The Gammons People Play

Peter Gammons' ESPN column from last week is full of the head-scratching, incoherent babbling that we've all come to know and love from 'Ole Pete. Like this:

"People win championships," said Joe Torre, and so it is that through all the Yankees have faced -- serious injuries (Jeter, Williams, Nick Johnson and Mariano Rivera), bullpen roulette, public spats with Raul Mondesi, David Wells and Jeff Weaver, the unraveling of Jose Contreras -- they came out of the Labor Day Weekend series in Boston with not only a safe six-game lead in the loss column but the final family reunion of Roger Clemens, who effectively buried the Red Sox's chances of catching the Yankees as he exchanged a figurative hug with New Englanders that reminded one and all how much they meant to one another."

Wow. That’s one sentence. 107 words, one sentence. Gammons sometimes writes as though preparing for when the Commies take over the world and make periods illegal.

I've already written about the Yankees bullpen in another column, so I won't go into that again.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that Contreras has “unraveled”. He’s been injured, like a lot of guys, but he’s actually pitched pretty well when they’ve used him as a starter. It’s only when they tried to get him to do long relief that he’s sucked. As a starter he’s 4-1 with a 2.90 ERA, 20 hits and 30 strikeouts in 31 innings. On the other hand (where I have four fingers and a thumb) the teams he’s beaten don’t exactly scream “Clutch October workhorse”: Detroit (37-102), Cincinnati (60-79), Toronto (69-70) and Baltimore (63-76).

Gammons also wrote:

"We know what we have to do," Giambi said. "[...]You learn to fight through it all."

Including Pedro Martinez. On Saturday, Martinez was still weak from his bout with a flu bug and threw one pitch above 89 mph, but the Yankees forced him into an early exhaustion with their patience.

Listen, Peter: The word "but" is what's called a logical connector, which serves to establish a contrast between what follows it and what preceeded it. For example:

"I was going to go wax my bronze statue of myself in the portico, BUT I decided that I would rather stay inside and practice looking menacing to opposing basestealers."

In this sentence [extra points if you can name the speaker!] used the word 'but' to show that one activity was excluded by the other. It was different from what had been expected.

In your sentence, (paraphrasing) "Pedro was still weak...couldn't throw hard..." shows that he should have been easier to beat than usual, which means that when the Yankees wore him out early, it was not unexpected, and so the logical connector 'but' does not belong. 'And', 'so', or 'therefore' would all have been better choices. Now, I'm going to have to start charging you for these grammar lessons if you don't start improving.

"Over the entire weekend, there were few obscenities, few of the "Yankees (----)" that usually litter the city. It was as if Red Sox's fans were getting over Roger, appreciating what it means to watch Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Jeter play their hearts out with dignity, understanding that even when Pedro doesn't win he leaves his soul on the mound and that, indeed, these guys named Williams and Giambi, Jeter, Posada, Johnson, Pettitte, Mussina and Rivera will never stop trying to overcome all the shrapnel that surrounds them."

How exactly does one "overcome shrapnel"? Don't you just duck and hope for the best? Oh, and Pete's getting better: That sentence only contained 89 words.

Gammons' next segment:

Marlins get tougher with Conine

Tougher? Maybe. Better, probably not much.

"We felt," said Beinfest, "that we've come this far, so we owe it to our fans and to the players to do whatever we can do to win."

"But then we decided to trade two of our best prospects for Jeff Conine instead." Right? Look, Conine's not the worst player around, and there's something to be said for versatility, but Jeff's only had one season in the last seven when he was worth more than 3.5 wins more than a replacement level guy at his position. Which means that, even in the midst of a decent season (for him) he's not likely to be worth more than half a win over the last month of the season. But with the wild-card race as close as it is in the NL, it might just come down to that. I guess we'll see.

Conine is actually having a pretty decent year, right around his career average, and the Marlins needed something when they lost Mike Lowell, but don't make it out like they got some kind of steal in giving up two good pitching prospects for an aging, overpaid mediocrity. They were hard-pressed to make something happen and they did the best they could in a bad situation. Kudos for that, no more.


Regarding NL Manager of the Year candidates, Gammons had this to say:

"But has anyone faced more adversity than Felipe Alou? While holding a significant lead in the NL West, Alou has had to use more than 100 lineups and employ 13 starting pitchers. The Giants moved their two innings horses, Russ Ortiz and Livan Hernandez. They lost Rob Nen. Kirk Rueter has been injured. They've had J.T. Snow, Rich Aurilia, Benito Santiago and Ray Durham on the DL, and seen Edgardo Alfonso struggle at times."

The Giants have had their issues, and Alou may very well deserve the Managers' highest honor, but the fact that he has had an enormous lead with which to work is an advantage. Sure, there's pressure to stave off those chassing you, but nobody's been closer than about five games since the middle of July. Give him credit for patching together a winning lineup in spite of the persistent inneptitude of J.T. Snow and Neifi Perez at the plate, the surprising struggles of Alfonzo and Rich Aurilia, and Barry Bonds' personal distractions. Heck, you can even give him credit for winning despite having only one pitcher with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title (Jason Schmidt) and patching a rotation together with untested rookies, but don't tell us that he had this huge lead and present it as though it somehow worked against him.


And finally, Peter Gammons' trademarked...

News and notes

One NL executive suggests that if the Cubs could find one more starter to go with Mark Prior, Carlos Zambrano and Clement, that Kerry Wood could be their answer to Eric Gagne and John Smoltz.

This is my absolute favorite item from this particular column. Gammons doesn't really comment on it, but the fact that he included the statement without ridiculing it outright is perhaps an indication that he actually finds the possibility intriguing. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why anyone who runs a baseball team with Kerry Wood on it would be interested in making him a closer.

I thought that this was something of a curious statement from a man who seems to understand as much about baseball as Peter Gammons does, but then I did a search of some of his previous columns and found the following:

"One State Department Official suggests that if the President could find one more Cabinet Member to go with Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, that Condoleezza Rice could play a mean mariacci guitar at state department picnics."

"One Hollywood executive suggests that if the Universal Studios could have found one more actor to go with Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton and Ed Harris, that Tom Hanks could have been a great "LEM Controller White" in Apollo 13."

"One baseball historian suggests that if the '27 Yankees could find one more outfielder to go with Bob Muesel and Earle Combs, that Babe Ruth could have been one heck of a pinch hitter."

So maybe Peter's viewpoints are a little skewed.

Here you've got a pitcher who's had some injury issues, yes, but who has been pretty healthy for the last two years, can pitch 200+ innings per year when healthy, and strikes out more than 10 batters per nine innings and allows only about 7 hits in that span. Why the hell would you want to relegate such a talent to pitching only 65 innings per year? So he can make some impressive looking stat lines? 120 strikeouts in 70 innings looks nice in the history books, but it doesn't help win games like starting 34 times and mowing them down the way Wood can when he's on. The fact that he's yet to win more than 13 gemes in a season is more a function of his team not providing run support than it is an indictment of his abilities as a starter.

The problem is that pitchers like Eric Gagne and John Smoltz and Mariano Rivera were once starters who have become great closers, but people forget that they were bad starters. Or often-injured starters. Or superfluous to the starting rotation. You'd be hard pressed to pick up another pitcher somewhere who would be good enough to relegate Kerry Wood to a relief role. Besides, what the heck is wrong with Borowski?

Signed, Zeiled, Delivered

The Yankees released 15-year veteran Todd “Good Housekeeping” Zeile on Sunday.

Housekeeping was about all Todd had to do of late, given that the Yanks had recently acquired 3B Aaron Boone and jettisoned the lefty-susceptible Robin Ventura, whom Zeile had been hired to complement (“Nice bat, Robin.”) Besides this, Nick Johnson has recently come back from the DL, making it pretty tough to find playing time for Zeile at the 1B/DH spots.

I have two major observations about this:

1) I could have told you that Zeile was gonna suck.
B) The guys who pushed him out of a job have not exactly been hitting the cover off the ball.

Last year, Zeile hit .273 with 18 homers and 87 RBI, which looks pretty decent until I tell you that he played for the Rockies, and that his home/road splits looked like this:

	AB	R	HR	RBI	BB	K	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS

 Home	248	41	11	56	43	39	.315	.414	.500	914

 Away	258	20	7	31	23	53	.233	.291	.353	644

Yuk.

So, given that a player's actual ability correlates much better with his non-Coors stats that with his Coors stats, what might we have expected out of a 38-year old with this kind of record? That's right:

AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS

.210	.294	.349	.644

...which is exactly what we got. Nothing to write home about, unless you're Gary DiSarcina.

In fact there is good news here: Despite his relatively advanced age for a baseball player, Zeile didn't really decline at all from 2002 to 2003. He had the exact same 644 OPS, which, while stinking to high heaven, is almost Bonds-ian in its age-defying consistency.

Nick Johnson came off the DL in mid July after recuperating from (yet another) wrist injury, and has hit only .230 since. Thankfully, he walks often, so his .390 OBP bolsters his otherwise unimpressive .410 slugging percentage on the way to a decent 800 OPS. Presumably, Johnson’s patience and health will allow him to start hitting .300 or so again, but he hasn’t been scorching since coming back thus far.

And what about Aaron Boone? Boone has hit a pathetic .169/.182/.238, for a sub-Neifi .420 OPS. Two lousy walks in 63 at-bats? Three extra base hits in two weeks? Zeile must be really upset. At least he wasn’t traded for Dooley Womack. Or worse, Tony Womack.

Don't worry about Zeile. He'll catch on somewhere. Dusty Baker is bound to bench some kid and give Todd another shot at mediocrity.

