Who’s the best prospect in the game: B.J. Upton of the Devil Rays or David Wright of the Mets? A look at their minor league numbers might unlock the answer. Dayn Perry anoints his top prospect in all of baseball in Friday’s Can of Corn.
Keith Osik has met his destiny in the Tampa Bay organization, while Scott Erickson has gone from top-line starter to designated for assignment. This news and more in your Friday edition of Transaction Analysis.
Last week, inspired by the well-timed thievery of the 2004 Mets, we discussed the teams with the best stolen base percentages in recorded history. This week, we look at the other side of the coin– the teams with the worst percentages that the game has ever seen.
Do you think Jack McKeon gives Larry Bowa his ass back after the Marlins play
the Phillies, or do you think he just keeps it all the time?
Vaughn should have been solid for 1911, but a number of things were working against him. Hal Chase, the gambler, was the player-manager and is presumed to have subverted many games. Vaughn missed a month with an “illness,” and didn’t pitch well when healthy. He opened 1912 the same way, and manager Harry Wolverton–the New York Americans were going through a manager a year in those days–decided to send him to Providence of the International League. Vaughn balked, saying he would refuse to report unless given a small cash bonus and part of the sale price.
This simply wasn’t done in those days. Players were expected to accept their place as chattel. The Yankees waived Vaughn and probably expected him to drift back to the minor league fringes, but Clark Griffith, now managing the Washington Senators, put in a claim and added Vaughn to his staff. Griffith still liked Vaughn’s stuff and thought that Hilltop Park, home of the Highlanders, might have worked against the pitcher. Whether that was the case or not we will never know, but Vaughn found himself in Washington and was never lost again, though it took the scouts a while to figure it out.
Now that we’ve gotten to the 100-game mark on the season, I decided to take a look at how the park factors were shaking out so far in ’04. Park factors are noisy pieces of data–that’s the reason why we use three-year averages in the first place–and I expect that some of these 100-game factors will change significantly between now and the end of the season.
That caveat aside, let’s take a look at how pro baseball’s parks–from the majors down to A-ball–are playing.