Darin Erstad returns to Anaheim just as Jeff DaVanon’s terrorizing the league. David Dellucci hits the DL just as he’d started to find a groove. Hee Seop Choi’s should be back healthy and playing after a scary moment at Wrigley. Vlad Guerrero’s DL stint has Expos fans clamoring for Terrmel “the Hammer” Sledge. News, notes, and Kahrlisms from 17 major league teams in this edition of Transaction Analysis.
Baseball could learn a lot from Don King. When Don King puts on a fight, there’s instantly a thin, greasy film of sleaze on it, but most of the time, King’s able to overcome the aversion and distrust inherent in his productions, and sell the damn tickets. When King promotes a fight, he works his butt off to transform the tomatoest of cans into a Mythic Warrior whose nobility and sense of purpose is matched only by his strength and cunning in the ring. Then, after the inevitable whooping of Steve Zouski by Drederick Tatum, the No. 3 contender of the Uzbekistan Boxing Council (not affiliated with the Uzbekistan Boxing Association), people feel ripped off, and know they were stupid for signing up for the $84.95 pay-per-view event–even though they kinda liked the two chicks beating the living crap out of each other on the undercard.
The promotion of the fight was great, but the fight itself, the actual product, was pretty lame.
Baseball’s in exactly the opposite situation. The product is amazing beyond description, providing a mix of rapid, short-term thrills with the mysterious narrative of a 162-game regular season that still actually counts. Collectively, MLB clubs have lost their focus on getting people to actually watch the game, be it on television or in person. Over the past 20 years, management’s developed an affinity for publicly trashing their own product, and in terms of holding onto the front of the sports fan’s mind, they’ve had their butts handed to them by Pete Rozelle, Paul Tagliabue, and even the Michael Lerneresque David Stern. From the Commissioner writing off a third of the clubs before the season starts in an attempt to get givebacks from the players, to George Steinbrenner talking about how dangerous it is to come to Yankee games, no stone’s gone unturned in the inexplicable quest to keep fans away. To date, no club has come up with “Persistently Infected Sore Night,” but at least one club did threaten Jason Tyner bobbleheads.
Joe Sheehan calls MLB’s efforts “anti-marketing,” which is certainly a solid enough label, even if it’s overly kind to MLB.
The odds are very good that you’ve read too many analyses of last week’s draft already. The odds are also very good that you have no idea that Jamie D’Antona’s OBP was .450 this year. I’d like to take a look at the season numbers for the Division I college players taken in the first two rounds last week, not as part of the questionable sport of prospect-watching, but as an exercise in learning how to interpret college numbers–putting them in context and separating the wheat from the chaff.
For the last hundred years or so, the professional thinking on how to evaluate players at the high school or college level was that it was a purely observational task. There was no real understanding of what college numbers meant, so deciding how good a player was needed to be done purely by sending a scout down to watch him and record his observations in the few games he saw. There’s still a lot of that in play, as the crowds of guys with clipboards and radar guns at any major conference game will attest, but major league clubs are starting to try to learn how to interpret college numbers and, as John Cougar once sang, “collate them all in their proper places.” Given that the notion that minor league numbers might actually mean something if discounted properly is only about 20 years old in most corners, the fact that the same transformation is only now taking place in the college scouting ranks is not surprising. The scouts aren’t going away, of course, and they shouldn’t, but most organizations are trying to add another set of tools to their preparation techniques (and quite a few of them seem to be trying to go back to gather old data for analysis as well).
Brandon Phillips is struggling; Odalis Perez has been surprisingly unlucky; and Jeff Cirillo’s been better than a lot of people realize. All this and much more from Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Seattle, in your Friday the 13th edition of Prospectus Triple Play.
Are we sure that Friday the 13th didn’t come early this year? The Yankees are melting down, Steve Phillips was shown the gate, a no-hitter falls from the sky, and I can’t get guests for BPR. In the end, everything will be OK. I think. Maybe. If nothing else, it was a great night out at the ballpark in Indy and, as always, we still have injuries…
While the Cardinals have fallen apart around him, Matt Morris (aside from that annoying ligament replacement a couple years ago) has been the one rock of consistency. Any injury to an ace, let alone a shoulder problem, would not just be a crushing blow for the Cardinals, it would have been the crushing blow. Morris is having a muscular problem–probably centered on his subscapularis, which is part of the rotator cuff. While not considered serious, the Cards will need to be cautious with any concern surrounding Morris. Looking back at his velocity data, it appears it may have been affecting him in at least his last start.
The serious rehab for Vladimir Guerrero’s herniated disc began this week. He’ll be ready in about six, but early reports say that Guerrero is working extra hard and his great physical condition could change that timeline rapidly. Of course, I’ll be watching this one closely.
Matt Williams announced his
retirement, a little over a week after being released by the Diamondbacks.
It’s a bit of a shame in that his career is ending with such a whimper.
There are many teams who would be helped by a third baseman who can hit lefties
while making the minimum. Williams was hitting .302/.396/.581 against
southpaws this season, and regularly hits .300 with good power against
them. He can play both infield corners passably, although he’s no longer a
top-notch glove man at third base.
Just noodling here…the Yankees would be far better off with Williams than
with Todd Zeile. The Twins could actually bat him cleanup
against lefties. The A’s have to be questioning whether Eric Chavez
will ever hit lefties (.147/.188/.333 this year; .224/.272/.372 from 2000-2002); they need runs badly and would be well-served to employ Williams. The Expos could add him to their corner mix and be improved, as could the
Reds.