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| MONDAY, MAY 1 So much baseball, so little time ... First, yesterday's little brouhaha in Cleveland. I've been hearing two versions of the events, depending on whether the teller resides in Ohio or New England. Fortunately, I was watching the game, so I have my own version. Pedro Martinez pitched well; not as well as he can, but well enough to shut down the Indians. Through six innings, he'd permitted five hits, two of them ringing doubles off the bat of Einar Diaz. So when Diaz came up in the bottom of the seventh, Pedro threw a curveball that was a bit inside and had Diaz flinching. The next pitch was a bit more, shall we say, purposeful. Fastball. High and tight. Diaz went down, as anyone else would have done in his position. I'll say this, though; if Diaz had not moved, the pitch would not have hit him. He might have felt a breeze across his nose, but he'd still have been the same Einar Diaz that we've all grown to love. And that was that. Diaz eventually struck out and, while trudging back to his dugout, shot some hard words toward Martinez. Jose Offerman led off the eighth, and Charles Nagy nailed him in the ribs. Offerman yelled at Nagy, benches emptied, both benches were warned against further such silliness, yada yada yada. Long story short, when Roberto Alomar led off the bottom of the eighth, Martinez aimed a batting-practice fastball at his butt. Bull's-eye, and Pedro was kicked out of the game. As I have written many times in this space, baseball should not be a contact sport, and I frown upon pitchers throwing at hitters. That said, I don't think Martínez deserves a suspension for this incident. First of all, it was Charles Nagy who really started things. While Martinez apparently did not intend to plunk Diaz in the seventh, it was quite obvious that Nagy was aiming for Offerman's ribs. In baseball, you're supposed to retaliate. So that's what Pedro did. (It's worth noting, however, that his payback was a batting-practice fastball that struck the softest part of Alomar's anatomy.) There's an equation here, but unfortunately one of the quantities is completely unknown. When Martinez threw at Alomar, he knew he would be ejected from the game, and he knew that he might even be suspended. So there is a risk here, the risk that the Red Sox might lose not only this game (they held on, winning 2-1 despite a shaky outing from Derek Lowe), but also a game Martinez might miss because of suspension. The later event is unlikely because even if Martinez gets suspended, it would probably be for two or three days, meaning he wouldn't miss a start (I know, I know, then what's the point?). We could, were we so inclined, come up with some vague approximations of those risks. What we don't is how much value there is in "backing up your teammates" and all that jazz. Is it worth, say, half a win? I just don't know (and neither do you), which is why I'm hesitant to criticize Martínez for doing something he thought he had to do and was just slightly dangerous to the hitter. In this case, I think the ejection was both appropriate and punishment enough. In all honesty, I probably should have given the Panicky Manager Award to Art Howe last week, when he arranged to send Jeremy Giambi to Sacramento, and bring up Terrence Long and Adam Piatt. If it had been almost any other club, I probably would have unloaded with both barrels. But it's the Athletics, and perhaps that clouded my judgment. You gotta give them this, though; it's worked. The A's were desperate for a potent righty bat, and Piatt's been even better than potent. Long's just been OK, and I'd have left him in Sacramento and kept Giambi around. Anyway, the Award remained unclaimed ... until Friday, when the Pirates demoted third baseman Aramis Ramirez. We're talking about a 21-year-old player who already has played 178 games of Triple-A baseball, and played well. In 1999, Ramirez slugged .546 and on-based .425 and if a guy who does that in Triple-A at 21 isn't a major leaguer, then I'm a big red fire hydrant. All right, there's one argument, that Ramirez has nothing more to learn in Nashville. Here's another: the Pirates don't have anybody better. Believe it or not, the exciting new Pittsburgh third basemen are Mike Benjamin and Luis Sojo. Ramirez did not hit in his 17-game tryout (.167), but that was not his chief crime. He also did not field. Ramirez made four errors (and last year in Nashville, it was 42 in 131 games), and he would have made more if enemy right-handed hitters hadn't felt sorry for him and started going the other way. While managers can live with a poor batting average for a while, errors drive them absolutely nuts. And it's probably even worse when you're trying to develop a young pitching staff. So I understand why Ramirez got bumped. I just don't agree with it, and that's why Lamont wins the Panicky Manager Award. (Many readers nominated Lamont, but Jason Heller was first by a few minutes.) TUESDAY, MAY 2 The New York Yankees are one of the worst 16-8 teams you'll ever see. Did I get your attention? Good. Now I'll be a bit more accurate ... the New York Yankees are one of the luckiest 16-8 teams you'll ever see.
