. Frank Thomas isn’t going to do his best Curt Schilling imitation; bone chips in his ankle are likely to put him on a surgeon’s table. The surgery, while minor, would keep him out for six-to-eight weeks. In essence, the Sox swap Thomas for Magglio Ordonez. While the Sox had hoped to keep Ordonez on the shelf through the ASB, the Thomas injury forced their hand. Slipping a bit lately, the Sox are still in the thick of the AL Central. A healthy lineup down the stretch is a must to keep up with the deep Twins.
For weeks, I’ve been watching a dip in the velocity of Brad Penny. Actually, it’s his pitches that are losing velocity, but there’s finally a clue as to why. While most have assumed that his frayed labrum was finally voicing it’s disapproval or that he was going through a dead arm period, the reason is simpler. Penny has had an infected cut on his knee. His leg drive has been cut and the repeatability of his motion–never a strength–has also been impacted. Cuts, like bones, heal on a predicatable schedule, so this is a good time to buy low on Penny.
There was some speculation that Eric Chavez could be back as early as Thursday, but it was unclear if he’d joined the team prior to the game. It’s widely expected that Chavez will be back in the lineup on Friday, picking up where he left off when his hand was broken. Chavez will be a boost to the A’s offense, but the pitching staff is where the problems have been most pronounced. Tim Hudson’s oblique problems could pose problems down the stretch, and the A’s can ill afford to further tax their weak bullpen.
SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
The Giants page at ESPN.com currently features the headline, “Alou Still Believes in Tomko.” Alou also believes in the lone gunman theory, that the Beatles reunited to record “My Sharona,” and that “Joe Sheehan” is just another one of Joyce Carol Oates’ pen names. He may even be right about one or two of these things but not about Tomko, who has pitched in 212 career games and has seen more balls get whacked than the kid who got held back twice at the boys’ school. At this point, waiting for a turnaround is an act of blind faith equivalent to eating McSushi. Despite (or perhaps because of) the name on the label, you know that things can’t turn out well. Tomko is symbolic of the problems with the Alou/Giants approach this year: on both sides of the ball they’ve wasted precious resources on automatic non-contributors. Perhaps at times they didn’t have any other options, but that’s the whole point of team-building: what you don’t have, you try to find, as opposed to pretending that your Tomkos will somehow learn to be Marichals. GRADE: C+
COLORADO ROCKIES
The Rockies are going nowhere fast, but it’s hard to get very upset about it because my town is finally getting a Papa John’s. Consuming a Domino’s pizza is akin to chewing a very salty tire, so we’ve stuck with the local product for years, most of it of variable quality. “Variable quality” also describes the CRockies, who in the first half have gotten Matt Holiday and Aaron Milesoff to major league careers–for what that’s worth given the former’s lack of real production and the latter’s age and lack of plate discipline–as well as salvaged Joe Kennedy, probably the most impressive stroke of all. As for the second half, perhaps Ian Stewart will get a shot at Visalia, or–dare we hope!–double-A. For the mnemonically impaired: Ian Stewart is the Rockies’ third base prospect. Ian Anderson was the singer-flautist in Jethro Tull, while Dave Stewart was the male half of the Eurythmics. Golly, why didn’t those two guys ever record together? GRADE: D
There are going to be a lot of trades and trade rumors in the next month. More players will be approached, and more will be confused. I want to see this looked at evenly for once, that’s all. It’s not an issue of players being selfish; sometimes, when they’re choosing between their families and a chance at a ring, it’s an issue of them being unselfish. I’d like to see the story covered that way, just once.
Red Sox Nation shouldn’t panic just yet. The Reds’ Adam Dunn is a historial oddity. The Padres park has played to extremes. All of this and more news from Boston, Cincinnati and San Diego in your Thursday Prospectus Triple Play.
At the halfway point of the season, it’s hard to find a player who isn’t sore and fatigued, a pitcher who doesn’t have some problem, or a team that isn’t affected by its health. One of the more interesting questions I’ve been asked was by a national baseball writer who asked if teams have “health inertia”–do teams that have been healthy tend to stay healthy or is there a regression to the mean? With only limited data to work with, there doesn’t appear to be much of a pattern. Over three-year periods, “luck” tends to even out, but over the course of a season, it follows a pattern that looks more like roulette than anything else. There are patterns, but they’re not usually meaningful. Instead, it appears that a focus on prevention and risk management is the way to minimize the loss of playing time.
The Yankees always are a bit different. There’s now some discussion that George Steinbrenner would rather not see his players taking part in the All-Star Game unless they’re fully healthy, but with Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, that definitely isn’t the case. Sheffield has been playing with a damaged shoulder, while Giambi has been dealing with a plethora of problems, including parasites. I’m still confused why Giambi was selected for the Home Run Derby, but don’t be surprised to see pressure on them to play. That said, the Yankees don’t normally succumb to pressure, even from the Office of the Commissioner. It’s hard to argue that any player, especially one dealing with injuries, wouldn’t be better served with extra rest.