Still Here?: Revisiting The Baseball Book 1992, Pt. 1

Revisiting baseball predictions is a tricky prospect. If the predictions
are based on a specific methodology, then revisiting them is necessary:
doing so helps to modify and improve the methodology. Otherwise, the pundit
is just whistling in the dark.

Most baseball predictions, of course, aren’t that systematic in their
origin. A writer looks at rosters at the end of spring training, does a
seat-of-the-pants guess as to who will improve, who will collapse and which
clubhouses will explode, and comes to the conclusion that the Toronto Blue
Jays (or whoever) will win the division. Usually, the writer has forgotten
this by June, unless he turns out to be right, in which case an "I
told you so" article in September is his reward and the readership’s
punishment.

In the age of the Internet, most writers do not have the luxury of
forgetting about their predictions. Witness
Rob Neyer’s season-long battle
with Mets fans on ESPN.com.
Usually, if wrong, they provide a defense of "it made sense at the time".

Even in this age of sports-fan saturation and information overload, though,
some predictions can go unnoticed. In this case, one of the leading writers
in the field made a series of predictions, affecting almost every team in
the majors, and no one has checked on them.

Until now.

In the spring of 1992, Villard published The Baseball Book 1992,
written by Bill James. This was the last of the three annuals by that name
written by James; he then spent a couple of years writing the "Player
Rating Book" before teaming with Stats, Inc. every year.

In The Baseball Book 1992, James condensed each team into a box.
Each box comprised a summary of the team’s 1991 season, a general prognosis
for 1992, a look at the teams’ best prospects and a bunch of other nuggets,
most of them for fun. I’m especially fond of the "Ugliest
Player", "Designated Malcontent" and "Never Going to Be
as Good as the Organization Thinks He Is" categories.

For each team, though, he designated one player as "Most Likely to
Still Be Here in 2000". That time has come. So for each team, we’ll
have a look at the player designated by James as most likely, ruminate on
whether it was a good choice at the time, and then see what happened
afterwards.

The purpose of this article is not to take James to task for the rightness
or wrongness of his predictions. In most cases, the player he picked was
the most logical choice, or at least a justifiable one. He probably spent a
total of ten minutes considering them for all 26 teams, and didn’t mean
them to be taken too seriously.

Rather, this article exists more to satisfy my curiosity about how well a
prediction with a nine-year time frame might work out.

This first piece looks at the American League. Next week, we’ll examine
James’s National League predictions.

Baltimore Orioles

BB92 SAID: Cal Ripken

A GOOD CHOICE? An obvious choice, though not for the usual reasons.
Granted, Ripken had just won the MVP award; on the other hand, it is the
rare 30-year-old shortstop whom you could expect to last nine more years
with the same organization. Still, he was an institution by then, the most
firmly entrenched one in baseball.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL AROUND? Did the sun rise in the east this morning?

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? Two others: Brady Anderson and Mike Mussina.
Anderson was a real surprise: he had just hit .230 with two home runs in
half-time play at age 27. Who knew?

Boston Red Sox

BB92 SAID: Phil Plantier

A GOOD CHOICE? Strange as it may seem now, yes, it was. At one point, Bill
James thought that Plantier had a good chance of hitting the most home runs
in the 1990s, and after 1991 it looked like he might be right. Plantier,
after a sad cuppa Joe in 1990, slammed the espresso in ’91 with 11 home
runs and 23 walks in 148 at bats. He was only 22, and looked like he would
outclass the Sox’s other top-flight hitting prospect, Mo Vaughn. A year
older, Vaughn hit only four home runs in half a season in 1991.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL AROUND? Alas, no.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? No. Vaughn stuck around through ’98: everyone
else was long gone.

California Angels

BB92 SAID: Jim Abbott

A GOOD CHOICE? Oddly enough, yes. I say "oddly enough" because
pitchers aren’t usually good picks. There were some good-looking young
hitters on that team (Bobby Rose, Lee Stevens) and some young hitters who
didn’t look that good (Junior Felix, Luis Sojo), but Abbott was a clear
choice. He had just completed a terrific season at age 23, and it seemed
impossible, from a PR standpoint, that the team would ever trade him.

