Catching up with the BA Top 20...

Given that we're nearly half way through the season - and frankly, I'm a little bored - I thought I would check in on some of my comments and predictions on Baseball America's top 20 prospects list. Let's see how I did with #1 through #10 and then next week I'll look at the rest...

#1. Jason Heyward, about whom I had nothing negative to say, won the Braves' right field job with a stellar spring training and, frankly, no real competition from anyone on the roster. He mashed right out of the gate and was continuing to do so when he injured his thumb, which diminishes his Rookie of the Year chances but not his long-term prospects. His 11 homers, 42 walks and 45 RBI currently lead all qualified MLB rookies, and his .821 OPS is second only to Gaby Sanchez.

#2. Stephen Strasburg: I assume you've heard of him. If it's possible, he's been even better than expected, though for what it's worth, Walter Johnson doesn't think much of him.

After going 7-2 with a 1.30 ERA in 11 minor league (AA and AAA) starts, he was promoted to Washington where they continued, for one game at least, to allow him to face minor league hitters. He beat the lowly Pirates like a Disney villain beats a wayward step-child, fanning 14 in seven innings and generally embarrassing them all night. He then proceeded to tie a record for strikeouts in his first three and first four career games, before his teammates' lousy defense and inexperience cost him a potential win against Atlanta on Monday night. Seems like he's gonna be OK.

#3. Mike Stanton: I've taken a lot of flak over the years for my criticism of Stanton - based mostly on the fact that players who strike out as often as he does in the minors rarely become successful major leaguers - and for a while there it looked like I was going to have to eat my words.

Stanton - whose full name is a much more interesting Giancarlo Cruz-Michael Stanton - came out of the gate swinging, as he always does, and destroyed AA pitching for about two months. His .313/.442/.729 line gave him the Southern League lead in OBP, Slugging and of course OPS, and his batting average was 8th. Good time for a promotion, right?

Well, yes, but probably, given that he was still striking out about once every three and a half at-bats, you would think they'd want him to get some seasoning in AAA first, wouldn't you? See if he can hit Chris Waters' curveball, or Brandon McCarthy's change-up, or Clay Mortensen's slider or Brian Bruney's fastball or Michael Kirkman's assortment of junk before exposing him to (I kid you not...) Roy Halladay, Neftali Feliz, Jeff Niemann, C.J. Wilson, Heath Bell, Francisco Rodriguez, Brad Lidge and, in case he wasn't already flabbergasted enough, R.A. Dickey, among others. Heck, Kevin Millwood even fanned him twice, and he sucks.

To date, he's hitting only .217 in the majors, having struck out in 30 of his 69 at-bats. Four of his 15 hits have gone for extra bases, including two homers, but he's clearly overmatched for the moment. let him get his feet wet against competition that's not so far over his head, and he may impress you next year.

#4. Jesus Montero, the biggest prospect in the Yankee system, has not hit quite as well as hoped so far this year. He's still hitting doubles and taking walks at a decent rate, but his batting average is down to about .250, perhaps due to bad luck or perhaps to all the work they're doing to develop his awkward catching mechanics.

He's hit .228 with a .665 OPS as a catcher so far this year, but .311 with a .948 OPS as a DH, so maybe he can't get out of his head when he's catching. He's only caught 20% of base stealers so far this year (18 of 90) but then the rest of the Scranton catching corps is even worse (2 for 24), so maybe he's not so bad and his pitchers just need to learn a slide step or something.

In any case, he hit .284/.324/.505 in June, so maybe he's coming around. I saw him hit a double and a triple at Lehigh Valley a couple of weeks ago, both off the wall, and he looks to me at least like the real thing. Look for him to heat up in the second half as he either gets more comfortable behind the plate or abandons catching all together, and look for him in the Bronx this September.

#5. Brian Matusz leads the AL with nine losses, but this belies the fact that he's actually pitched reasonably well for a rookie in his first long exposure to the majors, and this without any seasoning at AAA at all. Five of those nine losses occurred in Quality Starts, which happens a lot to pitchers on a team like the 2010 Orioles. If he can keep from getting dismayed by his teammates' porous defense and limp offense, he should turn out to be a very solid major league pitcher.

#6. Desmond Jennings was expected - by Baseball America and by me - to reach the majors in mid summer, and nothing he's done in the first half of the season has changed my mind. He's currently hitting .301/.376/.439 and is 19-for-20 in stolen bases at AAA Durham, but the Rays were in first place until a couple of weeks ago, and anyway, where would they put him?

Carl Crawford has been great, and Zorilla, while not the beast he was in 2009, and been fine too. BJ Upton is hitting only .226, but he's also the youngest and the best base stealer of the group, so they can't exactly bench him either. Probably they use one of those guys as a DH and then put either Hank Blalock or Willy Aybar on the bench, and DFA the other one. In fact, I fully expect them to come to this conclusion within the next couple of weeks or so. Mark my words.

#7. Buster Posey - I said the following about the young Giants' catcher in early March:

Posey will likely get some more seasoning in AAA, but assuming that he continues to hit the cover off the ball, he should be up in the majors for good by the end of May.

[...] If the Giants fall out of contention, he'll probably get more playing time in the majors, so they can help him develop, but if they can somehow stay within earshot of a playoff berth, look for them to give Molina the bulk of the playing time while Posey wiles away on the bench or in AAA.

And of course the Giants just traded Molina to the Rangers, which may or may not mean that they're bailing on 2010. While I would imagine that they still fancy themselves as contenders this year - they're currently 40-37, 5.5 games out in their own division with more than half the season left to play - it's likely that they also know that 55 of their remaining 85 games come against winning teams or teams with positive run differentials, and that they would have to leap-frog three teams to win their division this year.

If this isn't giving up but actually the first of a few steps in making a real push, Posey should be a help, though they'll need more of it.

While Posey has yet to really "hit" much in the majors, he was hitting .349 in the Pacific Coast League at the time of his promotion, and clearly has nothing left to prove down in the bushes. He isn't likely to bloom into the second coming of Mike Piazza in 2010, but he probably won't embarrass himself either.


#8. Pedro Alvarez. Well, he mashed at AAA, kind of the Giancarlo Cruz-Mike Stanton of the International League, hitting .277/.363/.533, with 13 homers and 68 strikeouts in 66 games. In the two weeks he's spent in the majors, he's hit only a buck-fifty-two and has made two errors at the hot corner, but then Andy LaRoche (.229/.295/.313) seems determined to give his job away, so Alvarez will get a chance to improve.

The Pirates, in dead last and with perhaps the worst offensive team in almost 40 years, have little to lose by giving him a chance to play. Look for him to eventually start to make some more contact and produce some power, though even at his best in the minors, he was striking out a little more than once per game, so don't expect that to change any time soon.


#9. Neftali Feliz leads the AL with 21 Saves as I write this, and he's struck out 37 batters in 34 innings with a 2.62 ERA. I'd say he's adjusted well to the majors. And if they keep him in the bullpen, then the control problems he showed as a starter may be behind him. That's probably asking a bit much, but it's not so outlandish as to be impossible.

#10. Carlos Santana did not seem fazed by his first exposure to AAA pitching. He hit .316/.447/.597 there, averaging an extra base hit in just about every other game and amassing more walks than strikeouts. While there was thought to be no rush - at least by me - to promote him to the majors, those numbers and the dismal performances of Lou Marson and Mike Redmond (a combined .200/.251/.270 with one homer between them) made it necessary to do something.

Enter Senior Evil Ways himself, who has hot .345 with four homers and more walks than strikeouts in his forts two weeks. Santana's not likely to keep hitting like this, but he's a good bet to finish the year with something like a .310 average and 15 or 20 homers, despite spending the first two months in the minors.

A Tale of Two Pitchers: Yankees' A.J. Burnett

The Yankees maintained their loose grip on first place in the American league Eastern Division Monday night despite being handed an embarrassing, 10-4 loss to the last-place Arizona Diamondbacks. Since the Tampa Bay Rays and the Bostons did not play, the Bronx Bombers retained a slim, 1/2-game lead on their division rivals.

That contest marked the fourth straight poor performance - and fourth straight loss - for starting RHP A.J. Burnett, whose once-sparkling 6-2 record and 3.28 ERA have ballooned to 6-6 and 4.83, respectively. Having a streak of four starts in which you allow nine homers and 23 runs in just 20 innings will do that for you, it seems.

The Yankees signed Burnett last winter, despite my impassioned pleas not to, though to be fair, my skepticism was based on Burnett's health, not his skills. In any case, in my frustration with Burnett's apparent inability to either throw strikes (at all) or throw strikes that batters would actually miss, I began wondering how it's possible that this man once won 18 games in a season. For that matter, how is it possible that the man won 13 games last year, when it seems that every time I watch him pitch, he allows six runs in five innings or something like that?

