Brian Sabean has brought a fair amount of criticism on himself with his low-key approach to this off-season, creating the world’s largest chapter of the lunatic fringe in the process. So it’s no surprise that he faced his share of skeptical questions from Giants fans during his live chat on mlb.com earlier this week. But it was his answer to a fairly innocuous question that raised the most eyebrows among the “fringers”:
Q: Did you ever make an offer for Vladimir Guerrero?
Sabean: In a word: No. If we had signed Guerrero or [Gary] Sheffield, we would have been without [Jim] Brower, [Scott] Eyre, [Matt] Herges, [Dustin] Hermanson, [Brett] Tomko, [A.J.] Pierzynski, [Pedro] Feliz, [J.T.] Snow, [Jeffrey] Hammonds, [Dustan] Mohr and [Michael] Tucker–obviously not being able to field a competitive team, especially from an experience standpoint, given our level of spending.
This time I’m going to turn my attention to the reigning World Champion Florida Marlins. I’ve seen it proclaimed in more than one corner that last year’s model was mostly the fine work of Dave Dombrowski, with his successor, Larry Beinfest, adding only a complementary tweak or two. So let’s find out whether that’s true. You may recall that I performed a similar exercise with the ’03 Red Sox last year. The methodology will be the same this time around. Using Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), let’s see how much Beinfest’s acquisitions contributed compared to Dombrowski’s.
In the first part of our winter leagues study, we looked at what the player performances said about each league’s level of quality. In Part II, we’ll look at what player performance in these leagues say about a player’s future.
In our last report, the Round Robin playoffs were in the first week of action and the surprising Cibao Gigantes led the pack with a 4 and 1 record, with the weakening Azucareros in last place with a reversed record of 1 and 4. Meanwhile, the heavily-favored Aguilas and Licey were 3-2 and 2-3 respectively, but both were seemingly moving in opposite directions at the time. The Aguilas had won their last two games against Licey, and Licey had lost their last three, looking flat on the field and on the verge of a prolonged losing streak.
But on January 9th, second baseman Luis Castillo (Marlins) rejoined the club and D’Angelo Jimenez (Reds) was moved to shortstop for the injured Cristian Guzman (Twins), and that night Licey started a nine-game winning streak that virtually catapulted the team to the final series. The streak tied the longest in the history of the Round Robin playoffs, also established by Licey in 1998. The team had solid offensive performances from Eric Byrnes (Athletics) (.375/.434/.563, and a new playoff record 20 RBI), José Offerman (.338/.423/.500), Castillo (.442 OBP), Jimenez (.403 OBP), Timo Perez (Mets), Izzy Alcantara, and at the end of the series, Carlos Peña (Tigers) and Henry Rodriguez, each hitting key home runs in the middle of the winning streak.
On the pitching side, José Jimenez (Indians) won his four starts with a 1.13 ERA, Vladimir Nuñez (Rockies) had a 1.35 ERA in 21 innings, and veteran Rafael Roque was moved from the bullpen to the starting rotation and didn’t allow a single run in two starts. These three pitchers were key, because the Tigers lost Juan Cruz (Cubs) after just two starts with an injured non-throwing hand, and Salomón Torres (Pirates), who battled a severe case of the flu, and managed to pitch just two innings in the semifinals.
Today BP debuts the second season of Will Carroll’s Team Health Reports. Over the next few weeks, Will will cover all 30 teams, rating each team’s lineup, starting rotation and closer on a three-color scale: red light for significant injury risk, yellow light for light to moderate injury risk, green light for minimal injury risk. First installment: the Philadelphia Phillies.
Under new owner Frank McCourt–who has about as much of his own cash invested in the team as you do–the Dodgers have embarked on a search for a general manager. Current GM Dan Evans, who has held the job since October of 2001, hasn’t been fired, and has been told he is welcome to interview for his job, which is awfully nice of McCourt.
I can’t even begin to describe how angry this whole thing makes me. It shouldn’t; I have no emotional attachment to the Dodgers or Evans. However, the idea that Evans, who inherited a nearly impossible situation and has put the franchise on much more solid ground than it was when he arrived, could somehow find his job in danger just as his work could begin to bear fruit strikes me as patently unfair.