W-L RS-RA Diff
Atlanta 19-6 122- 83 +39
St. Louis 17-8 180-129 +51
New York (A) 16-8 114-107 + 7
Chicago (A) 17-9 184-139 +45
Arizona 16-9 135-110 +25
OK, class, which one of these is not like the others?
Mind you, I'm not suggesting that the Yankees are truly the so-so team that their run differential suggests. What I am saying is that they're lucky to have that 16-8 record, because they have not played like a first-place team. And before you argue electronically that the Yankees "just know how to win," save your fingers because we're not buying that product here. The fact is that the Yankees currently rank 13th in the American League in runs scored per game and have outscored their opponents by just seven runs. Here's that same information for each of the last four years, in which they won three World Series and a division title:
Runs/Gm AL Rank
1996 5.4 9
1997 5.5 2
1998 6.0 1
1999 5.6 3
2000 4.8 13
These are not your older brother's Yankees, at least not to this point. You can talk all you want about how "the great teams win the close games," but that's poppycock. I don't have the space here to prove it to you, but if you don't believe me you can run the numbers for yourself, or buy a new book called "Baseball Dynasties" which discusses the issue in some detail.
There have been rumblings in New York that the Yankees may soon have to look for a productive left fielder or DH if Ricky Ledee or Shane Spencer don't start hitting. "We have to resist making judgments too quickly," says GM Brian Cashman. "Look around at the time it took for a Matt Stairs or most young players to develop. We have to allow that in New York, as well."
A lovely sentiment. But Shane Spencer is 28 years old, and he's not going to get better than he is right now. And what he is, right now, is a pretty good hitter who murders lefties but probably doesn't belong in the lineup every day. Ricky Ledee? Same story, except he's two years younger and might still become a quality regular. I'll say today what I said six weeks ago, once the Yankees committed to using Jim Leyritz as their backup catcher rather than as their DH ... Ledee deserves to play every day. Spencer deserves to DH against left-handed pitching. And the Yankees need a lefty bat who can DH against right-handed pitching.
The Matt Stairs reference is interesting, but perhaps not completely relevant. True, Stairs enjoyed his first solid major league season when he was 29. And if you can find me five other current big-league sluggers who took that long to develop, I'll kiss your ring and say hi to your mom.
Two episodes from (very) recent Yankee history that bear on this discussion ... Saturday, the Yanks recalled Felix Jose from Columbus, where he'd been doing his best impression of Oscar Charleston. Some of you younger fans don't remember Jose, but back in the early 1990s some people thought he was hot stuff. Then he sort of disappeared, collecting his last major league hit in 1995. Since then ... well, I'm not exactly sure what all he's been doing. I do know that Jose's 35th birthday is May 8, and I know the Yankees were desperate. So he started Saturday, added two hits to his career total ... and promptly strained a groin muscle.
For the record, I still think the Yankees are going to win the East. My point yesterday was that they won't win if they don't score more runs. But I believe they will. (The biggest problem, by the way, has been their strange inability to draw walks. Strange, because the Yankees' patience has been one constant over the last few years, yet this season they're last in the American League in walks. That's just weird. And according to Jayson Stark, Joe Torre recently devoted a team meeting to this very subject.) Of course, my e-mailbox was flooded with insults, as it always is when I write anything less than laudatory about the Yankees, or about any player who wore the pinstripes for more than a week at any point in baseball history. That's OK, I'm a big boy and the Delete key works just fine on my keyboard. But let me address one of the most common sentiments, something like, "I don't care what you say, Mr. ESPN.com Columnist, run differential doesn't matter with the Yankees. They just know how to win." Now, if that were true, if the Yankees possessed some magical ability that allowed them to pick and choose when they scored runs and when they didn't, how would that be reflected in the numbers? It seems to me that the Yankees might win significantly more games than we would expect, given their runs scored and allowed. Have they done that? We can check using the Pythagorean Method, which gives us a projected record based on a team's runs scored and allowed.
ExpectWins ActualWins Diff
1996 88 92 +4
1997 100 96 -4
1998 108 114 +6
1999 96 98 +2
-----------------------------------
Totals 392 400 +8
Yes, they have done better than "expected." But of course, eight games over the course of four seasons is essentially meaningless. The Yankees, like any other team you might care to check, are powerless before the cruel logic of the Pythagorean Method. Yes, a great bullpen might help a team "beat" Pythagoras, but not by much.