Could He be (H)Appier?

Kevin Appier beat the Yankees last night, pitching six shutout innings on the way to an 11-0 laugher due largely to Jeff Weaver's continued and inexplicable suck-ness. This was Appier's first start at Kauffman Stadium since rejoining the Royals, who traded him away to Oakland during the 1999 season. At the time, I was appy for Happier, er...appy for Appier, happy for Happier, er...I was glad for him because the Royals sucked back then (probably more than Jeff Weaver does now...maybe not). But now the Royals don't suck, at least not as much. And whomever in the AL Central can get through the rest of the year having sucked the least will win that weak-ass division and have a real, live shot at getting eliminated from the playoffs by the Yankees or Mariners. You can't beat that with a 19-or-20-inches-worth-of-pine-tar coated stick.

Appier spent the first eleven seasons of his career in Royal blue, pitching extremely well for some extremely lousy teams. Baseball-Reference.com's schedule breaker-outer indicates that only the Tigers, Phillies, Devil Rays, Marlins and Twins had a worse record than the Royals in that span, and that includes a 92-win season in 1989 in which Appier didn't play much of a role (1-4 in 21+ innings).

It also includes his best season, an 18-8 campaign in 1993 in which he won the AL ERA title by almost half a run less than the next closest competitor and almost a whole run less than the Cy Young winner, Black Jack McDowell. Jack had the good fortune to pitch for a team that could actually hit and therefore won 22 games despite a higher ERA and about 30 fewer strikeouts in 20 more innings. If the punchless Royals had somehow averaged more than the paltry 4.1 runs/game they gave Appier, he might have that trophy in his den instead of Black Jack.

For that matter, where would Appier's career numbers be if he'd had a team that could hit behind him for most of his career, say, like Andy Pettitte. Pettitte's got an ERA for his career roughly 18% better than the park adjusted league averages, which is pretty darn good. Granted, Pettitte's career isn't even ten years old yet, while Appier's been pitching in the bigs since 1989, but look at the contrasts:

Pettitte's career 3.95 ERA, roughly 18% better than average, has gotten him a career record of 141-77, so far, for a .647 winning percentage. That ERA ratio doesn't even rank him among the top 100 pitchers in history.

Appier is somewhere around #60, with an ERA about 24% better than average. That ratio is slightly better than current or future Hall of Famers Tom Glavine, Silver King, Bob Feller, Juan Marichal, Eddie Plank, Don Drysdale, Clark Griffith, and Joe McGinnity. What's more, it's only slightly worse than Hall of Famers Lefty Gomez, Tim Keefe, Jim Palmer, and Dazzy Vance. Pretty good company, if you ask me, which you must have, since you're still reading.

And yet Appier just doesn't have the wins to show for his effort. If not for the lousy run support he's received throughout most of his career, Appier might already have 15-20 more wins (and fewer losses). His "Support Neutral" record works out to about 175-130, instead of 169-135, but with good run support that could easily have been 190-115, which would place him squarely among some of the best pitchers in history. Where he is already, except that nobody knows it.

"Feature Analyst"

I haven't felt this important since the first time a clerk at the mall called me "Sir."

I add links to other baseball sites all the time. Other people link to me fairly often as well. Hopefully, at least some of those people actually think enough of something I write occasionally to mention it more specifically in their own writing. This is not completely unusual.

I have even been asked for my opinion, on occasion, on a certain subject in spirited debate. But now, I am syndicated.

That's correct folks, as you can see from the link on your left (right your to look should dyslexics you) I have linked a new site called Baseball Interactive, and, as you might have guessed from the 'interactive' part of their name, they have linked to me as well. Not just linked, syndicated. For now I am a member of the staff of writers at BI, and am listed as a "Feature Analyst" which is a somewhat cooler title than "Sir" and a much cooler one than "Ma'am," at least for me.

I won't necessarily be doing any extra posting, though I may get the chance to be part of an electronic round table discussion once in a while. The coolest part is that BI looks much better than Boy of Summer, and hopefully it will have an extent of reach beyond what I can do on my own. It'll be billed as "A Fan's Notebook", which will allow me to continue posting at random times on random subjects of my own choosing without having to have any sort of real responsibility at all! But I am proud to join Mike Carminati, Jay Jaffe, Brad Dowdy and a boatload of other writers to try to make BI a great fans' site. Should be fun.

What Goes Around Came Around for Pettitte

The Yankees lost today. Not such an unusual occurrence that it would normally be write-worthy, but it's the way they lost today that bothers me: They lost by playing well.

OK, so their hitters didn't play so well. They managed to scrounge together only three lousy hits and a walk. Four baserunners in nine innings does not often allow you to outscore your opponent, but given that they've averaged six runs per game over the last week, it's not as though they're in a "slump". Seattle Mariners starter Gil Meche just out-pitched them.

Meche was a super-prospect who broke through in 1999 and 2000, but had an undiagnosed injury to his pitching shoulder that shelved him for a while. Now, two years and two shoulder surgeries later, Meche is finally doing what everybody expected he would do in the first place: winning. He's now 13-7, 3.63 ERA, and strikes out twice as many batters as he walks, which isn't too shabby. But tip your cap to him and let's move on. This column isn't about Gil Meche.

It's about Andy Pettitte. Pettitte had the unusual misfortune of losing a game in which he pitched well. Since Pettitte hadn't seen an "L" next to his name in a boxscore since June 8, he might have forgotten what it felt like to lose. That performance (five outs, sig earned runs, two homers allowed to the Cubbies) stank very much bad. But since then, he may have begun to think that he led a charmed life, as even when he was less than stellar, his teammates picked up the slack. Four of his ten starts since that abysmal performance saw him allow four runs or more, never with more than 7 and a third innings pitched, but the Yankees hit in all of those, so he either got the win or someone in the bullpen vultured it from him. So this loss helps to make things even. If a man can be credited with a "Win" when he allows five runs to the lowly Devil Rays, then it only seems fair, if not appropriate, that he can be given a "Loss" for holding the mighty Mariners to two runs. But this column isn't about today's game.

It's about history. More specifically, Andy Pettitte's history. The guys announcing the game for FOX this afternoon were talking about how Pettitte has taken to working out with Roger Clemens, and how (presumably) this has helped Andy to improve his game. It seems that few, if any, of Rocket's teammates have been able to keep up with his workouts, but Pettitte is the exception, not the rule, and is the better pitcher for it. Apparently.

Year	CG	SHO	  IP	IP/GS	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	W	L	ERA

1995-97	9	1	636.33	6.42	9.12	0.64	2.83	6.25	51	24	3.58

1998-00	8	1	612.67	6.45	9.71	0.84	3.76	5.76	49	31	4.42

2001-03	5	1	482.00	6.34	9.73	0.71	2.02	7.26	41	21	3.87

Total	22	3	1731	6.51	9.50	0.73	2.93	6.36	141	76	3.96

Pettitte's never been much for stamina, averaging only about 6.5 innings per start over the course of his career,
somewhat less than most "aces" (Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling, Kevin Brown, etc) usually tally. He was quite a find,
the first Yankees pitching prospect to make a serious impact in quite a while. He finished third in a close vote for
1995 Rookie of the Year. (The 'close' was between Marty Cordova's 105 points and Garret Anderson's 99. Pettitte
finished a distant third with 16 points.) He finished a close (really this time) second to Pat hentgen in the 1996 Cy
Young voting, winning 21 games en route to the Yankees' first World Series triumph since 1978, and then found
himself among the leading CYA vote-getters in 1997, when he posted a career best 240 innings and 2.88 ERA,
allowing only seven home runs all year.

But then something happened. I don't know what, exactly, if Pettitte got complacent or if he just fell in love with that cut-fastball or what, but he slipped a little. From 1998-2000 his strikeout rates and innings pitched fell (though he was still a work-horse, averaging about 200 innings per year), his walk rates, homerun rates and ERA went up, and naturally he didn't win quite so often or lose quite as rarely.

But if his workouts with Clemens really are the reason for his turnaround, then it really didn't start to show until two years after Clemens joined the team. From 2001 to 2003, Pettitte has lowered his ERA, raised his strikeout rates, and cut his walk-rate almost in half. The hits have stayed about the same, as they are wont to do, but the things he can control, strikeouts and walks, he has controlled. And he should be commended for it. Where other pitchers may have gotten frustrated with lack of success or indignant towards new instruction when they had a hard time following success, Pettitte has seemed to embrace the advice and practices of someone who knows how to win and how to keep winning. Who better to look towards as a mentor than a guy who was your childhood hero, your rival for four years, and now your teammate for five? The only guy in history to win six Cy Young awards? The only guy to strike out twenty batters in a nine inning game twice?

Roger Clemens is to pitching longevity what E.F Hutton wa sto investment in the 1980's: Listen to him.

It's worked for Andy.

Mythological Figures...

Myth: (n) A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal

There is a myth in the baseball world. Actually there are many of them, including the notions that “defense and pitching win championships”, “never make the last out at third base” and “Joe Morgan doesn't know what he's talking about". Well, maybe that last one has something to it.

The Yankees traded RHP Armando "Most Homers Allowed In Postseason Play By A Reliever In History" Benitez to the Seattle Mariners for RHP Jeff Nelson. The myth goes that you need solid middle relief (the Yankees already have a solid closer in Mariano Rivera, his recent penchant for allowing runs int he ninth inning notwithstanding) to win in the postseason, or maybe even to get into the postseason. The myth is probably right, in this case, but there's really no reason to believe that Benitez would have been any worse off in that role than Nelson will. The only real difference is that Nelson's done this job for years, while it's supposedly a relatively recent reaquisition for Benitez.