Burnett's troubles - or at least his inconsistencies - have been pretty well documented. The broadcast team on ESPN last night started describing their perceptions of Burnett, who seemed to be "frustrated" and "having mechanical issues" and "not on the same page" as catcher Jorge Posada, and so on.

Lack of focus, front shoulder flying open, bad karma...whatever. It seems that everybody has an explanation for how a guy who can consistently throw a baseball 94 miles per hour and has a curveball that dives toward the plate as though being suddenly pulled by an electromagnet can be so...so...mediocre.

They mentioned the supposed difficulty Posada and Burnett had last year in connecting with each other, though they didn't mention the specifics: That Burnett had a 4.96 ERA when Posada caught him in 2009 and a 3.22 ERA for anyone else. Granted, he pitched badly a couple of times in the playoffs with Jose Molina catching him, too, but still, that's a big difference. This year's even worse: 6.06 with Posada, 3.63 with Francisco Cervelli. (For the record, Burnett didn't seem to connect with Chad Moeller all that well either: 5.21 ERA).

There are other bizarre splits as well. Burnett is 3-2 this year with a 3.47 ERA when he gets five days of rest, but on normal four days' rest or on 6+ days, he's got an ERA well over five and a half. He's got a 3.46 ERA at home, 5.85 on the road. Last year's split was not quite as pronounced: 3.51 at home, 4.59 on the road. And this despite New Yankee Stadium's reputation as a hitter's park.

Or, here's a fun one: He's 3-0, 1.23 in day games, but 3-6, 5.97 at night. Maybe 7:05 PM is past his bed time? Probably just a fluke, since last year that split was reversed (5.38 ERA during day games, 3.14 at night). Most pitchers tend to do better at night overall, since hitters can't see the ball as well.

But perhaps the most glaring disparity is the one I mentioned first: How can a guy who wins about 15 games a year seem to be so terrible whenever I get to see him pitch? The answer is a simple one: Because he is.

Let me explain. I live in Pennsylvania, outside the usual area of the YES network, which means that I only get to see Yankee games when they're either on national TV (like FOX, TBS or ESPN) or when they're on the local New York stations that happen to get broadcast in eastern PA, like WPIX and WWOR. That means that I only see a handful of Yankee games each year, perhaps 20 or 30 at most. And, as I mentioned, it seemed to me that every time I saw Burnett pitch, he was terrible.

If it seemed that way, that's only because, well, he was:

2009-2010 National broadcasts (ESPN/TBS/FOX)      
GS   Dec   IP      H  ER  BB   SO  HR   ERA  IP/GS   H/9  K/9  BB/9  HR/9
12   2-6   66.0   85  61  38   47  15  8.32   5.5   11.6  6.4   5.2   2.0

2009-2010 Local NY Broadcasts (YES/WWOR/WPIX)      
GS   Dec   IP      H  ER  BB   SO  HR   ERA  IP/GS   H/9  K/9  BB/9  HR/9
36  17-9  232.1  206  81  94  215  23  3.14   6.5    8.0  8.3   3.6   0.9

If you include his postseason performances, which are all nationally broadcast, his numbers improve very slightly, to 3-7 with a 7.44 ERA, which, on a scale of one to ten, is still awful. Overall, Burnett has been more than twice as likely to surrender a home run on national television as he has been on local TV. He walked two more batters per nine innings, struck out two fewer and gave up about three and a half more hits per game. And of course he allowed more than twice as many earned runs.

Including his postseason outings, that makes a total of 93.1 innings on national television, 17 games. It's not a small sample size, though perhaps not as large as I might prefer. And he was only able to provide a Quality Start in seven of those 17 games. Compare that to his locally broadcast work, where he made 23 Quality Starts in 36 outings, and you can see why someone like me may have gotten a skewed impression of his pitching acumen.

In short, Burnett looks every bit like a Cy Young candidate on local New York TV, or at least he looks like the $16.5 million workhorse the Yankees thought they were getting when they signed him last winter. But if you see him on national television? Well, let's just say they'd be hard pressed to justify letting him keep his rotation spot over, say, Kyle Davies.

Why is all of this important? Well, for one thing, Burnett's next start is scheduled for Saturday.

On the road. (@ the Dodgers)

On national TV. (FOX)

Since becoming a Yankee, Burnett is 2-5 with a 9.88(!) ERA in nationally broadcast road games. Lots of minor league clubs do fireworks after the game on the weekends. This game should have plenty of fireworks before that.

Walter Johnson Evaluates Stephen Strasburg's Debut with Washington

Today's blog post has been - ahem- "ghost"-written by one Walter Perry Johnson. Don't mind him. He's been dead for over 60 years and has only the vaguest ideas of what's going on in the world.



Mr. Nelson has been kind enough to wake me from my eternal slumber to weigh in on a subject of obviously eternal importance: The major league debut of one Stephen Strasburg.

As it happens, I could hardly acquire a wink of sleep anyway, rolling in my grave as I listened to all this hype comparing him to me. Applesauce! Do you know what the Washington Post said about me before I first set foot on a major league hill?

"No youngster that has broken into fast company in recent years is attracting as much attention as..."

...well, Yours Truly. That's who.

And with good reason: I had spent the previous six weeks racking up goose eggs on minor league scoreboards around the country. I hadn't allowed a run in 75 consecutive innings, finishing most of the games I started! I had struck out 166 batters in those innings, nearly three quarters of all the outs I recorded, and about two out of every three men who stood in against me!

And that was only after I was found by a scout in Idaho, working for the phone company by day and decimating opposing lineups at night. I spent my boyhood working on the family farm in Kansas. Working, not playing ball. Then I worked in the California oil fields when I was just 15 years old, and I was proud to know that my efforts would help keep America hustling and bustling, working and building for centuries! That was work, I tell you, not like kids these days, having everything handed to them.

But what has this Strasburg kid done? Led a coddled life, getting rides in some spruced up jitney to his baseball games against other towns and schools? I had to walk to most of my games, or hitchhike for a passing mule wagon, until I was in a semi-pro league and could afford a jalopy of my own. Took days. That's why we couldn't play every day.




But this Strasburg kid, I hear he even attended college. College! Anyone who tells you that a college campus is a good place to find a baseball player is all wet, I say. Sure, that Matty fellow turned out all right - not as good as me, mind you, but definitely the real McCoy - but the list is short after that.



No, if you want a real talent, go and find yourself some hard-boiled reuben on the side of a country road, someone who's worked hard his whole young life and developed the muscles needed to withstand the daily grind of a long life in baseball.

You need someone who's honed his skills against grizzled veterans of sandlots across the great wide expanse of the West, and proven himself against them, not against kids who are barely old enough to wipe their own noses! All the best come from this stock: Cobb, Wagner, Wheat, Alexander, Three-Finger Brown, Ruth, Coveleski. You can take that to the bank!

And another thing: I'm sorry to be the wet blanket here, but from what I've learned, he's hardly pitched! Fifty five innings? In more than two months of "work"? Heck, they've been giving this guys some kind of runaround, or else he'd have pitched more. What is he, some prom-trotter who's too busy filling out his dance card to finish his own games?

Those teams he's played on in Syracuse and Harrisburg must not have wanted to win very badly. Perhaps the Tri-State League plays a shorter schedule these days and the pennant was already wrapped up. How else can you explain limiting a kid with so much supposed talent to starting only once every six or seven days? And then yanking him for a reliefer after only five or six innings?

Talent? Phenomenon? Horsefeathers! They've obviously been hiding something, else they'd have let him finish what he started once in a blue moon. Or they'd let him barnstorm the way we did back in those days, racking up almost as many innings in the winter and in between games as we did during the real "season". That's a way to keep yourself in shape, none of this bunk about exercise machines. Just exercise!

Maybe it's that hard overhand delivery of his. That can't possibly be good for the man's limbs, all those elbows and knees flailing about. Reminds me a little of that Feller kid the newspapermen were all getting stuck on just as I went to meet my maker. Whatever happened to him? Probably got hurt and was never heard from again! Why, I'd bet my all Bethlehem Steel stock that guy never made an impact in the majors!



In my day, I threw in a smooth, sidearm motion, keeping the ball behind me til the last moment and whipping it around on the strength of my gut and my gams, not just my arm. That's how I was able to pitch for over 20 years and strike out more batters than anyone ever has or ever will! Over 3,500 of them! Young Stephen has a long way to go before he can eclipse that record!

