The Angels lose Troy Glaus for 60 days, or perhaps the entire season. Walkin’ machine Kevin Youkilis makes his debut with the Red Sox. Sammy Sosa hits the DL, weakening the Cubs’ lineup even more. Carl Everett returns for the Expos. And Raul Mondesi’s contract has been terminated by the Pirates. All this and much more news from around the league in your Friday edition of Transaction Analysis.
It was another day at the Indy Motor Speedway today, where I give hourly updates on nothing. Nothing happens, really. The same cars go out and do laps (very fast), then come in. The excitement is, maybe, a crash, but there was only one of those. Thankfully, no injuries and barely any damage to the million-dollar car. But the funny anecdote is that I was sitting with one of the drivers and he turns to me and says “you’re the baseball guy on the radio, right?” I said, yes. He paused and said “If I got a couple million dollars together, could I get to play for a team?” It took me a second to realize he wasn’t kidding. “No, (name), it’s not like racing. You’d have to go through the minors and all that.” He shook his head. “That sucks. Doesn’t seem fair.” I wasn’t sure if he was joking, but later, his cell phone rang. The ring tone? “Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” On to the injuries…
The big story here is the arrival of the young guns. Two catchers who demonstrated strong throwing arms in the minors, Kevin Cash and Gerald Laird, are showing that their ability translates to the major leagues. While Victor Martinez looks like the Next Big Thing at catcher based on offense alone, Cash’s superiority on defense makes up a big portion of the current offensive gap between the two. The same is true for Laird, whose all-around performance makes him a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate despite his recent hitting slump. We wondered in our last catching article who the young heirs to Jason LaRue and Mike Matheny were. It looks like we might have our answer.
The Phillies will miss Randy Wolf for one start and Jim Thome for a couple games. Neither is likely to hit the DL, but it is concerning for the team. Wolf had a “tingle” in his elbow after an outing in Colorado. While there’s no pain the day-after, the team is concerned enough to give him some extra rest. He’ll work on the side while Jeff Cooper and the rest of the staff watch him closely. Thome is dealing with more hand problems; two swollen fingers on his right hand now join his left thumb that has been bothering him since Spring Training. Highlights from Sunday clearly showed Thome wincing as he swung the bat, even when he hit a home run.
The timetable for Dmitri Young has changed slightly. Published reports say that the Tigers expect their slugger back on May 25th, rather than early-June. Why is this? The Tigers are bringing back Young before he’s completely healed. Alan Trammell was quoted as saying that he expected Young to “play with a limp.” It’s not often that a team will rush someone back to help salvage a .500 season, but it shows just how important the improvement is to this franchise.
Simi Valley, Calif. native and Long Beach State (No. 5) RHP Jered Weaver sat down with BP to discuss Team USA, superstitions and how he dominates hitters. Jered is a six-time 2004 National Player of the Week, seven-time Big West Player of the Week, a finalist for the Dick Howser Trophy awarded to the top player in collegiate baseball and a potential #1 overall pick in the upcoming June draft. His 2004 line:
W-L ERA IP H R ER BB SO
14-0 1.27 113.1 55 19 16 14 171
It wasn’t so long ago that the Indians, almost by acclimation, were deemed to have the best farm system in the game. That’s a fleeting honor by nature, as great systems are generally loaded with talent in the high minors–talent that isn’t long for the farm. Indeed, mashers like Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner are now plying their trade in Cleveland. Brandon Phillips exhausted his prospect status and the patience of his handlers, but he’s renaissancing in Buffalo this season. The gaggle of high-ceiling arms once in the system is now splitting time between major league duty and the injury docket.
All that said, replenishment is in the offing. The Indians’ High-A Carolina League affiliate in Kinston has been far and away the most dominant team in the minors thus far. At 27-9 (a tidy .750 winning percentage, which translates to 108 wins over a 144-game schedule), the Kinston Indians are playing Chet to the rest of the ‘Lina League’s Gary and Wyatt. All without the transmogrification-cum-comeuppance in the end.
Unless you’re the Giants, success isn’t reducible to one player, but in Kinston’s case it may be reducible to three. So ready yourselves for the “Kinston Trio.”
K-Rod may be the best reliever in baseball. Sammy Sosa’s costly sneeze lands him on the DL. Ben Sheets is having a breakout season. These and other news and notes out of Anaheim, Chicago and Milwaukee in today’s Prospectus Triple Play.
Matt Mantei hits the DL yet again. The Braves are running out of options as the injuries pile up. The Royals serve up the ultimate indignity: a promotion for Wilton Guerrero. The Expos take a big risk with Jose Vidro. Matt Ginter could be a good sleeper for the Mets. These and other happenings in today’s Transaction Analysis.
Some pitchers’ most readily-identifiable characteristic is their ability to induce groundballs. Indeed, for pitchers like Lowe, Zambrano, and Brandon Webb, inducing groundballs is an essential part of their game plan. Zambrano, for instance, can get away with maintaining a relatively high walk rate because he induces a lot of double plays, and avoids giving up home runs, which are especially costly with runners on base.