The myth has it that the Yankees relief corps just hasn't been right since Jeff Nelson departed for Seattle after the 2000 season. And in a move that would have made my freshman psychology professor cringe, they note that the Yanks haven't won a World Series since he left. But, as they say in France, "correlation never implies causality", and so I looked it up:

Yankees Right-Handed Relievers, Regular Season Performance



Year	Saves	Holds	Innings	HR/9	K/9	WHIP	ERA

2003*	41	24	249	0.759	7.23	1.45	4.08

2002	47	29	288	0.719	6.66	1.30	3.59

2001	57	25	330	0.846	8.02	1.23	3.55

2000	40	22	333.3	0.729	6.26	1.40	3.94



*projected over 162 games

So we can see that the Yankees righty relievers actually got better after Nelson left. In 2001 and 2002 the right handed half of the Yankees Bullpen Monster had more saves, more holds, a lower ERA, allowed fewer baserunners, and struck out more batters than the team had in 2000, with Jeff Nelson. So there goes that theory.

So I thought to myself, "Self, I wonder if it was the POST-season that they were talking about..."

Yankees Right-Handed Relievers, Post-Season Performance



Year	Saves	Holds	Innings	HR/9	K/9	WHIP	ERA

2002	1	0	14.0	2.57	5.79	1.50	5.14

2001	5	2	34.0	0.79	8.21	1.32	4.50

2000	6	3	29.7	1.21	6.67	1.11	3.94

This makes things a little tougher to evaluate, largely due to the small sample size. Clearly the Yankees relievers have nt been nearly as effective in the post season as they have in the regular season, and this is true for almost every year. But you can hardly blame the Yankees lack of post season success in recent years on the relievers.

In 2002, the Yankees' starters had a combined ERA of almost 11.00!, so the fact that the relievers didn't do so well seems hardly relevant. It's not as though there were many leads for them to protect.

In 2001 the starters were not so bad as all of that, but Andy Pettitte managed to lose three games in the postseason all by himself, which constituted half of the losses attributed to the Yankees starters in that post season. Mariano Rivera was the only reliever who was credited with a loss that year in the playoffs. So again, it's hardly for a lack of middle relief that the Yankees didn't win that World Series either.

And in 2000, the last year the commisioner's trophy did end up in the Bronx? Jeff Nelson did get three "Holds" that year in postseason play, but his ERA was 7.04, so I'd say that they were sucessful in spite of him.

Joe Sheehan has an article in Baseball Prospectus' Premium area in which he says it's a win-win trade. That the Mariners are better off having a righty who can get both lefties and righties out, and that the Yankees are better off having a situational pitcher with whom Joe Torre is comfortable, especially for the postseason. I don't disagree, necessarily, but the Yankees may end up with egg on their collective faces if Benitez comes in to close out games against them and succeeds, or if Nelson is asked to pretect a lead against the Mariners in the ALCS and fails. I guess we'll see.

Updates...

I have been made aware that a couple of my fellow bloggers have moved over to Movable Type. I don't really know what this means, but I assume it costs money or something, so I doubt that I'll be doing it any time soon. However, if you're interested, you can now find the illustrious John J(acob Jingleheimer) Perricone's Only Baseball Matters at http://www.grousehouse.org/obm/. Of cours, if you go to his former site, there's a banner that will take you right over anyway. The only difference I really see is that he doesn't seem to have the papyrus font like he did before, but hey, you don't go there for the font, right?

Also, Brad Dowdy's Atlanta Braves Blog, **No Pepper** has moved to http://www.nopepper.net. No font change here, I think.

And of course both of these can be reached from my blog links on the left, as soon as I update them, which should be shortly.

While you're surfing, you may find Baseball Crank Dan McLaughlin's analysis of the Red Sox potential to finish the season with a team slugging percentage over .500, which has never been done before, and some ensuing comments, one from Yours Truly.

And Last, but not Finally, Elephants in Oakland has just become one year old. This Post marks their anniversary, but if you haven't read more of their writing by now, you're really missing out. EIO may be going the route of Movable Type or something even cooler soon, so stay tuned....

And speaking of being a year old, my own anniversary is Friday, August seventh. Here is my first post. Cool.

Trade Analysis...

How did this happen?

I went away for a couple of lousy days, and I came back to find that my favorite team's starting right fielder, third baseman and best pitching prospect had been jettisoned to the National League, and that they had gotten an overrated thirdbaseman, a backup outfielder, an injured lefty reliever and a couple of prospects in return. Not good.

What's more, my favorite team's immediate rival had gotten the second-best available starter (Jeff Suppan), two of the best available relievers (RHP Scott WIlliamson and LHP Scott Sauerbeck) and had given up only a couple of marginal prospects to do so.

Now don't get me wrong, I think that Yankees GM Brian Cashman did a pretty good job in getting a new, fairly productive thirdbaseman (Aaron Boone) to replace the aging, underproductive one they had (Robin Ventura), who was necessarily dumped into the Dodgers' already underachieving hitting ranks. And though I don't happen to put much stock in "team chemistry", if you hafta get rid of Raul Mondesi, it's best to get something for him and to send him someplace where he can't come back to haunt you. Arizona seems pretty safe.

Aaron Boone isn't that much of an upgrade on Robin Ventura, but it's something. Even when Ventura's batting average dips below .250, he walks enough to keep up a respectable OBP, but his almost complete lack of power this year (13 2B, 9 HR) and his age (36) meant that some upgrade was needed. There really wasn't anywhere else in the lineup they could expect to significantly upgrade anyway. And they got some decent (albeit old) prospects back in Bubba Crosby and Scott Proctor.

Boston, on the other hand (...yep, still five fingers!), did a wonderful job shoring up their bullpen with Sauerbeck and Williamson, not to mention getting Byun Hyun Kim earlier in the year, while essentially giving up only a 2B prospect, once most of the original deal was un-done.

Suppan, frankly, I'm not very worried about. While he's a durable pitcher having a pretty good year (for the Pirates, no less) his career ERA is almost 5.00, and he's really not giving up any fewer hits or getting any more strikeouts this season than he normally does. What he is doing is allowing fewer walks (about one per nine innings less) and homers (about one-half per nine innings less). This, as Oakland GM Billy Beane and any sabermetrician worth his salt will tell you, is a good way to keep your ERA down. Unfortunately, it might just be a fluke. Suppan may revert to giving up that extra homer and extra walk and revert to the league-average innings muncher he usually is, in which case the Red Sox playoff foes have little to fear from him.

Updates...

I have been remiss (miss, miss), not to be confused with or , in not giving appropriate props to a fellow blogger. Actually, I gave him props, but then I forgot to follow up on them.

For those of you out there who are Mets fans (the six or seven remaining), you may be particularly interested in The Eddie Kranepool Society, run by Stephen Keane. I had given him a reference a couple of months ago, but I forgot to add his link to my sidebar, so, upon his reminder, I have done so.

NOTE: Be careful not confuse his site with The Stephen Crane Society. Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage, which is a book about the Civil War, as opposed to the Civil Injustice that has become the New York Mets franchise. Also I think that the punctuation was a lot better in The Red Badge of Courage. I believe I still have a copy of this from a summer reading assignment in high school. If the Lodi Public Library ("Featuring the largest collection of absolutely nothing you've ever seen!!") fines are still $0.10/day, I owe them $498.70, for a book that was worth about a buck when they acquired it in 1962. Nice return on their investment. For that kind of scratch, I could have assaulted a young woman in a sausage costume! And then taken her out for dinner!

Actually, come to think of it, that might be the Catcher In The Rye that I still have. Never mind.

While I've got your attention, go check out Alex Belth's interview with Moneyball author Michael Lewis. Alex gets opportunities to interview people like this every once in a while, and he always makes the most of it. I'm sure that this time is no different.

In addition, the new edition of Mudville magazine came out last week, so go check that out, too. Mmmm, skin pics.....

I Wanna Comb-Over! To Hell With the Consequence!!

The Hall of Fame induction ceremonies took place yesterday afternoon, in Cooperstown, NY. Catcher Gary Carter and 1B/DH Eddie Murray were inducted as players, and your hero and mine, Bob Uecker, was inducted as a broadcaster, getting the Ford C. Frick Award, and generally making people laugh, like he always does.

I only saw a few highlights of the ceremonies, but I understand that Carter was concerned about crying onstage during his speech, and so he mad a point not to dwell on the especially emotional aspectsof his story, as outlined in the 23-minute speech he delivered. Of course, he got kinda choked up anyway, but overall it wasn't really embarassing, and even if he had cried, it would not have been especially embarassing. Heck, Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly was practically a fountain of tears in Akron last year, as he gave his acceptance speech to the football Hall of Fame, all the while facing his disabled son, and everyone thought it was very touching, and it was. Not embarassing at all.

No, what Carter should have been worried about was his hair. I mean, did you see this guy? They call him "The Kid"? OK, so he's no spring chicken, but he's not fooling anybody with an 8-inch combover either, y'know? Gary used to have hair, see?


But not now:


And of course, the speeches are filmed from the worst possible angle for a guy with this problem, one to which I can relate, given my relative abundance of forehead these days as compared to my youth. They shoot you straight on, just a little above level, so that every time "The Kid" looks down at his speech notes, all you see is the combover. Bad news, man. Bad news.

And what's worse is that the plaques they make for these guys always look like the sculptor finished the bust perfectly and then took a sledge hammer to to the face.



He looks like the title character from Mask. All told, not a very flattering weekend for The Kid.


