FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
Quick review: awards are meaningless, the criteria are absurd, this is all bunk.
Worst Surprise, Player: Johan Santana, Mets.
In the time it takes to read the explanation, try to name 50 guys who are "worse" surprises than Johan Santana. Go!
Who would have thought this guy would fail to grab a spot on the National League All-Star team?
Anyone who (a) understands that wins are overvalued and/or (b) knows that the ASG voting is borderline sociopathic, as evidenced by the facts that (b-sub1) Cristian Guzman had to be on the team as the Washington National representative and (b-sub2) that somehow the NL players or Clint Hurdle or a bunch of pederastic chimps or whoever actually chooses the reserves got together and decided that (b-sub2-sub1) Miguel Tejada and (b-sub2-sub2) Brian Effing Wilson should be on the All-Star Team, despite the fact that (b-sub2-sub1-sub1) Lance Berkman and (b-sub2-sub2-sub1) Tim Lincecum were already representing their respective teams and actually deserved to be there.
A two-time Cy Young Award winner in the AL, he was expected to dominate after being traded from Minnesota to the Mets. He pitched well, statistically, in the first half, going 8-7 with a 2.84 ERA in 19 starts.
Hmmm.
Trying to parse your complaint.
Categories Johan Santana Is In The Top 10 of So Far, In The National League:
Innings Strikeouts Strikeouts/9IP ERA WHIP K/BB But the Mets have been only 10-9 behind him.
How can you be this stupid?
The man is pitching very very well, as the above facts indicate. It's not his absolute best year ever, but he's having a very good year. You acknowledge that the team is only 10-9 behind him. And this is all presented in service of his election to "Worst Surprise, Player" in your mid-season awards.
I don't normally like to be strident, but that is incredibly stupid.
Let's imagine I am part of a 25-man team that makes frozen 4-cheese ravioli dinners. And every time I'm on a shift, I take my syringe and I expertly inject the pasta with goat cheese (my task) and I have like a 99.4% success rate of successful goat cheese injection, and when my raviolis go on to the next man on my team, ready for edam infusion, they are just perfectly formed and looking tasty and delicious. And by the time they reach the end of the assembly line, they are torn to shreds, leaking gouda, and somehow covered in bat feces -- so bad are the other men on Team Ravioli.
So my boss, Hunt Sperkleman, C.E.O. of Sperkleman Four Cheese Ravioli and Penne Arrabiata, Inc. (NASDAQ Ticker: SFCR: 92.50, +10.68, +13.1% as of Monday, 12:02 PM EST, thanks to rumors of a takeover bid from Sheinhardt Wigs), comes down to the assembly line, and he looks around and he sees all the morons on my team. He sees W.K. Horflitz, whose nose is running directly into the pasta cutter. He sees Janet Przyblr, who's on the phone, gabbing with her new husband, as chunk after chunk of unmelted brie just goes rolling by on the assembly line. He sees them all, and he says: "Ken! You're disappointing me!" and I say: "Why, Hunt?" and he says, "Only 8 out of 15 people who eat these raviolis like them!" and I say, "But I did my job!" and he says, "You can go ahead and end this metaphor now -- I think people get the idea." The good news is that Santana is historically a fast finisher, although Thursday didn't bode well. He gave up five runs in four innings against the Reds.
On April 6 he gave up one run in 7 IP against the Braves and got a loss.
On May 4 he gave up one run in 6 IP with 8 Ks against the D-Backs and got an ND.
On June 6 he gave up one earnie in 6 IP and got a loss thanks to a second, unearned run.
In his next start, June 12, he gave up 3 H and 0 R in 7 IP (with 10 Ks) and got an ND because his team also scored 0 R in those 7 innings.
He then lost three decisions in a row, twice pitching okay, once going 7 strong against Seattle, giving up 7 H and 1 run but losing anyway because again, his offense did nothing.
He got another ND on July 4, going 8 innings, giving up only 6 H and 2 R, striking out 6 and walking zero, but -- and you see this trend emerging here -- his offense fell down like one of those little plastic deer when you push the button underneath its pedestal, causing its legs to collapse.
