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TODAY: Monday, May 15
April Archives



MONDAY, APRIL 3
From time to time, I'm told by readers that I occasionally write as if I don't enjoy the game. This could not, I assure you, be further from the truth. My love for baseball runs wide and deep within me, though sometimes perhaps that love does not come through in this space as it should.

Once or twice per year, something happens that brings my love for the game welling up. A couple of years ago, it was Barry Bonds getting intentionally walked with the bases loaded. Last fall it was my first game at Fenway Park. And the latest instance came yesterday, as I watched a new documentary titled "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg." The film is not, it should probably be said, a masterpiece of the form. It's not quite as good as "Hoop Dreams" or "Roger and Me," and in five years it will likely be forgotten by anyone who's not Jewish, or an aficionado of baseball history, or a Detroit Tigers fan.

Nevertheless, I spent most of the movie wiping tears from my cheeks, as I watched and listened to people whose lives were so profoundly touched by both Greenberg and, in a larger sense, the game itself. I'm no blind nostalgist; for a variety of reasons, I would rather be a baseball fan in 2001 than in 1941. At the same time, it's wonderful to watch the old film of players like Charlie Gehringer, Lou Gehrig, Bob Feller, and scores more. It's wonderful to see the gloves on the field, and Tiger Stadium in all its glory. I watch these things and I think of "The Natural," in which Roy Hobbs says from his hospital bed, "God, I love this game."

"The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg" is playing all over the country, sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week or more. I suggest you check the web page that lists upcoming screenings. I also suggest that, if you love baseball, you see the movie.

50 bombs for Bags?
Jeff Bagwell is, along with Tim Wakefield and Jeff Manto, one of my favorite players. Not because I think he's a great guy -- maybe he is, maybe he's not -- but simply because he's a wonderful player, a great hitter who does everything else well, too.

That said, I've been reading a lot of silly predictions for Bagwell's 2000 performance. Namely, that he's going to explode for 50 or (gasp!) 60 home runs. Why? Because last year, Bagwell hit 30 home runs on the road, but only 12 in the Astrodome.

I love facts. And that, my friends is a hard, cold fact.

Unfortunately, to extrapolate from that fact the expectation that Bagwell will hit 50-odd home runs is ... well, it's some sort of faulty logic that I can't identify by name. I only know that it's faulty logic.

Bagwell's home run splits last season were a statistical anomaly, plain and simple. From 1994 through 1998, Bagwell hit 91 home runs in the Astrodome, 77 on the road. I'll repeat that, just so we're clear on everything.

From 1994 through 1998, Bagwell hit 91 home runs in the Astrodome, and 77 -- 14 fewer -- away from the Astrodome.

And then last year, probably for no other reason than happenstance, Bagwell hit significantly more home runs on the road than he did at home. Now, should this one year count for more than all the previous years? Of course it should not.

I suppose I should rejoice merely because someone's paying attention to home/road splits. But looking at splits can be worse than not looking at splits, if you don't look at enough of them. And in this case, it's quite obvious that one year's worth of home/road splits simply doesn't tell us all that we need to know.

How many home runs will Jeff Bagwell hit this year? He will, most likely, hit around 20 bombs on the road, as he usually does. And if Enron Field is truly more homer-friendly than was the Astrodome, Bagwell will probably hit between 20 and 25 at home. Thus, I think we can expect him to hit somewhere between 40 and 45 home runs. And be, as usual, a fantastic player.

Getting back to the opening of this column, I suspect some of you, in this discussion of statistics and logical fallacy, might once again find evidence that I don't love baseball, aside from perhaps the hard, cold statistical analysis that sometimes characterizes my work.

John Keats believed that Isaac Newton, by reducing the rainbow to its prismatic colors, had also destroyed its poetry. But as Richard Dawkins recently wrote, "Keats could hardly have been more wrong ... Science is, or ought to be, the inspiration for great poetry."

This is, I suppose, only tangentially relevant to the subject at hand. But my point is that knowing more about baseball need not make it less enjoyable. In fact, it's my great love for baseball that drives me to understand it, and greater understanding leads to even greater love. What's more, it's my great love for baseball that compels me to occasionally expose the shortcomings of the men who administer or play the sport. There is, in the end, absolutely nothing wrong with baseball that a little love, and a lot of common sense, couldn't fix.

TUESDAY, APRIL 4
Yesterday I read, yet again, that Ken Griffey "is the best player of his era."

One can, I suppose, make that argument. But winning that argument ... well, nobody's done it yet, at least not to my satisfaction. Is Griffey the second best? Perhaps, assuming that we exclude pitchers.

But the best? Only if you're unwilling to accept the majority of the evidence that can be brought to bear on the subject. Let's look at the most compelling evidence, the basic building blocks of offensive production:

                 OBP  Slug   OPS
Young Bonds     .409  .559   968
Young Griffey   .380  .569   949

The difference here is, I hope, obvious if not overwhelming. Both men have been fearsome sluggers, but Griffey simply hasn't been quite as all-around productive as Barry Bonds. Or for that matter, Mickey Mantle. And the reason is that Griffey draws 70-80 walks per season rather than 100-plus.

What else is there?

Bonds has been the better basestealer, or at least the more prolific. In 11 seasons, Griffey has stolen 167 bases, at a fine 74 percent success rate. In 14 seasons, Bonds has stolen 460 bases, at a 78 percent success rate.

Intangibles? Hey, neither of these guys is considered a paragon of clubhouse leadership. For what it's worth, though, Bonds has three MVP trophies on his mantel, Griffey just one. And you know that MVP voters do love their intangibles.

Defense? Both Griffey and Bonds have been excellent outfielders. Junior's got a few more Gold Gloves, but I'm not sure he earned all of them. Still, a great defensive center fielder is more valuable than a great defensive left fielder. And it's certainly possible that Griffey's defense does indeed lift him above Bonds in career value.

I don't think that it does, however. I rate Bonds No. 1 of his era, followed by Griffey, Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens, with those latter three in no particular order. (Rickey Henderson could be placed in this group as well, but I excluded him because his best years don't really overlap with Griffey's.)

I simply believe that Bonds' edge in OPS (especially when you consider their home ballparks) and steals gives him the slightest edge over Griffey. And speaking of OPS, I do believe we're making some progress. Witness the following:

    Rob,

    I am, as we metaphorically speak, watching the A's opening game on the local network. Instead of the Holy Trinity of batting statistics -- batting average, home runs, RBI -- they display OBP and slugging percentage, plus the total (although they don't call it OPS). The announcers noted this departure from the norm in the first inning, explaining that the A's front office believes that these numbers provide a much more accurate measurement of a player's offensive contributions.

    Do you suppose it's coincidental that this same front office built one of the best young teams in the game? I just wonder why they make a point of publicizing their heretical beliefs. You'd think that they would want to keep the edge as long as they can.

    Chip Little

Thanks for writing, Chip. Apparently, Athletics GM Billy Beane is responsible for these new graphics and of course it's no coincidence that Beane has also built an offensive powerhouse in Oakland. I have written about this before, but Beane is simply the No. 1 general manager in the game today in terms of understanding what makes a productive hitter.

I received three or four messages about this, but Chip was the only correspondent who wondered the same thing I did ... Is Beane risking the loss of his competitive advantage, like a brilliant horse-racing handicapper who publishes a book explaining his methods in detail?

Probably not. First of all, GMs from other clubs don't have the time to watch many Oakland Athletics broadcasts. And second, most of them are far too stubborn to let something like evidence color their thinking.

I'll say this, though; we are witnessing something of a sea change. As I've written in various places, the success of the Yankees and Athletics cannot forever be ignored. There are, right now, young people watching Athletics and Yankees games on TV, and -- yes -- reading this column, and someday a few of them will be running major league baseball teams. And when that happens, when eight or ten teams are built on OBP rather than two or three, then I will truly feel sorry for the pitchers. Because while you might think the hitters are having fun now, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5
Though one could argue that the Opening Day took place in Tokyo, and our Opening Day took place yesterday, my Opening Day finally arrived yesterday when the Mariners hosted the Red Sox. As I'm sure you've heard, Pedro Martinez simply took up where he left off last fall.

The Red Sox pitching had better be great, because that lineup they've got against left-handed pitchers looks pretty pathetic. Of course, without Carl Everett last year it looked even worse, and all the Sox did was win 94 games. But I still say the Old Towne Team is at least one bat short of a full roster.

Oh, something weird happened as I was entering Safeco Field. In the old days (i.e. last season), as you went through the turnstiles some old guy would tear off the bottom part of your ticket, and you would keep the upper section.

No longer. Now as you're spinning the turnstile, a young person with a scanner "reads" your ticket, and you keep the whole thing, perforations be damned. It was strange, and in a way I'm not still sure if I actually went to the opener. After all, I still have the whole ticket, don't I?

At the risk of sounding negative, I would now like to write something negative about attending baseball games in Seattle.

Last night, the pre-game festivities included a ceremonial opening of the roof. So far, so good. Unfortunately, before long the P.A. announcer ominously intoned, "Fans, storms are moving in. So the roof will now be closed." Let's hope the Mariners are better at scouting amateur players than forecasting the weather. Because for the next three hours, the sun shone off Seattle's downtown, visible to us between the left-field bleachers and the roof that should not have been there.

This was pretty much par for the course, as the M's spent much of last July and August making stupid decisions about the roof. They apparently didn't learn much. Nor did they figure out how to run concession stands. Swear to God, during my post-game walk from Safeco Field to ESPN.com's secret skyscraper lair, I ran across three acquaintances, and all three of them had horror stories about the concessions. Shortages, health violations, long waits, incompetent personnel ... you name it, and I heard a complaint about it.

I've got my own horror story ... OK, so it's not really a horror story. But it might give you the willies, if you're prone to such things. Anyway, it was chilly at Safeco Field, and for some reason I settled in my seat an hour before game time. I don't drink coffee, I don't eat meat, and hot chocolate is real hard to find at Safeco Field, which doesn't leave much in the way of possibilities when it comes to warm food. So that left ... (drum roll, please) ... ballpark nachos! All right, so that cheese they use is somewhat questionable, but at least it warms the stomach, right?

Not at Safeco Field, it doesn't. The first bite was merely lukewarm, and the meal went downhill from there. And you know what really made me mad? That I was stupid enough to fall for this gag again. I bought nachos at Safeco last summer -- after giving up on the "pizza."

And that's what is so frustrating about Safeco Field. The dunderheads who run the place are still more worried about pre-game fireworks and similar silliness than the simple things, like making sure the number of hot-dog buns equal the number of hot dogs, and not putting a roof over our heads when the sun is shining.

In the long run, of course, the Mariners will sink or swim according to the product they put on the field. But last night, people weren't talking about Jamie Moyer or Alex Rodriguez, they were talking about the concession stands and the roof. And they weren't saying nice things about either, which makes you wonder if running a ballpark is really that difficult.

A few notes from the Department of You Might Have Missed This:

  • Yesterday, I credited Billy Beane with getting OBP, slugging, and their aggregate featured on Athletics TV broadcasts. But while Beane certainly deserves the credit for getting players who do those things well, the credit for getting the numbers on TV goes to producer Mark Wolfson. This is even better, because it means another profession can boast at least one enlightened individual. Hey Mark, I hear ESPN might have a position available ...

  • A lot of starting pitchers are on pretty short leashes for the first week or two of the season. I'm not sure if they should be, but they are; Greg Maddux threw only 81 pitches in his first start, Pedro Martinez threw 108 in his. Not Russ Ortiz, though. In a continuation of the fascinating experiment begun last year, Dusty Baker allowed Ortiz to throw 119 pitches last night.

  • You gotta hand it to the Blue Jays. When they set a record, they really set a record. Last night, the club shattered its Skydome record for fewest paying customers, drawing 13,514 fans with the Royals in town. The previous Skydome low was 20,258. Of course, what's weird here is that the Jays have a pretty good team.

  • That same game, the Royals used the same lineup against right-hander Roy Halladay as they'd used against left-hander David Wells on Monday. For all the talk about the Royals' good young hitters, they have very little depth, which means until somebody gets hurt, you might see the same lineup virtually every day. Just like the '39 Yankees. (And in case you missed it, that's irony.)

    THURSDAY, APRIL 6
    Some stuff I saw on the way over here ...