This kid's an injury waiting to happen, and then what? God help him if he tears his ulnar collateral ligament, something I once heard my old teammate Curly Ogden harping about up here. Can't do a darned thing if that sucker snaps! All that lettuce the Washingtons are supposed to pay him will be lost! He won't get a single Mercury dime! They'll just release him and he'll have to go work in a soap factory. Then he'll see what real work is like!

For now, well, he mostly looks the part. With that on the table, there have been other impressive debuts that would make you think the guy was the dog's bollocks, when he just turned out to be Joe Average. So last night didn't mean much in itself.




I'll give him credit where it's due, since he did strike out 14 batters in the seven innings he did pitch, whereas your humble author fanned only three in his own debut. Still, though, I also pitched eight innings, not seven, and these came against the eventual pennant winning Detroit Tigers, including the Georgia Peach himself, who was so impressed with me he said,

"The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him..."

The soon-to-be American League champions resorted to bunting against me to get on base, which is mostly why I struck out so few that day. Then later Sam Crawford, a two time home run champ, smacked one off me in the eighth. But then I didn't surrender another circuit clout for almost two years! Let's see if young Stephen can rack up 450 or so innings before someone circles the bases on his credit again!

Strasburg gave up his lone home run, I hear, to someone named Delwyn Young, a lusterless reserve who's got no business hitting a homer of anyone mentioned in the same sentence as The Big Train. What kind of name is "Delwyn" anyway? What a hoot! Next thing you'll be telling me that there are players named Daric, or Denard, or Dustin! Kids these days!

And anyway, these were not exactly the Pirates of my day, with the likes of Pie Traynor, Max Carey, Stuffy McInnis, Kiki Cuyler, Big Poison and Little Poison in the lineup. But Milledge? Cedeno? Walker? Jamarillo? There's not a single guy in that Pittsburgh lineup who would have passed muster as a waterboy with those Pirates, much less on the playing field.

In short, while everyone's yammering on about how this kid is the bee's knees and how everything with the Washington Nationals will soon be Jake, remember that my Washingtons had a winning record only six times in my first 17 seasons with them. Remember too that Strasburg will face a lot tougher competition than the ragamuffin Pirates as the season plods on, and that the babe might not be so berries pitching against first division teams.

And finally, remember that injuries happen, and only the Big Cheese up here really knows if and when, and mum's the word from him.


Wait...Washington Nationals?

The Even More Perfect Game

My mom tells me that in her high school English class, during a discussion of how, grammatically, certain words should be modified (i.e. is it "narrower" or "more narrow", "certainer or more certain"?) the word "perfect" came up. Some students thought "more perfect" the correct usage. others thought "perfecter" was acceptable, if somewhat clunky.

My mom pointed out that it was neither. Perfect, is, by definition, without the possibility of improvement, and so there was no need to modify the word. You could not be more perfect than perfect. And her teacher agreed.

But Wednesday night, Armando Galarraga taught us what my mom and her high school English teacher could not: You can improve upon perfection after all.

As you by now know, the Tigers' 28-year old Venezuelan pitcher retired 26 consecutive Cleveland Indians that night in Detroit, and then disaster struck. Well, not disaster, exactly, but certainly an injustice. Galaragga induced a little grounder to the right side of the infield, which was cleanly fielded by Tigers' firstbaseman Miguel Cabrera, who threw to Galaragga, covering the bag, as the pitcher should. It was the ideal, textbook ending for a gem of a game, 83 pitches of remarkable efficiency and effectiveness, leaving the pitcher holding the ball with which he had entered the record books.

Except it wasn't.

The now infamous umpire, Jim Joyce, despite having a clear view of the play and plenty of time to call it, somehow called it wrong, making an out batter safe and a perfect pitcher flawed.

Replays showed that Joyce was clearly in the wrong. Galaragga has the ball in his glove and his foot on the bag while Donald's foot is still perhaps 12 to 18 inches from touching the bag. Granted, that's just a fraction of a second, but this is what umpires train for, hone their skills for a quarter of a century for, and this is what they're paid to do. He's got to get that call right, especially now.



Normally, as I understand it, an umpire makes that call with both sight and sound, watching the base for each player's feet while listening to hear the ball hit the fielder's glove. If you watch the replay (and I know you have, lots and lots of times already) you see that Galaragga didn't catch the ball right in the meaty part of his hand, which would make the loudest 'pop'.

The fact that Miguel Cabrera only had to throw the ball about 15 feet means it wasn't thrown that hard, and the fact that Galaragga caught it in the webbing, as you're supposed to, and that it rattled around a little only makes it tougher. It didn't rattle much. He essentially had control of it, but it was enough to dull the sound and perhaps make it difficult for Joyce to hear it. To his credit, Joyce doesn't cite this as the problem. He just admits to screwing it up and asks for forgiveness, something Galaragga has already given him, even if the Detroit Tigers' fans never will.

Umpires make that call all the time. Joyce makes that call all the time and has never previously been challenged like this, because if he's ever been wrong about it before, it was never in so momentous a spot. Never with 18,000 fans watching in rapt attention, waiting to be able to tell their grandchildren that they Witnessed History.

But he blew it. An umpire's mistake accomplished what 27 Indians' intentional actions couldn't, and just like that, history was, well...made anyway.

It's been said frequently that Galaragga's "failure" to accomplish the feat will actually make him, and this game, more famous than if he'd actually done it. That may be true. After all, Kenny Rogers, Len Barker and Mike Witt all had careers that belied their one-time perfection, making that hardly the first thing you think of when someone brings one of their names into the conversation. Galaragga likely would have fallen into the same category. Now he's in a class by himself.

No, commissioner Bud Selig can't - or at least won't - overturn Joyce's call. He could. He's got the authority, both from his title and from the "best interests of the game" clause in his contract, that is too frequently interpreted as "the best interests of the owners' bank accounts". But make no mistake: Selig could call the now ruined game "perfect" and it would be recorded as such in the record books.

He's done it before. Randy Johnson once struck out 20 batters in nine innings, but was told that his game wouldn't be remembered along with those of Kerry Wood and Roger Clemens, because the game went 11 innings, and he left after nine. But then MLB reversed its decision and eventually decided to recognize it as an official 20-strikeout game.

Others have done it before. The judges and committees at the 2002 Winter Olympics made a similar wrong "right" when they awarded gold medals to two sets of skaters. One of the judges had been coerced into modifying her scores to favor the Russians over the Canadians, in exchange for better votes for the French in the ice dancing competition. When this came to light, her score was discarded and the two pairs were declared tied, and both were awarded Gold Medals. Two sets of "the best" which is technically impossible, and yet, allowed.

Selig could do the same. What if it came out that Joyce was paid to blow that call? I don't think he was, but if he was, wouldn't Selig be forced to succumb to pressures to reverse the call? Is it really any better to leave it this way simply because it was an honest mistake?

The mistake happened, and it's been said that we can't simply ignore that Trevor Crowe batted again and made another out, but of course that's not true. Until recently, stats accumulated during games that failed to go the requisite five innings were ignored, with MLB essentially pretending that they, and the game, never happened.

Selig could effectively pretend that the blown call, and Crowe's subsequent at bat, didn't happen. He doesn't even have to mutter magic words and cast a spell. He can just do his best Captain Picard impression and say "Make it so." and it will be so. Literally nobody can stop him, and there are probably a lot more people upset about the current state of affairs than would be upset by that.



I don't think he should, but I don't want to hear him saying he can't. In true Seligian fashion, Bud isn't even saying that. He hasn't yet even addressed the blown call or the review of it directly, only the general idea of instant replay, and this in the midst of an admission that the umpire blew it and that Galaragga should have been given credit for perfection.

...there is no dispute that last night's game should have ended differently. [...] ...it is vital that mistakes on the field be addressed. Given last night's call and other recent events, I will examine our umpiring system, the expanded use of instant replay and all other related features. Before I announce any decisions, I will consult with all appropriate parties...

To summarize, that means, "No."

Selig won't overturn the call, in spite of the fact that this seems exactly the right thing to do. Perhaps not the correct and precise thing to do, but the good and right thing.

And that's OK. The really impressive thing about this feat is that Galaragga, upon seeing that he's been robbed of his pending immortality, only smiles. He doesn't explode, or plead with the umpire or even so much as kick the dirt. He just smiles, as if to say, "OK, if that wasn't good enough, let's try this." He then goes and retires Crowe on five pitches, making him the only man in history to have to retire 28 batters to finish his perfect game.



And that's exactly how he should be remembered. Galaragga's game ball and glove should go to Cooperstown, to be displayed along with the other 20 balls from the perfect games throughout history and the hundreds of no-hitters, and perhaps a photo of him smiling at Joyce when he sees the bad call.

After the game, Galaragga was interviewed and showed no malice or resentment toward Joyce, ironically reminding us all that "Nobody's perfect,". And he was right about that.