Here are the scores of the games the Mets have lost with Santana pitching, and the # of earned runs Santana gave up while in the game:
So, in the nine Santana-involved losses the Mets have suffered, they, the Mets, have scored a total of 18 runs. 2 runs a game. Their offense averages 2 runs a game, in those losses. And this face somehow makes Johan Santana the "Worst Surprise, Player" of the first half.
Let's go back to the assignment. How many Worse Surprises can you name?
Richie Sexson Freddie Sanchez Edgar Renteria Melky Cabrera Jeff Francoeur Gary Matthews, Jr. Robby Cano Paul Konerko Carl Crawford Derek Jeter Alex Gordon Alex Rios Miggy Tejada Defending NL MVP Jimmy Rollins Bobby Abreu Brett Myers Justin Verlander Nate Robertson Andrew Miller Joe Blanton Aaron Harang Homer Bailey Dontrelle Willis Fernando Rodney Ian Kennedy Phil Hughes Fausto Carmona Jeremy Bonderman Roy Oswalt
There are some.
All big-name players, pretty much, who have been disappointments (though some, like Verlander, are coming on strong). Hey -- how about Carlos Delgado? There's another one.
Rookie of the Year, AL: Jacoby Ellsbury, Red Sox.
Ellsbury is hitting only .269 but he has stolen 35 bases and scored 60 runs. He gets a slight edge over Tampa Bay's Evan Longoria and Texas' David Murphy.
Please. I love the guy. He's part Native American, and quite sexy, but if you give Bellsbury the award you are doing so because of what he did last September and October, and that's insaner than insane. Longoria is destroying Bellsbury statistically this year -- and he's a great fielder, too. It would be a shame if Longoria lost.
Manager of the Year, NL: Jerry Manuel, Mets.
Get ready for some hard-core retroactive association.
This is a premature call, but you've got to be impressed with the 17-9 record since Manuel replaced Willie Randolph on June 17.
I do? The Mets underperformed all year. Then a thing changed, and they eventually started not underperforming. Should I be impressed with their 8-9 start after Randolph left? Because that's the awesome record they jumped out to in their first 17 games after Randolph left. 8-9. Thank God they got rid of him when they did, or they wouldn't have been able to go 8-9 in those next 17 games.
He has enabled an uptight clubhouse to relax and is riding a 10-game winning streak after Thursday's victory in Cincinnati.
This is all Manuel. Not Reyes, Pelfrey, Wright, Delgado, Beltran, Wagner, Maine, or anyone else. Manuel.
Florida's Fredi Gonzalez was looking like the choice before the Mets went on the winning streak. He has put his team into contention with a $21 million payroll, a nice little bit of sleight of hand.
Has had team in contention all year with payroll lower than salary of Derek Jeter, or ARod, or Giambi: nice little bit of sleight of hand.
Happened to be managing team with $680 million payroll when team finally stopped underperforming and reeled off 10 in a row: Manager of Year.
You talked about...the June 12 D-back game where Santana went 7, with 3 hits, 3 BB, and 10 Ks and got an ND. However, it wasn't because his offense didn't score for him. They actually had a 4-0 lead when Santana left. Then, in the middle of a huge, week-long meltdown, Billy Wagner blew the save in the 9th and the D-backs came back to win in the 10th.
Thanks to a reader named Daniel, a little math genius I like to call Phil Rogers, and whichever Chicago Tribune editor passed out drunk and allowed Mr. Rogers to publish this article, we now have the best, most simple formula for determining whether teams have gotten better or worse in the off-season.
While the White Sox paid an extremely high price for Nick Swisher, at least their short-sighted fans should be happy. His acquisition continues a winter in which Ken Williams has done more than almost any other general manager to improve his team when gauged simplistically.
The key word here is going to be: "simplistically."
(For the record, Swisher is a beast who has walked 197 times in the last two years. He's 26 and really good. Gio Gonzalez led the Southern League in Ks last year, but the ChiSox apparently think so little of him they have now traded him twice. Fauti de los Santos is doing well in rookie ball and Ryan Sweeney may turn out to be a good OF someday, but Chicago fans should be effing psyched that Swisher and Carlos Quentin are in their OF now. That's a good young OF. Anyway, back to Rogers's awesome new system.)