Somehow, any number of my friends in New York confused what I did write (the Yankees have been lucky) with what I didn't (the Yankees are in big trouble). It's funny, apparently Torre and his players have, to their credit, been quite forthcoming about their good fortune this season. But when I write the same thing, it's because I'm a "Yankee hater."
Sorry, that's not fair. I realize that when I receive a few score insulting e-mails, it represents only a tiny, tiny percentage of all Yankee fans. So I'll avoid the temptation, today at least, to make any generalizations about said fans.
On a related matter, yesterday I challenged readers to come up with five sluggardly sluggers, aside from Matt Stairs, who enjoyed their first productive seasons at 29 or older. A few took me up on this challenge, and I thought I was licked ... until I checked, and it turned out many of the candidates submitted for approval actually enjoyed those first productive seasons when they were 28 rather than 29. So the challenge still stands.
Department of RetractionsA week ago, after Rick Ankiel threw 99 pitches in a game, Tony La Russa said, "His body is still developing. You saw the max today. He might go five or 10 pitches more than that sometime, but not too often." Last night, Rick Ankiel threw 116 pitches. THURSDAY, MAY 4 One if by land, two if by sea, and three if by Frank Robinson. He may be a Hall of Famer and he may rank No. 4 on the all-time home-run list, but today Frank Robinson is not a popular man in Boston, Massachusetts. Or, for that matter, in the rest of New England. Rehashing the events of Sunday just briefly (and I witnessed all of them on my TV set): Einar Diaz doubled twice against Pedro Martinez. After the second two-bagger, Martinez glared at Diaz. The next time Diaz came up, Martinez threw an innocuous breaking ball, a bit inside. And later in the at-bat, he threw a fastball, high and tight, that might or might not have struck Diaz if he hadn't been quick enough to spin out of the way. Diaz eventually struck out. In the next half-inning, Indians starter Charles Nagy threw a fastball into Jose Offerman's ribs. Both benches emptied, both benches warned to avoid more of this prankish behavior. Martinez, forsaking such advice, retaliated by plunking Roberto Alomar in the rear end with a fastball of his own. Again the benches emptied, and Martinez was ejected. And now Martinez has been suspended for five games. Both he and Nagy were also fined, but of course the money involved is chump change for these guys. The problem here is that while both pitchers committed exactly the same crime, in terms of intent, one was suspended and one was not. Yes, I do understand the difference here; Martinez got his man after he'd been warned, while Nagy was brilliant enough to get his before any official warnings. That's the only way Frank Robinson can justify suspending Martinez but not Nagy, and it's a good way. But is it a fair way? No, it's not. If throwing at a hitter (as opposed to near) really is such a horrible offense, then the serious punishment should be levied equally. And everybody knows what Nagy was doing. So in the interest of cutting back on beanballs, that "warning policy" should be revised. But you know, it doesn't help to get hysterical, as Dave Kindred did in his recent column for The Sporting News. A guy can pitch inside, certainly, and Martinez has a well earned reputation for moving hitters off the plate. Nothing wrong with that. But there's plenty wrong with intentionally bouncing a 95-mph fast ball off a hitter's back, as Martinez did with Alomar. What's wrong is that it's only a matter of inches between delivering a message and delivering death ... Any pitcher ejected from a game for intentionally throwing at a hitter should be suspended for two weeks ...Hey, I've been guilty of exaggeration on occasion. When you're a columnist, it's part of the job description. Plus, it's fun, keeps things interesting on a cold winter's night. But isn't "delivering death" a bit much? I mean, I hate to soft-pedal the danger that comes with standing 60 feet away from a guy throwing a hard sphere 95 miles an hour, but let's maintain a little perspective. It's been 80 years since a major league hitter was killed by a pitched ball. And he wasn't wearing a helmet. And even aside from that, Kindred's account of the events is not accurate. True, the pitch was almost "a 95-mph fast ball"; it was actually 94 mph, according to an impeccable source of mine. The other day I called it "a batting-practice fastball," and I was wrong. But the pitch did not hit Alomar in the back, it hit him in the backside. And I'm not sure how a good plunk in the butt qualifies as "a matter of inches" from death. Yeah, about 24 inches. The fact is that Martinez came much closer to killing Diaz than Alomar. Yet according to Kindred, the pitches to Diaz were within the boundaries of acceptable baseball behavior. You see the problem here? By this "logic," it's OK for Martinez to pitch inside to Diaz and it's OK for Nagy to plunk Offerman in the ribs ... but then it's not OK for Martinez to nail Alomar in the rump? Everyone in Boston is, as you can imagine, up