He was more perfect.

Omar Vizquel and the Hall of Fame, Revisited

I originally opined on the subject of Omar Vizquel and the Hall of Fame about two years ago, and I notice that I have gotten a lot of traffic and comments on that post lately, so I thought I would update it a bit. But feel free to go and read the original post and especially the comments, as some people made some good points with which I was forced to grapple.

Two years ago, Henry Shulman of the San Francisco Chronicle suggested that some writers might be thinking of voting Omar Vizquel into the Hall of Fame, once he's eligible. Shulman said that he conducted "a small straw poll of hall voters" which probably means he asked two guys while they were sitting in the press box together, covering a game. More recently, due to the fact that Vizquel has surpassed 2,700 career hits and continues to add to his record for career games as a shortstop, the subject of whether Omar = Hall of Famer has come up again. Let's examine the case, sort of a sports interaction review, one merit at a time:


1) Lots of Hits

Of course, 2,700 career hits on its own is not such a big deal. Harold Baines has about 150 more hits than Vizquel and the BBWAA writers have shown no particular inclination to enshrine him. Derek Jeter currently has 99 more hits than Omar, and continues to widen that gap, but obviously has a lot more going for him than a lot of singles (and a lot more outs). Roberto Alomar has more, too, and will probably be elected to the hall of Fame this or next year, as will Barry Larkin. The presence of two contemporary middle infielders who combined defensive acumen with offensive prowess will only make it harder for the light-hitting Vizquel to get in.

Andre Dawson just recently got into Cooperstown, but he's got over 400 homers and an MVP award to his credit as well, plus a cool nickname. Vada Pinson and Al Oliver and Bill Buckner and a bunch of other guys all have 2,700 or more hits and have no hope of ever being elected. They all had their merits, but none was considered a sufficiently great player to get real consideration for the Hall.


2) Lots of Games

Being the career leader in games played as a shortstop is a meritorious achievement too, but again, not enough. The other defensive positional leaders (Pudge Rodriguez, Eddie Murray, Eddie Collins, Brooks Robinson, Barry Bonds, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente) were all great players in other ways than simply their ability to repeatedly answer the bell.

To look at this another way, if the #2 or #3 player at each of these positions had in fact made it to #1, would that make him a Hall of Famer? Carlton Fisk, Joe Morgan, Jake Beckley, Luis Aparicio, Rickey Henderson, Hank Aaron and Tony Gwynn are already in, and Fred McGriff and Roberto Alomar are on the edge, likely to get in eventually.

But the #2 center fielder - another position that requires some defensive prowess - is Steve Finley, and #3 is Willie Davis. The #3 catcher, just one behind Fisk, is Bob Boone, a man known primarily for his defense. Greg Nettles (whom Bill James calls the "Incredible Leaping Octopus") and Gary Gaietti are the next two third basemen, and Luis Gonzales is the next left fielder. Do you really think that any of these guys would be a solid candidate for Cooperstown if they'd played a few more games or if the leader had played fewer?

Neither do I.


3) Lots of Gold Gloves

Another argument in his favor is his cache of 11 Gold Gloves. the number of course is not enough. Keith Hernandez also has 11. Andruw Jones has 10. Mark Belanger, Paul Blair, Don Mattingly, Frank White and George Scott all have at least eight, and none has ever gotten serious consideration for Cooperstown. A great defensive reputation simply is not enough. Rob Neyer argued that the fact that the man was never considered a great player, not just defender, should mean that the writers wouldn't even consider voting for him.

Look, Gold Gloves are more of a popularity contest than anything else. Derek Jeter, who truly is a great player, has four of them, even though he only recently turned himself into an adequate defensive shortstop. Steve Garvey's got four of them, despite the fact that the man never threw the ball to second base. Jason Varitek has one, for crying out loud. At best, perhaps they reflect a player's ability to repeatedly look impressive or acrobatic while making the same plays that look routine when accomplished by better prepared defenders. Adam Everett, let's say.

There's little question that Vizquel has been a very good defender over the course of his career, but much of his defensive reputation rests on his appearance rather than on his results. In 2006, for example, he won a Gold Glove largely on the merits of his league-leading .993 fielding percentage, but the more advanced metrics - Total Zone Runs, Fielding Bible +/-, UZR, FRAA,- all seem to suggest that he was somewhere between the 5th and 10th best defensive shortstop in MLB that year. Granted, there have been years (2007, for one) where he actually was the best, and didn't get the Gold Glove, but the former occurrence is much more common.


The Case Against: Career Value

The truth is that, despite his longevity, Vizquel has never been a great player, and the baseball writers, the ones who vote for the Hall of Fame, know it. He only received any votes for the MVP once, finishing a distant 16th in 1999. He was worth about six Wins Above Replacement that year, a true all star caliber performance, and the only time in his 22-season career that he crested the 4.0 WAR plateau. MVPs are typically about 8 WAR or more in that year and Hall of Famer shortstops, though there is a significant range, average about 64 WAR for their careers, as you will see.

This lack of MVP appreciation has occurred despite the fact that Vizquel frequently anchored the infield defenses of playoff teams with the Tribe in the late nineties and early aughts. For getting into the playoffs, especially playing in a world series, odds should increase of getting MVP votes, but alas, not so much. Also, he's not much of a singer.


Comparison to the Elite:

There are the 23 players whom the Hall considers shortstops, and the following list shows their Baseball Prospectus career WARP3 totals, which is Wins Above Replacement Position, encompassing offense, defense and even pitching, adjusted for all time. Additionally, I have included his WAR, Wins Above Replacement, as calculated by Sean Smith of baseballprojection.com.

This means, by definition, that these numbers allow us to compare players across different eras.

Shortstop          WARP3     WAR
Luis Aparicio       47.4    49.8
Luke Appling        70.7    68.9
Dave Bancroft       38.2    46.3
Ernie Banks         62.9    64.3
Lou Boudreau        73.6    55.9
Joe Cronin          69.0    62.6
George Davis        76.5    90.8
Travis Jackson      43.7    43.4
Hughie Jennings     56.8    47.9
Pop Lloyd            ???    ????
Rabbit Maranville   39.9    38.0
Pee Wee Reese       63.1    66.4
Cal Ripken         102.4    89.8
Phil Rizzuto        47.5    41.6
Joe Sewell          51.5    48.1
Ozzie Smith         92.0    64.7
Joe Tinker          51.4    49.0
Aarky Vaughan       85.2    75.6
Honus Wagner       140.6   134.7
Bobby Wallace       60.5    60.4
Monte Ward*         58.9    64.5
Willie Wells         ???    ????
Robin Yount         66.8    76.8
Average             66.6    63.8

Omar Vizquel currently sports a total of 41.0 WARP and his WAR is 42.8.

Since the first time I looked at these numbers, Baseball Prospectus has significantly changed its WARP3 formula. The average last time was about 111, almost double what we have now, though the scale is roughly the same.

Also, since I've added WAR to the evaluation, we can see that the two do not always agree. On average, WARP3 and WAR agree to within less than 3, but there are a few significant differences. These generally seem to be in the upper echelon of players though - Ripken, Wagner, Smith, Vaughan, Boudreau and Davis - so it's really only a question of how MUCH better than everyone else those guys really are.

It should be noted that some of these guys spent significant amounts of their careers at other positions, and it's therefore perhaps not fair to compare Vizquel to them directly. Ernie Banks actually played more games at first base than he did at short. Yount played almost half his career as an outfielder. Vizquel deserves credit for staying at shortstop, something few 40-year olds ever do, much less do well.

Boudreau and Cronin were, in addition to being very good players, managers for a long time, with some degree of success, and their selections to the Hall may have benefited from this legacy. In truth, though, both had top-10 MVP finishes half a dozen times or so, and probably didn't need any help from their managerial credentials.

Wells and Lloyd were both presumably very good players in the Negro Leagues, but we don't really have any credible numbers for them. Monte Ward was also a pitcher, amassing about 1/3 of his WAR value as such, and was a pioneer in the early days of major league baseball, so he gets some extra credit too. Joe Tinker was elected by a suddenly generous Veterans Committee in 1946, right after a World War, when they were feeling especially nostalgic, apparently. But even if you throw all of those guys out, the average for the remaining players stays almost exactly the same, 67.7 WARP3, hardly any difference at all. So don't worry about that.

With the current formula for either of these statistics, Vizquel is near the bottom of the list, in the neighborhood of a couple of questionable Hall of Fame choices in Travis Jackson and Dave Bancroft, as well as Rabbit Maranville, who only squeaked into the Hall in his 15th year of eligibility - right after his death - after a big nostalgia vote jump.

