PEORIA, AZ–If President Bush truly intends to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, he might want to start with what I’m looking at right now. It is a golden brown, sugar covered, cream-loaded agent of evil; a Twinkie covered in batter, skewered on a stick, and tossed into the fry vat like a corn dog. If I had met this when I was six or seven years old, Jerry Springer would be lifting me out of my bed with a crane. Next to the Twinkie on the grease-soaked paper plate are the smart bombs of the deep-fry arsenal, the Oreos. Together, they are the talk of the concourse on this sunny day at the Peoria Sports Complex, moments prior to the Padres game against Milwaukee.
Joe Sheehan begins his divisional previews series with a stroll through the AL West. Will Erubiel Durazo stay healthy long enough to push the A’s offense to the top of the league? Can Chan Ho Park and company ratchet up last year’s miserable pitching staff? Will the Angels’ put-everything-in-play hitting approach bring the Rally Monkey back for another October engagement? And can Mike Cameron break out and give the M’s offense a badly-needed lift?
Sheldon Ocker shares tidbits on the Indians’ third base job and spars with Will Carroll over pitch counts, St. Louis may soon need Dane Iorg to plug its outfield holes, Kaz Sasaki enjoys self-flagellation, and Will reminds Kevin Brown supporters not to get their hopes up.
Monday, the Blue Jays announced that they’d signed both Eric Hinske and
Vernon Wells to five-year deals in the neighborhood of $15 million. The
deals take both players through their arbitration seasons, while not buying
out any years of free agency. More importantly, the deals tie each player to
the Jays through their probable peak; Hinske is under contract through age 29,
Wells through age 28.
My first reaction to the deals was positive. Hinske should be a good player
through the life of the deal, although he lacks the potential of, say, Eric
Chavez or Hank Blalock. Hinske’s defense improved enough during last
season to scotch the idea of moving him off of third base, which leaves just
his performance against left-handers (.202/.293/.339) as a major flaw in his
game. Wells has a higher upside and considerably more defensive value than
Hinske does, although his lousy OBP means that he hasn’t been as good a player
to date.
The media gets A-Rod’s injury right, aces that may not make it out for Opening Day, Grudzielanek’s injury reduces the Cubs’ 2B job to a dogfight between Hill, Martinez, and Bump Wills, and Will Carroll’s bizarre love for Wily Mo Pena lives on.
There are certain occupations where mentioning the elephant in the room that everyone knows about but no one acknowledges can be hazardous to your continued livelihood. You can’t find a single politician, for example, who thinks that Social Security is viable long term without significant benefit cuts or tax increases. And yet, because Joe Sheehan’s assessment of Americans is, by and large, too charitable–and because we’ve all embraced the tragedy of the commons with such zeal–no elected official in their right mind will come out in favor of cutting Social Security benefits or dramatically raising taxes.
So, instead of trying to solve the problem in advance, we’ll wait until there’s a crisis and do a half-assed job of fixing it down the road, when the problem’s particularly acute, and the group that will take it in the shorts when that happens will be the group that’s either demographically or electorally challenged. It’s the way we do things. We don’t often mention the elephant in the room, even though its presence is patently obvious.
Last Saturday, Oakland A’s owner Steve Schott flashed a spotlight on the elephant in the room.
The PECOTA system acknowledges that there is a wide range of variance intrinsic to any set of forecasts. What’s more, there’s no reason to expect that this variance will be unrelated to the team that a player toils for. On the contrary, there are myriad anecdotal examples of entire teams who routinely fall toward the top or the bottom of their forecast range. Under Dusty Baker, the Giants have consistently gotten more production than would reasonably be expected from a set of thirtysomethings. Under Leo Mazzone, the Braves have consistently turned waiver wire fodder into good or even great bullpen arms.
Indeed, it’s possible to conjure up an argument like that for just about every team, and some of the time, you won’t even be BSing. Translating player projections into team forecasts is an exercise that caters mostly to the left side of the brain; you’re sure to see some more creative solutions in the coming days as we publish the BP author forecasts, crazed opium dreams like the Cubs taking the pennant. I have myself deviated from the HAL 9000 version in quite a number of cases. Nevertheless, we’ve never had anything quite like PECOTA before, and it’s worth seeing what it has to say.