in arms over the suspension. But let's step back and figure out what it really means. Last year, the Red Sox wound up winning roughly 85 percent of the games Martinez started. That's a lot, but we'll make the highly specious assumption that they'll do it again this year. We don't know who will start for Martinez during the suspension, and in fact there's a chance that he could start just as many games as he would have sans suspension, depending on how the schedule shakes out. But let's assume that one of his starts is replaced by a Tim Wakefield outing. What chance do the Red Sox have of winning if Wakefield starts? Gotta be at least 35 percent, right? Probably close to 50. But let's assume it's 35 percent, because the math is easy. That's 50 percent less than a Pedro start. Now, maybe my math is too easy, but it seems to me that losing one Pedro Martinez start costs the Red Sox roughly half a win. Put more directly, it's either one win or zero wins. And very, very few pennant races are decided by one win. And I think this is where we find the value in Kindred's otherwise convoluted argument. If MLB really wants to send a message, eventually they may well have to start handing out two-week suspensions, because five days and one start really doesn't mean all that much. But if it's two weeks and two or three starts, at that point star pitchers might realize that staying in the rotation is a tad more important than "backing up my teammates." FRIDAY, MAY 5 Earlier this week, I devoted a fair amount of space to the Yankees' struggles at the plate. Of course, they're 18-8 so their poor run production isn't much of a concern at this point. The Indians, on the other hand, are also have trouble scoring runs, and they're 3½ games behind the White Sox so people are noticing. The table below lists the Indians' and Yankees' American League ranks in runs scored and on-base percentage in 1999 and 2000:
1999 2000
Runs OBP Runs OBP
Indians 1 1 8 10
Yankees 3 2 13 12
If you detected a correlation between runs scored and on-base percentages, feel free to give yourself a gold star.
Of course, it's highly unlikely that either of these clubs will finish the season in the bottom half of the league in scoring. Anyone who understands baseball, and even most who don't, will agree.
Cleveland's problem is simple; they're receiving subpar production from four players who were great last year.
1999 OBP 2000 OBP
Roberto Alomar .422 .306
Kenny Lofton .405 .328
Jim Thome .426 .310
Omar Vizquel .397 .318
Alomar, Thome and Vizquel were all due for declines this season, at least in terms of on-base percentage. But the declines should not be this sizable, and they probably won't be. (Lofton's only played in 15 games. His replacements have not done well, either.)
I have a pet theory relating to Charlie Manuel and the Indians. He was, as you may know, the club's hitting coach from 1994 through 1999. Hitting, of course, has been Cleveland's biggest strength through those years. And now the hitting coach is the manager, and the hitting is suddenly mediocre.
This calls to mind the 1998 Baltimore Orioles. In 1997, with Ray Miller serving as pitching coach, the O's finished with the No. 2 ERA in the American League. In 1998, with Miller installed as manager, the O's finished with the No. 7 ERA in the American League.
Like I said, it's just a theory, and not based on much data at all. What I really think is that all those guys will get their OBPs back up, just not to last year's levels, which were anomalous in the first place. The Indians won't score a thousand runs again this season, but they should score enough to win another division title.
A number of well-intentioned readers entered the Sluggardly Slugger
Sweepstakes, so rather than pick a winner from among them, we'll just
combine all that wonderful knowledge and run a list of the best examples of active sluggers who didn't enjoy their first good season until age 29.
Age Slug
Ge. Berroa 29 .485
Ke. Caminiti 29 .441
John Jaha 29 .579
Mike Stanley 30 .534
B.J. Surhoff 30 .492
Lee Stevens 29 .514
Hey, that's six! So yes, it can happen. (Dante Bichette was a popular
nomination, but I'm not counting him, because when he was 29 he moved to Colorado for the baseball season. And there are a lot of 29-year-old hitters who would benefit from such a move.)
And finally, on the burning issue of Pedro Martinez' five-game suspension, it's worth noting that Martinez will almost certainly not miss a start after all. Apparently he will pitch Saturday, then drop his appeal and begin serving it immediately. This would simply push his next start from May 11 to May 12. So really, the only way the suspension costs Martinez a start is if he would be scheduled to pitch on the day after the last day of the season. This simply reinforces my point, that the fans in Boston should not be so antagonized by the suspension. In the long run, it simply won't make
any difference one way or the other.
Gene Lamont already won the Panicky Manager Award, but the Twins certainly deserve something for messing up Todd Walker's career. They just sent him to Salt Lake, and if they can find a major league team that wants him, he'll be traded.