In any case, Maranville's kind of a special case, something of a baseball whip, a defensive whiz at the toughest defensive position at a time when runs were scarce, so his value, or at least his perceived value, doesn't show up directly in the numbers as much as it does the MVP voting of the time.

But Omar is well below Rizutto, Pee Wee Reese, Aarky Vaughan, Lou Boudreau or Luke Appling, all five of whom lost time to the War and yet still come out ahead of Vizquel in WAR and WARP.

You can argue that he's no worse or less valuable than some of the gentlemen already in the Hall. It seems obvious that Omar has done more in his career than some of those guys, given his longevity, despite never being great in a single season. But it's also debatable whether guys like Travis Jackson belong in the Hall in the first place, so that's not a terribly convincing argument.

If you want to use the benchmark of where the average is, it would seem that Vizquel would significantly drag down the median level of MLB HoF shortstops. By contrast, Bill Dahlen (77.9 WARP3, 75.9 WAR) would considerably raise that bar, and I don't see anyone clamoring for his candidacy.

This type of argument is something of a slippery slope. It's not a bad starting point to only enshrine players would maintain or even raise the standard of the existing crop at a given position, but that's not enough, in my mind. We ought to want to make the Hall more exclusive, and therefore more impressive, not less.


Did He Do Enough?

Omar Vizquel was never a great hitter, and rarely even a good one. In 22 seasons in the major leagues, he has only twice had an adjusted OPS above the league average. One of those, 1999, when he had an OPS of 110, was essentially a fluke. He hit .354(!) when he put the ball in play that year, even though his career mark is .294 and the league average BAbip that year was .302, about what it usually is.

The other time was 2003. His OPS that year was just 104, but that's the only other time it's ever been above 100, and this one looks legit, as his .284 BAbip is actually a little lower than the league. So congrats, Omar, you earned your career-high 14 homers and 72 RBIs that year, even though the rest of your career marks are pretty pedestrian.

Speaking of walking (see what I did there?), Omar Never took free passes all that often, something that might have helped to bolster his general mediocrity with the bat. He did walk 87 times in Y2K, but only walked more than 60 times twice in his career besides that, and rarely posted an OBP much more than .350 or .360. And that was perhaps the best part of his offensive game.

He had only one season in which he hit double digit homers. At his peak, he cracked the 30-double mark four times in seven seasons, but never hit more than 36 in a season. he hit a few triples, as he was reasonably fleet of foot in his prime, but for all their excitement, they're of limited value. His supporters may point to the fact that he has stolen almost 400 bases in his career, and that at his best, he twice nabbed more than 40 in a season.

I would point out that he's also been caught 158 times, which ranks as the 21st most in history. For comparison, Juan Pierre has been caught stealing 159 times, but has about 90 more successes. Kenny Lofton was gunned down 160 times, but succeeded 622 times. In an era in which power is increasingly common place, the value of individual bases is severely diminished, while that of baserunners is increased, so Vizquel may have harmed his teams more with those 158 failed attempts than he helped them with the 389 successful ones.

Sure, we can put Omar Vizquel in. He's better than Dave Bancroft, and almost as good as Travis Jackson, right, even though he doesn't have as cool a first name? But then we've got to let Ron Santo in too, since he's better than George Kell, right? And what about Harold Baines, since he has the most games and hits and what-not as a Designated Hitter? Shouldn't he be considered Hall-worthy, given that he was apparently so good at what he did?

If you think instead about where the bar should be, instead of where it is, I think you have to leave Vizquel out of the Hall. Not everyone in the Hall has to be Honus Wagner or Cal Ripken, but "appreciably better than Gary Gaetti (38.4 WARP3)" doesn't seem like such an outlandish requirement to me.

We've had more than 125 years to see what great players look like, and to paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, I think we should know them when we see them.

Omar Vizquel is not one of them.

Another Long, Boring Yankees/Red Sox Game Finally Ends

Joe West would have been bored out of his mind last night.

Six weeks ago, after the Yankees began their title defense with a three-game opening series against the Boston Red Sox, major league umpire Joe West complained about the length of time the Yankees and Red Sox take to play each other. Among his criticisms, he said,

“They’re the two clubs that don’t try to pick up the pace. They’re two of the best teams in baseball. Why are they playing the slowest? It’s pathetic and embarrassing. They take too long to play.’’

Well, last night's contest, at three hours and forty seven minutes, was no exception. West was not working this game - or any MLB game, for that matter - so perhaps he was watching it on ESPN in his hotel room or at home. Probably while telling his kids to hurry up and finish their math homework without worrying so much about whether they got any of the answers correct.

If so, he would have been none too pleased at how long Monday night's game took. The 20 runs scored, seven pitching changes, 26 hits (including seven home runs, with those excruciatingly slow home-run trots), the six walks (Walks?!? For Christ's sake, run!!!), and the 348 total pitches. Heck, 29 of those pitches were thrown by knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, whose pitches take almost 40% longer to reach the plate than an average major league fastball. The nerve!

I kid, of course. Unless you either hate or completely misunderstand baseball, you could hardly have asked for a more exciting game. Besides the general excitement created by any Yanks/Sawx contest, you had the added appeal of:

• The Monday Night game on ESPN, with one-time Yankee and Red Sox heroes Aaron Boone and Nomar Garciaparra among the commentators
  
• A new ballpark with 48,000 screaming fans, most of whom stayed for all four hours
  
• The pitting of the Yankees' budding ace, Phil Hughes (5-0, AL-best 1.39 ERA entering the game) against the Red Sox expensive, imported reclamation project (Dice-K, coming off one of the best starts of his American league career).
• The Yankees' efforts to catch red-hot Tampa for first place in the AL East
• The Red Sox' effort to stay above .500
• The Yankees depleted bench and bullpen, without Curtis Granderson or Nick Johnson, with Jorge Posada questionable, and either Joba or Mariano unavailable out of the bullpen, and Chan Ho Park having just come back from an injury.
  

So there was plenty of intrigue to go around. Early on, Matsuzaka was as terrible as ever, allowing five runs in the first inning, before he settled down. It also looked as though Hughes would continue to be the American League's best pitcher, as he took a 6-2 lead into the 5th inning, but a couple of long at-bats by Marco Scutaro and Dustin "Laser Show" Pedroia and a three run jack by JD Drew brought the game to within one run.

The Yankees got a so-called insurance run on a double by Marcus Thames, but an inning later, the struggling Victor Martinez homered to make it 7-6 Yankees. That lead only lasted until the top of the eighth, though, as Chan Ho Park, clearly not fully recovered from his ailment, allowed a single to Drew and then back-to-back homers by Kevin Youkilis and Victor Martinez, this time from the other side of the plate.

That made it 9-7 Boston, their first lead of the evening. Flame throwing Daniel Bard made quick work of the Yankees in the bottom of the eighth, but then Boston got two men on base with two out in the top of the ninth, whereupon Javier Vazquez was called upon to relieve. Vazquez, you may recall, last relieved for the Yankees in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, whereupon he surrendered a grand slam to Johnny Damon that basically put the game 0 and the pennant - out of reach for New York.

But despite his early struggles, and unlike his track record late in 2004, Vazquez had been pitching better recently, including a seven-inning, two run performance against the Tigers last week. He struck out Youkilis on four pitches, setting the stage for the heart of the Yankees' order against the Red Sox closer, Jonathan Papelbon.

papelbon allowed a double to Brett Gardner, who apparently can occasionally acquire an extra base with his bat after all, and then got a fly out from Mark Teixeira, whereupon Gardner went to third. This move proved to be an unnecessary risk, as Alex Rodriguez hit the very next pitch 420 feet, over the center field wall, to tie the game at 9-9.

This event may have rattled Papelbon, who's no stranger to choking against the Yankees, as his second pitch to light-hitting catcher (with the new Gazoo helmet!) Francisco Cervelli hit him on the arm. And then Marcus Thames deposited the very next pitch 381 feet away, just over the left field wall, to end this tedious, boring game, 11-9, 227 minutes after it started.

What a drag.

Texas Rangers Showing Promise against the Oakland A's

I had the distinct privilege to see a Texas Rangers' game in person Wednesday night.

The AmeriQuest Rangers Field BallPark at Arlington, or whatever it's called these days, is really a heckuva nice place to watch a game. It opened in 1994, which means that this is its 17th year, and frankly, it still looks brand-spanking new. The Rangers and their fans have done a great job of keeping the place in pristine shape, and there's no reason to think that this Texas baseball cathedral should ever be as decrepit ans outdated as, say, Yankee Stadium used to be. On the other hand, I'd be willing to wager a BetUS bonus code that another 60 years might put a few cracks in the facade, both literally and figuratively.