Mark Quinn, Bruce Chen and Rob Bell still dishing out torment, Benny Agbayani peddling his Hawaiian Punch to the wrong team, Dan O’Dowd shopping Helton for an impulse control device to be named later, and the Dodgers messing with the wrong Alvarez.
Ron Gant entered the majors at 22 as a light-hitting second baseman, but later transformed himself into one of the more feared power hitters in the National League. Continuing his series of articles from spring training in Arizona, BP correspondent Craig Elsten sat down with the former All-Star and Comeback Player of the Year recently, and asked him about his time in Atlanta, the motorcycle accident that nearly ended his career, and the hopes he has for his current team, the Oakland Athletics.
Will’s quick Pizza Feed and Tout Wars wrap-up. Are goofy arm-slot experiments the key to A.J. Burnett’s future success? Chris Singleton’s hurting; will anyone notice? The Cubs’ Opening Day starter may be determined by an ear infection, and an update on injured middle fingers around the league.
Growing up in New England, it was an article of faith that the 1967 Red Sox won the American League pennant with the help of divine intervention–that it was an “Impossible Dream.” With the passage of time, this depiction has become less satisfying, if for no other reasons than that it gives short shrift to the people who actually built the team. Ken Coleman and Dan Valenti, in 1987’s otherwise enjoyable “The Impossible Dream Remembered,” wrote: “The real miracle of 1967 is that it happened, not as the conscious effort applied to a preconceived plan, but in spite of just about everything.” Notwithstanding this supposed lack of either effort or a plan, Dick O’Connell, the team’s architect, won the Sporting News Executive of the Year award.
Suffice it to say that no one saw it coming. Perusing several 1967 preseason publications, most of them envisioned the Red Sox finishing either ninth (as they had in 1966) or 10th in the 10-team American League. Sports Illustrated came the closest to expressing optimism, saying: “If [manager Dick Williams] can find some pitching, too, the 1967 Sox may revive baseball in Boston.”
Mariner president Chuck Armstrong was quoted on MLB.com this off-season, mentioning “I haven’t attended an arbitration hearing in my 11 years with this ownership, but this one is too important. (Garcia’s request) is way out of line…If I’m going all the way to Florida,” he said, “I’m going there to win.” He lost.
Now, I’m all for an owner aggressively pursuing team goals and trying to keep the budget down, but if you think you’ve got a star young pitcher, and you’re concerned about his emotional maturity, perhaps the best way to handle a situation like this would be to give it to some competent representatives and let it go. Make some noise about how it’s all business, nothing personal, and how you look forward to having Freddy back no matter what the outcome of arbitration. The Mariners had very little to gain and much to lose by making this such a high-profile, confrontational issue in front of the public.
Dusty Baker: “We can rebuild him. We can him bigger, stronger, faster, hackier.”
Lee Stevens: “I feel like I’ve got enough production left in me to swindle a team into paying me $4 million a year. Then you too can resent me, as much as Expos fans did.”
Benito Santiago: “It’s ridiculous that I’m not signed until I’m 67 years old.”
With a few days to reflect on spring training and his time in Arizona, Joe Sheehan concludes that ouija offers more predictive value than spring training stats. Plus, letting Miguel Tejada go is the right move, even if it hurts the ears to listen to Steve Schott complain.
I mentioned yesterday that John Halama is the front-runner to be the
Athletics’ #5 starter. If he does win the job, the A’s would have four
left-handers in the rotation, with Halama backing up Mark Mulder,
Barry Zito and Ted Lilly. Before the A’s/Rockies game on
Tuesday, I asked an A’s executive if that imbalance concerned the team, and he
said that it didn’t, that quality pitching is quality pitching.
While it goes against our religion here at Baseball Prospectus to
question anything the A’s do, I have to admit I was curious. Is there any
disadvantage to getting a disproportionate number of starts from one side or
the other?
Under current MLB rules, teams are not allowed to trade draft choices. It’s not a new idea, but it is under consideration, and we spoke with an AL Central executive about the potential impact of a change in the rules that would allow clubs to trade draft choices.