Like most lousy organizations, the Twins tend to focus on what a player can't do, rather than what he can do. Walker's not a good second baseman, and to this point he's struggled badly against left-handed pitchers. But he does have some pop against righties, and perhaps he could play another position.
But the Twins are obsessed with the negatives; meanwhile, Ron Coomer rolls merrily along to one of the most gloriously mediocre careers in franchise history.
Look, Todd Walker is never going to be a great player. At this particular moment, he's almost 27 years old and his career on-base percentage is .341, slugging percentage .411. Maybe he's even got an attitude problem (though I don't get that from anything I've seen in the media). I'll tell you this, though. Todd Walker can help a team that knows what it's doing.
MONDAY, MAY 8Last year in this space, I devoted two or three columns to the fabled "clutch hitter." Or, rather, to the non-existence of such mythical beasts. Last week, I suggested that the Yankees were winning not because "they know how to win," but rather because they constitute a great team that's enjoyed more than its fair share of luck. And just to hammer something home, it's not just the Yankees; I also argued that the Royals were pretty lucky during that streak where they won four straight games in their final at-bat. And it wasn't just those four games. In 1999, the Royals went 11-32 in one-run games. Yes, the bullpen was horrible, but even an awful bullpen can't account for an 11-32 record. This year, again with a pretty crummy bullpen and nearly the same lineup, Kansas City is 7-2 in one-run games. What, did a fairy flit about the Western hemisphere last winter, sprinkling some sort of magical "knows how to win" dust over various Royals? Like I said, I've written about stuff like this many, many times before. And I've even written that we construct these mystical reasons because it's more comforting than the complicated truth. Well, this weekend I finally found a label for this. Consider the following: Psychologists call this tendency the Fundamental Attribution Error (FAE), which is a fancy way of saying that when it comes to interpreting other people's behavior, human beings invariably make the mistake of overestimating the importance of fundamental character traits and underestimating the importance of the situation and context. We will always reach for a "dispositional" explanation for events, as opposed to a contextual explanation.That comes from a new book called "The Tipping Point," by a brilliant writer named Malcolm Gladwell. He goes on to describe an experiment where two sets of similarly talented basketball players were placed in two gyms, one of the gyms well lit and the other not. Naturally, the players in the poorly-lit gym don't make many baskets, and the players in the well-lit gym perform better. A group of people are asked to rate the abilities of the two groups and, apparently with complete disregard for the conditions, they rate the players in the well-lit gym as better than the players in the poorly-lit gym. That is, they lose the context and instead attribute qualities that don't actually exist to the players. To revisit another recent subject in this column, I would suggest that today's baseball environment is analagous, for pitchers, to that poorly-lit gym. It's not that they can't pitch; it's that they can't see the baskets.
1941 MVP Pts AwardShare DiMaggio 291 0.87 Williams 254 0.76You figure an Award Share by dividing the voting points into the maximum possible, which back then was 336; that is, a player listed first on every MVP ballot would pick up 336 points. From the above, we see that even if the voting had been reversed and Williams had won, he would have added just 0.11 Award Shares. Here's the same information for 1947: 1947 MVP Pts AwardShare DiMaggio 202 0.60 Williams 201 0.60Finishing second in 1947 does not affect Williams' career Award Shares at all. Of course, having missed nearly five seasons while in the Marines does affect Williams' Award Shares. How much, no one can say for sure, but give him those five seasons and he almost certainly would be atop the all-time list. I still say Bonds will wind up as the greatest left fielder of them all. And before we leave great left fielders, yes, Rickey Henderson deserves to be a part of the discussion. I would rank him No. 4 all-time, but one might certainly construct a reasonable argument that he should be No. 3, ahead of Musial, who played a lot of games at first base as well as a couple seasons in right field. TUESDAY, MAY 9 Sandy Alomar returned to the Indians lineup last night. Yesterday, I ran across the following note: During Alomar's absence, the catching duties were handled almost exclusively by Einar Diaz, who is second on the Indians with a .356 average over 20 games. Diaz trails only infielder Enrique Wilson, who has appeared in just 10 contests. While Diaz has filled in admirably, he does not possess the all-around game of Alomar, which may be one reason the Indians have struggled at the plate.This is one of the most amazing things I have read. Ever. And that's why I reproduce it here. Today my aim is not to educate, but rather to entertain. Because I honestly can't believe that anyone conscious enough to read words on a computer screen needs to be told just how ridiculous it is to blame a .356 hitter for Cleveland's offensive woes. No, batting average isn't everything. But I would argue that there's hasn't been a .356-hitting catcher in major league history who didn't help his club. As for an "all-around game," let us note that in 1999 Sandy Alomar drew the grand total of four walks and stole zero bases. So I'm not sure what that means. Maybe Alomar will help the pitching staff. Maybe he'll give Dave Justice some pointers on bunting. Maybe he'll make sure the dugout drinking fountain is dispensing chlorine-free water. But Cleveland's plate struggles have not been due to Einar Diaz, but rather to Roberto Alomar and Omar Vizquel and whoever's playing center field today. All that said, the calls for Diaz to keep his regular job are misguided. Assuming Alomar's healthy -- never a wise assumption -- he's the better hitter. Let's revisit Ted Williams once more ...