The Dodgers have been contenders in both seasons under Evans, and their two-year record of 177-147 is fifth in the NL in that time. The Dodgers have achieved that mark despite the crushing weight of former GM Kevin Malone’s worst mistakes. In both seasons, the Dodgers got next to nothing for more than $20 million of their money. Darren Dreifort took home nearly $22 million over two years, and threw a grand total of 60 2/3 innings, all in ’03. In ’02, Kevin Brown made $15.7 million while throwing just 63 2/3 frames (to the tune of a 4.81 ERA). This past year, Andy Ashby closed out his three-year deal by providing 78 innings of 5.18 ERA ball, while cashing in for $8.5 million.
Still, by this standard the Tigers could be as much as 11 wins better just based on these upgrades. Keeping in mind that they were a "true" 49-win team in 2003 (falling six games short of their projected, or Pythagorean record, based on runs scored and allowed), you can project 15-20 games of improvement even before considering the possibility that the returning players will get better. That’s certainly a worthy achievement, but it’s more important to evaluate the Tigers in terms of what they are now, comparing them not to their wretched performance of a year ago, but to their competition. Are the Tigers really comparable to the Twins, White Sox and Royals, or even the Indians?
Not long ago, a Chicago judge tossed out a lawsuit against the Cubs, who had set up their own company to scalp their tickets. They’d done so on the grounds that (essentially) by being two parts of the same company, it wasn’t like it was the same company doing it, as prohibited by the law. Explanations readers suggested for that finding ran from stark judicial incompetence all the way to the Tribune Company getting one of those Wrath of Khan creatures into the judge’s ear somehow.
Meanwhile in the gray, gray, gray state of Washington (contrary to our reputation, it’s only rained a couple of times this winter: October-December, then it snowed, December-January, then it snowed again, then January through today), where local government isn’t quite as corrupt as Chicago but is racing to catch up, judicial insight flared.
Who wants to be a Yankee third baseman? OK, so maybe that doesn’t have the same ring of a certain game show that gripped the nation a few years back, but it’s a question on many people’s minds right now. Incumbent starter Aaron Boone blew out his left ACL playing basketball and may be lost for the entire 2004 season. While Boone is basically a league-average third baseman, maybe a bit better due to his glove, he looks like Mike Schmidt compared to the available replacements.
After being selected in the Rule 5 draft this winter and traded to the San Diego Padres, MIT graduate Jason Szuminski will have a chance to become the first person from his school to play in the major leagues. In addition to getting selected in the draft, Szuminski spent his winter working for the U.S. Air Force as an aerospace engineer, to fulfill his ROTC obligation. He hasn’t taken the traditional road to the big leagues, but Szuminski showed last year that has the stuff to be a contributor in a major league bullpen. While splitting time between three levels in the Cubs organization, Szuminski posted a combined 2.78 ERA in his best season as a professional. He impressed again in the Arizona Fall League, striking out 19 in 19.1 IP. Baseball Prospectus talked with Szuminski about pitching development, rocket science, and how he keeps hitters off balance and hitting the ball on the ground.
In Monday’s column, I picked on Keith Foulke a bit, expressing the opinion that I didn’t think he’d sustain his performance throughout the life of his new four-year contract. Buried in that criticism was the following: I haven’t looked too deeply at this yet, but I don’t think you can find a lot of relievers who stayed at Foulke’s recent level for a seven- or eight-year period. I think the best relievers in the modern era have short, high peaks before slipping. Mariano Rivera is the exception to this, but when you look around at the best relievers in baseball, by any standard, there just aren’t guys who are worth five or more WARP a year for most of a decade.
It seems there’s one case like this every year, but I can’t remember one that had the potential to be as significant. With Aaron Boone down and likely out for the season due to a significant tear to his left ACL, the Yankees are scrambling to not end up with Drew Henson at the hot corner. The Yanks will be calling all the usual suspects looking for some help, but Brian Cashman seems ready to play hardball to get some financial recompense. According to the AP, Cashman is ready to invoke a clause in the standard player contract that specifically cites basketball as a prohibited activity. The Yankees are reportedly waiting for final results, but since Boone damaged his knee nearly two weeks ago, this sounds like a stall.