I saw perfection tonight. I saw Randy Johnson when he came to the Seattle Mariners from the Montreal Expos as a wild flame-thrower, I saw him refine himself into an ace pitcher, a guy who could throw 200 innings, strike out almost 300 guys, walk about 75, and keep his ERA under 3 in one of the AL’s more notorious launching pads. He threw a no-hitter in Seattle in his early days (1990–8 K, 6 BB). I missed him getting through an inning on nine strikes for three strikeouts in 2001, which is a weird but almost as rare historical achievement, and I’m still mad about it.
Today, I was flipping around watching games while writing something else up when I found the Diamondbacks game. The announcers were talking all about the perfect game he had going and I started yelling “Shut up! Shut up!” at the television. I’m a guy who’ll rail at the stars against astrology, I’ll talk until spoons bend about what a bunch of baloney telekinesis is, I’ll bore you to death about my hatred for John Edward, but when it comes to baseball and a chance to see one of the great games in history, I flip back to the superstitious caveman in a second.
Johnson’s performance tonight was one of the most impressive in baseball history. Thirteen strikeouts in a game is the second-most of the 17 perfect games in the modern era–only Sandy Koufax in 1965 topped him, setting down 14. One-hundred and seventeen pitches isn’t the most in a perfect game, either–David Wells threw 120 in his 1998 perfect game (struck out 11), but it’s the second-highest among the games that offered pitch-count totals.
That must have been one heck of a sneeze. Sammy Sosa’s sneeze strained a ligament in his back, pushing him to the DL. While the injury is both painful and would make playing difficult if not impossible, Sosa doesn’t have any further structural damage and should come back around the minimum. With the Astros and Cardinals on the immediate schedule, this is a bad time to be without the slugger, but the Cubs will try to make do by mixing and matching players like Todd Hollandsworth, Tom Goodwin, and perhaps David Kelton or Jason DuBois.
The injury to David Wells could have been a lot worse. While the rumors and innuendo will only intensify, Wells’ injury consists of simple yet deep lacerations to the hand and a partial tear/laceration of the palmaris longis tendon. This tendon, normally used as the replacement structure in Tommy John surgery, was repaired in minor surgery on Tuesday. Since the tendon has no real function, Wells is expected back around the minimum.
A quiet day on the schedule usually means a pretty quiet day on the UTK front, but injuries, at this stage, are inevitable. Despite teams and medical staffs doing all they can to prevent injuries, things are going to happen. Even if we were able to figure out how to prevent overuse injuries, there would still be freak things or collisions like the Giles vs. Jones natural disaster. I’ve often wished for a day without injuries, but it’s not coming any time soon.
Powered by the mystery of the gyroball, on to the injuries…
I saw Khalil Greene down on the farm and I didn’t see it. Whatever it was they were talking about, it wasn’t there that game. Pushed through the minors, it’s difficult to get a handle on whether he would hit or not, regain the walks he showed in college or not, if he could play shortstop well enough to hang there defensively. So far, he’s hung in there, hitting .266/.348/.395 in the pitcher-friendly environment of Petco Park while starting at short. The surprising bit’s been the walks, which are back in force. The Padres are investing playing time in the hopes that Greene will develop fast, and this may be the most interesting story to follow, as a contending team tries to break in a new shortstop while contending for a division race.
I intended this week’s YOU to be a tale of one of baseball’s great reprobates, a square table of scum and villainy that Christensen will now not have a chance to join. It’s hard to pick just one. It’s easy to dispense with Cap Anson, Dixie Walker, Ben Chapman. They were racists, sadly common rather than arch-villains. Chick Gandil and the other game-fixers of 1919 are closer to the mark, but everyone knows their story. They were the subject of a classic book and an excellent film. Hal Chase, the serial cheat, would have been a great subject, but in the last couple of years he’s been rediscovered, with two full biographies hitting bookstores. Denny McLain’s’s story is just distasteful and travels to too many places far removed from the ball field. Rogers Hornsby and Ty Cobb were anti-social and paranoid, respectively, but that’s all.
For today, that leaves us with a more obscure figure, not one of the game’s spectacular evildoers, but simply a consistently bad guy, one who, like Christensen, went out of his way to cause injury. Jake Powell played the outfield for the Washington Senators, New York Yankees, and Philadelphia Phillies in the 1930s and 1940s. He spoke rashly, acted rashly, and ultimately paid the price for his way of living.
Given the caliber of competition, it’s entirely possible that at least one
RotY award winner has yet to make his major league debut. If Willis and Berroa
can win the award based entirely on what they did after mid-May, certainly
other players can. So which prospects currently in the minors are set to make
the leap, and garner award votes come the fall?
The fifth installment of the series tours the majors’ largest division, the NL Central. Four of the six clubs in the division have moved into new ballparks since 2000, yet the one that’s virtually sold out for the season is the one that plays in a 90-year-old park built for the Federal League. The Reds, Brewers and Pirates are Exhibits A, B and C for the proposition that a new ballpark doesn’t ensure on-field success.
Once again, I shopped the clubs’ Web sites on MLB.com to see which seats a fan could hope to buy two or three weeks in advance, and how much a typical fan, or a typical family could expect to pay. That didn’t work for the Cubs, who were sold out three months in advance, but everywhere else, typical fans are likely to pay less than Team Marketing Report’s Fan Cost Index suggests they would.