On a related note: F#

ESPN has Rob Neyer's take on which current players would make the Hall of Fame if their careers ended tomorrow, and he picks a dozen guys who are essentially locks: Rocket, Big Unit, Mad Dog, Glavine, Piazza, Pudge, Alomar, Biggio, Bonds, Rickey, Sammy and Junior. Not a bad group.

Just missing the cut, in Neyer's opinion are Palmiero, McGriff, Bagwell, Pedro, Big Hurt, Barry Larkin, and A-Rod.

Now as I understand it, Neyer's not saying who deserves to get into the Hall, but who would get into the Hall, as I know that he has advocated for Palmiero, McGriff and Thomas under separate auspices, if not others in that group. And surely, if four Cy Young Awards will get Steve Carlton, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson (5) and Roger Clemens (6) into the Hall, certainly these should do the trick for Pedro Martinez as well, despite his "frailty".

The really interesting stuff comes up in the opinion polls. Readers were asked who they would vote for, and then the results are tallied, with anyone who gets the requisite 75% vote (the minimum BBWAA percentage for induction) highlighted. And who's highlighted? Only, Clemens, Maddux, Randy, A-Rod, Bonds, Henderson and Sammy.

Pedro Martinez doesn't make 75%, but he gets 10% more votes than Glavine, which is interesting considering that he has about hundred fewer career wins. I'm not saying that either of them isn't deserving. I just don't understand the thought processes involved in not voting for a guy with 250 career wins, five 20-win seasons and two Cy Young Awards.

None of the four relief pitchers (Hoffman, Rivera, Smoltz or John Franco) got enough votes, but John Smoltz, who has been a relief pitcher for... -what, about half an hour? ...got more votes than anyone else. Go figure.

Neither Mike Piazza nor Ivan Rodriguez received 75% of the vote, which is amazing considering that Piazza is easily the greatest hitting catcher EVER, and that Rodriguez is one of only ten catchers ever to win an MVP award. Most of those are either in the Hall already (Campanella and Berra with three each, Bench with two, and Ernie Lombardi, Mickey Cochrane, and Gabby Hartnett with one each), on their way (Joe Torre) or died too young to cap off what would likely have been a Hall-meriting career (Thurman Munson). Only Elston Howard was never a serious candidate for enshrinement.

Among the 1B/DH types, nobody got particularly close to 75%, with Palmiero coming in the highest, with less than 65%, and Frank Thomas bringing up the rear, around 30%. This is sad. How in the world a guy with 500+ career homers doesn't get 3 out of 4 internet users to vote for him is beyond me. And how Frank Thomas ends up with fewer votes than Edgar Martinez completely escapes my comprehensive capacity.

Neither Roberto Alomar nor Craig Biggio got enough votes, not even 60% for Alomar and not even 35% for Biggio. What a shame.

It's hard to argue with Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Rickey Henderson, who all have "First Ballot" written all over their careers. But Ken Griffey not only doesn't get 75% of the vote, doesn't get 60%, doesn't even get 50% of the votes??? The guy's got 2000+ hits and 480-something homers, and he's only 33! He's been among the top ten vote getters in the MVP race seven times in 14 seasons! He even won once! Ten Gold Gloves! Seven 100-RBI seasons! Six 100-run seasons! Seven .300 BA seasons! FOUR HOME RUN TITLES!!! Do you know how many players have led their leagues in home runs at least four times (Since 1920, the end of the dead ball era, when homers really became significant) and aren't in the Hall of Fame?

None.

There are seventeen guys on that list, and they're all in the Hall, except Griffey, who's not elligible. Yet.
But when he is, he'll get in. You better, you better you bet. Anybody who's that good, for that long, eventually gets enshrined. Even if he does get hurt or lose a step when he gets older.

The trouble with these internet polls is that you can't tell who's voting. Don't get me wrong, the BBWAA has made more than its share of mistakes over the years (how do you not elect Joe DiMaggio on the first ballot?), but by and large, they do OK, because most of them kinda know their stuff. With the Internet, you never know who's out there clicking those mouses. Meeses. Mice. Buttons. Or do you?

It seems from the results of this poll, that the average baseball fan is about eight or ten years old, and can only rember back about as far as 1999 or so. Maybe 1998. This would explain why Pedro Martinez (one CYA and two 20-win seasons in that span) gets more votes than Tom Glavine (none and one). It would also explain why Edgar Martinez gets more votes than Frank Thomas, who was basically the best hitter in the AL for seven straight years, but seven years that ended in 1997. It also explains Griffey's lack of support, as his trade to Cincinnati before the 2000 season coincided with his plummet from super-stardom.

And, of course, it explains why none of the voters seems to have any idea how good Roberto Alomar, Craig Biggio and Barry Larkin were for most of their careers, before they got kinda old, and why they have no sense of history when it comes to rating two of the best players ever to strap on the Tools of Ignorance. Also, it explains why they think that Alex Rodriguez's nine seasons in the major leagues merit his enshrinement now, even though you need ten years just to be considered: They haven't learned to count yet.

So to sum up...

Bad News: The average fan of Major League Baseball is either ten years old, really stupid, or both.

Good News: The average fan of MLB is probably about ten years old, which means that the sport is doing a better job of marketing itself to youngsters than we thought!

Bud Selig, Bob DuPuy and their comb-overs will be so relieved.

Broken Record...

Barry Bonds, by all accounts, one of the greatest players in history, hit his MLB-leading 33rd homer of the season last night. It was his 646th of his career, and his 470th as a Giant, which is widely (but inaccuratley) being reported as eclipsing Willie McCovey's record for the club.

This is, as they say in France, a load of crap. Not only doesn't Bonds own the club record for homers, he doesn't even have the second most. That distinction belongs to Hall of Famer and beneficieary of the laughably short right field fence at the Polo Grounds, Mel Ott. Ott, you may recall, spent a long career as a New York Giant, smacking out 511 homers in 22 seasons as an outfielder and sometime thirdbaseman. And of course there was Willie Mays, who was no slouch himself, hitting all but 14 of his career 660 homers as a Giant. (That's 6-4-6, for those of you scoring at home. And hey, if you are, stop reading this and pay more attention to her!)

What Bonds owns is the San Francisco Giants record for career homers, which is like saying that the world (or at least that franchise) began in 1958, and that nothing that happened before that is valid. I think a lot of old-time Giants fans (and Dodgers fans, and A's fans, and Braves fans, and Senators fans) who might take issue with that.

And more importantle, we gotta give Jack Pfeffer his props! here's to the Dodgers career ERA leader! The greatest pitcher in Dodgers history!

Or not.

The Rich Get ...Older?

The Yankees, with their unbridled obsession to, either win the most, or make the most noise losing, have made yet another move, acquiring 309-year-old Jesse Orosco for three cases of Big League Chew and two tickets to a future Yankees home game. Or something.

It doesn't seem that they really needed another lefty reliever, since they've already got southpaws Dan Miceli, Chris Hammond, and Sterlling Hitchcock in the pen, not to mention right-handers Antonio Osuna, Armando Benitez and Mariano Rivera, who are all historically as good against leftys as they are against righties, if not better.

But for better or for worse (HINT: worse), they've now got Orosco, too. This will be Orosco's eighth different team (he pitched for LA twice), in his long, LONG, illustrious career. The only significant record he holds is for career games pitched, and so I suppose the only reason he's really hanging on is to pad that record, so that if some young whipper-snapper comes along, say, John Franco, and thinks that he can wrest this accomplishment from Orosco's dry, wrinkly, calloused, arthritic hands, he'll have another think coming.

Orosco used to be a pretty effective reliever against all comers, but of late (that is, the last ten years or so) he's been relegated to LOOGY status. Which is fine, because he sucks at getting righties out:

	AB	R	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS

Right	47	22	2	10	6	6	0.426	0.482	0.660	1.142

Left	57	0	2	7	4	16	0.228	0.290	0.351	0.641

Or, to put it simply:

Righties: Think Rogers Hornsby
Lefties: Think Rogers, Fred



Can't you hear it?

"Pinch hitting for Jeremy Giambi, number twenty nine, Gabe Kapler..."

Of course, you had to expect that Orosco was gonna have a hard time maintaining his control as he got older. I understand that it's been especially tough for him to keep the walks down since they lowered the number of balls required for a walk from 5 to 4.

Actually, the guy they got Orosco to "save" them from, Chris Hammond hasn't been bad, overall. It seems to me that a 2-0 record, 3.02 ERA, with 13 holds and one save in 15 opportunities, pitching 41+ innings and striking out 32 while walking only 7 is pretty good, and it is. But there are two problems:

A) Hammond hasn't been nearly as effective against lefties (.303 BA/.342 OBP/.424 SLG/.767 OPS) as he has against righties (.253/.273/.295/.567). Being a LOOGY, this is his primary responsibility, and a .303 batting average against just ain't gettin' the job done.

2) Hammond hasn't been nearly as effective against anybody this year (respectable 3.02 ERA) as he was last year (insane 0.95 ERA). So they think that something's wrong. Bob Gibson's ERA nearly doubled from 1968 (1.12) to 1969 (2.18), but the Cardinals didn't run out and acquire Bill Henry, just because he was available.

Oh well. If anyone can afford to make this mistake, it's the Yankees.

Wiley Coyote, Super Jeanyes Geenius Geneous...Genious

I found this article by Baseball Ranting Mike Carminati, in response to the inarticulate grouping of words that passed for a Ralph Wiley column last week.