While I’ll leave the fallout to the Yankees lineup to others in this site, I’ll look to the injury itself. The most similar injury I could find was the near complete tear of the ACL suffered by B.J. Surhoff in the early days of 2002. Surhoff missed the entire season, but was able to return for spring training 2003. Expect a similar timeframe for Boone.
The Yankees got better news on Steve Karsay. After shoulder surgery last year, Karsay was able to throw from a mound over the winter, but won’t throw breaking balls until pitchers and catchers report. That will be his big test and will determine whether Karsay will be immediately penciled in as one of the Yanks top set-up men or whether he’ll miss the start of spring training. Even if healthy now, Karsay remains one of the bigger risks in pitching.
Sometimes I’m easily confused. Watching Jane Campion films makes me feel like a monkey trying to open a coconut. I’m puzzled as to how Napster hopes to achieve substantive market penetration without having Ratt’s “Way Cool Junior” on its play list. Oh, and I’m also perplexed by what the Rockies are doing this winter–which is what this little piece of bandwidth is all about.
I’ve never met Roockies GM Dan O’Dowd, but I know people who have. By all accounts, he’s a heady, intellectually curious guy with an open mind. That’s why his club’s off-season machinations are especially troubling. The Rockies have–rightly, I think–perceived the NL West to be on a down cycle and, ergo, in a winnable condition. But how they’ve gone about positioning themselves as a contender makes no sense to me.
To wit, Colorado has gone out and signed Jeromy Burnitz, Vinny Castilla, and Royce Clayton. What’s more is that they apparently have starting jobs in mind for each member of this nefarious troika.
The regular seasons for the various winter leagues are over now, although the various league playoffs leading to the Caribbean World Series are still ongoing–a process that runs almost as long as their regular season, kind of like the NBA.
The Caribbean World Series is a contest between the winners of the four regional leagues: the Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Venezuelan winter leagues, plus the Mexican Pacific League. What I’m going to do here is to give an overview of those four leagues, plus the Arizona Fall League, with an emphasis on how to make sense of winter league statistics.
The process for working out the talent level of a league depends on, number one, having a large number of players in the circuit who have played in other leagues; and number two, knowledge of how good those other leagues are. Every player who has played here and elsewhere becomes a data point: You rate the player’s hitting (or pitching) level, relative to league average, with park adjustments when you have them, in both leagues. If his relative offensive level gets worse, that is a (slight) argument that the new league is tougher than the old. If it gets better, that’s an argument that the new league was easier.
Aaron Boone hurt his ACL playing basketball on Monday, which could mean that he’s out for the season. His contract isn’t guaranteed if he plays basketball, which he did, so the Yankees aren’t going to pay him his full salary, which they shouldn’t. It may be a different situation if it’s a minor tear and he’ll be healthy for spring training in less than 30 days, though, so we’ll have to wait and see. (I can’t express the jolt of joy I just felt typing “spring training in less than 30 days,” by the way–only a month of this seemingly interminable purgatory remains, where I’m forced to watch whatever my wife has found on one of the 80 different home improvement channels DirecTV was kind enough to cram into my package.) If it’s minor and he’ll miss a little time, the Yankees might decide that 90% of Boone is worth 100% of the deal he signed (though that seems difficult to justify). But more likely they’re going to set fire to his contract and then mail him the ashes. Boone at $5.75 million for a year was high when he signed it, and considering comparable signings this offseason (Adrian Beltre was the only close signing, and he’s way younger, though BP’s PECOTA forecasts have Boone hitting better in 2004, while others like Scott Spiezio came much cheaper). The Yankees might just even call do-over and see what Boone will take, now that almost everyone else has signed their third basemen and are probably not going to offer Boone anything close to what he was scheduled to receive.
Boone, who recently agreed to a one-year, $5.75 million contract, has freely admitted that the injury he sustained occurred during an activity not related to the playing of, or training for, Major League Baseball. Brian Cashman has already gone on record saying that basketball is a prohibited activity under Boone’s contract. In a fairy tale world of grand rewards for moral behavior, Boone would get credit for admitting his error without having fabricated some Jeff Kent-style story in which he tore up his knee after slipping off the top of Roger Clemens’ Hummer while polishing the foghorn. Unfortunately, New York is the place where contract language trumps contrition every time out; truth is no defense when you’ve signed on the dotted line.