There are really two ways for rosters to improve: the ebb and flow of proven players and the development of young talent. The latter is the better way, but it is more art than business—an extremely subjective process to evaluate. The former, however, is easily studied.
New key word here is: "easily."
For the purpose of identifying the most on-the-surface improvement around the major leagues, consider the core players—hitters projected to be regulars and pitchers who either start or work the last two innings of games—who have come and gone. In this simple accounting, the Sox rate a plus-two, having added Swisher, Orlando Cabrera and Scott Linebrink while losing only Jon Garland. That puts them alongside Detroit (plus-three), Tampa Bay (plus-two), Toronto (plus-one) and Houston (plus-one) as the most improved teams in the majors.
Okay. Let's review the system.
If you add a "core" player -- meaning anyone who projects to be regular, or a starting pitcher, or (for some reason) a pitcher who is either an 8th inning guy or a closer, you get one Point. If you lose one such player, you lose one Point.
Thus, if the St. Louis Cardinals traded Albert Pujols and their eleven best minor league prospects to the Texas Rangers for Vincente Padilla and Ben Broussard, the Cardinals would be "Plus-One," and would have improved.
It's an excellent system.
The Cubs excited their fans with the signing of Kosuke Fukudome, but that addition is offset by the departures of Jacque Jones, Cliff Floyd and Jason Kendall. That leaves the Cubs at minus-two at present. The only teams that have lost more are Oakland (minus-four) and St. Louis (minus-five).
Jacque Jones, about which we have written before, is not that good. Cliff Floyd is okay, but he's 35 and plays about 100 games a year. Jason Kendall is a 34 year-old catcher coming off a season where he made an out 69.9% of the time, and who has 7 HR in the last four seasons. So who will replace them? Maybe Matt Murton, who won't set the world on fire, but who's better than Jacque Jones; and Felix Pie, who is 22 and (no matter what that guy says) is not "not a major league hitter" at the ripe old age of 22.
Getting rid of those two old OF to make way for two young guys who seem like they're better (or could be better), and adding Fukudome, makes them "Zorp-7" in my system, wherein I give each team a nonsense word and a randomly-generated number to indicate how well I think they have done in the off-season. Oakland is "Flerm-22" and St. Louis is "Chunktastic-4."
Detroit's plus-three comes from adding Miguel Cabrera, Edgar Renteria, Dontrelle Willis and Jones while losing only Sean Casey. Tampa Bay got its plus-two by adding Matt Garza, Troy Percival, Jason Bartlett and Floyd while subtracting Delmon Young and Brendan Harris.
Just realize, please, what is going on here. I know it came with the caveat that it was a "simplistic" system, but all that is occurring is a count of number of starters and pitchers who have left or come in. Quality = not a factor. Sean Casey counts as much as Miguel Cabrera. Delmon Young counts as much as Jason Bartlett. (In my system, by the way, Detroit is "Slerk-191" and Tampa is "Tpwlgr-00000000."
The Cardinals have lost Jim Edmonds, David Eckstein, Kip Wells, Preston Wilson and Percival while adding no one who played a big role last season.
Eckstein should count as 100 men. He should be the one exception.
The Athletics, intentionally downsizing, are replacing Dan Haren, Mike Piazza, Shannon Stewart and Swisher with kids.
Oakland's new rating: "Charlemagnewwwwww-20." That's what happens when you rebuild.
There's still time for teams to tilt these rankings. About 25 guys who can be considered core players remain unsigned after filing for free agency or being non-tendered.
If I'm the Milwaukee Brewers, I go out and sign all 25. Then they'd be Plus-25!
Though you mentioned Murton and Pie -- and, as a Cubs fan, I'm still really hopeful about Pie -- you forgot to mention Geovany Soto, who last year hit a monster .353/.424/.652 in AAA and, in a very small sample size, .389/.433/.667 in the majors. The Cubs are replacing a 34 year-old who hit 7 HR in the last four seasons with a 24 year-old who hit 3 HR in 54 big league AB. And this is minus-one.
Or just read it in Phil Rogers's end-of-the-year wrap-up:
If I could have been a fly on the wall...
I would have been with Derek Jeter when he got word that the Yankees had reversed course and decided to recommit themselves to Alex Rodriguez after seemingly deciding to turn the page. There's a reason Rodriguez doesn't have a World Series ring. He wears on his teammates.
