Q: Did the Rangers waste their money on A-Rod?
Oops, that question is outdated already . . .

Q: What’s with this Soriano guy?
Hot rookie stirs April buzz... a very old story. Soriano is an extremely talented athlete, and with power, speed, and the New York media behind him he’s been generating massive buzz since the Yankees first signed him. Like Timo Perez, he originally played in Japan. My older brother compares him to Juan Samuel, another power/speed guy who was never really in position at second or in the outfield but put in four seasons as a productive hitter before the league caught on to him in 1988.

Warning: in 120 major league plate appearances through Wednesday, Soriano had struck out 30 times and walked just once; even though he’s hitting .290 this season, his on-base percentage is an surreal .286. Soriano should hit some homers as well, but his career high in the minors was 19, so don’t expect him to suddenly turn into Miguel Tejada.

Q: How on earth is Jeff Fassero leading the major leagues in saves?
He’s working hard, and Flash Gordon is hurt. Given that Fassero has a 7.00 ERA, don’t expect Bobby Thigpen to start quivering in his shoes.

Q: Why did Joe Torre pitch to Manny last week?
If you missed this... I was flipping between the Mets-Reds game and the Sox-Yankees Friday night, and the same situation came up three times: do you walk the big gun to load the bases? Bobby Valentine had Ken Griffey walked (Griffey actually asked the home plate ump if he had to walk to first to be pinch run for), and Bob Boone had Mike Piazza pitched around to the point of walking him. Torre clearly told Mariano Rivera to be careful with runners on second and third, a one run lead, two outs in the tenth and Troy O’Leary on deck, but he let Rivera pitch and Manny set the tone for the series with the winning single. While he may have wanted to see if Manny – who was 0-for-12 lifetime against Rivera – could come through, you have to play for the win there.

(I know Rivera is usually lights-out, but this is the best hitter in baseball we are talking about and TROY O’LEARY is on deck. But all Tim McCarver could talk about was how Manny can’t hit the high fastball. The good thing about a guy like Rivera is he won’t walk someone like O’Leary. Maybe O’Leary gets a hit and maybe he doesn’t, but I’d pitch to him over Ramirez any day.)

Q: Will the Orioles lose 110 games this year?
Not with 19 against the Devil Rays they won’t. I hope you had “twelve” as the number of games Baltimore would play before they got a win from a starting pitcher. Actually, the O’s haven’t been that bad so far, but there hasn’t been any reason to believe they won’t lose 100 games. (By the way, any really comprehensive list of guys who were likely to regress this season should have had Jose Mercedes near the top).

One guy I liked and picked up for my rotisserie team: Jay Gibbons. Gibbons still needs to find playing time, but he is a legitimate major league hitter.

As for Tampa, manager Larry Rothschild has now been sacked, which seems a little unfair for a guy who made chicken salad out of chicken &$%# (he was stuck with thin pitching staffs and never had the horses offensively). I can't say the Rays were entirely unjustified in seeking a new direction, but Rothschild was killed by the incompetence of GM Chuck LaMar; it's hard to imagine how LaMar can justify firing his manager when he played the guys LaMar told him to play instead of demanding a lineup with some young hitters and fewer Randy Winns (young, not a hitter) and Fred McGriffs (hitter, not young). Hopefully a GM with a balanced team will give Rothschild a second chance to show whether he can manage or not.

Q: Who’s benefitting from the new strike zone?
Other than “the pitchers,” this is too early to call, but here’s my guess on one count: while lots of preseason speculation focused on the Royals as the team most likely to benefit, with a stable full of hard throwing youngsters with control problems, the team to keep an eye on is Anaheim. The Angels finally trimmed all the Belchers and Ken Hills off their roster (except for Pat Rapp), leaving them with a talented but unproven young staff including Ramon Ortiz, Jarrod Washburn, Scott Schoenweis, and possibly Matt Wise (who’s now disabled suffering from dizzy spells). Ortiz and Wise between them have struck out 24 batters and walked 5 thus far. That’s who to watch in the early going: pitchers with huge K/BB ratios, also including Curt Schilling, Chris Carpenter (who might have a big year but more likely will wear out and start getting shelled again), Wade Miller, Pat Hentgen, Esteban Loiaza, and of course the usual suspects like Mussina, Leiter and Pedro.