Mike, as always, does an excellent job of picking apart Wiley's race "column", but I noticed that Wiley provided an alley-oop, and Mike missed the dunk! A rare occurrence indeed. Here's what Wiley wrote:

"[...]In other words, the cream will almost always rise.

I say "almost," because none of that helped Rickie Weeks.

Weeks went to Lake Brantley High, in Orlando, Florida. He was a starter on the high school baseball team. But somehow, all those in-state high-level college baseball programs like Florida State and Miami didn't offer him a scholarship, so he went to a historically black university, Southern U. in Baton Rouge, to be developed, and ended up as the No. 2 pick overall in the amateur baseball draft in June and just won the 2003 Golden Spikes Award as the best amateur player in the country. [blah-blah-race Dusty slavery-blah]"

Is it just me, or doesn't the evidence he cites actually work against his argument? He says, "Hey! The cream doesn't always rise to the top! Look at this guy!!" He then begins to propound what I expected would be some sob story about a poor black kid who grew up in the slums and could have been great if only some fat-slob, racist, honkey scout workin' for the Man woulda come watch him play for half an hour. Or something.

Instead I get the story of Rickie Weeks, a kid who, despite playing for (what I assume was) a relatively small high school program, got noticed as a college player, became the #2 pick in the amatuer draft and was named the Best Amatuer Player in the Country by a fairly knowlegeable and influential group of honkey racist slobs, the MLB Players Association and USA Baseball. Not to mention a littany of other awards.

This is it? This is your evidence that The Man is keeping you down? A kid who is all but universally acclaimed to be the best baseball player around not getting paid for it?

That's like arguing that the economy is in the dumps by pointing to Bill Gates' house. And then taking a tour of the place.

In a court of law, this is like arguing that the defendant is not guilty of murder because it happened at 12:03 AM, not 12:01, as the prosecution contends. And then showing a videotape from the 7-11 where the defendant clearly blows the cashier's head off at 12:03.

It sometimes amazes me what passes for "logic" in some sports columns.

Bucked Bucs: Ex-Pirates Starting All-Star Game

My esteemed colleague over at the Illuminated Donkey, Ken Goldstein, posted some ABC (Actual Baseball Content) on said blog, regarding the All-Star game and more specifically, its impact on the World Series. He looks at the effects of home field advantage in the World Series over its history, and has an interesting theory about it…but I won’t spoil his fun. Go check him out.

Another esteemed colleague, we’ll call him “Tim” (as we always do, since that’s his name and all), sent me an email yesterday:

Hey Travo, 



Here's a topic for your blog...  How about 2 former Pirate 

pitchers starting the all-star game against each other?  

Thank you, Cam Bonifay! 



Tim

“Tim” is very observant, as this didn’t even occur to me until he mentioned it, but he’s right. For that matter, several pitchers have left Pittsburgh to have significant success elsewhere:

Tim Wakefield was 6-11 with a 5.61 ERA for the pirates in 1993, was out of MLB in 1994, but then came back and won almost a hundred games for the RedSox since 1995, with an ERA as good as or better than the league average every year but one in that span.

Denny Neagle, who went to the Braves in the trade for Jason Schmidt (I think) won 20 games for them in 1997, and 51 games in the three years after the trade, despite his lack of success since joining the Colorado Rockies’ staff.

Jon Lieber was allowed to depart the Pirates and join the Cubbies, where he became a 20-game winner in 2001. Of course he’s injured now, rehabbing from Tommy John surgery on the Yankees buck, but the Cubs got about 720 quality innings out of his arm in three and a half years before he broke down.

So what gives? Well, obviously, the first answer is money. Unlike Wakefield, Jason Schmidt was actually a pretty good pitcher when the Pirates had him, but they couldn’t afford to keep him, and so he was traded to the Giants for prospects or Wendy’s coupons or something in mid-2001, where he promptly became one of the dozen or so best pitchers in the National League. Take a look:

Jason Schmidt									

Seasons	TM	GS	IP	IP/GS	H/9IP	BB/9IP	SO/9IP	W	L	ERA	ERA+

1996-01	PIT	129	799.67	6.2	9.35	3.62	6.71	44	47	4.39	101

2001-03	SF	58	384.67	6.63	7.04	3.25	9.36	29	13	3.06	134

And his salary jumped from just over $3 million to just under $5 million in 2001,
which essentially priced him out of the Bucs’ market.

Interesting notes about these stats:

1) Schmidt walks about the same number of batters now as he did then, so it doesn’t appear that he’s really gained control since his Pirate days.

2) Schmidt’s hits/strikeouts ratio essentially flip-flopped, perhaps an indication that he found a little more “heat” on his heater, allowing him to punch-out roughly two batters per game that would previously have gotten a hit. This is a really nice improvement, and more than a little responsible for the drop in his ERA, for which the new pitcher’s park at Pac Bell, or whatever it’s called this week, is also a little to blame.

3) The difference in winning percentage is largely owed to the ability of his teammates to actually hit. Eat your heart out, Kip Wells.

What about Loaiza? Well, as you probably suspect, since many of you may never have heard of him before this season, there wasn’t much to hear.

Esteban Loaiza									

Season	TM	GS	IP	IP/GS	H/9IP	BB/9IP	SO/9IP	W	L	ERA	ERA+

1995-98	Pit	87	513.33	5.9	10.2	2.81	5.12	27	28	4.63	94

1998-00	Tex	46	307	6.67	10.7	2.73	6.07	17	17	5.19	98

2000-02	Tor	69	433.33	6.28	10.9	2.16	5.38	25	28	4.96	98

2003	CWS	19	130.1	6.85	7.4	2.15	7.33	11	5	2.21	200

Before this year, the esteemed Esteban was moderately…well, mediocre.

He’s never pitched 200 innings, never won more than 11 games in a season, never had a winning record in a season in which he pitched enough to qualify for the ERA title (162 innings), allows about 11 hits and 2-3 walks per nine innings, and only struck out about 5 or 6 per nine. M-E-D-I-O-C-R-E. Not terrible, just not a guy, at the age of 31, you would have expected to learn how to strike out two more batters per game without allowing any more walks, and to shave three and a half hits and three earned runs off of each box score.

And again, the Pirates weren't necessarily wrong to trade him. He was decent, but nothing special, and stood to make a lot more money as he entered arbitration. When you're the Pirates, you have to consider that. Especially if you want to be able to retain the services of, say, Kevin Young, Pat Meares, Mike Benjamin, and Al Martin.

Frankly, I don’t know what the hell happened here, but I’ll tell you this: I pity the poor fool GM whom Loaiza’s agent convinces to sign him for something like five years and $50 million, because you only catch lightning in a bottle once, and this was it.

Pitch Count Issues...

My old pal (and most frequent reader-referrer) John Perricone has been writing and ranting over there at Only Baseball Matters about the pitch counts of some of his favorite Giants pitchers for the last few days, and I was composing an email response, but thought that this might be a better way to respond to him, to his readers, and to solicit comments from mine (who are admittedly, largely his readers as well).

John has been looking at the declining performances and recent injuries of Jesse Foppert and Kirk Reuter, relative to their seemingly needless pitch counts of 123 and 122 pitches in a given start, respectively. He has noted that the two pitchers suffered apparently significant declines in effectiveness over their following starts and are now in the minors (Foppert) or injured (Reuter). And more specifically, he's worried that Williams will suffer a similar fate, given his recent complete-game start of 127 pitches on July 7th.

One of the things I love John for, besides his Pink Cadillac,



is that he can write something like "There can be little argument that..." and what he really means is "Please, someone, argue with me!!!"

So here I am.

John had a reader answer his contention that

"There is no doubt that pitchers years ago threw many more pitches in their starts."

with a response outlining how pitchers had generally easier lineups to face at that time, requiring less effort (and often fewer pitches) for certain batters, as discussed in an unknown Baseball Prospectus article. The article, which I also recalled, was written by Joe Sheehan in mid-June and is here.

ASIDE: The only thing I kinda disagree with Sheehan about is the contention that A-Rod or other "big" shortstops would have been made into outfielders in the 1950's, thereby weakening the lineup.

As I understand it, the reason that people like Mantle and DiMaggio were playing that position in the first place is that they were the best athletes in their neighborhood/team, and that's where you put such people: the toughest defensive position. But these guys were moved to the outfield when they reached the big leagues because their arms were too erratic to leave them at SS (at least according to Richard Ben Cramer). It wouldn't take a rocket scientist of a manager to realize that if you come across a SS who can play the field reasonably well (i.e. without knoblauching the ball into the mayor's head on a routine DP) and hit like Mantle/Aaron/DiMaggio, you leave him there. In case you're wondering, this has almost nothing to do diectly with Jerome Williams' pitch counts. END OF ASIDE

Anywho, with that said, I think John's overreacting a little with the pitch counts issue, at least in these few cases. I happen to agree with Perricone (and with Baseball Prospectus) that the evidence exists to indicate that repeated high pitch counts decrease short-term effectiveness and increase long term injury risk, but to say that Foppert or Reuter or Williams or anyone's specific injury is due to throwing too many pitches in a particular start is more than a bit of a stretch. Even the guys who actually did the research were referring to for BP will tell you not to go out and buy a sniper rifle if your favorite manager leaves your favorite young pitcher in for 140 pitches, much less 128 or 122.

Their numbers indicate trends, and in terms of the injury, the guys to whom you refer actually don't fit the trend. Here's why:

1) The ineffectiveness correlation doesn't really even begin until 120 pitches. The starts to which you refer for Reuter, Foppert and Williams, respectively, (122, 123 and 127) just barely get in under the wire anyway.