Indeed, the second-most-likely pick from that team was probably Bryan
Harvey, who had an outstanding season at age 28, and Dennis Eckersley was
putting the idea in everyone’s head that relief aces could last forever.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? No. Injuries and ineffectiveness did him in.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL HERE? Appallingly enough, yes. Gary DiSarcina is still
around. Does anyone really know why?

Chicago White Sox

BB92 SAID: Frank Thomas

A GOOD CHOICE? Absolutely. Thomas was the most effective hitter in the
league in 1991, and he was only 23.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? Yes.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL HERE? Ron Schueler, who just stepped down.

Schueler is among the most unlikely names on the list of those who are/were
still around. I remember, when I lived in Chicago, Schueler saying that he
only wanted to be GM for a few seasons, to help settle the organization
down in the post-Himes turmoil, before returning to his true calling,
scouting director. I haven’t lived in Chicago since 1991, and I remember
being surprised several times during the 1990s to realize that Schueler
was, in fact, still the GM. Not Gary DiSarcina surprised, of course (that’s
more like incredulity), but still surprised.

TEE HEE: Under the heading "Never Going to Be as Good as the
Organization Thinks He Is", James named Sammy Sosa. Since the Sox
traded Sosa the following spring, clearly the organization changed its mind
over the winter.

Cleveland Indians

BB92 SAID: Sandy Alomar Jr.

A GOOD CHOICE? A tricky one. The 1991 Cleveland Indians were awash in a
whole bunch of players who might be good one day. Alomar had, in fact, just
come off a terrible season (.217 and no home runs, reduced by injury to 51
games), and I could see no reason to pick him over Albert Belle or Mark
Whiten or Carlos Baerga or Alex Cole, all of whom were younger, better
hitters and hadn’t suffered major injuries yet. (Belle had already earned
"Designated Malcontent" honors, so it was pretty clear that he
wouldn’t last the decade.) Jim Thome, regarded as the Indians’ best
prospect, had made his debut that year, too, and the team was wondering how
to juggle four players (Baerga, Thome, Mark Lewis and Felix Fermin) among
three infield slots. I probably would have picked Baerga.

However, James’s pick of Alomar may have reflected his pessimism that
Alomar would ever become a particularly good player. He wrote an essay
about the Indians that year entitled "Clear the Mine ", which is
necessary reading in understanding the financial mindset that was about to
take hold in baseball. (The piece is on page 162 of BB92; hie thee to thine
library.)

The gist of the article, as James wrote in boldface, was that "The
Cleveland Indians have become the first team to abandon the hope of paying
a competitive salary to a quality player." He assumed that any good
player the Indians developed would either leave as a free agent or be
traded away before that time in order to land younger players (who, in
turn, if they became good, would leave before the Indians would have to pay
them a competitive salary).

By naming Alomar as the player most likely to still be around, he was,
perhaps, expressing the opinion that Alomar would always be a useful
player, but never so good that the Indians woud be unable to afford him.
James’s outlook on the Indians was extremely bleak: he thought that the
Indians (and the Mariners) were set to become the 1990s’ equivalent of the
Philadelphia A’s of the 1940s and early 1950s, a team that never had a
chance to do anything worth anything.

He allowed for hope late in the essay, but quickly dashed it. "We
underestimated baseball’s earnings potential before, and perhaps we’re
underestimating it now. I see no reason to believe that major league teams,
at this time, have a significant untapped economic potential." What
James failed to see (as did most of us, but not John Hart) is that there
was at least one untapped source of revenue–a taxpayer-supported new
stadium that was actually an attraction in and of itself. In 1992, the
opening of Camden Yards would provide a blueprint, and a shot in the arm,
for baseball revenues. John Hart saw this coming, staked the entire future
of the franchise on the confluence of maturing players and stadium revenues
in 1994, and it paid off in spades.

Two aspects of that strategy may not be remembered now:

• How unlikely it was that it would pay off. The Indians, heading into
  1992, were betting on the success of Alomar and Baerga and
  Belle and Whiten and Thome and Manny Ramirez (whom
  they had just drafted) and Kenny Lofton (just acquired by trade).
  The fact that they went, at worst assessment, five-for-seven on these
  gambles represents a stunning success–a more typical ratio might have been
  two-for-seven.