  • First of all, I hope you'll allow me a few more comments on the Mariners and Safeco Field. In a few days, I'll be back in Boston for the rest of the season, and from there I'll bore you with columns about the Sox rather than the M's ... I just want to say something positive about Safeco Field. They still sell official scorecards for a buck, which is the best deal you'll find inside any mallpark. Very few things frustrate me more than arriving at a Red Sox game at Fenway (for example), only to be told that I have to spend three or four dollars for a yearbook or whatnot if I want to score the game. So thank you, Mariners, for preserving this tiny piece of value.

  • Before last night's game in Seattle, I stopped for supper at a hole-in-the-wall across the street from the Kingdome rubble called Sluggers. The Brewers and Reds were on TV, and the capacity crowd went nuts every time Junior made an out. And he's been making plenty of them. As you may have heard, Griffey has yet to get a ball out of the infield in three games.

  • Junior's going to hit. And of course he's not in danger of losing his job. But there are players out there who are in danger of losing their job, and you know some of them will lose their jobs after going 4-for-29 or something similarly statistically insignificant. With that in mind, I'd like to run a little "First Manager to Panic" contest, the co-winners being the manager who needlessly panics first, and the reader who brings said panicky manager to my attention. I'm the sole judge in this contest and the winners will be ridiculed (manager) and praised (reader) in this space.

  • Monday, Ivan Rodriguez reportedly vowed to draw even fewer walks this year than last year, when he drew 24. A number of readers brought this to my attention, and I suppose it's now incumbent upon me to mock Rodriguez, or perhaps even question his sanity.

    Sounds fun, but my heart's just not in it. Why? Two reasons. One, even if Pudge does try to draw fewer than 24 walks, that's probably setting the bar too low. He's already got two in three games, and I'll be shocked if he doesn't top 25. And two, what's the logical limit to how few walks he might have? The guy walked 24 times last year and won the MVP. So if he walks 20 times, does that mean he's not still a great player? Of course, you wonder why pitchers would ever throw Rodriguez strikes, but that question was just as valid in 1999.

  • Bruce Bochy's a pretty good manager, but the list of managers I'd favor with a four-year contract extension consists of about seven men ... and four of them are dead. The living? Earl Weaver, Bobby Cox and Davey Johnson. The non-living? Connie Mack, John McGraw, Joe McCarthy and Billy Southworth. You can argue for Sparky Anderson, and I'll cave pretty quickly. But Bruce Bochy?.

  • Does this list seem long to you? Joe Randa, Charles Johnson, Brian Daubach, Tony Batista, Gabe Kapler, Ivan Rodriguez, Shannon Stewart, Vladimir Guerrero, Jason Giambi and Jeromy Burnitz ... Those are the guys who have already hit two home runs in a game this season.

  • Last night, Mo Vaughn stole his first base since 1997 and Mike Morgan earned his first save since 1991 (with four shutout innings, no less). I admire guys like Morgan. He's a pitcher by profession, so by God he's going to pitch until somebody comes and takes his uniform. And Morgan won't give it up without a fight.

  • Regarding the burning question of Harold Baines' fitness for the Hall of Fame, let's all take a deep breath before we do anything foolish. First of all, as reader Dan Gatti points out, Baines is not "the best DH ever." That distinction rightly belongs to Edgar Martinez, or will after another year or two if you think Martinez hasn't been a DH long enough. Second, it's definitely time for us to redefine what a Hall of Fame hitter is. Because of the DH and, I suspect, improved conditioning methods, the list of players with 3,000 hits is growing faster than a magical beanstalk. And thirdly, Baines has essentially never been a great player. He's been a good one for a long time, much as Jim Kaat and Tommy John were. I know that Kaat and John aren't in the Hall because they didn't reach 300 wins, but should a number that starts with a 3 and ends with zeroes be so important? I admire Baines for his longevity and his consistency, but being consistently good for a long time shouldn't get you into Cooperstown. Not in the 21st century.

    FRIDAY, APRIL 7
    A few columns ago, I off-handedly mentioned that I'd rather be a baseball fan in 2001 than in 1941, and the next day I offered a couple of reasons. Well, here's another one: the Internet.

    Yesterday at around 12:20 Pacific Time, I was fooling around with my computer. Started with the Royals' box score (yea, team!), and then took a virtual trip through the rest of the games ... and discovered that Francisco Cordova had a no-hitter through six innings. After shooting off the obligatory e-mail to friends and colleagues, I settled down to enjoy the festivities. First, I clicked on ESPN.com's GameCast of the Pirates and Astros, where aside from the play-by-play, one can find the all-important pitch count.

    Why all-important? Because of Cordova's history. On July 12, 1997, Cordova threw nine no-hit innings, but was lifted from a scoreless tie after throwing 121 pitches. Coincidentally, that day he faced, just as he did Thursday, Chris Holt and the Astros in Pittsburgh. Having thrown only 76 pitches through six innings yesterday, Cordova looked to be in pretty good shape, though of course many pitchers are put on a short leash this early in the season.

    Aside from needing nine pitches to dispatch Caminiti, Cordova breezed through the seventh. Then I got a message from Keith Law, reminding me that I could listen to the radio broadcast over the Web (D'oh! Why didn't I think of that?). So a few seconds later, there I sat on a kitchen floor in Seattle, listening to the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Houston Astros through a tiny speaker on a computer that fits in an attache case.

    Mitch Meluskey broke up the no-hit bid with a double off the center-field fence, but it was still a thrill to hear it happen, as it happened. (By the way, Tim Bogar followed with another double, and almost as quickly as the no-hitter died, so did the shutout.)

    Other stuff
    From the Department of It's About Time, we have Oakland Athletics infielder Frank Menechino. He won a utility job in spring training and has been starting at second base due to the injury that's shelved Randy Velarde. He's also hit two home runs in three games, which is a fluke.

    Menechino, on the other hand, is no fluke. He's 28 and is just now getting a chance to play, but that doesn't mean he's not a player. Menechino, even if you assume that that he's not good enough to play every day, is the perfect bench player, and frankly I don't understand why it took him this long to win a major league job. Menechino's career on-base percentage in the minor leagues is .407. And no, he's not a skinny little slap hitter; his career slugging percentage in the minors is .442, which is plenty respectable for a guy who can play in the middle of the infield.

    Menechino spent most of his professional career in the White Sox system as a second baseman, but they had Ray Durham so he never really had a shot at a regular job there. So a year ago, the Athletics grabbed Menechino in the Rule 5 minor league draft -- that's one smart move -- and then they turned him into a utility player, another smart move. Now the A's have themselves a guy who can play six or seven positions and get on base 35 percent of the time. Like I said, he's the perfect bench player. Most bench players can do just one thing well, or one thing well and one thing passably. But in Menechino, the Athletics have a guy who does two things well, and I suspect he'll have a career something like Rich Amaral's, but better because Amaral didn't really get his start until he was 30.

    In response to an item in yesterday's column, a good number of you took me to task for taking the Padres to task for taking Bruce Bochy to the nearest bank vault. Look, I'm not saying that Bochy's not a good manager. I'm just saying that four years is too long an extension for anybody that's not a great manager, and aside from anecdotal "evidence," I see little proof that Bochy is great.

    To be a bit more precise -- and this is not an original idea -- most managers are good in some situations, and not so good in others. So unless you know which situation your team will be in three or four years from today, it doesn't make sense to sign your manager that far ahead. And where's the benefit? Wouldn't a two- or three-year extension have sent the same message, that Bochy will be here for the long haul? And yes, I know that the Padres can always fire him if things change, but that means eating $1 million per season, and the club is already blowing enough millions on Randy Myers.

    And finally, yesterday I announced the Panicky Manager Contest, and today I want to clarify something. To be eligible, our panicky manager must do something based on insufficient data that also is stupid. Thus, if Jimy Williams releases Gary Gaetti after only 17 at-bats, that wouldn't qualify because releasing Gaetti would be a smart move. By the same token, if Bobby Valentine gives Jon Nunnally a regular job next week, that also does not qualify.

    Remember, it has to be panicky and stupid. And please, no more predictions or nominations. Hold the e-mail until something actually happens.

    (P.S. I'll be visiting Tacoma tonight to see Ryan Anderson make his first Triple-A start, and I'll have a full report in this space Saturday morning.)

    SATURDAY, APRIL 8
    In 1997, a tall and skinny kid named Ryan Anderson threw 51 innings of high school baseball. In those 51 innings, Anderson allowed seven hits. In those 51 innings, Anderson struck out 133 hitters.

    That summer, due mostly to concerns about his personality, his coachability, and any number of other ilities, the tall and skinny kid tumbled in the draft, tumbled all the way to No. 19, when the Mariners took a flier (yeah, right) on the tall and skinny kid. Now it's almost three years later, and the tall and skinny kid's not in high school any more ... but you sure couldn't guess that from last night's performance. In his first Triple-A start, Anderson threw six-plus innings. In those six-plus innings, Anderson allowed two hits. And in those six-plus innings, Anderson struck out 10 hitters.

    I hadn't seen anything like it since the summer of 1989, when I watched Andy Benes make his last minor-league start before getting called up by the Padres. Benes wasn't close to perfect that night, and I think he even lost the game. But you could just tell he didn't belong there, that he was essentially playing a different game.

    That's Ryan Anderson.

    Last summer in Wichita, I watched Eric Gagne and Chad Durbin engage in a wonderful pitcher's duel. Both eventually jumped straight from Double-A to the majors, and both have a good chance at long and profitable major league careers. But while both Gagne and Durbin were outstanding in that game, they never looked unhittable, even though each of them allowed just a few hits.

    Ryan Anderson, on the other hand, was essentially unhittable last night. Yes, he did allow two hits. The first of them, off the end of Doug Mientkiewicz's bat, was a pathetic little line drive, hardly deserving of the name, which squeaked through the infield. And the second was a grounder in the hole that the shortstop fielded after taking a circuitous route to the ball that didn't leave him enough time to throw out the hitter. But Anderson had no-hitter stuff, and if he's allowed to make 24 starts for Tacoma -- he won't be -- he'll throw a no-hitter this year, pitch limits notwithstanding.

    There simply aren't many 20-year-old pitchers who can take the mound and make Triple-A hitters look like orangutans trying to play baseball, yet that's exactly what Anderson did. And if he does it a few more times, it's going to be awfully hard to keep him down, just as it was hard to keep Andy Benes down.

    So what do you do with him? Remember, the Mariners already have a pretty good rotation, and their Triple-A rotation is stocked, too. (Some have suggested that the Tacoma rotation is better than the Milwaukee rotation. They exaggerate, but not by much.)

    This is the first chance for Pat Gillick to show his mettle. His hands were pretty much tied in the Griffey situation, John Olerud came to Seattle wrapped up in a bow, and the signings of Mark McLemore and Stan Javier were, though perhaps canny, not particularly exciting.

    So here's where Gillick finally gets to earn his keep. The Mariners currently have seven legitimate major league starters (or eight if you count Ken Cloude, who's back in Tacoma but could easily be a No. 4 starter with the proper instruction). What does Gillick do with all these starters? Does he hold them as insurance, like a poker player with an ace or two up his sleeve. Or does he convert that surplus talent into something he can use, now?

    Gillick's No. 1 priority, at this particular moment, has to be the care and feeding of The Giant Who Could Pitch. At some point, the welfare of Anderson might be superseded by the effort to win a division title, but right now Anderson's gotta be No. 1. And if things go well, these two imperatives might meet and, after a short courtship, live happily ever after.

    I think Anderson should make three or four more starts for Tacoma, just so everyone knows that he's as good, or nearly as good, as he looked last night. Once that's been proved to everyone's satisfaction, there's not much point in keeping him down. My impression is that Jim Slaton, the pitching coach in Tacoma, is very good at his job. But it looks like Anderson's just about got stuff figured out, so he might as well get used to his next pitching coach and (a bit more ominously) his next manager in Seattle. (I think Lou Piniella will like Anderson, whose first pitch last night was aimed a few inches from leadoff hitter Chad Allen's chin.)