B) The injury correlation is not between pitches in an individual start and propensity for injury, but between above average career PAP and injury. (PAP, as you know, is Pitcher Abuse Points, a metric derived by Baseball Prospectus and described by here and here.

None of these three pitchers, having averaged roughly 100 pitchers per start, as John was so kind to point out in his own posting, would be likely to fall into the "above average PAP/career pitches" category.

It seems to me that, in terms of inneffectiveness, both Foppert and Reuter have been teetering on the edge of awful for some time now. Reuter's one of the rare examples of a guy who hardly ever strikes anybody out, but gets away with it because he has pretty good defense behind him most of the time, and he doesn't walk too many. But when the hits start to regress to the mean, he's in trouble. Reuter was kinda over his head last year, and seems generally to be just coming back to what we expect from him anyway, minus the "strikeouts".

Foppert seems the same, in some ways: both before and after that start, he has walked more than 6 batters per nine innings, and consequently it takes him nearly 4.5 pitches per batter. He does strike out a few more than Reuter does (and I'm taller than a Smurf...), but it looks like he essentially stopped inducing popoup outs after that start (41/64 GB/FB before, 26/21 after) and that those extra grounders & line drives became hits (8.8 hits/9IP before that start, 12.8 after). Sounds like luck to me.

He's just a kid, and kids get lit up, often for a year or two, before finding a niche. It's not always because the manager abused him...sometimes it's just because he has a lot to learn about how to pitch to the best batters in the world, and his once-apparent effectiveness was a mirage created by luck.

Randall's Scandal: Simon Arrested For Beating Sausage In Public

Sorry, I couldn't help it.

Apparently, Pirates' 1B/OM (out-maker) Randall Simon was actually arrested for clobbering a young woman in a sausage costume with a bat, during the nightly "Sausage Race" at Milwaukee's new Miller Park.

Frankly, I don't see what the problem is. I mean, in the movie Nine Months, everyone laughed their asses off when the Barney-like stuffed dinosaur got the crap beaten out of it, but now a guy just bonks a girl in a sausage suit on the suit and her skinned knees are a national scandal? Whatever.

Here's the more interesting part: Simon was fined $432 for the misdemeanor offense. Relative to his purported $1.475 million salary (???), this means that I would have been fined about $13 for the same offense:

Travis: I'm sorry your Honor, I'll never do it again. Should I write a check to the City of Milwaukee?

Judge: How's about you just buy a Brewers' tee-shirt for my grandson and we'll call it even?

A-Rod's fine would have been $7615.00. Or roughly one Lime-Green 1988 Chevy Silverado from e-Bay.

In other terms, $432 is eight bucks for every walk Simon has drawn in his illustrious 6-year career (spanning two millenia!). Here's what some other players would have had to pay based on this metric:

Rank	Player	         Walks	Fine

1	Rickey Henderson*	2179	$17,432.00

2	Babe Ruth+ **	2062	$16,496.00

3	Ted Williams+ ***	2021	$16,168.00

4	Barry Bonds	2002	$16,016.00

5	Joe Morgan+ ****	1865	$14,920.00

25	Reggie Jackson+ *	1375	$11,000.00

32	Frank Thomas	1348	$10,784.00

34	Fred McGriff	1289	$10,312.00

38	Ty Cobb+ **	1249	$9,992.00

59	John Olerud	1158	$9,264.00

95	Jim Thome     	1058	$8,464.00

NOTES:
+ Hall-of-Famer
* If he weren't Retired/Inactive
** If he weren't Dead
*** If he weren't a Splinter-sicle
**** If he weren't an Analyst...oh, wait, he's not!

That same $432 also works out to exactly $144/triple in Simon's career. By this method, poor old Hall-of-Famer Sam Crawford would have to pay a fine of $44,496! Just for bopping some girl on the head with a bat that never touched her! Conversely, former Brewers utility man Ed Romero would owe a paltry $144, with only one triple to his credit, despite going to the plate over 2000 times in his career. Doesn't seem fair, does it?

So don't let this injustice pass! For less than the price of a cup of coffee (every hour, 24 hours a day, for a whole month...) you can help Randall Simon to escape the tragedy of a system that would put a Hall of Famer in the poorhouse while allowing a disappointment like Kevin Maas to walk off scot-free!

Don't let another minute go by! Pick up that phone now...no, wait, you don't have my number...

Send your contributions to:

Randall Simon Sausage Beating Anti-Injustice Fund
c/o Travis M. Nelson
1234 Boy of Summer Lane
The North Pole OU812

Don't delay!

All-Star Hoopla...and a Few More Updates

I understand from ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike that Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds have elected not to participate in this year's Home Run Derby as a part of the All-Star Festivities. Normally I don't much care about this sort of thing, and this is generally no exception. Every time I've watched any part of a home run derby I've found it to be exceedingly tedious and boring.

I, however, seem to be the exception and not the rule, as many fans will tell you that the Home Run Derby is actually more exciting than the All-Star Game itself. I happen to disagree, but there is a whole pile of merchandise-buying fans out there who evidently clamor to see Big Stars hit Big Homers in a Meaningless Exhibition on a Monday Afternoon. (As opposed to the Meaningless Exhibition that occurs on Tuesday Night. Oh, wait, I forgot, it's Meaningful now.)

Evidently Sosa and Bonds are not overly encumbered by any burden of responsibility to those who pay their checks. Bonds, citing his "right to do whatever he wants" (as though he's somehow prevented from doing that all the time or something) said he wouldn't go. It's his right to decline the invitation... but he doesn't hafta be so obnoxious about it.

Sammy, on the other hand (where, it turns out, I have one fewer finger than Antonio Alfonseca...and two more than Mordecai Brown!), is a different story. Sosa indicated that he turned down the offer because he wasn't going to play in the All-Star Game anyway and so he preferred to take the full three days off.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for vacation, time-off, a "little breather", whatever you want to call it. But, umm...hasn't Sammy had plenty of time off this season already? He missed 17 games with an injury and then another seven with a suspension for corking his bat, which reportedly has tarnished his reputation so much that he gets booed everywhere he goes to play now except Chicago. Cubs' manager and resident racial faux pas provider Dusty Baker and others have said that they agree with Sammy's decision to go "underground" for the three day All-Star break, but it would seem to me that the opposite would be true...

Shouldn't a player who's been maligned and injured, but who had in many ways been the Face of and Ambassador for MLB for the last several years, do everything in his power to regain some of that crediibility and stature? Given that his own income, via marketing contracts, depends not just on his ability to play the game but on the public's recognition and opinion of him, shouldn't Sammy be out there trying to get as much good publicity as possible to counteract some of the bad publicity he's received lately? Shouldn't a guy who's been accused of hitting cheap homers due to cheating go and at least try to prove that he can hit them without cheating? And if nothing more than for the sake of the Sport, and the Fans (read: his employers), shouldn't he at least try to kiss a few million asses by showing up? Guess not.

Updates...

BTW, I have also added Royals Baseball Blog to my growing list. It's brandy-spankin-new! Hopefully it will last longer than the Royals' pennant hopes.

Happy Return...

Wow. Long time off. I was on vacation a few weeks ago, actually working with a group called NAILS in Cumberland, MD, on a Habitat-for-Humanity kinda trip, through my church. I'm hoping that a few of the pics I took and had developed at Wal-Mart will be able to be seen here soon, but I haven't figured out a way to do that yet. If not, well, sorry, you'll just hafta come visit.

In the span of the last several weeks, I actually have written something, but it's a book review, so you have to visit Boy of Summer's Books to see it. The review is of Michael Shapiro's The Last Good Season, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Highly recommended.

I have also gotten contacted by several people who wanted a reciprocal link, and I'm always happy to comply with such requests. No fewer than two Atlanta Braves bloggers will soon be added to my links, if they aren't already. One of these, David Lee, has a site called Braves Buzz, which is pretty good in spite of the fact that it's pink. I guess if you're a Mets or Phillies fan, you're used to looking at the pink of a Pepto Bismol bottle after Braves games anyway.
The other one is called **No Pepper** which I though is a pretty clever name, even though it has nothing in particular to do with the Braves. Actually, come to think of it, "Brad" never did ask for a link, I just found his site referring to mine, and I figured that it was only fair to give back. So there you go.

Also, a guy named Wil Everts asked for a link to his site, curiously located at wileverts.com. Not sure what "wile verts" are, but Wil's got an intresting and well-produced (read:non-Blogger) site that deals with lots of things. Specifically he has an area called Baseballtopia that deals with lots of baseball stuff, including Boy of Summer's favorite: smart-alecky commentary. Mmmmm. Smart alecks....

Someone named Steve asked for a link to his site where they legally scalp tickets to MLB games, in this case, specifically to Yankees games, though they have tickets to all of the teams, if you want them. In return for this, he'll link Boy of Summer to their site that lists schedules for all of the teams in Major League Baseball. Frankly, that site seems pretty superfluous, given that without even breaking a sweat I can think of at least half a dozen others where you could (and probably do) get the same info, plus previews, matchups and stats, so I doubt I'll really glean much traffic from it, but what the heck...it's not costing me anything.

I also added in a clever site called Replacement Level Yankees Blog, which has some good stuff about the Bronx Bombers. And a Tigers Weblog, which seems very well done. Unlike the Tigers.

Stick and Move is a general sports weblog it seems, for whom I am reciprocating the courtesy of extending a link.

And last, but not finally, Truth Laid Bear is a more political/social type of weblog, so it goes under the Not Just Baseball category.

Anywho, that's it for updates. Hoping to get back to writing about baseball again soon.