• How low the stakes were. The Indians in 1991 were a bad team going
  nowhere. If Hart’s gambit hadn’t paid off, they would have remained a bad
  team going nowhere. What’s to lose?

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? Oh, gosh, who were we talking about? Right,
Sandy Alomar Jr. Yes, he’s still around, for precisely the opposite reason
that James predicted: he’s not that great and always gets injured, but
makes too much money to be unloaded in a trade. Who would have guessed?

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? Jim Thome and Charles Nagy. I didn’t mention
Nagy above, because he didn’t look like he’d amount to much at the time.

Detroit Tigers

BB92 SAID: Travis Fryman

A GOOD CHOICE? Heck, yeah. He pretty much represented the Tigers’ future
all by himself–a 22-year-old shortstop/third baseman who hit 21 home runs.
When you consider that the other leading Tigers prospect at the time was
Milt Cuyler, it’s a no-brainer. Rico Brogna, their top minor league
prospect at the time, hadn’t made the majors yet and was thus ineligible
for consideration.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? No.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL HERE? Not even close.

Kansas City Royals

BB92 SAID: Brian McRae

A GOOD CHOICE? About as good as any, but it was a weird circumstance. As
detailed by James in an essay in BB92 entitled "The Lost
Generation", the Royals had just gone through a rebuilding cycle that
produced no results whatsoever. Many of the young players from that failed
cycle–Kurt Stillwell, Danny Tartabull, Kevin Seitzer–were still around,
but it was pretty clear that they wouldn’t last the decade. This pessimism
also seeped into the next generation of Royals youngsters–McRae, Terry
Shumpert, David Howard and Brent Mayne.

McRae, 23 years old in 1991, had just had a season with an on-base
percentage under .300 in the leadoff slot. His dad was managing the team by
then, and I suppose a cynic would say that that alone bumped McRae to the
top slot.

I probably would have bucked the usual logic and actually picked a pitcher
for the honor, despite the fact that pitchers are, historically, bad bets
for long-term success. However, it wouldn’t have been 23-year-old Kevin
Appier. Despite his demotion to the bullpen, it seemed to me that the
Royals were most willing to invest a lot of time and effort into
23-year-old Tom Gordon, and that he was probably the best bet to make it
through the decade in a Royals uniform.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? No.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL HERE? No. Appier came closest. George Brett is in the
front office. Frank White is a coach. Do you realize that Warren Cromartie
got 131 at bats with the 1991 Royals?

Milwaukee Brewers

BB92 SAID: "I doubt that anyone on the 1991 team will still be here in
1995, let alone 2000. Well, Molitor will last until 1995."

A GOOD ASSESSMENT? I think it was unduly pessimistic. There was some decent
semi-young semi-talent on the ’91 team (Greg Vaughn, Bill Spiers, B.J.
Surhoff, Darryl Hamilton, Jaime Navarro) and I think there was reason to
expect that at least one of them would turn it up and make it to ’95. About
their chances for 2000, he was probably right–no one looked like they had
the moxie to last nine more years in Milwaukee. Their best young talent, by
far, was Gary Sheffield, who had already ticked off just about everyone in
the organization and would almost certianly leave soon (as, indeed, he did).

DID ANYONE LAST UNTIL 2000 IN MILWAUKEE? Not even the American League
affiliation lasted until 2000 in Milwaukee. (Even Molitor left before ’95.)
Cal Eldred, their best pitching prospect at the time (who started three
games late in the ’91 season) almost made it.

WHO REMEMBERS THIS INCIDENT? Although he declined to actually name the
player, James did include a category under the Brewers called "Most
Likely to Shoot You After a Traffic Accident." Who remembers the
player he was referring to? Answer a few screens down.

Minnesota Twins

BB92 SAID: Kirby Puckett.

A GOOD CHOICE? It was an excellent choice; an obvious one, really. Puckett
was an institution in the Twin Cities, and would presumably be in the
twilight of a brilliant career by 2000, as a 39-year-old DH/pinch-hitter.
Chuck Knoblauch would have been a better choice from a strictly talent
standpoint, but he wasn’t Kirby, and might have been traded away (as,
indeed, he was).