    So assuming that he continues to pitch well, the M's might as well promote him in early or mid-May. Then, I suggest, they should work him out of the bullpen, two or three innings at a time. Given the run production these days, I don't think it would be too hard to get Anderson some steady work. And if that goes well for a month or two, that's when you trade Brett Tomko or Gil Meche or John Halama. Tomko's the most likely to go, because he's not one of Piniella's favorite baseball players. And then Anderson slides into the rotation -- on a strict pitch count, we can only hope -- and everyone can start filling the newsprint and the Internet and the airwaves with the Randy Johnson comparisons.

    To be sure, there are similarities. Both pitchers are nearly seven feet tall, both pitchers often remind you that they're not Rhodes Scholars, and both pitchers feature mid-90s fastballs and nuclear sliders (though their sliders are slightly different pitches, Anderson's being almost slurvish).

    But Anderson and Johnson are not exactly the same. For one thing, Anderson is much further along in his development than was Johnson at the same age. Anderson's just this far from being a Rookie of the Year candidate. When Johnson was 20, he was still pitching at USC, and in fact he didn't enjoy his first productive major league season until he was 26. Also, you know how Johnson scares the bejeezus out of so many left-handed hitters, because he throws from a low three-quarters delivery? Anderson's arm angle is slightly higher, closer to true three-quarters, so the lefty hitters stand in there and take their hacks. It doesn't really do them any good, but at least they're not terrified. And finally, Anderson's already got a credible change-up. He threw seven of them last night, including one that completed a strikeout.

    In a nutshell, if Ryan Anderson doesn't get hurt, he could be the next Randy Johnson. But with a five- or six-year head start.

    And speaking of Tacoma pitchers ...
    Melvin Bunch, who pitched in Seattle for a moment last year and wound up leading the Pacific Coast League with a 3.10 ERA, is currently pitching in Japan for the Chunichi Dragons. And when we say "pitching," we mean pitching. In Bunch's first start, he tossed seven-plus shutout innings. And in his second start, a few nights ago, Bunch became only the fourth American pitcher to throw a no-hitter in Japan, blanking the Yokohama Baystars.

    MONDAY, APRIL 10
    News and notes in response to shouts and rumors ...

  • I hope that no one is surprised by the latest flap in Cincinnati, where Junior Griffey has requested a switch No. 24, which he wore in Seattle but is off-limits with the Reds because it also happens to have been worn by soon-to-be Hall of Famer Tony Perez.

    As anyone who's spent any time around Griffey will quite happily relate -- as long as it's off the record -- Griffey often lives up to his other nickname, "Kid." And after less than a week of troubles, isn't it just like a kid to resort to superstition, as if some sort of lucky number will fix his swing?

    Of course, you and I know that time will fix The Kid's swing. What's funny about this situation is that The Kid doesn't seem to know it.

  • Ran across the following in Sunday's Seattle Times:

    Oakland center fielder Terrence Long had a .615 slugging percentage in spring training but was sent to Class AAA because he went against the organizational demand for disciplined hitting. He had 67 at-bats before finally taking a walk.

    Perhaps I'm reading too much between the lines, but I sense that the author of this nugget finds something Draconian in this "organization demand" (which does, to some extent, exist). Or perhaps Long's demotion is meant to send a message to the other young players in the organization: "Mind your balls and strikes, fellas, or it won't matter if you slug .615 or .815, you'll still be carrying your own luggage this summer."

    I'm not inside Billy Beane's head, but Long's failure to stick was probably not designed to set some sort of example for any farmhands considering blind impatience. Rather, Long was sent down for a very simple reason -- if he can't control the strike zone, it's unlikely he'll be a productive hitter in the major leagues. It is, of course, highly unlikely he would maintain that .615 slugging percentage during the regular season. At this stage of Long's development, .400 would be a welcome surprise. Throw in a .300 on-base percentage, which is what you get if you don't draw any walks, and you've got a guy who shouldn't be in the major leagues. And that's why Long is not.

  • This last week I received yet another pointed object lesson in the irrelevance of small samples. Tuesday night at Safeco Field, there was a chill in the air and the wind was coming in from the north, i.e. left-center field. Any number of hard-hit balls fell short of the fence, leading any number of my fellow fans to predict, once again, that Safeco will be inordinately tough on power hitters until the weather turns. And for those of you who don't live in the lovely Pacific Northwest, summer officially begins on July 4. So according to the "it's a pitcher's park in the spring" argument, we should expect three months of soccer-like scores in Mariner home games.

    But while the temperature has been cool in each of the next five games, the wind has been a bit friendlier. It hasn't been blowing out, mind you; it just hasn't been blowing in. And in those five games alone, the M's and their opponents -- first the Red Sox, then the Yankees -- have combined for 18 home runs, many of them opposite-field shots that didn't look particularly impressive coming off the bat.

    What's amazing is how, in the face of no particular evidence one way or the other, the players continue to assume the worst (for themselves).

    John Mabry: "They're carrying, but they're not carrying far. And some balls are hit well, but they're not going out."

    Alex Rodriguez: "Yeah, there have been a lot of home runs. But there have also been a lot of balls that perhaps could have been home runs and weren't even close, so don't let that deceive you. ... If we get caught up in trying to hit home runs, we're going to be in a lot of trouble. If we keep doing what we're doing, playing small ball and letting home runs be accidents, then we're going to be fine."

    A true commitment to "small ball" in the Year 2000 would be comically ineffective. Fortunately for fans of the Mariners, and any other club silly enough to propose this strategy, no manager is stupid enough to truly commit to such tactics. Sure, managers will still commit the obvious gaffe -- Lou Piniella ordered his cleanup hitter to bunt in Saturday's game -- but the overall effect of these occasional missteps barely constitutes a blip on the radar screen of run production.

  • Cubs manager Don Baylor has suggested finding some time off for Sammy Sosa, who has missed only three games in the last three seasons.

    This is something about baseball that I've never understood. Why, in a blowout, do you so often see star players on the field in the ninth inning? One could, I suppose, construct a study that would help answer the following question:

    What is larger, the chance of overcoming (or blowing) a large, late-innings lead, or the chance that a future game (or games) will be lost because one of your players is injured while trying to overcome (or protect) a large, late-innings lead?

    I would err on the side of caution, in part because there's a side benefit to resting your regulars when you can, that being the chance to give the bench players a few extra at-bats here and there. And that should be considered a worthy goal, for any number of reasons.

    TUESDAY, APRIL 11
    Monday night at Enron Field, the Astros and Cardinals combined to hit eight home runs, two more than had ever been hit in a major league game in Houston before. On a related note ...

      Rob,

      I'm not sure if you have addressed this question or not, but according to the 1999 MLB rulebook, foul lines need to be at least 325 feet from home to the foul pole (1.04, note A). However, both new ballparks in Houston and San Francisco have foul lines that are less than this. I know that both parks have sizable walls in those areas, but I found nothing in the rulebook stating that a large wall was an acceptable replacement for a short foul line.

      Thanks for you time,

      Keith Dawson

    This subject has been a popular one in my e-mail box lately, and I'm running Keith's letter because his is the most recent and we both went to the same college. Anyway, there is indeed a rule about this. Here's the relevant section of the aforementioned Rule 1.04, straight from Official Baseball Rules (2000 Edition):

    NOTE (a) Any playing field constructed by a professional club after June 1, 1958, shall provide a minimum distance of 325 feet from home base to the nearest fence, stand or other obstruction on the right and left field foul lines, and a minimum distance of 400 feet to the center field fence.

    At Enron Field in Houston, it's 315 feet down the left-field line.

    At Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, it's 307 feet down the right-field line.

    How do the new ballparks square with the rulebook? Obviously, they don't. What they do square with is MLB's rapacious desire for greater revenues. It's generally believed that baseball fans enjoy home runs more than they enjoy deep fly balls, and it's a general working principle in the Selig Era that revenues trump rules.

    So MLB granted waivers to the Astros and Giants, simple as that. The Commissioner's Office might not be able to institute revenue sharing or a salary cap, but ignoring the rulebook is something that appears workable.

    Let's dip once more into the ol' e-mailbag ...

      Rob,

      I'm sure you have already been mailed about this, but we seem to have a case of "stopper" misuse. I assume you have seen the article on ESPN that refers to Mike Trombley as a "stopper" and a closer within a sentence of each other. It seems the noble fight for the correct use of terminology has been struck another blow.

      -- Matt Doughty

    As some of you might remember, a few weeks ago I railed against this misuse of "stopper." Well, today I come before you with my hat in my hands, humbled by my intellectual inadequacies.

    You see, Trombley might well be the Orioles' new stopper after all. According to The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, the first citation of the word "stopper" in a baseball sense referred to ... a relief pitcher. In 1948, the San Francisco Examiner reported Boston Red Sox reliever Tex Hughson saying, "I had been known as the 'stopper' for the Sox for a long time and I really had to be on September 13, 1946, in Cleveland, the day we clinched the American League championship."

    There's another citation from 1954, again referring to a club's most effective relief pitcher.

    Interestingly, Dickson lists the stopper-as-starter definition first, suggesting that it's now the more common of the two. But in my recent experience, both definitions seem to be used about equally. And if that's the case, then it seems to me that the older definition is the more valid. So let's pick that one, and stop using the other. Yes, I'm reversing myself, which is something I'll do occasionally when presented with compelling evidence.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the wonderful English tradition of multiple meanings for single words. This strange practice keeps lexicographers in clover on three continents. But you can't have a word carry different, and almost diametrically opposed, meanings within a particular field.

    One might reasonably ask if we need another term that means "closer." No, we don't. But I harbor a fantasy that, one day, managers will again use their best relief pitchers not in the ninth inning, but at any crucial juncture late in the game. A reliever used in those situations would be a true "stopper," in the sense of stopping potential rallies.

    Before I let you go, I'd like to explode a myth well known to students of baseball history and fans of the Milwaukee Brewers.

    If you've heard it once, you've heard it a hundred times ... As a player, Bob Uecker, now a broadcaster for the Brewers, couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat, but he did "own" Sandy Koufax.

    Here are, thanks to The Retro Sheet (house organ of my favorite charitable organization, Retrosheet), Uecker's career stats against Koufax:

    AB  H  2B 3B HR  BB SO  RBI   Avg   OBP  Slug
    38  7   2  0  1   3  2   8   .184  .244  .316
    

    There were, it must be said, hitters who fared even more poorly against Koufax. But the numbers above could hardly be described as anything better than awful.

    If you're looking for somebody who really> owned Koufax, then Hank Aaron is your man ...

     AB   H  2B 3B HR  BB SO  RBI   Avg   OBP  Slug
    116  42   6  3  7  14 12   16  .362  .431  .647
    

    Uecker and Aaron were teammates in Milwaukee for two seasons, so maybe somebody just confused them. They do look so much alike.

    WEDNESDAY, APRIL 12
    Yesterday, I quoted Tex Hughson referring to himself as a "stopper" in 1948 while remembering his performance in a pennant-clinching game in 1946, thus proving (in my mind) that this first known use of that term referred to a relief pitcher.

    Unfortunately, I had Hughson's 1946 season confused with his 1949 season. In '49, Hughson pitched in 29 games, all but two of them in relief. He pitched poorly (5.33 ERA), but I remember him from that season because he plays a role in David Halberstam's book, "Summer of '49."

    Unfortunately for my credibility, in '46 Hughson rarely pitched in relief: 39 games, 35 starts. And Hughson started (and won) on September 13, the pennant-clinching game that served as fodder for that aforementioned quote. So it turns out that our first known reference to relief pitchers as "stoppers" actually came in 1954, from the pages of "Collier's" magazine.

    I've decided to leave this in your hands. As I see the issue, it breaks down like this. We can use "stopper" to describe ace starters, those who stop losing streaks, or we can use "stopper" to describe relievers who stop rallies. There are, it must be said, problems with both of these.

    If you're talking about starting pitchers, there's really no difference between a "stopper" and an "ace." It's not like some great pitchers have magical abilities to stop losing streaks, and some don't. So if we use "stopper" like this, essentially we're merely creating a synonym for "ace," a synonym that's probably not necessary.

    Speaking of synonyms, if you're talking about relief pitchers, "stopper" means the same as "closer" (the Cincinnati Reds notwithstanding). As I mentioned yesterday, I'd love to see teams use their best relievers when most needed, rather than to protect three-run leads in the ninth. But I'm not holding my breath.

    So in today's game, we really have no use for "stopper." But the word isn't going anywhere, so let's pick one definition and stick with it. Rather, I'd like you to pick one definition, and then I'll stick with it. Vote early and vote often.