There's a reason this "point" keeps getting made. Journalists forget that in baseball, there is "pitching."
Phil Rogers' Baseball Thoughts: More Vomit, Less VORP
Phil Rogers believes it is the solemn duty of a baseball executive to be a party animal. Seriously.
Meetings change ... for better? Unlike the old days, action lags, though possibilities remain
Love when a guy straight up says "unlike the old days" -- it's a handy heads up that I should immediately bookmark the article and start ridiculing.
Back in the day, before the Internet, digital music and VORP ratings, baseball's winter meetings used to be almost as much about debauchery as business. They were not considered to be in session until some well-known executive had fallen flat on his back off a bar stool or a trade had been made in a washroom, just before somebody vomited.
Doesn't this sort of sound like the 24-year-old who comes back to his old high school and brags about how crazy it used to be at Eisenhower High when him and Mikey Rags and Paul Shutson used to drink beer while doing the rope climb and remember that one time when Mikey took a shit inside the guidance counselor's file cabinet? That was awesome!!!
We're talking about baseball executives. Executives. But Phil is straight-facedly saying that he misses how often they used to vomit.
There were some downsides to this, of course. Fistfights weren't that uncommon. You could oversleep and miss the Rule 5 draft. And sometimes the owner of a team would get confused and trade for Domingo Ramos when it had been Damaso Garcia his scouts had recommended.
Those brown people all look and sound alike! Again, just to be clear, Phil's getting misty-eyed about guys getting drunk and violent and basically completely fucking over their team's fans by overfuckingsleeping. Can you imagine if Brian Sabean held a press conference and was like, "Sorry, friends, I missed out on some great trades because I had to have myself a fourteen-hour whiskey nap." Actually, Sabean might be better off completely horse piss drunk.
It wasn't a perfect world, but at least then the people who took themselves too seriously stood out. And things happened.
It wasn't a perfect world, but at least guys were punching each other in the face and vomiting into each other's butts. And there warn't no fucking computerfaces nerding up my field of vision!
I wonder why general managers tend to take themselves seriously these days. Is it because they're responsible for multi-million dollar assets and they aren't professional fuck-ups for a living?
At last week's meetings in Nashville, the Ivy League numbers crunchers and lawyers paraded around the Opryland Hotel like accountants on the eve of an audit. In the end, nobody covered themselves in glory except perhaps Detroit general manager Dave Dombrowski. Dave Dombrowski went to Cornell, an Ivy League school, for a while before transferring to Western Michigan. He was a wunderkind who became general manager of the Expos at age 31 -- the youngest in baseball at the time. I bet he has crunchered numbersons, or at the very least has gentlemen who cruncher them for him.
Phil, I'm sorry the baseball winter meetings are no longer the rootinest, tootinest, topsy-turvy pastiche of the Old West you believed them to be in the past. These men have jobs to do. They may wear suits now. They may even -- gasp -- wear glasses or have college degrees. Some of them use statistical analysis, perhaps because it helps them avoid doing things like proposing that the White Sox trade Mark Buehrle and Joe Crede for A-Rod, Melky Cabrera, and a couple of live arms. Or believing that Kevin Millwood (WHIP of 1.62 last year!) from ages 31 to 35 at 12 million dollars a year is a good deal. Or telling us, point-blank, before the 2007 season: "Don't be surprised if Erstad's play is bigger than the headlines given his signing." (Erstad, 2007: .645 OPS.)
You know who did do these things, Phil? You did.
But to your credit, you did so with vomit all over your fucking shirt.
Phil Rogers Tinkers With Stats; 4 Dead, Logic Wounded
This is going to be annoying to break down. But I can't ignore an article that says that ERA is three times as important as any other stat for a pitcher.
Forget "poor" Josh Beckett. If anyone got overlooked in American League Cy Young voting, it was the Los Angeles Angels' John Lackey, not the Boston Red Sox's Beckett.
Who has been whining about "poor" Josh Beckett? What are those quotes for? I am the biggest Red Sox fan in the world, and I have absolutely no problem with C.C. Sabathia winning the Cy Young award. It was the right choice.