An unlikely beneficiary: the pinpoint control artists. Rick Reed hasn’t walked a batter yet – not while striking out 14 in 25 innings this season, and not all of spring training. Reed’s threw complete games of 96 and 98 pitches in his first two starts. Greg Maddux has thrown just 226 pitches through 20 innings and allowed just a single, unearned run.

On the other hand, projections that Matt Anderson would become a star were clearly premature . . .

Q: Who’s been hurt?
Way too soon to tell. Oakland’s struggles are clearly a coincidence; the guy who’s killing them is Damon, who was never the prototypical Athletic.

Q: Are the Twins for real?
I stand by my preseason pick of the Twins to finish third; they’ve got good pitching and improved defense, but they don’t have the bats. Still, USA Today’s Danny Sheridan had them listed before the season as a 50 million to 1 shot to win the World Series. Wish I’d put ten bucks on that...

Q: What about the Blue Jays?
Well, the pessimist’s view of Toronto was that too many guys had career-type years last season (notably Delgado and Fullmer), all the key hitters but Fletcher were healthy all year, and they still didn’t win anything. The team’s two best pitchers last year (Frank Castillo and David Wells) are gone, and Mike Sirotka might not pitch this season. Alex Gonzalez is still the shorstop.

But the optimist’s view was that Chris Carpenter, Roy Halladay, Kelvim Escobar and Clayton Andrews combined to start 66 games last season and pitch 443.2 innings with a 6.73 ERA. Those four pitchers, even with mountains of run support to work with, were a combined 25-36. The odds would have to be against getting pitching that bad again; Halladay has been dispatched to the Class A Florida State League, Escobar to the bullpen, Andrews back to the minors and Carpenter (who’s been spectacular so far this season) will be on a much shorter leash. A full season from Esteban Loaiza and the arrival of veteran mediocrity Steve Parrish promises less excitement but more stability, and Joey Hamilton is healthy again. Homer Bush may also lose his job to veteran Jeff Frye and utilityman Ryan Freel. All in all, the Jays have plugged enough holes that they might yet win the 90-92 games it will take to catch the Sox and Yankees if both teams are stumbling.

Q: Can we now fairly say the Reds got screwed in the Denny Neagle trade?
Yes and no. Neagle, after a fast start, didn’t live up to expectations with the Yankees lasts season, getting bombed most of the second half and being a non-factor in the postseason. But what the Reds got in return looks largely useless now. Drew Henson never intended to play for the Reds, which they should have been able to find out ahead of time, and had to be given back to the Yankees for Wily Mo Pena, an overpaid prospect whose upside is the next Ruben Rivera. Ed Yarnall went from “guaranteed a spot in the defending World Champions’ rotation” to “sold to the Orix Blue Wave” in just over a year, a testament to the unpredictability of young pitchers but also to a guy who thought “conditioning” was something you turn on when it gets hot outside. Nobody else in the deal really had a ton of promise anyway.

Q: Is the Coors Field effect overrated?
Don’t be fooled by the occasional good pitching outing there. I was never a big Vinny Castilla fan, but even I never dreamed that at sea level he’d be a .210 hitting singles hitter. Al Gore, Darryl Strawberry and the guy who designed Dale Earnhart’s seatbelt have all had more fun in Florida lately than Vinny Castilla. And Dante Bichette, like Castilla, is now bolted to the bench. Here’s a stat – lifetime batting averages before arriving in Colorado:

Dante Bichette: .254
Andres Galarraga: .267
Jeffrey Hammonds: .268

Q: El Sid couldn’t make it back after all?
You know Sid Fernandez was lying on the couch with a bag of chips when a voice on the TV said “they’re bringing back the high strike,” and next thing you know he’s on a plane to Florida. Fernandez could have prolonged his career as a reliever, but I guess he just didn’t have the same pop on his fastball after a few years away. I may do a longer column on Sid at some point – he was really a fascinating player to watch, a guy who could go from totally unhittable to useless in a matter of minutes.