    A few readers pointed out my mistake with Hughson, and all of them have my thanks. Next, I'll print an e-mail that does not make me look stupid ...

      Rob,

      In your column yesterday, you addressed the Astros' and Giants' rulebook violations while building their new ballparks. Another clear violation of the rules occurred in Japan, where the Cubs and Mets wore advertisements on their jersey sleeves and on their batting helmets. Rule 1.11(h) of the Official Baseball Rules is quite clear on this ... "No part of the uniform shall include patches or designs relating to commercial advertisements."

      The uniforms worn in Tokyo are not merely a violation of this rule, but also represent a new low for Major League Baseball.

      Thanks,
      Adam Steinberg

    You're absolutely right, Adam. I commented on this -- the ads on the helmets, at least -- in a prior column, but I completely forgot about Rule 1.11(h), which exists in exactly the form you have quoted. With regard to any alterations of the rules, I note that the latest edition in print states quite clearly, "The Official Playing Rules Committee has adopted no changes for the 2000 season."

    Perhaps there's some sub-rule, so obscure as to escape the type-setter of the Official Baseball Rules, that reads "Rule 1.11(h) may be ignored if most of North America is still in bed."

    Or perhaps Commissioner Bud doesn't bother with rules when there's a dollar to be had.

    Finally, let me close today's missive with something a bit more mysterious than what motivates Bud Selig ... Have you noticed what Carl Everett is doing this year?

    Last week, facing the left-handed Jamie Moyer, Everett batted lefty. Which is kind of weird, given that he's (supposedly) a switch-hitter.

    And yesterday, facing the left-handed Mark Redman, Everett again batted lefty. Which is kind of weird, given that he's still (supposedly) a switch-hitter. Or at least he batted lefty for a bit. After striking out and drawing a walk, Everett finally turned around and batted righty against Redman ... and drove a pitch over the Green Monster for his second homer of the day (the first came against starter Joe Mays).

    I was lucky enough to be at both games. The first time Everett did this (in Seattle), I was so cold and so far from the field that I didn't even notice. I'm ashamed to admit that, but the truth is the truth.

    Yesterday at Fenway, though, I did notice. And while I was surprised the first time (after someone else pointed it out), this time I was truly intrigued. After all, Mark Redman's not known for ... well, for much of anything. So what inspired Everett to spurn convention?

    As it turns out, in spring training Everett announced that he would bat lefty against some lefty finesse pitchers this year. Moyer and Redman both fit that description. Arthur Rhodes and Kent Mercker do not, so Everett batted righty against them. He only batted right-handed against Redman because John Valentin told him, "Why don't you hit one over the Green Monster?"

    So he did. Right-handed, of course. That was his fourth homer, and Everett now has hit twice as many home runs as Darren Lewis -- the incumbent center fielder -- hit all last season. And if Everett can stay healthy enough to play 150 games, the Sox might have a shot to win something. As the guy filling the seat next to mine said after the second home run, "He's gonna hit a lot ovuh the Green Monstuh this yeuh."

    THURSDAY, APRIL 13
    It happened once. I didn't say anything.
    It happened twice. I didn't say anything.

    But now it's happened three times, and I have to say something. For the third time in three nights, the Kansas City Royals won a game with a "walk-off" home run, something that likely happens once or twice every decade, although the Arizona Diamondbacks did pull off the feat last May.

    Monday night, it was Johnny Damon with a solo shot in the bottom of the ninth.

    Tuesday night, it was Brian Johnson with a two-run blast in the bottom of the 12th.

    And Wednesday night it was Rey Sanchez (Rey Sanchez?) with a three-run bomb -- just the 12th home run of his 10-year career -- in the bottom of the ninth, giving the Royals a 7-6 win over the Orioles.

    So if I were in Kansas City, tonight I'd proceed to Kauffman Stadium with all due haste. Because sometime around 4:20 Central Time, Mark Quinn is going to hit a grand slam to beat the O's, 11-9.

    The 7-3 Royals have taken a new nickname, "The Blue Wave." I don't think they've got the talent to really compete for a postseason berth -- 75-80 wins is more realistic -- but one of the nice things about baseball is that occasionally even the bottom-feeders will enjoy their day in the sun.

  • Baseball season brings with it an incredible amount of e-mail in the direction of this (sometimes) humble columnist, so please pardon what may seem to be my over-use of said e-mail. It's just that so many of you raise issues I'd like to address. Speaking of which ...

      Rob --

      I don't know if you have written about this or not, but I would like to hear your comments on The Umpires. We always used to have AL and NL umps, but now there are just MLB umps.

      I have heard several announcers suggest that with a former AL ump now working an NL game, the pitchers and hitters aren't used to his strike zone. Personally, I always thought it was rather nice having separate crews for the leagues, as it helped add some contrast between the two leagues. I guess we should have seen this coming, though, with the introduction of interleague play a few years ago.

      Peter J. Huska

    Thanks for writing, Peter. I've been meaning to write about the umpires since I first noticed their new caps with the red MLB on the crown, but I'm just now getting around to it.

    I am happy to see the umpires consolidated, and supported such a move a year ago (if not earlier). Hey, I love tradition more than most, but there really wasn't that much difference between American and National League umpires anyway. We've always heard a lot about different strike zones in the different leagues, but I watch a lot of baseball, and certainly haven't noticed any difference in recent years.

    So if there's no substantive difference between the umpires, then why maintain an official difference? Consolidating the umpires results in two fine objectives. First, it removes a layer of administration, thus making it easier for the Commissioner's Office to manage their men in blue. And second, at least some umpires should theoretically be able to work more games close to home.

    Before we leave MLB, let me offer a rare word of praise to Bud and his boys. The Lords have finally called a halt to players marking initials and numbers on their caps, which is something that's been driving me nuts for the last couple of seasons. Some of you might reasonably ask, "What's wrong with that?" In the grand scheme of things, not a whole lot. But all those initials and numbers were a distraction if you were watching a game on TV, plus their very presence led broadcasters to waste time commenting on them. (Of course, those rotating advertisements behind the plate are distracting, too, but you know they're not going anywhere.)

    The down side of this new uniform policy is that Derek Bell will no longer be permitted to wear the puffy shirt and the clown pants. Yes, I know that he looked ridiculous in the baggy uniform, but that silly suit was at least a distinguishing characteristic. Now Bell is just another middle-aged ballplayer making more money than he's worth.

  • We have our first serious candidate for the Panicky Manager Award, as yesterday the Devil Rays fired their pitching coach after the grand total of eight games and 72 runs allowed. But while I would agree that firing anyone after eight games is both panicky and probably stupid, I'm going to disallow this nomination (first made by reader Jerry McLaughlin) because this was likely the work of Tampa Bay's general manager, Chuck LaMar, rather than manager Larry Rothschild.

    LaMar did have a great quote about the move, however. "Panic is the furthest thing from our mind," he said.

    By the way, a friend points out that LaMar, despite a stunning lack of success on the field, has been granted two contract extensions in the last two years. Reminds me of a story about a naked emperor ...

  • And finally, in regard to the burning issue on everyone's mind, according to your wishes I shall henceforth use "stopper" only to describe a top relief pitcher. (And as Al Smith points out, "Stopper is the natural antonym for ... you guessed it ... Starter!")

    But I will not use the term to describe pure closers, those pitchers who almost exclusively enter games in the eighth or ninth to protect a lead. Rather, "stopper" will be used to describe great relief pitchers commonly called upon to stop any late rally, even in the seventh inning. Last year, I believe, only Scott Williamson would have qualified for this appellation. But so be it.

    FRIDAY, APRIL 14
    ESPN has created a monster.

    In addition to "walk-off homer," in the last 24 hours I've heard or read, for the first time, the terms "walk-off single" (Carlos Beltran yesterday) and "walk-off win" (the Royals in general).

    Call me a geek if you want, but I love watching the language being created like this, so obviously and so quickly. Three days ago, many of us had never heard "walk-off" used at all, and now it's impossible to check out SportsCenter or ESPN.com without running into the term.

    Will it last? I suspect that it will because, contrary to some opinions I've seen, we need "walk-off." Well, perhaps we don't need that exactly, but we do need something like it. And while "walk-off" might not be perfect, it has the virtue of being firstest with the mostest.

    Let's back up for a moment, as you might be asking, "Why do we need 'walk-off'?" We need it because there's no other term that's quite so specific. Yes, people have been using "game-winning" whatever for a long, long time, but that's simply not specific enough, or at least it's not specific enough in modern usage. Hits in the top of the last inning are sometimes described as "game-winning," and sometimes even hits before the last inning are described as "game-winning." Meanwhile, "walk-off" is both specific and evocative, and I suspect it's here to stay.

    That said, I would prefer that "walk-off" be reserved for home runs -- when the team in the field can only walk off the field, heads hanging in defeat.

    A lot of people have been asking me about the origins of walk-off. Surprisingly, it's been around for some years, Dennis Eckersley apparently having coined the term "walk-off piece" in the early 1990s to describe a game-winning homer. As in, "Kirk Gibson once hit a walk-off piece against me." Its first known appearance in print came six years ago. And why its sudden popularity now? I don't really know, but I do know, friends, that you underestimate the power of ESPN at your own peril.

    One final point, from reader Chris Hirth, who points out that a game-winning home run in the last at-bat in Japan is called "sayonara home run" or "sayonara hit." A game won in the last at-bat is a "sayonara game."

    About the Royals ... let's wait a few more weeks before we award them a wild card. They've been great in close games lately, but the fact is that great teams are characterized by their success in games that are not close. Like it or not, there's a significant amount of luck involved in winning the close ones, and the Royals could almost as easily have lost their last four as won them. And nobody would be talking about what a genius Tony Muser is.

    Just before the season, I predicted 77 wins for the Royals. Based purely on their 8-3 start, I happily revise that upward, to 80 wins. Perhaps that sounds pessimistic, but 80 wins would represent a 16-win improvement over last season, and jumps that big are pretty rare. A .500 or near-.500 record this season would be a wonderful accomplishment given the franchise's current handicaps (financial and organizational). And if things break right and the pitchers stay healthy, they've got a chance to contend in 2001.

    Before you start the weekend, gotta tie up a few more loose ends from old columns:

  • One more think about the walk-off home runs. Many of you, I'm sure, have wondered how rare three in three days is. I asked Tom Ruane, and he was able to check all American League games since 1963, and all National League games since 1974. That's 63 league-seasons, and would you believe it only happened twice in that span? What's more, those two occurrences came in the last two years!

    In 1998, the Tigers hit three straight walk-off homers, beginning on September 17. The first was a three-run shot by Damion Easley to beat the Blue Jays, the second was a solo shot by Tony Clark to lead off the 11th and beat the Twins, and the third was another Easley blow, this one a two-runner to beat Minnesota in the 10th.

    In 1999, the Diamondbacks hit three straight walk-off homers, beginning on May 10. They beat the Expos each time, and the home runs came courtesy of Jay Bell, Luis Gonzalez and Matt Williams.

  • One week ago, Ryan Anderson made his first Triple-A start. I was there, sitting right behind the plate. But I've got it on good authority that the press box was no more full than usual, with only sportswriters from Tacoma and Salt Lake City (the visiting team) covering the game.

    Of course, Anderson pitched brilliantly last Friday, striking out 10 Buzz while allowing just two hits and a walk in 5.2 innings. Well, he pitched again Wednesday night. This time, the media were out in force, but there was no letdown. After two games, here's Anderson's 1999 line:

      IP    H  W   K  R  ER
     11.2   3  3  20  2   2
    

    Anderson permitted just two runs Wednesday night against Sacramento, which arguably features the best lineup in the Pacific Coast League. Those two runs came on one hit, a two-run homer from Roberto Vaz, a non-prospect who was the only left-handed hitter allowed in the lineup against Anderson.

    Two or three more games like this, and it'll be real hard to keep the kid on the farm, no matter how well the big club is playing.

  • Overwhelming opinion dictates that I allow the 1999 version of Derek Lowe to enter the pantheon of "stoppers." I'm still not sold on Keith Foulke, Doug Brocail and Jeff Zimmerman, however, because they weren't allowed to save games. As I wrote yesterday, I am henceforth reserving "stopper" for pitchers asked to pitch at crucial points in the late innings, whatever inning that might be. And I urge you to do the same.