I understand that there are all sorts of cool things to do in the ballpark, such as a huge baseball museum, a walk of fame, a picnic area and other stuff, but I missed all of that, since I got there right as the game was starting. I sat in the box seats between first base and the right field foul pole, and found that I had a pretty good view of just about everything, a comfortable seat, and a cool breeze for most of the game.

In the last three innings or so, the cool breeze gave way to some fairly impressive swirling winds, presumably caused in some part by the steady, straight winds coming directly into the ballpark from the outfield, keeping the pennants as straight and stiff as writing tablets for a solid hour. How tiny little Eric Patterson managed to hot a home run into that is beyond my understanding of the laws of physics.

Unfortunately for the Oaklands, that was their only run. The Rangers, though they took a few innings to find their stroke, managed 10 of them, including five homers of their own, mostly before the winds started. Josh Hamilton and Vlad Guerrero hit back to back homers off starting pitcher Gio Gonzales and (not much) relief pitcher Chad Gaudin.

Yes, that Chad Gaudin. Fortunately for Yankee fans, the Yankee brass were not fooled by Gaudin's two months of smoke-and-mirrors pitching in Pinstripes toward the end of last season, perhaps thanks to the info they found at Pinnacle Sportsbook Review, and they let him go as a free agent. For his part, though he had not been good this year, Gaudin was at least striking out about a batter per inning in 2010.

Entering a game with an ERA of 6.23 and making it worse is no easy feat, but don’t tell Chad that. No siree. After giving up that homer to Vlad, Gaudin allowed two more homers, also back to back, in the next inning, making this the first time in his major league career he’d ever surrendered three homers in a so-called “relief” appearance. One of those was to catcher Max Ramirez, only the second of his brief major league career, and the other was to Michael Young. No, the Yankees don’t miss this guy.

The Rangers, cheered on by 26,682 of their fans, managed to take over first place in their division by a game, this after a tough, extra-innings loss to the Oaklands the night before. The loudest and most obnoxious of these fans happened to be sitting about 15 feet in front of me, the realization of which initially annoyed me – how do I always manage to find these people? – but later gave me an appreciation for the fact that baseball games are meant to be enjoyed, and that this man was doing little more than enjoying himself. A lot.

Having seen more games in New York and Philadelphia than anywhere else, I’m no stranger to obnoxious fans. But this guy was not like those. Primarily, he was sober. He may have had a beer or two, but clearly was not drunk, as evidenced by the fact that every time, and seriously, I mean EVERY time the organist played something on the loudspeaker, this guy got up and danced to it, or ran in place, or mimicked playing the organ himself, or whatever.

I briefly even considered sitting next to him myself, if only to save me from the dead-fish middle aged woman on my right and the two hipsters on my left who were too cool or jaded or apathetic to bother talking to me.

After the third inning I went to get something to eat and decided to take full advantage of Wednesday Dollar Dog Night, buying three of the generic pink tubes of nondescript ground up what-not. And a beer. Some dark, local brew that was pretty solid.

The dogs, I’m convinced, must be brought in especially for dollar dog night, as I can’t imagine that a major league baseball team that once spent $55 million on Chan Ho Park would be able to sleep at night charging $3.50 for hot dogs that clearly where not worth the effort to remove small pieces of bone, or gristle, or, for all I know, polycarbonate from them before turning them into franks. Seriously, all three of them had something in them that I was forced to remove from my teeth and examine further, a texture consummate not with food but with perhaps sand or a rough polishing compound.

Upon my return I took a different seat and ended up near some friendlier fans, and closer to the loud one, who by then had recruited at least two other young men and a boy of about eight to remove their shirts and sing and chant and dance around the aisles with him. At least until the Fun Police showed up in the form of a Rangers security guard. At one point, during the 7^th inning stretch, as two of them were square dancing in the aisle, he ordered them back to their seats, which was lamentably understandable, as concrete stairs are not exactly the safest environment to go running around in circles.

But later, when they were doing nothing more than cheering and chanting and yelling and pumping their fists, the same curmudgeonly member of the F.P. came back and ordered them to sit down and (I assume) stop having so much fun. This is a baseball game, dammit, not an Irish wake. Now sit down and think about what you’ve done, mister.

And then, to make sure they complied with the official F.P. Decree Against Having Fun at Baseball Games, he sat down right behind them. This was possible because, of course, there was nobody behind them. For, like, five or six rows. Which means that they were blocking the view of exactly nobody, were not drunk, were not throwing anything or hitting anybody or picking fights. At worst, they could be accused of yelling too loud. At a ballgame. Fanatics, indeed.

They did, at one point, encourage the crowd to boo a fan wearing an Oakland jersey, which isn't unusual. What was unusual was that the guy wore a garish yellow replica jersey that said "RUDI 26" on the back, which means that this particular fan was old-school and knew his stuff, and didn't particularly care that few people would remember or appreciate his favorite player. I imagine that someone showing up where the Red Sox are the visiting wearing a George Scott jersey might be similarly regarded, and similarly underappreciated.

But besides the cheap-ass hot dogs – which I can hardly complain about because, as everyone knows, you get what you pay for – and the F.P., there wasn’t much wrong with the Rangers or their ballpark on this night. Well, they for some reason forgot to set off the fireworks when Ramirez hit his homer, even though they did so for all of the other Rangers’ bombs, the fifth and last of which came smoking off the bat of rookie firstbaseman Justin Smoak.

A Wave got started late in the blowout game, and though I’ve been at dozens of games where this was attempted with some success, none of which ever made it around the ballpark more than three times, the origins of the movement had never previously occurred to me. There’s probably some Official Story as to when and where the Wave first started, and who thought of it, but whomever is responsible could thank one and one thing only: boredom.

There are few things less exciting than a game that’s way out of reach, even if yours is the team that’s winning. And of course there’s little to do, if you don’t want to leave early, other than start some kind of chant, except that only maybe a hundred people can hear even the loudest voice in the midst of a large ballpark, even a relatively quiet one. Even if you got a chant started, who would know? And how long would it last? Only til the next batter struck out or got on base or whatever. But the Wave? Sheer, simple genius.

All it takes is standing up and sitting down, throwing your arms up in the air in sequence with 27,000 others, and maybe a loud “Oh!” or “Hey!” when you do so. It could go on like that for an entire inning or more. And everybody can do it. Everybody knows exactly what to do and when, and there’s no worry that your initial chant of “Julio Borbon, Julio! [clap, clap-clap] will sound on TV like “Here we go, Morons, here we go!” [clap, clap-clap]. Or vice-versa.

Anyway, the Rangers.

Additionally, they managed to get prized pitching prospect Derek Holland a Win in his first major league appearance of his sophomore season. Holland had been pretty terrible in his rookie year, amassing an 8-13 record and a Gaudin-esque ERA of 6.12. But on this night, after having torn up the PCL for a month, Holland was very good, striking out seven and walking only one in six scoreless innings.

He was followed up by Darren O’Day, for whom both the obnoxious fans and, when he got out of the inning, the public address system, sang a chant of “O-DAY o-dayo-dayo-DAY, o-DAY, OH-oh DAY!!!” Doug Mathis pitched the last two innings for Texas, allowing the homer by Patterson, but little else, despite the fact that he only threw strikes about half the time.

Not that it should be so difficult to dominate a team like the Oakland A’s. Their cleanup hitter had a slugging percentage of about .350 coming into the game, and two thirds of the lineup was hitting about .250 or worse, generally without any power either. Heck, even their designated “hitter”, Josh Donaldson, was hitting .071 coming into the game, and his 0-for-4 dropped him down even further into the abyss.

I saw Donaldson a few years ago, when he was a hot hitting catching prospect in the Cubs' class A short season team in Boise. He was sent to the A's in the Rich Harden trade almost exactly a year after I saw him play. Back then I'd have put a few bucks down on him to pan out as a solid major leaguer, especially if I had a bookmaker bonus code. He's cooled down quite a bit since that hot season in the high Idaho desert, but still shows glimpses of the keen batting eye and doubles power he displayed last season in AA, such as last night, when he singled in the tying run in the 4th inning. Maybe he's better when he catches.

Catcher Landon Powell looked promising as he laced a ball into the left-centerfield gap and then dragged his lumbering, 6’1”, 260 lb frame around the infield, stretching a double into a double, as they say. He singled again later, less dramatically, but other than he and Daric Barton, nobody else on the team got on base more than once.

I expect the A's to more or less disappear from contention as the year wears on, that's my second half betting advice. Unless something truly special happens, like the King of Bradenia hurling another dozen or so perfectos, they just don’t have the bats to keep in the race. The Rangers may have both the bats and the pitching, if Holland is the real thing. But the Texas heat has caused many a Rangers team to fade over the course of the year, and this one is not above that fate.