Sabthia: 241 innings with a 1.141 WHIP, a 209/37 K/BB ratio and a 143 ERA+. Beckett: 200.2 innings with an identical 1.141 WHIP, a 194/40 K/BB ratio, and a 145 ERA+.
An additional 40 innings with the same, excellent WHIP and a better K/BB ratio = better year. That's pretty uncontroversial.
Now.
Lackey: 224 innings with a higher 1.210 WHIP, a 179/52 K/BB ratio and a 151 ERA+.
So, better adjusted ERA than Sabathia, but fewer innings, and a significantly worse K/BB ratio (and thus higher WHIP).
This article should now pretty much be over.
Sure, if you factor in the regular season and the postseason, Beckett was the best pitcher in the majors in 2007—a combined 24-7 with a 3.00 earned-run average. It's no accident his team won the World Series.
Again, no argument from me that Beckett should not have won -- nor from any other rational human who understands that post-season stats do not count toward this voting. Sabathia > Beckett in 2007.
But the Cy Young Award, like the other awards the Baseball Writers Association of America hands out, is about getting your team into the playoffs, not carrying them once they're there. They are regular-season awards, and as such, Beckett should not have been better than third in the tight, four-pitcher race involving C.C. Sabathia (the winner by a nose), Fausto Carmona, Lackey and Beckett.
Well, now, hang on there, Sparky.
Carmona: 215 innings, a pretty pedestrian 137/61 K/BB ratio, a 1.209 WHIP (thanks to that crazy sinker thing he throws) and a 151 ERA+.
I'd say that the 60 or so more Ks and fewer walks puts Beckett's year ahead of Carmona's. Carmona's is almost identical to Lackey's, really. In fact, they're all super close. I'm not sure there's a great argument to be made that Lackey or Carmona had a better year than Beckett, except that they did throw more innings...but not many more, and Beckett allowed fewer baserunners per inning...it's probably the closest 4-man race in a long time. I'd say C.C. is the clear winner, Beckett is second, and Lackey and Carmona tie for third.
This was a fascinating vote, in large part because only one victory separated the four of them (Beckett had 20, the other three 19).
The victory total is the absolute worst possible way to compare or contrast their levels of success.
I have no problem with Sabathia winning, but Lackey would have gotten my vote if I had been voting. He led the AL with a 3.01 ERA. Carmona was second at 3.06, followed by Sabathia in fifth at 3.21 and Beckett in sixth at 3.27. No stat better tells the story for pitchers than ERA.
No stat better tells the story for pitchers than ERA.
This is not a story. This is simply a coarse measure of runs scored, which can be affected by relief pitchers. How many of these runs were inherited by relievers who had bad days? How many other runs were saved by relief pitchers who had good games? The story of ERA (not even park adjusted, for goodness sake?) is a fairy tale with a morally ambiguous ending. It's a Golden Book in a dentist's office with 6 pages ripped out by a hyperactive kid. It's a Richard Bachman novel. It's a terrible story.
WHIP, on the other hand, for example, measures an individual pitcher's effectiveness per inning. That's better, for a lot of reasons which should be self-evident.***
For the sake of argument, I put together a simple formula to compare the top four Cy Young vote-getters.It ranks them among each other in victories, losses, ERA, innings and strikeouts. Because I think ERA is the most important, I've given it twice the weight. That formula gives Sabathia a slight edge over Lackey and a significant edge over Beckett and Carmona, who would be tied for third.
I have created a similar formula for judging the viability of the Democratic Presidential candidates. It ranks them among each other in health care plans, economic proposals, interest in aliens, and foreign policy. Because I think interest in aliens is the most important, I have given it twice the weight. That formula gives Dennis Kucinich a slight edge over Clinton, and a significant edge over Edwards and Obama.
If you weighed ERA three times as heavily as the other four stats, you would have a tie between Sabathia and Lackey, with Beckett dropping to a clear fourth.
If you weighed interest in aliens three times as heavily as the other stats, you would have a tie with Kucinich and Alf.
Sabathia's edge over the other guys comes down to leading the league innings and strikeouts.