Q: Whose injuries are worse than they originally looked?
Travis Fryman. Carl Pavano. Mark McGwire.

Q: Is Jimy Williams nuts?
That's another story, but he's actually done two things I suggested in my preseason preview:

1. Move Arrojo to the bullpen
2. Reduce Bichette's role

Unfortunately, the Nomar injury short-circuited any chance of completing the trifecta and cutting Mike Lansing. One reader wrote in to suggest that the Sox should cut a deal for Rey Ordonez, which would make a certain amount of sense (Ordonez could stabilize the infield and is really better suited to being a bench player, albeit a grumpy one) but wouldn't work because Ordonez has a big contract and the Mets' other options at short are even more frightening.

Q: Who will hit more homers, McGwire or Bonds?
That's a tough one, it depends on how bad McGwire’s knees are. Through Monday, Big Mac was 56 homers ahead, which is about a year and a half’s work for Bonds, or 2 full seasons’ worth if you look at what the tail end of his career might look like. A healthy McGwire should still hit anywhere from 50 to 65 homers in a full season, but it’s still unclear how much he can play; it wouldn’t be that surprising to see 25 homers this year and 30 next year followed by retirement if the knee keeps him out nearly half the time. That would leave McGwire at 610 homers, 24 ahead of current fourth-place holder Frank Robinson but 50 behind Willie Mays (even though Mays, unlike all the other 500 homer men except Ted Williams, spent nearly 2 full years in the military).

Bonds’ established home run level is 42; if he hits 42, 37 and 30 over the next three seasons that gives him 603, and unless he gets a serious injury I don’t see Bonds as a guy who would just hang it up at that point. Unlike Rickey Henderson or A-Rod or Pete Rose, Bonds has never given us enough insight to know if he’d just stick around for stats, though I suspect that at some point his pride in his game would compel him to retire on his own terms rather than just play for a buck. My guess is that Bonds will be with us a while, so he will outhomer McGwire unless McGwire can regain his role as an everyday player buy next season.

Q: Is Bonds better than Ted Williams?
ESPN.com ran a comparison of Barry Bonds to Ted Williams and Rob Neyer weighs in as well. It’s a very interesting comparison and not a slam-dunk either way; I’ll return to the issue in depth myself some day. But for now, to make it fair, you have to (1) lop off the last six seasons of Williams’ career, including his horrid 1959, since Bonds is only now the age Williams was in 1955; (2) take away the 1989, 1990, 1991, all but a week of 1998 and all but a month of 1999 from Bonds to match what Williams lost to two wars (there go an MVP award, two All-Star appearances, three Gold Gloves, and 4 of Bonds’ 12 league leads in the percentage categories from his resume); and (3) cut all Bonds’ totals (except the 1994 and 1995 seasons, which were his own fault) by 5% to reflect the difference between the 154 and 162 game seasons. Then we have a fair fight.

(By the way, even playing in a mostly higher-scoring era, Bonds has never had a season that matched Williams’ career batting average or career on base percentage and he’s only topped Williams’ career slugging percentage in a season three times).

ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S TRIVIA QUESTION
The two 300-game winners to pitch for the Yankees during their careers were Gaylord Perry (1980) and Phil Niekro (1984-85).

ANSWER TO THE STRATEGY QUESTION:
If you guessed (f), call for a double steal, you're right! With Harold Baines! And Albert Belle stealing home! The crazy thing was, it worked. This is how managers act when they expect imminently to be fired. Red Sox fans, take note.