At least the ballpark is still nice.

What's Wrong With Javy Vazquez?

There are probably fewer things more frustrating to a sports fan than watching an expensive, recently imported veteran player repeatedly fail in his efforts to help the team. The more prior success he's had, the more money he's making, the more you had to give up to get him...well, that all just makes it worse.

And then there's Javy Vazquez.

Vazquez had all of those things against him:

• He was probably one of the five best pitchers in the Senior Circuit last year,
• He's guaranteed $23 million combined this year and next, and
• The Yankees traded their young centerfielder, inexplicable fan favorite Melky Cabrera, plus two pitching prospects and half a million dollars to get him.
  

In addition, Vazquez had the ghost of his former, unsuccessful stint in the Big Apple looming over his head. Despite high hopes for him last time he came to New York, and an impressive first half, Javy Vazquez left New York in ignominy having walked five batters and surrendered two home runs to some bearded, homeless hippie, making the Yankees the first team in over a hundred years of professional baseball playoffs to ever lose a series they had led three games to none.

Granted, Kevin Brown gave up five runs all by his lonesome, and the Yankees only scored three all day, so it's not like Vazquez really made things much worse, but his efforts out there put the game ostensibly out of reach, and that's what everyone remembers.

Still, in the intervening time, he's been nothing if not consistent. Heck, "consistency" is Vazquez' calling card. He's the only pitcher in baseball who's provided his teams with at least 32 starts, 190 innings and double digit wins every season since Y2K, the very definition of LAIM. Granted, his ERA has fluctuated by more than two whole runs from year to year, but the innings are there and he's occasionally been something close to brilliant.

This is, perhaps, what many Yankees fans thought they were getting when the Vazquez trade was completed this winter, but the Yankees had no right to expect that. They've now bought high twice on Javier Vazquez - he set personal career bests in ERA, adjusted ERA, and virtually every rate stat last year - but at least this time they didn't give up the kinds of prospects you usually have to surrender for an ace.

They only really need him to be a good #4 (or perhaps #3) starter, since the heavy lifting is supposed to be done by CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and perhaps Andy Pettitte or Phil Hughes, if he comes into his own. The trouble is that Vazquez has been, in three of his four starts, anyway, God-awful. In the other one he was just bad.

There is some hope in that Vazquez seemingly has hit into some poor luck so far this year. He is still striking batters out at just about his career rate, a little over eight batters per nine innings. Also, his BABIP (batting average on balls in play, something over which pitchers have little if any control) is .345 this year, compared to a career average of .302 and a major league average that is perennially about the same as that. Both of these facts are encouraging, but that's about all the encouragement you can get out of his performance so far this year.

Still though, he's only had 58 at-bats where the ball has been put in play this year, so the difference between .345 and .302 is generously speaking, three hits. That, my friends, is not the difference between Vazquez's current 9.00 ERA and the expert projections, which generally put him in the range of about 3.50 to 3.75 or so.

What's more worrying is that much of the stuff he can control is also way off his career rates. He's allowed five homers in only 20 innings of work, after taking more than twice as long to allow his 5th homer last season. He's also walked a good number of batters - 11 of them in only 20 innings - so that both his homer and walk rates are more than double their 2009 levels.

He has faced pretty stiff competition - two games against the defending NL West champion LAnahfornia Angels, one against the first place Tampa Bay Rays and one against the upstart Oakland A's, also in first place right now. Still, though, part of a pitcher's job, especially on the Yankees, is to be able to beat teams they might face in the playoffs, and so far Javy has shown little ability to do that.

The change to the generally higher quality batters of the American League probably isn't helping either. KFFL.com reports that Vazquez' record against the NL since 2008 is 16-10 with a 3.28 ERA, but that against the Junior Circuit he's just 12-19, 4.71. Even that, however, is a far cry from how terrible he's been to this point in 2010.

The most troubling part is that there seems to be a real, tangible reason for the lack of success so far this year. According to FanGraphs, Vazquez' fastball is almost two and a half miles per hour slower this year than last, an average of 88.8 mph, compared to 91.1 last year, and 91.3 mph in his career.

He's only pitched 20 inning so far this year, but he's thrown just about 400 pitches, and about half of them have been fastballs, so we have a decent idea of what he can do. The percentages of each pitch thrown (slider, curve and changeup) are about the same as usual, so it doesn't seem like he's favoring one of his offspeed pitches to compensate for what he's lost on his fastball, just that his fastball isn't what it used to be.

I don't think it's simply that he's still building arm strength, as he had about 19 innings of official work in spring training, about the same as Sabathia, and Burnett both of whom are generally pitching well. And their fastballs are within 0.9 mph of last year's averages.

Joe Girardi says that Javy's issues are mechanical, that he "gets under the ball", whatever that means. You would imagine that a guy who has thrown nearly 35,000 pitches in major league games in the last decade, more than anybody this side of Livan Hernandez, would have a pretty good idea of his mechanics by now. But still, maybe there's something to that. Maybe there's a way to tell if Vazquez is messing up his delivery somehow.

If he were "getting under the ball" you would imagine it would show up somewhere. Or if "getting under the ball" were so terrible for a pitcher, you would imagine it would be tough to pitch a complete game against a major league team and allow them only one run on three hits, while striking out seven and walking one right? Yes, even the Nationals.

For what it's worth, the game charts for this past Sunday's lousy start against the Angels do not show any appreciable difference in release point when compared with a start from late last year, a one-run complete game against the Washington Nationals.


20 April 2010, Javy Vazquez vs. Angels



25 September 2009, Javy Vazquez vs. Nationals

One potential explanation to consider is that Vazquez is having trouble with his two-seam fastball. The main page of FanGraphs lumps his fastballs all together, but when you go to the Pitch f/x pages, they separate his regular four-seam from a supposed two-seam fastball, which he only started throwing last year (4.6% of the time). This year he's throwing it 10.8% of the time, more than twice as often as he did in 2009.

Here's where it gets really sketchy and speculative, because we don't know much about this alleged two-seam fastball, including whether it even exists (more on this later).

It's possible that...

• ...having lost his feel for the pitch, he's trying to throw it more to regain that feel.
  
• ...having lost confidence in his "stuff", he feels a need to throw the 2-seamer more often to keep batters honest.
• ...he's experimenting with a new grip on the two-seamer and hasn't quite got it yet.
  

But it's just as possible that what Pitch f/x thinks is a two-seam fastball is just his normal fastball, with a couple of mph lost. The Pitch f/x technology can't always tell what the type of pitch is. It just makes an assessment of the pitch based on velocity and movement, but isn't always correct, as we found while trying to sort out Chien-Ming Wang's problems last year.

In any case, while I think four starts is a little too soon to start giving up on Vazquez - he has, after all, had similarly poor streaks in the past, but has always bounced back - the drop in velocity is somewhat troubling. Part of Joe Girardi's job is to keep the peace and to protect his players, so naturally, he's not going to lay into his pitcher whenever the beat writers are looking for an explanation. Naturally, he's going to say it's a mechanical glitch and that they're working on it and that he'll be fine.

But if there's something wrong, like really, physically wrong with Vazquez already, of if the mechanical glitch that's causing the drop in velocity is also causing stress on his arm that could lead to an injury, well, then we've got a real problem. My best guess is that within the next two or three starts, if we don't see some real improvement, Vazquez may end up on the disabled list for the first time in his career.

UPDATE: Curt Schilling (of course) has an opinion on the matter too. Silly me, it's not his fastball slowing down or a possible injury. It's Vazquez not being "equipped" to get outs in the American League. My bad.

An Open Letter to Oakland A's Pitcher Dallas Braden

Dear Mr. Braden,

Congratulations on beating the Yankees Thursday afternoon and ending their winning streak at six games.

Now shut up.

You sound like a fool.

When you yelled at Alex Rodriguez for taking a shortcut (not a "detour") across the diamond, back to first base after a long foul ball by Robinson Cano in the top of the 6th inning yesterday, well, you intimidated exactly nobody. Alex Rodriguez was already the best player in the major leagues when you were still growing hair in awkward places of your anatomy. He doesn't care what you think.

The Yankees don't care what you think. The fans don't really care what you think. Frankly, I doubt that your teammates are buying this crap about how you own the mound, but they're contractually obligated to back you up even if you start pontificating about how aliens from the planet Snorg are responsible for everything from the Kennedy assassination to the fact that the cost of postage stamps seems to rise every 20 minutes. (Whoops, there they go again! Damn Snorgians!)