    MONDAY, APRIL 17
    In case you spent the weekend in a cabin in the mountains, here are some highlights from a pretty incredible Sunday afternoon:

  • In Cleveland, the Indians trailed 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth, but won when Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome hit consecutive home runs off John Wetteland. Same game, Chuck Finley struck out four Rangers in the third inning. Finley has now recorded four strikeouts in one inning three times ... and he's the only pitcher to do that more than once. That, my friends, is a freak stat.

  • Another walk-off home run, this one in Boston, courtesy of Carl Everett, who has already become the No. 3 man in the hearts of Fenway Faithful.

  • The Mariners completed an incredible pasting of the Blue Jays in Toronto, winning 19-7 to finish a three-game sweep that saw the M's outscore the Jays 47 to 22. Alex Rodriguez hit three home runs yesterday, and took an early lead in the MVP race. (I know it's incredibly premature to even mention this, but he was my preseason pick so I'm looking to crow while I can.)

  • The Yankees swept the Royals -- and pretty convincingly. I hate to keep hammering on this point, but I'm just curious ... is Tony Muser still a genius? That's a rhetorical question, of course, but I just wonder how many pundits will be talking about the Royals now that they're 8-6 rather than 8-3. Realistically, of course, there's no real difference between those two records.

  • Another in a long series of notes on fan interference. As you probably saw, a young fan in San Francisco cost the Giants three runs Saturday night -- in a game the Giants wound up losing by three runs -- when he reached over the left-field fence and caught a ball that Barry Bonds might well have turned into an out.

    Last night, thanks to the rains in San Francisco, ESPN broadcast the Rockies and Cardinals. In the sixth, speedy Neifi Perez shot a grounder down the first-base (and then the right-field) line. Some brilliant "fan" reached over the short wall and snatched the ball. Perez, who might well have scooted all the way to third base, was instead limited to second by the relevant arbiter. The fan and, unfortunately, his son, were escorted from Coors Field, and rightly so. But even in the parks where this is standard procedure (in some, it is not), is this enough?

    For most fans, it's sad to say, the prize of a baseball worth $10 is worth altering the course of events on the field, and it's worth missing the rest of the game. So as a small step toward remedying this ill, I propose that fans who interfere with baseballs should not only be ejected from the grounds, but should also be forced to relinquish their ill-gotten baseballs. Fans can be trained to stay out of the way, and I believe they should be trained to stay out of the way. Quickly.

  • To this point we've had some interesting candidates for the Panicky Manager Award, but nothing quite panicky enough to merit a winner.

    However, perhaps we should invent some other award for Tony La Russa. Somehow he can't find regular work for J.D. Drew, who at this writing is batting .500, with four home runs in 16 at-bats.

    Using ESPN.com's nifty new sortable team statistics (including OPS!), I was quickly able to determine that Craig Paquette has more at-bats (33) than J.D. Drew. A lot more. Eric Davis has more at-bats than J.D. Drew. Placido Polanco (24) has more at-bats than J.D. Drew. Shawon Dunston (20) has more at-bats than J.D. Drew. Shawon Dunston!

    Wait, I know what you're saying (at least if you live in St. Louis) ... "Rob, forget about your silly stats and look at the standings! The Cardinals are in first place, and they're leading the National League in run production."

    Duly noted. The Cardinals do lead the majors with 105 runs, 20 more than Seattle and 29 more than the second-best NL team. The problem is that Paquette and Dunston (not to mention the heretofore unmentioned Thomas Howard) really aren't good hitters, but their early successes will quite likely buy them a number of at-bats later on, at which time they'll be wasting at-bats like local TV news wastes the airwaves.

    Now, before jumping on Tony La Russa, Drew was apparently unable to play in the second game of Sunday's doubleheader after getting hit on the left wrist in the opener. He will probably receive X-rays in St. Louis on Monday.

    "Don't get hurt on the road," Drew told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I've got to figure out a way to stay in the lineup."

    Of course, getting on La Russa's good side would be a start.

    TUESDAY, APRIL 18
    This column was supposed to be about Billy Beane and Chuck LaMar, but after sitting down I realized I've already written so glowingly about Beane that you're probably tired of reading what I have to say about him. Still, in summary let us note that in 1999, Beane's $25 payroll million bought 87 victories; and Oakland's farm system is considered among the top three or four in the game.

    You want more? Hey, I'm just getting warmed up ... The joke among baseball writers is that the A's are little more than a slo-pitch softball team. And if you spend much time watching them, as I just did in Boston, you can't help but think the same thing. After all, the A's are a bunch of slow white guys who, patient as herons, lounge in the batter's box waiting for a pitch in their happy zone. If they don't get one, they jog down to first base. If they do get one, they take mighty cuts and jog around all of the bases.

    But doctor, what about defense?
    Score eight runs and call me in October.

    This is either the 21st century or the next best thing, and either way you have to score plenty if you're going to win plenty. And with the all the small ballparks, who needs speed anyway? The Athletics' success may well hasten the WWF-ization of baseball, but don't blame Billy Beane. His job is to build a winning team, not to preserve the legacies of Phil Rizzuto and Vince Coleman.

    Chuck LaMar's job is to building a winning team, too, but to this point he hasn't showed us even the slightest ability in that particular area.

    Let's go back to the beginning. Early on, LaMar vowed to build the Tampa Bay franchise on those two pillars of organizational strength, pitching and defense. As part of this brilliant plan, LaMar traded Bobby Abreu to Philadelphia for shortstop Kevin Stocker. If you're reading this column you probably already know this, but that deal may wind up as one of the most lopsided in the game's long history.

    But let's play along for a minute. All that pitching and defense resulted in a 4.35 ERA for the Devil Rays in their first season, fourth in the American League, perhaps the most impressive defensive performance of any expansion team ever. Unfortunately, the hitters were historically awful, the Rays ranking 14th in scoring despite a pretty good park for offense. Oh, and they actually were outscored by every National League team as well.

    In 1999, the Devil Rays improved the offense, all the way from 14th to 11th. But of course, the pitching/defense decline erased the offensive improvement. In spades, too, as they allowed 913 runs, 13th most in the league and just eight fewer than Kansas City. The solution? Of course, simply sign some sluggers with the patience of kindergartners and the defensive mobility of French military fortifications. And when it turns out that you can't score enough runs to compensate for the lousy pitching, fire the pitching coach two weeks into the season.

    LaMar tried to duplicate Beane's philosophy -- get a bunch of sluggers, sacrifice defense and watch the runs pile up. However, while Beane has Jason Giambi (.422 OBP in 1999), John Jaha (.414), Rich Becker (.395), Randy Velarde (.390), Matt Stairs (.366) and Ben Grieve (.358 OBP), LaMar has Fred McGriff (.405), Jose Canseco (.369), Greg Vaughn (.347), Gerald Williams (.335), Miguel Cairo (.335) and Vinny Castilla (.331).

    You see, the A's score a lot of runs (third in the AL last season) not because they hit a lot of home runs, but because they hit a lot of home runs with guys on base. The Devil Rays simply won't have enough runners on base to score enough runs to lead the league in scoring, which is what it looks like they'll have to do with their pitching staff.

    Tampa Bay had the 10th-highest Opening Day payroll at $62.7 million. Oakland had the 25th-highest, at $32 million.

    The mark of a lousy general manager, my friends, is the lack of vision with which LaMar is so obviously afflicted. Hey, I'm not saying that GMs should necessarily stick with what hasn't worked. One of the marks of a good general manager is flexibility. The problem is that when LaMar changes his mind, he doesn't carry out the new plan with any particular intelligence.

    You want to score more runs? That's a wonderful goal. But bringing in a bunch of old, multi-millionaire sluggers with low on-base percentages? That's not wonderful at all. Acquiring ex-stars just because they were born in Florida? That's not wonderful, either. Did McGriff and Wade Boggs really add anything to this club, aside from a (relatively) few extra fannies in the seats? Is Dwight Gooden really the answer to the pitching problems?

    I have now strayed into something that bears little resemblance to responsible journalism, and for that I apologize to you and your family, along with Chuck LaMar and his dog. But you see a situation like this and you can't help but wonder, Where's the accountability? How does LaMar earn not one, but two long-term contract extensions? The ballclub doesn't win, the ballclub doesn't draw, the ballclub doesn't have any reasonable hopes of doing either in the near future. I'd just like to see LaMar achieve something before his next contract extension.

    But, hey, that's baseball. God love it.

    This column would normally end with the above. But, inspired by my friend Jayson Stark, I'd like to continue with a different subject. Don't hate me because I'm verbose ...

    Here's a letter, one of many I received on the subject of fan interference ...

      Rob,

      I enjoy your columns very much. I just wanted to toss in my two cents on the fan-interference question. I was watching both of those games, and the fellow at the Colorado game clearly deserved what he got, as he reached into the field of play and clearly interfered with a live ball.

      The play in San Francisco, however, was not so clear to me. From the camera angles they showed, it appeared to me that the ball had passed beyond the vertical plane of the outfield wall extended -- that is to say, the ball was in, or at least headed for, the stands. The young man standing by the wall in right field put his glove up and, believing that the ball would simply be a home run, prepared to catch it. To that point, Bonds was below the top of the wall and quite possibly out of sight of this fan.

      Bonds times his leap perfectly, gets his forearm over the wall (much to the surprise of the fan), but the kid's glove is just a little bit higher and he catches the ball. I think his reaction (almost immediately, he dropped the ball into Bonds' glove) speaks to his lack of intent to interfere with a live ball. After all, if it he had been fixated on the ball as a souvenir, he would surely have kept it.

      I just think the two unfortunate incidents don't spring from the same motivation. No doubt, there is a problem these days with fans disrespecting the game in very serious and damaging ways, but I hate to see honest mistakes lumped in with obvious abuses.

      Thanks again for your column,

      Rob Schmoll

    Good points, Rob. You're absolutely right about the play in San Francisco, and the section in yesterday's column that dealt with that situation was, I must admit, sloppily written. That boy at Pac Bell did not commit fan interference in the strict sense of the term, and in fact he did apparently have some remorse immediately after catching the ball, which is more than you can say for the great majority of the "adults" who do the same.

    You know, there are a lot of things to dislike about Comiskey Park, but the waterless "moat" between the outfield fence and the fans is a pretty good idea. Call me crazy, but each baseball game should be settled by the guys wearing the uniforms, and the results are tainted when a fan becomes part of the action.

    Also in yesterday's column, I suggested that any fan ejected for interference should also be forced to give up any baseball gained from said interference. According to various readers, this policy is already in effect, or has been recently, in San Diego, Detroit and Yankee Stadium (and there may be more). This is a great start, but it should be a Major League Baseball policy, and everyone should know about it. There should be absolutely no reward for trespassing on the field of play, even if it's just with one's hands, just as there should be no reward for jumping onto the stage at a Broadway show. And perhaps there should be a penalty.

    In closing, yesterday someone accused me of being a jaded sportswriter who doesn't know how thrilling a baseball can be. Interesting theory, but incorrect. I spend nearly all of my ballpark time in the stands, just like you. And as it happens, just last week I had my very own foul ball, at least for the few seconds until I presented it to a little girl named Tracy, in return for which she gave me two big smiles and a snack to be named later (which turned out to be a handful of popcorn). Now that's thrilling.

    WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19
    Thoughts that have been thunk since yesterday ...

  • Got my first good look at Comerica Park and have to say that I like it. The amount of foul territory is fair, and the amount of fair territory is, at least if you're a right-handed power hitter, foul. Which of course makes for a nice contrast with nearly every other new mallpark. (I'm also glad that it doesn't feature all that eclectic ornamentation that makes some of the new parks look like they were designed by Dr. Frankenstein's great-great-great grandson, who now works at HOK Sports.)

    It's interesting. The Tigers built a big ballpark, one would assume, at least in part because GM Randy Smith is obsessed with pitching and defense, and there are still baseball executives who think that a big ballpark translates into good pitching. But while Smith really doesn't know what he's doing, this foolishness has resulted in a ballpark that's not like all the rest, and that's a good thing for all of us.