Games Avg HR RBI Runs OPS
Ballgame 156 .343 32 114 125 1133
Clipper 141 .315 20 97 97 913
Williams won the Triple Crown, and also led the American League in runs, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
DiMaggio was a great player, and this was a fine season by anyone's standards other than his own. Frankly, there's no way in hell that DiMaggio's superior defense and baserunning could make up for 220 points of OPS, not to mention 15 games. Any baseball writer who didn't think Williams was one of the three or four most valuable players in the league should have been admitted to an asylum with all due haste. And any baseball writer who didn't list Williams at all should have had his membership in the BBWAA revoked.
Yet that's exactly what one Boston baseball writer did. For many years, that Boston baseball writer was identified as Mel Webb, but I recently saw something that said Webb didn't even have a vote that year. Somebody did leave Williams off, however, and fans of the Thumper won't let you forget it. What they don't tell you, because they probably don't know, is that two writers left DiMaggio off their ballots.
As I said yesterday, two or three stupid baseball writers don't affect Award Shares much anyway. That's one of the nice things about the method, that a few idiots can't really screw it up.
Williams finished second in the MVP vote not only in 1947, but also in 1941 and 1942 (when he won the Triple Crown). In each of those three seasons the Yankees won the pennant, and in each of those three seasons a Yankee was named MVP (DiMaggio in '41 and '47, Joe Gordon in '42).
And the fact is that MVP voters have always given extra credit to players on pennant-winning teams. That's why Ted Williams didn't win in 1947, and that's why Mo Vaughn did win in 1995. (Speaking of Vaughn, I'd love for someone to explain to me how he finished a distant fifth in the MVP voting in 1996, despite posting better numbers than he had the year before.)
WEDNESDAY, MAY 10Brian Brennan has been reading this column for nearly as long as I've been writing it, and today I'd like to reproduce a discussion we've been having over the last couple of days. Setting it up, Brian has also read Malcolm Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point," which I referenced Monday. The title describes the point at which something "happens" to cause a major, sudden and unexpected change in our society. The first example Gladwell presents is Hush Puppies, those traditional shoes that, in the early 1990s, were selling only about 30,000 pairs per year. But sometime between late 1994 and early 1995, something "happened" -- the tipping point -- and Wolverine, the company that makes Hush Puppies, sold 430,000 pairs in 1995. Brian: So you liked "The Tipping Point," eh? Can you find a "tipping point" for home run hitting, as a league learned skill? I think Gladwell's points about epidemics are worth some consideration here. Do you think we're in a home run epidemic? Rob: Perhaps 1998 was the tipping point for home runs. Major leaguers saw two guys passing Maris, and all the attention they received might well have convinced them to try the same. And of course, chicks do dig the long ball. Brian: I'd go back to 1996 when, for the first time in the decade, three clubs posted better than a homer and a half per game. Baltimore with 1.57 (Brady Anderson 50, Rafael Palmeiro 39) Seattle with 1.52 (Ken Griffey 49, Jay Buhner 44, Alex Rodriguez 36) Oakland with 1.50 (Mark McGwire 52, Geronimo Berroa 36, Terry Steinbach 35) Call me crazy, but I think Brady was the kid in the Hush Puppies. Or, heaven forbid, Terry Steinbach. When the average Joes can figure out how to launch them, that's when the game gets tough for the guys on the mound. How long did it take for the lesson to kick in? In 1996, 16 of 28 clubs hit more than one homer per game. In 1997, 12 of 28 clubs hit more than one homer per game. In 1998, 15 of 30 clubs hit more than one homer per game. In 1999, 24 of 30 clubs hit more than one homer per game. Whoops. There it is. After the Mac and Sammy show, homers do get sexy. But I'm sticking to my guns. I think we heard the early rumble of thunder in 1996. Rob: And I'm sticking to my guns. It looks to me like the tipping point came in 1998. What is every player's favorite TV channel? No, I mean aside from Spectravision. Right, ESPN. And as I'm sure you remember, the second half of the 1998 season was one long homer-fest on every sports broadcast. As for 1996, let's take your methodology back a few years ... In 1992, 3 of 28 clubs hit more than one homer per game. In 1993, 6 of 28 clubs hit more than one homer per game. In 1994, 16 of 28 clubs hit more than one homer per game. In 1995, 14 of 28 clubs hit more than one homer per game. Looks like the big bump came not in 1996, but rather in 1994. At that point, this particular metric stabilized until 1999, when we had another big bump. This year, by the way, 25 of the 30 clubs are averaging more than one home run per game -- about the same as last year. I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea what happened in 1994. I'm sure that there was plenty of discussion at the time, but that discussion was likely overwhelmed by hand-wringing over the labor situation. Getting Better All the Time You know John Sickels as the author of "Down on the Farm" here at ESPN.com. I know him as that, but I also know him as a friend. So occasionally I'm privy to his major league musings, too. To wit:
In 1999, Rey Ordoñez drew 39 walks per 162 games. In 2000, Christian Guzman is drawing 69 walks per 162 games. In 2000, Rey Ordoñez is drawing 73 walks per 162 games. Both shortstops have substantially increased their (non-intentional) walk rates, at least to this point in the season. But of course, the results have been vastly different.