Nobody has ever heard of this rule before except you. Well, not nobody, exactly, but nobody seems to take it quite as seriously as you do. I have seen lots of quotes from you about how A-Rod should go out to the bullpen if he wants to run across a pitcher's mound. You do understand that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? Rodriguez was trying to save time, as he doesn't want to piss off another umpiring crew. Well, maybe not.

You also argued that you, "don’t go over there and run laps at third base." You are an American League pitcher. You almost never have any reason to be at third base, so the point is moot. You also said,

"I don’t care if I’m Cy Young or the 25th man on the roster, if I’ve got the ball in my hand and I’m on that mound, that’s my mound."

Fair enough. The rules should be the same for everybody, but of course this rule is largely new to many of us. ESPN's Baseball Tonight crew, including Rick Sutcliffe, who spent 18 seasons in the major leagues and won a Cy Young award before you were potty trained, and has spent much of the last 15 years as either a major league coach or a TV commentator, had never heard of it. You'd think a guy like that would know, right?

Or maybe there's something about this issue in writing somewhere. I have a book, given to me for Christmas, called The Code: Baseball's Unwritten Rules and its Ignore-At-Your-Own-Risk Code of Conduct. It's not a very good book, honestly. Most of what I've read so far has been a lot of anecdotes about how hitters shouldn't show up pitchers and pitchers shouldn't show up hitters and you have to pitch inside but don't hit a batter in the head and expect to get hit if one of their guys got hit and blah, blah, blah. Seriously, it goes on and on like that for almost 300 pages.

But nowhere in those pages does it say a single word about how nobody is allowed on the pitcher's mound during an inning or during a game. Other than, you know, the dozens of people from both teams who come out there during mound conferences and pitching changes, plus the umpires and the grounds crew and what not. But definitely NOT Alex Rodriguez, under any circumstances.

When asked where you picked up this particular tidbit of baseball etiquette, you mentioned American Legion Ball, and that your coach told you that, as the pitcher, you are (I am not making this up) "the center of the universe" when you're out there on the mound. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Everybody knows that Rickey Henderson is the center of the universe. Duh.

Seriously, though, we all know you need to be a little arrogant to make it in your business. Nice Guys Finish Last and all that. But even if you actually think you're the center of the universe, you don't say so out loud. You sound like an idiot.

My two year old son is just now learning that he's not the center of the universe, and it's a painful lesson at times. You should have figured it out a long time ago, and that silly tantrum you threw on the way back to the dugout just reinforced the fact that you need to grow up. If your mommy was watching, she would have given you a timeout, mister.

The only argument I've heard that actually makes much sense of this bizarre incident was Rob Neyer's as he rightly pointed out that when you were cursing at Rodriguez on national television, the mound was, in fact, NOT yours. Not any longer. The inning was over, and the mound therefore belonged to CC Sabathia. Apparently, CC Sabathia is the center of the universe, and given the gravitational pull a guy that size must have, that's not so hard to believe.

But you, with your 17 career wins, are most certainly not it.

Mostly, I get that you think your team deserves a little more respect. You guys did, in fact, finish last (nice guys or not) in 2009, so if saying stuff like this helps get your teammates fired up, then so be it:

“Maybe it doesn’t come across his mind to do that to the Oakland A’s, but maybe it does enter his mind to not do it against the Boston Red Sox, or to not do it against another team. So what I did was, I aided him with that. I don’t throw 95, so the point might not get across from me, but any kind of disrespect like that…it’s got to be handled."

But you know what really works? You know what will really inspire your teammates?

Win.

Build on that 3-0 record you've compiled so far this year. Help the Oaklands to a division title and, oh, I dunno, maybe a playoff series victory for once. That, and only that, will get you and your teammates the respect that your fragile little ego apparently needs.

In the mean time: Shut up and pitch.

Yours truly,

Travis M. Nelson,
The Boy of Summer

Yankees Winning a Team Effort

Well, it's fun being a Yankee fan these days.

The Yankees are currently 9-3, sitting atop the American League East division (albeit tied with the Tampa Bay Rays), with a nice five-game lead over the despised Red Sox and their small fiefdom. Their 69 runs scored and +25 run differential are both best in the AL, though not the best in baseball. Over in the Senior Circuit, the Phillies have scored a whopping 78 runs and both they and the Giants (??!?!) have a slightly better differential than the Yanks, though both are "only" 8-4.

The Yankees have not had a start this good since 2003, when they went 18-3 in the first three weeks of the season and finished the year with 103 wins and an American League pennant. Given that six of the team's next nine games come against the last-place Baltimore Orioles (2-11) and the other three are at home against the last place White Sox (4-9), achieving that 18-3 mark doesn't seem so far out of reach. Not that your April record wins you anything, unless your MLB betting regimen goes month-to-month.

The Yanks aren't exactly hitting on all cylinders, but those who are hitting are doing so well enough to more than make up for those who are struggling. Mark Teixeira, for example, is a notoriously slow starter, and is hitting only .114 at the moment. Indeed, his career .239 batting average in April is about 40 points lower than in any other month. however, he did hit his first homer of the season yesterday, so perhaps that's a harbinger of better days.

Nick Johnson has struggled, too the tune of a .158 batting average, though his league-leading 14 walks give him a more than respectable .404 OBP. But Jeter and Posada are both hitting about .380 and have three homers to their credit. Robinson Cano leads the team with four bombs and his hitting .340 in his own right. He had a hit in every game before Saturday's contest against the Rangers. New CF Curtis Granderson is hitting .311 with a couple of homers and four steals in four tries, and Alex Rodriguez had a .938 OPS, thanks largely to his team leading five doubles.

Nick Swisher's hitting only .200 at the moment, though he generally...well, Swisher doesn't generally do anything, except hit 20+ homers. In the five more or less full years he's been in the majors, he's only had one season in which his final OPS differed by less than 90 points from the previous seasons. Sure, he'll probably end up around .250 with 25 homers and an OPS around .825 or so, but he could just as easily hit .220 as .260, for all we know.

The real oddity is Brett Gardner. I had my doubts about him last year, and frankly the odds were and still are against him becoming a good everyday player, but he's certainly done his job so far this year. He's played in 10 of the team's 12 games, hitting .333, scoring nine runs and stealing seven bases.

His current "pace" would have him scoring 144 runs and stealing 112 bases despite never hitting the ball hard enough to get an extra base under his own power. Since the record for runs scored without an extra base hit is just 29 - and that was only accomplished by a former sprinter who was recruited as a designated base stealer by wacko A's owner Charlie Finley in the 1970's - well, I wouldn't bet on anything like that happening. More likely, Gardner will finish with something like a .280 batting average and 80 runs scored, with 40 or 50 steals at a high success rate. If he continues to slap singles, take walks and steal bases, he'll certainly earn his pay.

One of the biggest surprises so far this year has been the resurgence of Andy Pettitte. At 38 years old, you could hardly have expected him to improve on the level he's set for himself the last three years. That's about 15 Wins and an ERA slightly over 4.00, which is solid, if not Hall of fame material. But he's got a 1.35 ERA in a team leading 20 innings, having just quieted the Rangers' formidable bats for eight innings on Sunday. He's due to regress, of course, but if he can somehow win another 15 games this year, he would move into the top 50 in career wins. While the chance to tie Amos Rusie and Iron Man Joe McGinnity may not sell a lot of baseball tickets, it sure would like nice on his resume, don't you think?

Not that CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett have been slouching, mind you. Both are 2-0, like Pettitte, and both have an ERA comfortably under 3.00, though not as low as Andy's. Phil Hughes was far from sharp in his only start, walking five batters in as many innings, but at least he managed a Win.

Javy Vazquez has been awful in his two starts, surrendering 12 earned runs (14 total) in eleven innings. Granted, it a little early to start booing him, but at some point the guy who finished 4th in the 2009 NL Cy Young voting had better start pitching like the 15-game winner the Yankees thought they were getting when they dumped off traded Melky Cabrera to the Braves.

The bullpen has had its ups and downs, but the like the starting lineup, the good parts (Mariano Rivera, Joba Chamberlain, Damaso Marte) have more than compensated for the bad (David Robertson, Alfredo Aceves). Sergio Mitre has defied all the odds simply by getting through about two innings of work without allowing a run. Don't bet on that to continue.

Chan Ho Park has had his ups and downs, including a well-documented case of the runs, which he had and then allowed to the Red Sox on Opening Day. He deserves credit for taking the blame himself and not putting Joe Girardi in an awkward position (why would he use a pitcher who was weak and dehydrated from the flu? On opening day? Against the Red Sox?) but of course good character doesn't get that home run ball back.

In any case, though there a few guys over-performing, there are also several who have yet to hit their stride, and there's little reason to think that the Yankees can't continue to wreak havoc on the American League.