Breaking News...Orioles Discover New Offensive Philosophy: Score Runs

Peter Gammons column today on ESPN.com highlights, among other things, the way the Baltimore Orioles' offensive philosophy has changed for the better, and has actually worked out well. Or at least Gammons seems to think it has. He says...

Now led by Melvin Mora, who (Orioles' VP Mike) Flanagan calls "the poster boy for what we're trying to do (.338 OBP last year, .465 this season)," the Orioles are on a pace to score 170 more runs than last year, and they've done it without adding any significant offensive talent in the offseason. "The whole team has bought into it," said Flanagan, "and those who didn't (i.e. Gary Matthews Jr.) are out of here."

Umm, maybe I'm missing something, but isn't Melvin Mora the poster boy for what every major league team is trying to do? If you polled 30 GMs and asked all of them whether or not they'd like a player who can play five different defensive positions and hit .360 with patience and power, I doubt that any of them would have to think about it over lunch. Probably only Allard Baird would respond with, "No, we'll take the weak hitting middle infielder who gets hurt all the time."

The Orioles saying that Melvin Mora is the perfect example of what your team is trying to do is like a homeless guy saying that winning the lottery is the perfect example of what he's trying to do. Like I mentioned the other day, if you've got a 31-year old with a career .262 EqA (read: mediocre) and he goes on a tear and hits like the second coming of Babe Ruth for a couple of months, you count your blessings and maybe you reward him with praise and/or a bonus, but you can't expect anyone to take you seriously when you parade him around and toot your own horn as though you knew he was gonna do that.

The irony, of course, is that they really haven't added any significant offensive talent since last season, and the statistical record shows that. But I'll get to that later. The other irony, if Gammons is touting the importance of on-base percentage, is that by all indications, Gary Matthews Jr. does get it: his career minor and major leageu records show him walking about once every seven at-bats. It's not Barry Bonds, but it's better than the league average, which is around every 10 or 11 at-bats. It was hits that Matthews Jr. had trouble getting (career .238 hitter in the majors).

Gammons also said:

Last year the Orioles' on-base percentage was .309, second worst in the league. This year, it's .344, fifth best in the AL. "We were looking to add 100 runs when we made our runs at Clifford Floyd, Pudge Rodriguez and players like that," said Flanagan. "We may have found those runs, in a large part because of a philosophy. Hopefully this is just the beginning, up and down the organization, as we try to bring back the Orioles."

This is true, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Look at how the Orioles did last year and this year, with and without Melvin Mora's contributions:

                   R     H    HR   BB  AB/BB    BA   OBP   SLG   OPS

2002 Orioles      667  1353  165  452  12.15  .246  .309  .403  .712

2002 O's no MM    581  1223  146  382  12.92  .248  .302  .403  .705

2003 Orioles*     844  1572  169  517  10.88  .279  .340  .429  .769

2003 O's no MM*   737  1398  145  433  11.89  .272  .328  .414  .742

Difference**     +156  +175   -1  +51  -1.03 +.024 +.026 +.011 +.037

NOTES: The * means the projected numbers over 162 games for 2003. The ** means the difference for everyone on the Orioles who isn't Melvin Mora, both for 2003 and 2002.

Gammons was right about the numbers he quoted, but if you remove the flukey contribution of Melvin Mora from the equation, the rest of the Orioles have not improved nearly as much as Peter would hae you believe. Sure, the rest of the team has gained 26 points in OBP, but 24 of those are due to batting average, not walks, an indication that the Orioles are a lot luckier this year, not a lot more patient.

The rest of the Orioles are on a pace to score about 150 more runs than they did last year, which is a big jump, but there was really nowhere to go but up from that dismal team. They're taking about one more walk every three games as a team, which is a start but hardly the byproduct of an organizational philosophy. Just another statistical anomaly. Their increased run scoring is due more to a statistical return to the mean than it is to any true increase in talent or patience on the parts of Tony Batista, Marty Cordova, Jay Gibbons, Jerry Hairston, BJ Surhoff, or anyone else. They're just getting more hits, which means that they're pretty susceptible to a backslide later this year or next year. Just ask the Angels.

Hopefully this is just the beginning. Maybe next season the O's can bring in Eli Marerro and Doug Strange and Mark McLemore and Pete Rose Jr. and they'll all hit like Babe Ruth too. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Oswalt & Five Conspirators Avoid Hits
Six Arrested For Drunkenness on Grassy Knoll

Well, that was interesting. I got to listen to the first inning or two of the Yankees' first experience of being no-hit since the Eisenhower administration. I heard Roy Oswalt leave in the 2nd inning, and then spent the rest of the night playing cards with my wife, blissfully unaware that my favorite team was being embarassed on national television.



In truth, I'd have preferred to see the game, if only to say that I got to weatch live one of the more interesting no-hitters in major league history. I have historically missed most of the Yankees' no-hitters in my lifetime, many of them haviong taken place while I was away at college in Pennsylvania, unable to watch the games live due to broadcast restrictions. I think I may have gotten to see Gooden's no-hitter in 1996 and Cone's perfect game (the only other Interleague no-hitter) in 1999, but I know I missed Wells' Perfecto, Jim Abbott's no-no and Andy Hawkins' 4-0 loss in a no hitter against the ChiSox (4-0?!?). Don't mind so much that I missed that last one.

Lee Sinins of the extremely useful Around the Majors reports that Hoyt Wilhelm's no-no against the Yanks in 1958 was not the last no-hitter against them, just the last 9-inning no-no. Melido Perez no hit the Yanks for six innings less than two weeks after Hawkins' debacle, in a rain-shortened complete game. Interestingly, Hawkins was the losing pitcher in that game too. I wonder if that's a record, to be on the losing end of two no-hitters in the same month?

Overall, in terms of no-hitters, Yankee fans have been pretty fortunate. To have watcher your guys pitch no fewer than five no hitters in the last 15 years, including two perfect games, is pretty impressive. To have avoided being no-hit (over 9 innings) for 45 years (almost as long as Jesse Orosco's been pitching!) is also pretty impressive.

Rob Neyer, playing the consummate Thursday Morning Manager, says that we shouldn't be surprised that the Yankees were no-hit, and maybe he's right. Rob also said that we shouldn't be surprised that Kevin Millwood pitched a no-hitter either. Smart guy, that Neyer.

On the other hand (where, in case you haven't heard, I have five fingers...) the disturbing trends are there, not to indicate that the Yankees will get no hit again any time soon, necessarily, but that they might need to do some work to make sure they actually win some games. Bill Chuck of BillyBall.com points out that the Yanks are only 16-24 since April 27, a decidedly less-that-stellar record, and the Red Sox now control 1st place in the AL East by a slim margin. Granted, it is only June, and the Red Sox usually wait until August to wilt, but with Bernie Williams and Nick Johnson missing time due to injuries and Derek Jeter not yet returning to form after his own injury, the Yanks need help they can't get from Rueben Sierra.

Thankfully, Giambi and Matsui seemed to have started hitting again lately. Godzooky Godzilla was 12-for-17 with two homers in the last five games before last night's embarassment. And Giambi was 15-for-42 with 6 homers since May 27, so I guess he can see again. Hopefully the Yanks' will get Johnson and Williams back healthy soon, and Weaver and Pettitte will start pitching like they're expected to, or the Bronx Bombers will have a long summer in front of them.

And an even longer winter.

Postscript: In a classic move of capitalizing on their rival's bad press, the Mets will announce the firing of GM Steve Phillips this afternoon, according to Lee Sinins. I guess they're hoping that all the NY beatwriters will still be thinking of ways to sing lamentations on behalf of the hitless Yankees and won't notice.

Say It Ain't Sosa Short a Suspension!

Brief update: I'm wearing boxer-breifs.

Also, Sammy Sosa's suspension for CorkGate was reduced from 8 to 7 games, as everyone kinda expected. I maintain that Sammy Sosa is either a fool or a liar. If he expects anyone to believe that he would own a corked bat, bring it to the ballpark and put it in the batrack with his game bats without clearly labeling it

"DANGER! SUSPENSION LIKELY! DO NOT USE IN GAMES!!!"

then he's an idiot, for not doing so. Either that, or he knew he was using a corked bat, and is therefore lying when he tells us that it was a mistake. Either way, there's no evidence to suggest that the rest of his career has been anything but legit, Rick Reilly's steroids questions aside, so let's just allow the man to serve his suspension and move on to something else, shall we?

Overachievers...

Let me introduce you to two players...sort of. Player M and Player G. Or should I say Players Jeckyl and Players Hyde.

       G    AB    R   H   2B  HR  RBI  BB   SO   AVG   OBP   SLG   OPS

MB    162  490   69  122  27  12   55  51   98  .249  .334  .388   .722

MA    162  585  130  213  41  29   89  99  108  .364  .466  .592  1.058

GB    162  541   63  141  27  14   71  25  100  .260  .305  .398   .702

GA    162  493   79  165  26  36  102  23   93  .336  .371  .624   .995

MB is player M Before the start of this year, his projected average stats per 162 games. MA is player M after the start of the 2003 season, again, his projected average stats per 162 games. Ditto For player G, before and after 2003. Player M is 31, and plays several defensive positions on a lousy team going nowhere anytime soon. Player G is only 27, plays the outfield adequately, and is on a mediocre team in a tough division.

Now it's pretty obvious that the After versions of these two guys is much better than the Before's, right? But here's the real quandary: The Before versions are based on 1500-2000 plate appearances over the last several years, while the After versions are based on a paltry 150-200 plate appearances this year. Now it's not a question of which is better (Before or After) but "How long will After stick around until Before returns to right the ship toward the Straight of Mediocrity"? In a fantasy league, just like in the stock market, you try to sell high, but it doesn't always work out that way in reality.