    Speaking of Smith, due to popular demand I've got to mention his recent quote about Juan Gonzalez ... "I think he has a better chance to break Babe Ruth's RBI record than he does to get to Hank Aaron's home run record, anyway."

    That's interesting, given that Ruth doesn't actually own any RBI records. With 2,213 career RBI, Ruth is No. 2 behind Aaron (2,297). But we'll forgive Smith that particular gaffe, as a degree in baseball history certainly isn't a prerequisite for GMs. So what about it? Might Gonzalez break Aaron's record?

    He's 30 years old. We'll be charitable and give Gonzalez 10 more seasons. Despite spending a fair amount of time on the DL, Gonzalez has averaged 140 RBI per season over the last four.

    Entering this season, Gonzalez had 1,075, leaving him 1,218 short of Aaron's record. That means he'd have to average 122 RBI for the next 10 seasons to break the record. Piece of cake? Not when you consider (1) the probability of at least one labor war in the next 10 years, and (2) the natural decline due to aging.

    Let's do this a bit more scientifically, using what Bill James used to call The Favorite Toy, and now calls The Career Standards Assessment System.

    According to The Toy, Gonzalez has established an 18 percent chance of breaking Aaron's record. I would rate his chances as slightly better than 18 percent. But not much better.(And before you e-mail me with your requests for the formula for The Favorite Toy, please don't. Rather, go find yourself an old Baseball Abstract that includes the formula. And if you're not happy with the rest of the contents, I'll happily buy the book from you.)

  • Interesting statistic that may or may not mean anything: Andruw Jones leads the Braves with eight walks. The Braves broadcasters seemed fairly surprised by this last night, but A. Jones did draw 76 walks in 1999, so there's every reason to think he'll continue to be a patient hitter.

    I was talking to some guys recently, and one of them asked me who I thought would be the best player of the next decade. Alex Rodriguez is the obvious pick, followed by Vlad Guerrero (more on him later this week), and I mentioned both. But I would consider Andruw Jones a dark horse, even if his stats to this point might not merit such consideration. If he can put 1998 power and 1999 patience together, he's a superduperstar.

  • As you know, I think it's silly to save your best pitcher for the ninth inning. So it's encouraging to watch Jimy Williams handle his bullpen, as he often brings in Derek Lowe to start the eighth inning of close games.

    Then again, nobody's perfect. Last night, with the score 3-0 Red Sox, Lowe entered the game in the eighth to face the Tigers' nine-one-two hitters, and he pitched a scoreless inning. So far, so good.

    But then the Sox scored four more runs in the top of the ninth, making it 7-0, an exceedingly safe lead even in the Steroid Era. So why did Lowe pitch the bottom of the ninth? Wouldn't the club be better served if he took the rest of the night off, and were thus able to come back a bit fresher for Wednesday?

    I know Jimy likes to play 'em one game at a time, but sometimes you have to think ahead a game or two.

  • Space Needle Update: Last night, Ryan Anderson started for Tacoma in Fresno's bandbox of a ballpark. He pitched six innings, permitted three hits, zero runs. This makes his season totals:

      Inning Hit  W   K   ERA
       17.2   6   6  28  1.02
      

    Because I've taken a somewhat personal interest in Anderson, having been essentially the only member of the media (such as I am) in attendance for his first Triple-A start, I may run a regular Needle Update from now on.

    And if you live in the Pacific Northwest, I recommend that you get to Tacoma this Sunday for Anderson's next scheduled start. It might be one of your last chances to see this great pitcher, up close, for a great price.

  • Looks like the Braves may have done it again. Luis Rivera is 21 years old, and he spent last season blowing away Class A hitters. So what's next? Double-A? Triple-A? Nope, how about the National League?

    Rivera throws 95 miles an hour with movement and he throws strikes, so the Braves decided to bring him straight to Atlanta and see if he can get major league hitters out. And to this point, he has (his ERA is 0.00, and last night he pitched 2.2 innings for his first victory). Rivera's a great example of why you should never worry about Atlanta's bullpen. No matter what else is happening, they seem to have an endless supply of kids who can get the job done in relief.

    THURSDAY, APRIL 20
    A plague is spreading across the land, my friends, as inevitably as tonight's sunset. One day soon, nearly every ballpark in the game, Class A through the major leagues, will be named not after a team or a man, but after a corporation. This is, of course, simply another symbol of our times and should perhaps not be a point of fixation. But while I'm generally able to avoid the negative aspects of the new parks, their names intrude upon my thoughts every day.

    Corporations are amoral at best, immoral at worst. And in my experience, the latter is more often the case. Simply put, being compelled to inject the name of a corporation into every discussion of a ballpark is distracting at best, obnoxious at worst. And in my experience, the latter is more often the case.

    With the older parks, there was an easy way out. You could just ignore the corporate name, and continue referring to Candlestick or Riverfront or Three Rivers. But with the new mallparks, we simply don't have that option. Enron Field is Enron Field, and there's nothing to be done about it ... or is there? What I suggest is that we quickly adopt nicknames for the new parks, and stick with them to the point where they're more commonly used than the official names.

    It's still early, but Karl Ravech (among others) is already referring to Enron Field as Homeron Field, for obvious reasons. Another good one: Comerica National Park, supposedly coined by Bobby Higginson in honor of the spacious green spaces in the new Detroit Park (that one still includes the corporate name, of course). I've not been able to find (or create) a nickname for Pac Bell, but surely one will present itself before long.

    And speaking of Comerica National Park, aside from all the grass, two things struck me last night while watching the Tigers get shut out for the second straight game. One, the dugouts are huge, as if the club tried compensating for the tiny dugouts in Tiger Stadium. But if you see the new ones, you'll see that they have seriously overcompensated. Two, there aren't a whole lot of people in the stands. I know the weather's been pretty awful, but it's been awful in some other northern cities, too. The Tigers currently rank 19th in attendance, almost exactly what they did last year (20th). If this continues -- mark my words -- the Tigers will respond, next year or the year after, by converting their singular pitcher's park into a typical hitter's park.

    Oh, and here's a third thing ... the Tigers, as one might well have predicted, aren't scoring any runs, and it's not because of their ballpark. They're last in the American League in run production because they don't have anybody who gets on base, and they don't have anybody who gets on base because Randy Smith doesn't know what he's doing. It's likely Smith will be fired sometime this year.

  • Yesterday, I suggested that perhaps Derek Lowe should not have been allowed to pitch the ninth inning against Detroit, given that the Red Sox were sitting on a 7-0 lead. Perhaps it's too late for this, but I'll happily admit that, rather than suggesting that Jimy Williams is a lousy manager (which he isn't), more than anything I was simply trying to spark discussion.

    And of course, that's exactly what happened.

    Why did Lowe pitch the ninth? My e-mailbox is filled with reasons. Maybe it was because John Wasdin simply wasn't loose enough yet. Maybe it was because Williams is a "player's manager," and he wanted Lowe to get his precious save (he'd entered the game when the Sox were just three runs ahead). Maybe it was because Lowe had something like 24 friends and family in the stands (Lowe is from Michigan). And maybe it was because Lowe hadn't pitched the game before, and Williams thinks he's better off with more work.

    And once again, an important lesson is learned. As Tony La Russa famously said, "There's a lot going on out there."

    But just so you know I'm not giving up on second-guessing "baseball men" ... After posting yesterday's column, I learned that Ryan Anderson threw 107 pitches in his start Tuesday night. Now, 107 might not be a huge number even for a 20-year-old pitcher. But if the Mariners are letting Anderson throw 107 pitches in Triple-A, what happens when Lou Piniella gets hold of him? I believe that Anderson should be limited to 100 pitches, at most, for the rest of this season.

    FRIDAY, APRIL 21
    Today, I was going to run a poll asking all of you to select a suitable nickname for one of the new ballparks. But after thinking about it, I decided it's simply too early. It's all well and good to call Enron Field "Homerun Field" or "Tenrun Field" or whatever, but what if all those homers in the second series were an anomaly? Let's wait and see how these new parks play before we slap a nickname on them.

    That said, I would be remiss to completely drop this subject, because scores of readers took time out from busy (?) schedules to message me with their suggestions. So while it's perhaps too early to settle on nicknames, we can at least forward the discussion a bit.

    First, Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco. A lot of people have apparently taken to calling it "The Phone Booth," which relates both to Pac Bell and the park's relatively cozy dimensions. There is a problem with "The Phone Booth," however; it's already taken, by the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. (yes, another negative effect of telecommunications companies running the world).

    There are two other suggestions that seem appropriate. The first is "China Basin," which refers to the plot of land on which Pac Bell Park was built. "Basin" doesn't exactly conjure up images of baseball, but China Basin does remind one of Polo Grounds and Camden Yards and Baker Bowl. I have a hard time imagining this catching on with the fans, though. So my favorite, suggested by Carl Johnson, is the simplest: Pacific Park. While it's essentially a truncation of the official name, it evokes a completely different set of images, images that are appropriate given the ballpark's proximity to salt water. (Alternately, Bay Park, or even Bayview Park, would also work, benefiting from a connection to the nearby San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.)

    As for Detroit, the nickname for Comerica Park is apparently a fait accompli, with many fans and media types already calling it "the Copa." I know that name reminds many of Barry Manilow, but let's just agree to make the best of it. When I think of "the Copa," short for the Copacabana, I also think of the famous New York night club, featured so brilliantly in the movie, "Goodfellas." There's a baseball connection, too. In 1957, Billy Martin was traded from the Yankees after an incident at the original Copa. Let's just hope that, if this nickname really does catch on, the people in charge of the sound system don't feel compelled to play that damn song.

    Before the naming rights to Houston's new park were sold, it was generally called The Ballpark at Union Station (what is it about Texans?), which naturally was shortened to just "the BUS." But while some still use that nickname, it's got absolutely no panache, and it won't stick now that "Ballpark" isn't part of the official name.

    In a variation of that last one, from Enron Field at Union Station we arrive at EFUS, pronounced EE-fus. Like "Copa," this one has something of a baseball connection, too, bringing to mind Rip Sewell's famous "eephus pitch" of the 1940s. Later on, Bill Lee threw a "Leephus" pitch in the 1970s (ask Tony Perez about it), and Dave LaRoche the "LaLob" in the 1980s, both pitches being derivations of Sewell's original. Also, Bob Tewksbury fanned Mark McGwire with a lob pitch a couple years ago. (Sad to say, other than that incident, it's been years since a pitcher had the courage to throw such a pitch, though it's hard to imagine how some of the current hurlers could do any worse.)

    Apparently a fair number of people have taken to calling Enron Field "the Gashouse" or "the Powerhouse." The first is nifty if only because, like EFUS, it brings to mind a bit of baseball history, in this case the mid-1930s St. Louis Cardinals.

    I cannot, in good conscience, endorse any of those, so I'll wait to see what the public has to say in the coming months. There is a problem, though, with nearly all of the nicknames mentioned thus far -- nearly all of them are based on the actual names of the corporations who paid the big money. And what happens when the contracts run out? Right, some of those ballparks will change their official names, leaving the nicknames with little relevance to anything. This probably is, at this point, perhaps insolvable, Bayview Park notwithstanding. But I believe most of the names will be around for at least a decade, so maybe we should just not worry about it. God knows MLB never thinks that far ahead.

    Before we leave the subject of ballpark names, a few words about truly horrible appellations ... When the Orioles opened their new ballpark and somehow arrived at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, I was both amused and disgusted. At least you could just choose one or the other, and that's what people do (they choose Camden Yards, mostly). And then the Rangers came up with something far, far worse, The Ballpark in Arlington.

    What do you shorten that to?

    The Ballpark? To which ballpark are you referring?
    Arlington? To which Arlington are you referring?

    Just a horrible, horrible name.

    There are some lousy ones in the minor leagues, too. Wilmington (Delaware) has Judy Johnson Field at Daniel S. Frawley Stadium, which is the result of having your Negro Leaguer and eating your politician, too. And in Oklahoma City, they've got Southwestern Bell Bricktown Ballpark. Sheesh.

    Before I let you go, I thought you might enjoy the following e-mail I received, especially if you've had a chance to read Billy Beane's recent ESPN.com chat ...

      Rob:

      I just heard Giants GM Brian Sabean interviewed on KNBR, the Giants' flagship radio station. He was asked by Ralph Barbieri, the host, what he thought of all the emphasis the A's put on on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Sabean answered: "Don't give me all that sabermetric crap, Ralph. It gives me a headache." After that, Sabean went on to explain how the umpires are screwing the Giants, leading to their worst-in-the-majors record.