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? Sort of. What’s his front-office title again? I
can never remember. The eye injury, of course, ended his playing career
after the 1995 season.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? Tom Kelly. No one would have predicted
that.

New York Yankees

BB92 SAID: Hensley Meulens. Remember Hensley Meulens?

A GOOD CHOICE? A cry for help is more like it. Meulens, much-touted by the
organization, had just hit .222 with six home runs in his first
half-season, and was already 24. I would have picked–easily–Roberto
Kelly, who, although two years older than Meulens, was at least three years
better. No one else stuck out. The Yankees of 1991 were in big trouble.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? You know, I had completely forgotten that
Meulens resurfaced for 23 games in ’97 and ’98. Not in the Bronx, of course.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? Bernie Williams, straight off an unimpressive
rookie half-season, was allowed to struggle through a few more seasons
before justifying the Yankees’ patience with him. At this point, I’m
wondering if he’ll go into the Hall of Fame.

Oakland Athletics

BB92 SAID: No one. I don’t know if it was an oversight, or a commentary on
an old team, but James didn’t include the category in the A’s box.

WHO WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD CHOICE, THEN? It’s a tricky one. The only
non-pitchers under 26 on the team that year were Mike Bordick (.238 BA),
Scott Brosius (.235), Scott Hemond (.217) and Ron Witmeyer (.053); only
Bordick was a regular or close to it. Jose Canseco was 26 that season, so
he was probably the best bet…unless you want to consider the Four Aces,
who were just beginning to a) make the majors and b) get injured. Todd Van
Poppel was the best prospect of the bunch at the time; given the inherent
flakiness of pitchers, Canseco was probably the best choice.

IS ANYONE STILL AROUND? No. Not even Tony LaRussa or Sandy Alderson. Come
to think of it, Alderson was probably a better bet than Canseco.

(THE ANSWER: Relief pitcher Julio Machado, who shot a woman (in the
passenger seat of another car) in his native Venezuela in December of ’91.
His major league career came to an abrupt halt.)

Seattle Mariners

BB92 SAID: Ken Griffey Jr.

A GOOD CHOICE? Damn right it was. He was 21 years old and already the best
player on the team.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? Nope. Came close, though–only one year from
making it.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? Yes–Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner.

Texas Rangers

BB92 SAID: Juan Gonzalez

A GOOD CHOICE? Yes. Gonzalez was 22 and had hit 27 homers and driven in 102
runs in his first full season. Cases could have been made for Ruben Sierra
(better than Gonzalez at the time, but three years older) and Ivan
Rodriguez (who, being a catcher, might suffer a major injury at any time).
Rafael Palmeiro was there too, having just turned 26. The 1991 Texas
Rangers, in fact, were a great collection of young talent; you could have
made a case for any of those guys, or Dean Palmer, or even Kevin Reimer if
you were so inclined.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? Nope. Missed by only one season, as well.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? Ivan Rodriguez. Believe it or not, three other
players from the ’91 Rangers also played for the team in 2000, though they
had sojourned elsewhere in the interim: Rafael Palmeiro, Ruben Sierra and
Kenny Rogers.

Toronto Blue Jays

BB92 SAID: John Olerud

A GOOD CHOICE? A gutsy one, and quite prescient. Olerud, to that point, had
hit .265 and .256 in two full seasons with a total of 31 home runs. James
probably based his prediction on three facts:

• He was still only 22.
• His walk rates were very good.
• The Jays had traded Fred McGriff in 1990 to open up the first-base slot
  for Olerud, and so were making a very public organizational commitment to him.

Still, if I were picking at the time, I probably would have gone the
straight talent route and picked Roberto Alomar, already an MVP candidate
at age 23. Those were the only two defensible choices. Juan Guzman looked
great, but was older than both of them and a pitcher besides.

IS HE, IN FACT, STILL HERE? No. Neither is Alomar, of course.

IS ANYONE ELSE STILL AROUND? No. Three people have left and returned in
that time: Cito Gaston, David Wells and–brace yourselves–Rob Ducey.

We’ll take a look at the National League next Wednesday.

James Kushner is an occasional contributor to Baseball Prospectus. He can
be reached at kushner@wt.net.