Pre-2000 OPS 2000 OPS
Guzman 543 838
Ordoñez 585 526
What does it all mean? Well, of course the answer is It's still mid-May, it doesn't mean anything. True, but I still think that, as John suggests, patience will lead to positive results. What we don't know is if Guzman can continue to control the strike zone as he has. And of course, there's a difference between 22 and 27, the respective ages of Guzman and Ordoñez.
THURSDAY, MAY 11One hour, 29 minutes. That's how long it took me to read Bob Costas' new book, "Fair Ball: A Fan's Case for Baseball." And those 89 minutes included my brief prayer upon takeoff from Boston to Seattle, and a hearty airline breakfast of Special K, banana and muffin. I bring this up only because one's initial impression will almost certainly be, "Wow, $21.95 for a 177-page book with small pages and plenty of space between the lines?" The book is, as they say in the reviewing business, a "slim volume." I mean, people complain about the price of movie tickets, but the right movie will provide you with a good 89 minutes of entertainment -- nearly twice that if "Magnolia" is still in theaters -- for eight or nine bucks. So, curious, I called Pete, a friend of mine who's also a New York editor. I make the distinction because, well, people from New York are different from you and me. And I mean that in a good way. There are editors, and there are New York editors. There are agents, and there are New York agents. And if you want to make your (moderate) fame and (questionable) fortune writing books, you're generally better off with the New York versions of each. Anyway, I called Pete to find out how Random House, the biggest New York publishing house, could justify slapping a $21.95 sticker price on this slim volume. Pete had a good answer (New York editors always do). According to Pete, publishers look to charge five times what they call "cost of sale." That includes the paper, the ink, the marketing and publicity costs and the money to pay the author, the editors, the assistant editors and the 22-year-old Wellesley grad who answers the phones. And so the cost of sale for a hardcover book, even a 177-page hardcover book that contains approximately 40,000 words, probably does justify the cover price. (By way of contrast, "Baseball Dynasties" runs 382 pages and around 120,000 words, and costs $16.95 in paperback, $28.95 in hardcover.) But still, almost 22 bucks for something that takes an hour-and-half to read? Fear not, fans of Bob Costas. While your cost is ostensibly $21.95 plus any applicable taxes, you have to try real hard to spend that kind of dough. I bought my copy at a brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble, where the bill was just a shade over 16 dollars. And I'm told that Amazon lists the book for the low, low, LOW price of 11 dollars, a bargain by anyone's standards. And it's worth noting that, according to a note on the very last page of "Fair Ball," Costas' "net proceeds from the sale of this book will go to ... the Baseball Assistance Team, which provides financial assistance to those members of the baseball family in need." All right, enough about that. I probably focus on that stuff too an unhealthy degree, perhaps because (1) I'm sort of in the business now, and (2) at one time in the not-distant past, $21.95 represented my budget for two weeks of food. Anyway, let's find out what you actually get for your 11 or 16 or 22 bucks. First off, I'm probably not objective when it comes to Bob Costas. He's a fan of Bill James; so am I. He's "a 'Bull Durham' guy, not a 'Field of Dreams' guy"; so am I. He is, at heart, a lover of baseball; so am I. If Bob Costas and I were locked in a room together -- we've never met -- I think we would agree on nearly everything baseball, and perhaps about most other things, too. Costas is a true fan of the game and, what's more, he comes across as a truly likable fellow. For that reason, I will mostly call him "Bob" from this point. In his book, Bob touches on nearly every major issue facing Major League Baseball, with the exception of rampant run production. But four topics stand out: 1. Revenue Sharing 2. Salary Cap/Floor 3. Realignment/Scheduling 4. Postseason Format Let's go through those. Baseball's biggest problem, as I hope we can all agree, is the jarring revenue disparities between rich and poor. And redressing that problem must begin and end with revenue sharing. It's the bedrock, the foundation on which any true solution to the current inequities must be built. And Bob has a simple solution. Or, rather, he has a simple, multi-layered solution. One, every team contributes half