Innings and strikeouts? What kind of stupid ways are those to measure the effectiveness of a pitcher, whose job is to throw as many innings as possible, and whose best possible outcome in any one at bat is a strikeout? Talk to me when you start weighing Skewed Angle of Cap Brim three times as heavily as strikeouts. Then you get Sabathia in a cake walk. Or Number of Shark Teeth on Necklace 3x as highly as Ks, which gives the award -- for the ninth year in a row -- to Turk Wendell.
That achievement may have contributed to the Indians not going to the World Series, as Sabathia and Carmona clearly wore down during the championship series against Boston.
Sorry -- real quick -- thought we weren't supposed to take anything that happened in the postseason into account, here, birdbrain. Remember when you wrote this -- "the Cy Young Award, like the other awards the Baseball Writers Association of America hands out, is about getting your team into the playoffs, not carrying them once they're there" -- like eleven seconds ago?
Beckett looked the freshest of the Cy Young contenders in October—no wonder; he barely threw 200 innings during the regular season, the lowest total.
Quick recap of the insinuations of the last two sentences: Sabathia threw the most innings in the regular seaosn? He does not deserve the Cy Young Award more than John Lackey, because throwing that many innings led to him being worn down in the post-season. Also, Josh Beckett does not deserve the Cy Young Award because he threw the fewest innings in the regular season, leading him to be fresh in the post-season.
One of my favorite things about June is that sportswriters start proposing trades, and they're almost always loonytunes. (Steve Phillips, par example.) The 2007 edition of "They should totally do this!" has been officially kicked-off by FJM fave Phil Rogers.
Given the growing desperation of the two teams [Yankees and ChiSox], is it out of the question Sox general manager Ken Williams would package Joe Crede and Mark Buehrle to the Yankees for [Alex] Rodriguez, outfielder Melky Cabrera and a live arm or two? It's the kind of big-name trade Williams seems to love making. Rodriguez has a no-trade clause in his contract and Scott Boras as his agent, but you have to think he wants out of New York more than ever now that the New York Post is staking him out in hotel elevators.
Well done, sir.
I'm guessing that the real reason this would never happen is because Brian Cashman is a sentient human being with the ability to understand basic information. Joe Crede is a good fielding 3Bman who did hit 30 HR last year (in what might have been a career year) and this year is crashing to earth, sporting a .216 EqA. Mark Buehrle is a pretty good pitcher. Alex Rodriguez is one of the best baseball players in the history of baseball. Melky Cabrera is a 22 year-old OF with good upside. One or two "live arms" are anonymous pitchers with, presumably, some upside.
And before you fire off emails talking about how ARod is miserable and will void his contract at the end of the year and blah blah blah: Buehrle is a free agent after this year. And Crede has one more arb year and then he's free.
So, the proposed trade is:
YANKEES GET 1. Decent LHP (28th in VORP this year) who has a career K/9IP rate of 5.3, which is: eh, and who could leave at the end of the year 2. Good defensive third baseman who has shown good power in the past, whose career OBP is a Guzman-esque .306
WHITE SOX GET 1. One of the very best baseball players of all time 2. A 4th OF who's 22 years old and had a .750 OPS last year 3. A live arm 4. Another live arm
It's Like He Didn't Even Know This Guy Was A Hockey Star In High School
Writers, please. If you compose a gushing Darin Erstad piece, do not neglect the fact that he played hockey in high school. Don't you know hockey players are tough?
Erstad connects with his new club Ex-Angel likes Sox's chances, happy to play center field
The way he's been hitting, he should be happy to play anywhere, honestly.
Experience is a cherished commodity in every clubhouse.
Cherished, maybe. Overrated, certainly.
Few players are bringing more of it to a new team this spring than Darin Erstad did when he arrived at the White Sox camp almost three weeks ago, typically running early.
In Erstad, the Sox signed a guy only 12 years removed from playing football
(as a punter)
for a college powerhouse.
(that he punted for)
They also have the first guy selected in the 1995 draft, a player picked ahead of Carlos Beltran, Todd Helton, Roy Halladay and Kerry Wood, among others.
This matters not one bit. The thing to take away from this is that whoever drated Erstad (the Angels) made a pretty big mistake not taking Carlos Beltran or Todd Helton or Roy Halladay (Wood, not so much). By the way, here are some gentlemen taken ahead of Beltran in that draft: Ben Davis, Ariel Prieto, Mike Drumright, Ryan Jaroncyk, Mike Pasqualicchio, and Mark Bellhorn.