      Rich Rifkin

    Brian's the kid who gets to play in the fancy new ballpark, and Billy's stuck in the Mausoleum for who-knows-how-many years. Sometimes, life just ain't fair.

    MONDAY, APRIL 24
    The Cubs are not a good team, and it doesn't help that Don Baylor manages a team playing in Wrigley Field in 2000 as if he were managing a 1970s team in the Astrodome. But today's column isn't about Baylor and the Cubs, as I don't particularly enjoy kicking men when they're down.

    Rather, I'd like to discuss a particular moment from Saturday's first game, one of four the Cubs lost to the Mets this weekend. In the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Cubs losing 3-2 and a runner on second base, Eric Young batted against John Franco. One of Franco's slow breaking pitches crowded Young, who dropped his elbow ever so slightly, with said elbow sustaining a glancing blow from the ball. Young dropped his bat and began trotting to first base, but he was quickly summoned, in no uncertain terms, back to the batter's box by plate umpire Paul Schrieber.

    Rule 6.08(b) tells us that a batter becomes a runner and is entitled to first base when:

    He is touched by a pitched ball which he is not attempting to hit unless (1) The ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, or (2) The batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball ...

    There are hundreds of times each season where a batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball. So I have, in this space, argued for a more vigorous enforcement of Rule 6.08(b) ... but upon further reflection, I'm not so sure. It's problematic to the extreme, asking umpires to determine intent. In fact, to my knowledge they have never attempted that difficult task; if they had, Ron Hunt and Don Baylor wouldn't have been awarded first base as often as they were. And if they did now, Mark Grace would not have been awarded first base in the second game of Saturday's doubleheader, when he stood stock-still and let a Dennis Springer knuckleball hit him.

    No, Schrieber did about all an umpire can do. Grace just stood there and was allowed to take his base (with a different umpire behind the plate, by the way). But when Young actually made that slight move into the ball, he was told to get back in the box and hit. I suppose I would like to see the umpires be strict with incidents like the one involving Grace, but you can't really blame them if they don't. The real problem, as I have written any number of times, is the body armor that allows players to crowd the plate with impunity. People are finally starting to talk about this, but I don't expect any action from Major League Baseball in the foreseeable future.

    Scooped!
    Kay McFadden, TV columnist for the Seattle Times, beat me to it. I have been meaning, since the season started, to write something about the change we've seen on ESPN with the spelling of Latino names. You probably know what I'm talking about.

    Anyway, as McFadden related in her column last week, it seems that Jan Reeves Thomson, a freelance writer and baseball fan who lives on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, noticed that nobody ever uses the accent mark. And for whatever reason, she decided to do something about it. She wrote letters to Bud Selig's office, and she sent copies of the letter to all of the TV networks. Selig didn't do anything, and neither did any of the networks ... except ESPN. (And if it sounds like I'm proud of my co-workers in Bristol, Connecticut, it's because I am.)

    Tim Scanlan is the coordinating producer for baseball at ESPN, and as he told McFadden, "It was a very accurate comment about a topic I realized was important. We've always thought of ourselves as being very attentive to Latin American players and the international story of baseball, but here was something we'd completely missed."

    Scanlan got the copy of Thomson's letter last October, and on April 4 suddenly all the Latino names were spelled correctly on the ESPN graphics. And this makes so much sense that it's only a matter of time before the other networks follow suit.

    I know you're asking yourself, "If it's such a great idea, will ESPN columnist Rob Neyer start using the accent marks?" All that Rob Neyer can say is that he'll work on it. He's been reading and writing Martinez and Sanchez for a long, long time, and it'll take some time to get used to writing Martínez and Sánchez.

    The best thing about all this is that now we can, if we choose to bother, pronounce players' names correctly, just like Jon Miller does. Tony Pérez's last name is not pronouced puh-REZ, but rather PEH-dess, with the accent on the first syllable and the "r" sounding more like a "d." José Cruz's first name is not pronounced HO-zay, but rather ho-SAY, or at least something close to it, with the accent on the second syllable.

    Like I said, just pay attention to Jon Miller on Sunday Night Baseball if you care. And if you'll pardon a brief editorial comment, it's a simple measure of respect to pronounce someone's name the way he would like to hear it pronounced. Just imagine what you'd think of someone who mispronounced your name if he knew better. And now that we know better, we ... and when I say "we," I mean anyone who hasn't been pronouncing names correctly ... we really don't have any excuse.

    The only criticism I have is that ESPN seems to be applying the new rules across the board, though it's likely that some players actually pronounce their own names in the Anglicized style. I mean, I've never talked to Alex Rodriguez, but does he really place the accent mark over the "i" as ESPN now does? Of course, the problem is that asking each and every player with a Latino-type name for a correct spelling would be a major task. In the meantime, it's probably better to err on the side of excess.

    They will slow down
    Let me close with a fairly typical argument that you'll hear this time of year. In deference to a colleague who works four blocks from my apartment, I'll not tell you who wrote the following: "Imagine the damage the Cardinals may do when McGwire is healthy again and Ray Lankford ... begins swinging like he's capable."

    I've been writing this column for four years, so I hope that most of you have already spotted the fatal flaw in the above "analysis." While it's true that McGwire and Lankford have not contributed as much as they quite likely will, it's also true that any number of Cardinals have been swinging better than should be expected.

    Let's look at a few of them.

              AB   OBP  Slug
    Drew      27  .514  .889
    Howard    18  .400 1.000
    Marrero   23  .393  .793
    Matheny   48  .439  .521
    Polanco   32  .402  .688
    Viña      78  .443  .513
    

    I mean, Eli Marrero and Mike Matheny have combined for a .606 slugging percentage in 71 at-bats! Does anyone with cranial functions really think this will continue? And I left off players like Fernando Tatis and Jim Edmonds, who are doing even better than we should expect.

    They've got a good lineup, these Cardinals. Perhaps even a great one. But they're not going to continue scoring 7.6 runs per game, no matter how capably Lankford swings.

    TUESDAY, APRIL 25
    Sunday afternoon against the Blue Wave, Alex Rodriguez drew five walks. Given the free-swinging ways that have characterized much of his career, a healthy percentage of fans in Safeco Field must have been surprised by this turn of events, and a few might even have been disappointed.

    Not Rodriguez, though. "It's like getting five hits. If they walk me five times every day, we're going to be all right," he said. "Last year or three years ago, I wouldn't have allowed myself to get five walks. I would have chased some bad pitches. To me, it's a great accomplishment to get five walks."

    This statement, hard on the heels of another statement Rodriguez recently made about the importance of on-base percentage, should scare any American League pitchers not employed by the Mariners.

    Here are Alex's walks per 162 games since his first full season:

             W/162   
      1996    65    
      1997    47     
      1998    45     
      1999    70     
      2000   171
      

    On-base percentage aside, is it a coincidence that Rodriguez's two best slugging percentages came in 1996 and 1999, when he did a better job of controlling the strike zone than in '97 and '98?

    Obviously, Alex is not going to draw 171 walks this year. I'll be pretty surprised if he gets close to 100. But the simple fact that Rodriguez is apparently happy to take the walk, he's going to not only post a high OBP, he'll also get plenty of good pitches to hit. And it's quite possible that six months from now, only New Yorkers and Bostonians will bother with the "Who's the best shortstop?" debate.

    The Annals of Rules and Regulations
    Sunday night in a tie game, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 11th, Olmedo Saenz hit a long fly ball to deep center field. With Brady Anderson playing quite shallow, the ball flew over his head, bounced off the ground and over the fence.

    Automatic double, two runs, and two RBI for Saenz, right?

    Nope, just one run (the game-winner) and an RBI single, and a number of you wanted to know why. I won't spend a lot of time on this because I went into some depth on the subject a year or two ago. Suffice to say, that's simply the rule. A hitter gets full credit for a game-ending home run, but on a game-ending automatic double, he gets only a single if that's all it takes to win the game.

    There is, perhaps, a tiny bit of poetic justice in this. Sunday night, if the bases had not been loaded with nobody out, Anderson would have been playing deeper in center field, and may have caught Saenz's drive.

    And finally -- I've saved this for last in case you're sick of the subject -- a bit more on Spanish surnames.

    Yesterday, I mentioned the problems that might arise if the accent marks, etc., are applied without actually talking to the players themselves. One example is Eric Chavez, whose name might reasonably be spelled Chávez and pronounced CHAH-vez, and has been by ESPN. But Chavez was born in Los Angeles, doesn't speak Spanish, and pronounces his name "shah-vez," like "Chavez Ravine."

    A number of readers pointed out the difficulty of native English speakers trying, often quite clumsily, to pronounce Spanish names correctly. I think one reader has a good take on this ...

      Rob,

      Bravo on the Spanish names column, especially the pronunciation issue. The announcers' rule of thumb should be to use the English phoneme closest to the Spanish one. Thus, while untrilled Rs are excusable, no more voiced Z for letters S and Z, because English has the same unvoiced S sound as Spanish uses for all these; and while Spanish letter Hs should be silent, no more "wans" -- English-speakers can say "huan" (for Juan), no problema ... And yeah, folks should get syllable stress right. It is, as you said, a simple sign of respect to try to say someone's name as they would.

      By the way, what's the stress on Irabu, anyway?

      Hasta,

      Nathaniel Pearson

    I don't exactly understand everything in that message, but I'm pretty sure that's because Nathaniel is smarter than I am (I had to look up "phoneme"), and not because he's wrong about anything. All of this is clearly just the beginning of a long process, but I think it's a worthwhile effort.

    Oh, one last thing that I should have mentioned yesterday, in regard to a column from last week. As you probably know, The Ballpark in Arlington was built when George W. Bush co-owned the Rangers. This has Rod Taylor wondering, "If George W. wins the Presidency, does that mean we'll be The Country at North America?"

    WEDNESDAY, APRIL 26
    At the risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I think all this has gone too far. When I was a boy, my eyes would widen when I heard that a team had scored in double digits. I couldn't wait to pore over the box score, see which sluggers had done the most damage. Wait a second ... when I was a boy? What about just two or three years ago? Yep, then too. But that pleasure is now, in large part, gone. Last night, five teams scored at least 10 runs, and I was too busy yawning to check their boxes.

    And I'm not the only one. Granted, the great majority of broadcasters are even older than I, but lately it's been impossible to watch a baseball game on TV without hearing talk of all the home runs ... and then more talk, a few seconds later, of raising the mound three to five inches.

    Friends, raising the pitcher's mound is a terrible idea, and if that talk becomes truly serious I will make this my No. 1 crusade, ahead of all the others that so often fill this column. Raising the mound would mean, more than anything, more strikeouts. A classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. Strikeouts, as Crash Davis once said, are boring. Yes, there are exceptions. I enjoy watching Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez as much as anybody. But we certainly don't need more strikeouts, any more than we need more home runs.

    So what's to be done? Everyone's been talking about the baseball. This is, of course, nothing new. Someday I'm going to take a month of vacation and write a history of the so-called "rabbit ball." I guarantee that I could find stories about a "different" baseball in every season from 1999 back through 1987. The problem is that whenever somebody checks the baseball -- and I mean checks, with real scientific instruments and everything -- they don't find anything. Or rather, they find that the ball from this year is exactly the same as the ball from last year and the year before, and the year before that.

    It's been reported that Commissioner Bud has appointed a committee of GMs to -- yes -- check the baseball. And it's quite likely that the new committee won't find anything. But whether it does or does not, what's the difference? It's a simple equation. Or perhaps it's a complex algorithm. Either way, there are three variables that matter: the ballparks, the hitters and the baseball.

    The ballparks aren't going to get bigger.
    The hitters aren't going to get smaller.

    That leaves the baseball. If the Lords of Baseball decide, in their wisdom that approaches infinity, that scoring should be lowered, then at some point they will simply have to deal with the baseball. And from a practical standpoint, it's relatively easy to build a new ball that will, for example, travel 10 feet fewer when struck on the nose by a piece of Kentucky ash wielded by a 240-pound slugger. We have the technology.