it's local TV revenues to a common pool, which is then split equally among all 30 teams. Two, the visiting team receives 30 percent of all gate receipts. According to Bob's math, these two changes would result in the Yankees out-earning the Expos by only (yeah, "only") about $60 million per season, rather than the current $100 million. But revenue sharing alone isn't enough, because the Yankees could still seriously outspend the Montreals and Kansas Citys of the world. We also need a salary cap and a salary floor. The cap would have an obvious effect, and the floor would -- are you listening, Donald Fehr? -- ensure that the average salaries would not drop. Both the cap and floor would, of course, be tied to MLB's overall revenues. If the sport succeeds, everyone benefits. Of course, the Players Association will fight to the death anything that might result in a "drag" on salaries, by which they mean the highest salaries. As Costas points out, there needs to be some sort of NBA-style limit, wherein the highest-paid players might initially make something like $12 million instead of the $20 million that we'll likely see next season. Seems like a small thing -- who can't live on $12 million? -- but it won't come without a massive labor war and perhaps an entire lost season. Bob believes, and I believe, that it would be worth it. Bob is dead set against almost any realignment, more so than I. He would prefer that no team be be moved from one league to the other, but he does acknowledge that you have to move one club, and his choice is the Houston Astros. That would give baseball two 15-team leagues, rather than this silly 16-14 setup we have now. Yet, baseball seems committed to an even number of teams in each league, rather than the more logical 15 in each. Why? Because 15 teams in each league would necessitate an interleague game on each day of the season. But as Costas points out, "So? ... The notion that these games have to be played in blocks -- like some Mardi Gras of Interleague Play -- is nonsense." Bob suggests adjusting the schedule so that the fourth- and fifth-place teams from the season before are the ones playing interleague games at the end of the season, thus significantly lessening the chance of contenders playing out of their league. If you have three five-team divisions in each league, it's incredibly easy to make a logical schedule. Each club would play 72 games (4 opponents x 18 games) against divisional foes, 60 games (10 x 6) outside the division but within the league, and 30 games (5 x 6) against teams from the other league. Add those up, and you get the magical 162 (I would prefer 154, actually, but that's another column). And then what? As you would guess if you've ever heard Bob do a game on NBC, he's not happy with the current postseason format. The wild card, as he argues so well, is an abomination foisted upon a public that, in my opinion (and presumably in Bob's, too, though he's too diplomatic to say it), is too foolish to understand what happened. The wild card "creates fan interest"? Last year in Oakland and Toronto, attendance went up nary an inch as those clubs battled for the wild card in September. And of course, we end up losing great pennant races. Costas suggests simply eliminating the wild card, and giving the club with the best record in its league a bye in the first round of playoffs. Perhaps it's unfair for me to summarize Bob's book with such brevity, leaving you to wonder if there's any point in reading it. I guess I would say that if you agree with his suggestions, then maybe there isn't a reason to buy the book. But if you're not convinced, then by all means read it. (Hell, you don't even have to buy it. Just plop down in one of those soft chairs they have in all the big bookstores now.) Bob's arguments, while brief, are nonetheless compelling. But will anyone listen? Or is Costas baseball's Don Quixote, merely tilting at windmills? Look, the problem is not that every owner and player is a thoughtless jerk, set upon destroying this game we love so deeply. The problem is that when they act in groups, their hearts and heads become sublimated to the one overwhelming quality, a sickening greed that knows no apparent bounds. And frankly, no book that Bob Costas or anyone else writes will change that. On the other hand, baseball in Pittsburgh and Kansas City and the Twin Cities is worth saving, and it's only going to happen if enough people like Bob Costas beat the drums of reformation. His efforts shall prove futile in the long term, I fear. But we should be grateful for them anyway. Tilting at windmills ain't easy work. |  | ||||