Other than Bellhorn, you'd rather have Beltran than those guys, am I right?
The point is, Phil Rogers, who cares when Darin Erstad was drafted 12 years ago? That was dumb to bring up.
During his decade with the Angels, Erstad had some seasons when he felt like he couldn't get comfortable at the plate.
2006, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001, 1999 ...
The nominee for "Most Charitable Way Of Describing A Guy Sucking" goes to ... Phil Rogers for "Some Seasons When He Felt Like He Couldn't Get Comfortable At The Plate"! At first glance, it seems Sox general manager Ken Williams is asking for too much in looking for Erstad to improve the uncertain outlook in center field. He hasn't played more than 66 games in the outfield since 2002 and spent the winter recovering from surgery on his right ankle. But Erstad is a man on a mission and you wouldn't be advised to stand in his way.
He might punt you with his college football-playing punting foot if you don't get out of his damn way.
Witness his first at-bat in a Sox uniform during an intrasquad game—going down to rip a Jose Contreras fastball onto the warning track in left-center and then steaming around second base and into third when Pablo Ozuna mishandled the hop off the chain-link fence. He hardly looked like a veteran on his last legs.
"That's the way he always has played," manager Ozzie Guillen said about Erstad's all-out approach on the back field. "That's the type of player we want, we need."
A player who hasn't slugged over .400 since 2000. Is the kind of player you need.
Assuming his body doesn't fail him, Erstad seems likely to get 400-plus at-bats for the Sox
YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKES. Guillen pictures him batting second, which would allow Tadahito Iguchi to slide into the sixth or seventh spot, or possibly even leadoff when Podsednik is not in the lineup.
Look, Tadahito Iguchi's not going to win any awards for OBP. Last year he posted a .352. Darin Erstad has not exceeded that since 2000, when he was 26.
Don't be surprised if Erstad's play is bigger than the headlines given his signing.
At this point, he basically has to have an MVP season for that to be true.
From the post below, which tracks Phil Rogers's thoughts on Kevin Millwood:
"...[Millwood's] ground-ball style should help him at Ameriquest Field in Arlington.
The funny thing about this is, Millwood's not a GB pitcher. His career GB/FB ratio is almost exactly 1.00. His 1.34GB/FB ratio last year was 38th highest in MLB, just after Mike Maroth. (For comparison, Brandon Webb's last year was way over 4.00.)
Millwood is, if anything, a K/FB pitcher. But I wouldn't expect Rogers to know that, because he is not a sports columnist. He is a certified auto parts technician. Right? Oh, no -- wait. He is a sports columnist.
Maybe this is just piling on at this point, but I'd like to add that I timed myself, and it took me 91 seconds to compile the information about these two pitchers and their GB/FB ratios. But I guess I can't expect Phil Rogers to conduct 91 seconds worth of research before writing his article, because he's not a sports columnist. He's a Vermont-based Bed-and-Breakfast manager. Right? Oh, shoot -- nope -- forgot again. He's a sports columnist.
Phil Rogers thinks that Andre Dawson should be in the Hall of Fame.
He is wrong. Let's examine why.
If Kirby Puckett is in the Hall, if Tony Perez is in the Hall, if Gary Carter, Ryne Sandberg and Ozzie Smith are in the Hall, Dawson needs to be there, too. He's every bit the player any of the other five are -- although, yes, we're comparing apples to oranges in some cases -- but is undervalued because he hit the Hall of Fame ballot in 2002, the year after Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs and Bret Boone drove in 141 runs.
Tony Perez shouldn't be in the Hall. Gary Carter is arguable, but he's a catcher. Ryno...eh. Ozzie Smith is in for defense and one memorable home run in the postseason. So, yes, you are indeed comparing apples to oranges. The closest actual comparison is Puckett, but Puckett's injury was non-baseball-related, which makes it a special circumstance.
Also, I do not in any way think that Hawk was "undervalued" because of the timing of his Hall of Fame eligibility. Plenty of other guys hit the Hall ballots in the years right after guys on steroids did crazy things. Tony Perez in 2000. The selfsame Gary Carter in 2003. Tons of roided-out people put up crazy numbers in those years, too.