By now you may (or may not) realize that player M is the Orioles super-utility man, Melvin Mora, and that Player G is the Reds' Jose Guillen. Sean McAdam has a nice little puff piece about Mora on ESPN, and that's OK. If you can't write something nice about the guy who's leading the majors in batting average, what can you write? But for some reason, McAdam writes,

But the Orioles don't anticipate moving Mora. Rather, as the Orioles dig out from five consecutive losing seasons and approach contender status, Mora becomes that much more valuable.

This is a problem. As great as it is to have a guy hitting .364 on your team and to be able to play him anywhere you need, it's also necessary to recognize taht a 31-year old utilityman with a career .249 batting average doesn't suddenly learn how to hit, and isn't likely to keep this pace up for the rest of the season, much less over the next few years of the Orioles' "rebuilding process"...

BUILDER ANGELOS: "Hey, this building is old and crummy. Let's knock it down and build a new one...No, wait! Let's just trade it for another old, crummy building instead!"

CONTRACTOR THRIFT: "Yes, sir! But can I at least try to sell that nice, cast-iron antique tub on the second floor while they're still en vogue? We might get something for it..."

BUILDER ANGELOS: "Heck, no! We need that tub to make the place at least look a little nicer while we shop it around!"

CONTRACTOR THRIFT: "Darn."

The other player, as I mentioned, is Jose Guillen, who at age 27, is at least supposed to be having a career year, and it probably will be, but not likely at the pace he's currently showing. A couple of weeks ago, Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus gave Reds field manager Bob Boone a hard time for benching Adam Dunn, and I tend to side with Prospectus on the issue, as you might expect. Their suggestion is that if someone has to be benched, it ought to be Sean Casey, so that Dunn can play first base. (Austin Kearns and Ken Griffey have not given any real reasons to get benched consistently, so it's gotta be someone else.)

Casey is, as they say in France, a "professional hitter" which means that he's a firstbaseman who hits like a decent middle infielder. His career .283 EqA is just average for a firstbaseman, and this year's .260 is noticeably below average. However, there are a few GM's and GM's assistants around who don't know to look much past the .301 career batting average he also sports, but we won't mention any names. Besides Allaird Baird and Cam Bonifay and Chuck LaMar and probably a half dozen others.

So, as is typically the case in such situations, the fault in the organization lies not on the field (Dunn striking out too much) or even on the Manager (Boone benching the wrong guy) but on the front office. Reds GM Jim Bowden has pulled off a few decent trades in his time, and he ought to be shopping Jose Guillen, because

A) a guy with such a lousy history and lousy plate discipline never hits .336 for long, and

2) they need pitching!!!

I mean, have you seen who they're trotting out there? Their starting pitchers are 12-27 with a 6.67 ERA! None of them has a winning record, and only two of them have more than two wins (Danny Graves, 3-5, 5.31 ERA and Paul Wilson 4-4, 4.48 ERA) this season. I know that there are teams out there who need some offensive help, and would probably love to pick up a guy batting .336 with 11 homers before the middle of June. Heck, Arizona gave up Byun-Hyun Kim for a hitter who's less than half as good as Guillen looks. But the danger, as former White Sox GM Bill Veeck used to say, is holding onto a guy too long, rather than letting him go too soon.

The Reds and Orioles would do well to recognize how overvalued their commodities are in Guillen and Mora, and get something for them while they're hot.

But they won't.

Slammin' Cork-Crammin' Sammy

I had planned to spend my lunch hour with a little writeup about the Sammy Sosa Situation, but Christian Ruzich has beaten me to it, having made all the points I would liked to have made. Go check out what the Cub Reporter has to say, and try not to let the long excerpt from The Physics of Baseball scare you off. It's not that hard to understand. If you want some more depth, here's another professor's analysis of how a baseball bat works and can be modified.

Anyway, I guess that the reason everyone's making such a big stink out of this is that there exists a very real possibility, one we can never actually verify, that some of Sammy Sosa's 505 (and counting...) career home runs were accomplished with a corked or otherwise modified bat. And do you know what that means to his legacy?

Nothing.

Nothing is likely to happen to Sosa or his legacy as a result of this. While Sosa is the biggest name and the most likely Hall-of-Famer to ever be caught outright with a doctored bat, players have generally faced consequences for such offenses not much worse than being forced to watch reruns of The Magic Hour. Or the Nose-in-the-Book Penalty. (Not the nose-in-the-book-penalty!!) And nobody remembers primarily that Norm Cash or Mike Scott or Greg Nettles or someone else were cheaters. They remember that these guys were, at least for a little while, pretty darn good players, and a lot of fun to watch. Perhaps as a footnote in their careers, somebody occasionally mentions sandpaper or pine tar or Super-Bounce Balls, but nobody goes right to that in a discussion of such players.

People have been found to have doctored bats, or doctored balls, somewhat regularly over the years, and the penalty has generally been the same: When caught, the player and offending piece(s) of equipment are ejected, and the player is usually suspended 7-10 games and maybe fined. That's it. And these pansy-ass penalties often took place in eras when the players union either didn't exist or hadn't yet taken on the demeanor of a prissy, suburban mother defending her spoiled son who "just couldn't have done such a thing, my Lordy..." In this day and age I'll be surprised if they do much mor ethan take away Sammy's personal masseuse for a few days. This, I assure you, will not be the most memorable moment in Sammy's career.

You've heard the names: Gaylord Perry, Whitey Ford, Don Sutton... all Hall-of-Famers, all have essentially admitted to or been exposed to have cheated at some point, and it hasn't diminished any of their legacies one bit. If anything, it seems to make a pitcher more 'colorful' or clever to have thought to scuff up a ball with his wedding ring, or the catcher's shin guard, or a small piece of sandpaper, or whatever Perry could fit in his pocket that particular afternoon. In retrospect, we get nostalgic about such occurrences, with an "Aw, schucks..." and imagine giving a noogy to said offender like you would your kid brother when you found out that the only way he beat you at Go-Fish was by having your sister tellhim what cards you had behind your back. Perhaps the fact that they were so good without cheating (we think...) encourages us to lend them a little slack. It's Tim Leary eating a piece of sandpaper or Wilton Guerrero scrambling to reclaim the pieces of a shattered, corked bat that we remember...and rember to mock. They seem so pathetic. But Whitey and Gaylord? Cheating made them interesting. Rob Neyer concurs.

But for some reason, one I've not yet placed, we get really upset when Norm Cash or Greg Nettles or Albert Belle gets caught with a doctored bat. We think it cheapens there accomplishments...and maybe it does. But given the facts that physics has yet to show that doctoring a bat can do anything more than increase the chances that a bat will break and embarrass its owner, while scuffing/doctoring baseballs can even make Brian-Freaking-Moehler look like Sandy Koufax for three or four innings, maybe we should be more upset about the pitchers and less by cheating hitters. Of course, if you have to cheat to beat the Devil Rays, I have no sympathy for you.

Obligations...

Alex belth, he of the contacts with important people, has a couple more interviews available for your reading pleasure over at Bronx Banter. One is with NY Times sportswriter Allen Barra, and the other is with Ethan Coen, who has written some fantastic movies like Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski, as well as at least one terrible movie in The Man Who Wasn't There. Gives a damn funny interview too.

Also, I got this in my Inbox yesterday, and I suspect that Mr. McLean wouldn't mind if I posted it here. Any thoughts?

Dear Commissioner Selig and Bob Watson,

I've long admired Curt Shilling as a stand-up guy, but I hope he is disciplined by MLB for destroying QuesTec's umpire/strike zone analysis equipment. For the good of the game, this discipline should certainly exceed the cost of the equipment.

I'm a baseball guy, my son is a current collegiate pitcher, and for years it has been obvious to me that the existing strikes zones are not reliable, but instead liberally-customized interpretations. Most of my adult life, the in-game MLB strike zone has been a distortion compared to the MLB rule book. It was too wide, too short and for whatever reason, most MLB umpires felt compelled to have their "own zones".

There is no room for lose interpretation here. Rewarding pitchers for hitting out-of-the-strike-zone spots that are physically impossible to reach is unfair. It is wrong that "established pitchers" should get three fists on the outside corners. If, as the rules state, Home Plate is: Five-sided, 17 inches by 8 1/2 inches by 8 1/2 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches, cut to a point at rear, there are no exceptions. If MLB wants a functionally wider zone, to change the offensive/defensive balance, then make the wider zone official.

Watching my team (The Royals) play home games without QuesTec review, I observe extreme strike zone changes during nearly every series. Watching certain TV games, where the more consistent zones are higher-than-wide, its obvious when the QuesTec review system is already in place. There will always be real borderline calls, but just getting close to the strike zone is not a strike!
Of course there will be some rough spots. I'm sure Schilling, Smoltz, et al will continue to protest, because they have clearly benefited from the wide and short zone. Simply put, the rules are the rules. The strike zone should be a standard size, rather than changed daily like a golf course pin position.

Every regular Joe, has some form of employment performance review. To be effective, these reviews should be as impartial and objective as possible. Computer technology is a natural ally in this effort. We already trust computer systems with such critical life issues as bank accounts, medical analysis, air traffic control and national defense. We can certainly trust hardware and software as a component of a MLB umpire's performance review.

Please, don't be bullied by any person or group, especially those driven by selfish self-interests.
Do the right thing. Universally deploy the QuesTec system ASAP. Ten years from now the game will be better for it.

regards,

Anthony Mark McLean