    Of course, we also have the technology to land men on the moon, and that hasn't happened in nearly 30 years. Baseballs, like space travel and just about anything else worth doing, are bound up in money and politics. Nothing's going to change unless the owners think that it's in their economic interest. And even if they do, they'll have to convince the players.

    Why the players? Because in many ways they run the game, even when they're not really supposed to. First off, any change to the playing rules -- and the baseball presumably falls under this heading -- must be submitted to the players a year ahead of implementation. Now, technically the players do not have any rights beyond that, but in reality the union is consulted on just about everything that happens in Major League Baseball.

    And I suspect that if you poll current major league players, you'll find that roughly 54 percent of them are quite happy with the status quo, which frequently gets them featured on Baseball Tonight and, not coincidentally, also gets them even more money than they would make otherwise. Is 54 percent enough to put the kibosh on a new baseball? Not necessarily. But it won't help.

    That said, I do believe that we'll reach a critical mass, if not this year then the next, or perhaps the year after that. The pitchers took over the game in 1963, but it wasn't until things got really ridiculous in 1968 that the Lords of Baseball decided that enough was enough. Similarly, perhaps it will take something truly silly, like five or six players topping 60 home runs, and/or average game times closer to four hours than three, for the current Lords to take serious action. But barring action, those things will happen.

    THURSDAY, APRIL 27
    Wednesday's column wasn't perfect, and a bit later I'll count some of the reasons why. But first, I would like to run a letter, an amalgamation of a few that I received, altered so as not to offend anyone in particular.

      Sure, the easy fix is to manufacture a dead ball. But why should the hitters pay for the pitchers' shortcomings? What if the record for the 100-meter dash were to get broken time after time? Do we make the sprinters wear heavier shoes, like characters in a Kurt Vonnegut story? No. The solution is for the youngsters out there to spend their time throwing and practicing pitching fundamentals, instead of turning a bat all day.

      In the last several years, the pitching talent has been spread extremely thin, and this is evident in statistics. Whatever happened to the complete game? Good pitching beats good hitting in most cases, but when some teams have as many as four starters with no business being in the majors, hitting will prevail. Plus, many of these teams just don't have the bullpens. How many times do you see a guy come into a game, and he can't throw any strikes? The count goes to 3-and-1, and then the batters can sit on a fastball and crush it.

    Let me tell you, there is nothing, nothing other than blind nostalgia to support this theory that all we need to do is train our youngsters to pitch, or perhaps to beat some sense into the pitchers that we already have.

    You say that the pitching is "diluted"? Since 1977, Major League Baseball has added approximately 75 roster spots for pitchers, or about 11 apiece for the four new teams that have arrived, plus an extra reliever or two for the other 26 teams.

    That's 75 roster spots, drawn from how many millions of baseball players in how many counties? There are pitchers from the United States, from the Dominican Republic, from Canada, from Australia, from Mexico, from Japan, from Korea ... need I continue?

    I hate to sound insulting because I know everybody means well, but anyone who seriously thinks that it's not the small ballparks and the big hitters and (maybe) the lively baseball, but rather the pitchers ... well, you're missing something. You're stuck in a way of thinking that limits not only your understanding of baseball, but quite possibly other things in your life, too.

    Of course there are plenty of lousy pitchers out there, just as there always have been lousy pitchers, and there always will be lousy pitchers. Flip to any year in the baseball encyclopedia and you'll find 20 pitchers who couldn't get anybody out. Now, it might well be true that today's overstuffed bullpens mean even more pitchers who aren't very good ... but do you know why the bullpens are so big? Because the starters simply don't go as deep into games. And why don't the starters go as deep into games?

    No, it's not because most of them are coddled wimps, trained since they were wee lads to cry for help in the seventh inning or when two runners get on base, whichever comes first. It's because with all these guys hitting home runs, the starters must throw a lot of pitches, and a high percentage of high-stress pitches at that.

    Again, I apologize for my vehemence on this issue. But I just don't understand how anyone could, with zero evidence, blame the pitchers for the explosion in run production, when there is a huge weight of evidence suggesting that nearly all relevant factors (yes, including the strike zone) now favor the hitters. Today's pitchers are incredible athletes. Like the hitters, the pitchers are bigger than ever, and I believe they even have stronger arms. But there simply is no way for them to keep up with the hitters, not without some help from the people who make the rules and build the ballparks.

    All right, about the imperfection of yesterday's column ... I stated, as if it were a fact, that raising the mound would certainly mean more strikeouts. A number of alert readers asked me for evidence, as they should. So, as they say, I looked it up ... when Major League Baseball lowered the mound after the 1968 season, strikeouts actually did go down slightly. Here, I'll show you:

                At-Bats     Ks     AB/K 
    1967-1968   217,827   38,556   5.65
    1969-1970   263,427   44,847   5.87 
    

    They didn't go down much -- 3.97 percent, to be fairly precise -- but they did go down. In '67-68, batters struck out once for every 5.65 at-bats; in '69-70, they struck out once every 5.87 at-bats.

    So, my gut still tells me that if you raise the mound, you also raise the strikeouts.

    For another perspective on this, yesterday I asked Bill James if he enjoys watching all the walks and home runs that typify today's game. He responded about as I thought he might, writing, "I enjoy watching it, yes, because I'm committed to enjoying the game however it is played, rather than bitching about it not being played like it was in my day, when I was striking out Joe Morgan."

    But Bill continued, "The question, I think, is 'Is this the optimal form of the game, from the standpoint of the fan?' And the answer is, 'No, it's not (but then, no actual form of the game ever was).' The optimal form of the game, from the fan's standpoint, would have fewer strikeouts, higher batting averages, and more balls in play. Sitting around, waiting for somebody to draw a walk, waiting for somebody to reach the seats ... this is not great entertainment, in my view.

    "It would be a very simple thing to make the game more fan-friendly, more entertaining from the fan's standpoint:

      1. Deaden the baseballs just a little bit;
      2. Move the batters off the plate four inches;
      3. Put a "minimum thickness" on the handles of the bats -- or, alternatively, make a rule that the bat must balance at least 12 inches from either end.

    "You'd have a lot more 'action' situations, in which (for example) a ball is driven into the gap with a runner on base, and several people must make a play."

    And if I may echo Bill, let me stress that I still love this game more than almost anything. Hell, who am I kidding, there's no "almost" about it. I'll watch every game they put on TV, and I'll go to any ballpark that will have me. But there's always room for improvement, and getting more of the ballplayers involved in the action would be a great start.

    FRIDAY, APRIL 28
    Wednesday night, we saw the best in Tony La Russa and we saw ... well, not exactly the worst in Tony La Russa, but something other than his best.

    First, the best. Everyone's favorite Rookie of the Year candidate, Rick Ankiel, was cruising along with a 7-0 lead over the Brewers. Yet La Russa yanked him after seven innings. Why? Because he'd thrown 99 pitches, one under his theoretical limit. "His body is still developing," La Russa said. "You saw the max today. He might go five or 10 pitches more than that sometime, but not too often."

    There are two things about this that particularly interest me. The first is that after he arrived in the majors last year, Ankiel's limit was 110 pitches. So now it's a season later, yet the Cardinals are being more cautious with him. Notwithstanding pitchers recovering from injury, I certainly can't think of anybody who was put on a shorter leash when he got older.

    And it appears that Ankiel is happy with the program. "I know I'm on that count," he said after Wednesday's game, "and it's in the best interest for me. But nine innings can be pitched in 100 pitches."

    The second thing that struck me was La Russa's comment that Ankiel's "body is still developing." This echoes something that my pal Rany Jazayerli wrote in "Baseball Prospectus 2000":

    It's simple, really. Throwing overhand is not a natural act. Throwing overhand repeatedly can be damaging to the arm. And throwing overhand repeatedly before the shoulder and elbow have completely matured -- the plight of the young star -- can rob a pitcher of his gift, completely and irrevocably.

    As Rany notes later in that essay, "The word is out," and La Russa's willingness to limit Ankiel's pitch count reinforces the point. And you have to give the skipper some credit. Anthony La Russa Jr. is 55 years old, and he's been managing professional baseball teams for 23 years. It would be easy for La Russa to simply manage like he's always managed, sneering at pitch counts and anyone who thinks they're worth a thought. In other words, he could manage like Lou Piniella and Dusty Baker.

    But La Russa's smart enough to understand that times change, or at least our knowledge changes. And while there's still no definitive proof that limiting a young hurler's pitch counts will result in a better career than otherwise, the anecdotal "evidence" is strong enough to suggest that caution is the wise course. Just think how much money Rick Ankiel's left arm is worth, and then try to argue that the Cardinals shouldn't be careful with it.

    And then there's the other La Russa. Not an evil twin, but perhaps a somewhat eccentric cousin. This fellow does some strange things. Bizarre things. The latest of these odd occurrences also involved Rick Ankiel. Wednesday night in the fourth inning, the Cardinals led 1-0 and they had runners on first and second with no outs. La Russa ordered No. 8 hitter Mike Matheny to lay down a sacrifice bunt. No. 8. As in, just ahead of No. 9. The pitcher. Who just happened to be the aforementioned Rick Ankiel.

    Ankiel hit a three-run homer, thus making La Russa look like Brainiac and Einstein all rolled into one. Now, I do believe that Ankiel will prove to be a good-hitting pitcher; just from what I've seen on TV, he really does have a quick, compact swing. But will he, in the long run, be a better hitter than Mike Matheny? I sure don't think so. I think this is another example of La Russa trying to outsmart the game. Or perhaps La Russa is so brilliant that he saw something in that particular situation that no one else could see. The Cardinals are in first place, so I guess he gets the benefit of the doubt.

    Anyway, it'll be fun to see if Ankiel ever gets to bat No. 8 (or higher) in the lineup. You'll remember that La Russa batted all of his pitchers eighth late in the 1998 season and early in '99, based on the notion that doing so would result in more RBI opportunities for McGwire, and hence more runs for the team.

    On a related subject ... Gertrude Stein said two famous things: "Rose is a Rose is a ..."; and, of Oakland, "There's no 'there' there." But it struck me this morning that when it comes to baseball, there is almost everything there in Oakland. Think about it.

    Tony La Russa is, if not the best manager in the game, certainly the most interesting. He made his fame managing the Oakland Athletics.

    Sandy Alderson is now the most intelligent man allowed to work for Commissioner Bud. He built Oakland's dynasty of the late 1980s and early '90s, and in fact had a hand in the success of the current club. Alderson would be my pick as the next commissioner; unfortunately he's far too honorable to ever be elected by the owners.

    And everyone's favorite Wonder Boy, Billy Beane? As Beane is always quick to mention, he learned his trade from Alderson, and of course succeeded Alderson as GM of the Oakland Athletics. Back in the early and mid-1990s, when Alderson and La Russa were still there, just imagine how great it would have been to be a fly on the wall during a meeting that included those three guys.

    Oh, and let's not forget Mark McGwire. He was drafted by Alderson, managed by La Russa, and played with Beane. I believe that in 1989, when all four of these men were there, the most interesting spot in the baseball world was, indeed, Oakland, California.

    Before you take off for the weekend, a brief word on the suspensions and fines levied against the participants of the big brawl in Detroit last weekend ... Bully for Frank Robinson! I know there's some small segment of the public that enjoys watching baseball players throwing punches rather than baseballs, and even I get a kick out of the "I was at the ballpark and a hockey game broke out" jokes. But just as there's no crying in baseball (unless you just lost the World Series), there shouldn't be any fighting in baseball, either. The reasons are so obvious that I won't bother belaboring the point.

    And as some of you might remember from old columns, I would take it even further. I don't believe that there's a place in baseball for virtually any contact. If I were in charge of things -- don't worry, it'll never happen -- collisions at home plate would be mostly outlawed.

    The suspensions are a great start. Hold a guy out for five games, and he just might think twice next time. But the fines? Dean Palmer was fined $3,000. His contract pays him $8 million this season. If you make $50,000 this year, fining Palmer three grand is like fining you $18.75. Unfortunately, the Players Association takes a dim view of fines, so Frank Robinson is powerless to do any real damage to the players' wallets.

    So from a disciplinary point of view, the fines serve no purpose. What they should serve, however, is charity. To this point -- a few fines haven't been announced, and of course there will be appeals -- the total amount is $25,000, and that should go to some worthy cause rather than MLB's coffers.

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