Only his teammates and peers understood the daily battle he went through to get onto the field with knees that only an orthopedic surgeon could love...he destroyed them playing with reckless abandon on the concrete-like artificial turf at Montreal's Olympic Stadium. Maybe this wasn't as tragic as the irreversible glaucoma that ended Puckett's career in 1995, after 12 seasons. But there's reason to give Dawson the benefit of the doubt in terms of his Hall of Fame candidacy.
No there isn't. It's sad that he ruined his knees. But I doubt anyone will give Nomar Garciaparra "the benefit of the doubt" because he was hit on the wrist by Al Reyes in 1999 and was never the same player. Dawson had knee problems, and it hurt him, but you simply can't take potential or "what-ifs" into account.
No eligible player has ever collected as many hits (2,774) or RBI (1,591) without becoming a Hall of Famer -- a claim that Dawson will almost certainly pass to Harold Baines (2,866 hits, 1,628 RBI) when he goes onto the ballot a year from now.
It's not good for your cause to point out that another borderline HOFer has more hits and RBI than the guy you say should be in. But whatever. Here are some career stats for Hawk:
HR: 438 SB: 314 SB.
Not bad. But there's a lot of guys who had more.
OBP: a paltry .323. SLG: .482. OPS+: 119 RC27: 5.44
He is the very definition of a really good, but not great, ballplayer. By all accounts (I saw him play but don't remember) he was an excellent fielder -- very toolsy and all that. Great arm, fast, big, strong, whatever. But the numbers -- even in the clean era -- don't lie. There are lots of guys with much higher OPS+, for example, who are not close to the Hall. His career SLG doesn't get him within whiffing distance of the top 100 of all time. The 438 HR are good for 32nd all-time, which is obviously really good. But Dave Kingman had 442.
Look -- he was awesome. But he was not HOF calibre. If he hadn't been so injured, I have no doubt he'd be in. But he was injured a lot. So he's out. And for the record, it's not like he had to retire at 34. He played in 21 different seasons.
Dawson, who was such a good athlete that Davey Johnson started him in center field and Eric Davis in left in the 1987 All-Star Game, was the first player to ever put together 12 consecutive seasons in which he finished with double-figure home run and stolen base totals. He piled up 45 extra-base hits in 15 consecutive seasons, becoming the sixth name on a list that included only Henry Aaron, Stan Musial, Willie Mays, Mel Ott and Honus Wagner.
This is why people hate stat geeks. If you invent arbitrary categories -- even more arbitrary than the ones we use in standard discussions -- you can make an argument for anybody. I especially hate the "consecutive seasons" thing, because it punishes all-time greats who like missed part of a year due to WWII and stuff. Or guys who just had one year where they missed like 40 games due to a freak injury in an otherwise durable career. Or whatever. Also, in this specific case, 45 XBH...who cares? 45? That's 18 HR and 27 2B? You want to hang your HOF hat on that?
On the picture-perfect day he was enshrined into the Hall last summer, Sandberg took time to campaign for Dawson...
"No player in baseball history worked harder, suffered more or did it better than Andre Dawson," Sandberg said. "He's the best I've ever seen. I watched him win an MVP for a last-place team, and it was the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen in baseball. He did it the right way, the natural way, and he did it in the field and on the bases and in every way, and I hope he will stand up here some day."
I include this only because I love how bad Ryno is at talking. Look at that last sentence. It's like retarded Dr. Seuss.
Sandberg's comment about "the natural way,'' was, of course, a shot at the Jose Canseco generation of illegally-enhanced, often one-dimensional sluggers. The numbers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Bonds and others put up from 1997 through 2003 diminished -- at least in reflection during that time -- the career statistics of hitters from the 1980s and early '90s, including Dawson and Jim Rice.
I don't buy this argument either. Rice was a borderline case before the steroids thing exploded. Dawson would have been just as borderline if he had retired in 1994.
Just for kicks: Jim Ed , in 1700 fewer AB, has only 50 fewer HR, and a higher career OBP, SLG, OPS+, RC27, etc. He won an MVP, like Hawk. And I'd still say Rice is at best borderline.