ITEM: CLEMENTE vs. PETE ROSE
Now, Saraceno does have one legitimate point here: of the nine outfielders chosen for the team, one (Pete Rose) was not as good as Clemente in their respective primes and didn’t spend as many years playing the outfield. It’s not a huge difference, but you would clearly take Clemente in the years 1961-67 over Rose in the years 1968-73. Both hit for great averages in a low-average era (Rose peaking at .348, Clemente at .357); Rose generally got on base more and was a bit more durable (13 straight seasons of at least 625 at bats beginning in 1968, while Clemente cleared 600 only three times while drawing half as many walks), but Clemente had more power.

And then you get to defense. Rose was a pretty good outfielder and won two Gold Gloves on the basis of his legendary hustle, but nearly everyone who ever saw Clemente thought he was the best defensive outfielder they had ever seen. Rose lasted longer, and after 1967 Clemente missed a lot of time, but over their productive years (particularly just the outfield years) Clemente was almost certainly the better all-around player.

ITEM: CLEMENTE vs. MUSIAL
Here’s where Saraceno and most of the other critics really go off the rails, arguing that the committee of experts was wrong to put Stan Musial on the team (largely because Clemente finished ahead of Musial in the voting). Saraceno doesn’t even try to explain why Clemente was better than Musial; it cannot be done. Now, people who write about baseball history and baseball stats are often (and fairly) accused of being too harsh, negative, or pompous, and I’ve tried as best I can in this space to restrain myself in disagreeing with people. But this one can’t be stated any other way: anyone who thinks Roberto Clemente was a better baseball player than Stan Musial needs to have their head examined.

It doesn’t matter how you measure it, either... but we'll break it down:

--1. Musial was by far a better hitter. His best seasons were much better than Clemente’s (and he had many more of them). He was a better baserunner. His teams won more championships, three World Championships and a pennant to Clemente’s two World Championships and a division title (in fairness to Clemente, the Cards had a cakewalk to the 1943 pennant and 1944 World Series because so few of their players got drafted, but then unlike Clemente, Musial won in his prime when he was the focal point of the team). Musial was clearly more highly regarded when he was playing. Clemente’s cannon throwing arm gives him the defensive advantage, but Musial was hardly a bad fielder.

--2. Here are their lifetime stats, per 162 games; Musial (18.7 seasons) followed by Clemente (15.0 seasons):

There’s a big difference there; besides the 14-point spread in batting average, Musial hit an extra 10 doubles and 9 homers a year and drew twice as many walks while striking out half as much. And that doesn't mention double plays; Clemente hit into 32 more double plays in about 2500 fewer career plate appearances and despite generally batting with fewer men on base. The STATS Inc. "Runs created" formula values Musial at nearly twice the league average hitter over his career (before park effects) compared to about 40% better for Clemente. The Baseball Prospectus "EqA" formula, which does take account of ballparks, similarly rates Musial about 10% better on average and more than twice as far, cumulatively, above the average or replacement level player over his career: check the player cards for Musial and Clemente.

You might wonder what Clemente would have done if he hadn’t died tragically after batting .312 at age 37. Well, Musial hit .337 at age 37, and his lifetime batting average then stood at .340. He batted .283 over the last 5 seasons of his career (the comparison would look even more lopsided if you take out that coda). And yes, Musial had two seasons (1943 to 1944) to beat up on war-depleted pitching and win an MVP award, but he also missed a full season of his prime (1945, in between .347 and .365 seasons) to the war, which more than makes up for two years of hitting soggy gray wartime baseballs.

(Granted, Clemente played his prime years in a low-scoring era, while Musial did not. According to STATS, Inc., the league scoring average was 4.12 runs a game over the course of Clemente's career compared to 4.35 in Musial's, and Musial played in a decent hitters' park (an outstanding one in his last five seasons) while Clemente played in a mild pitchers' park.)

--3. The league leaderboards confirm that Musial’s numbers truly reflect his dominance. Musial finished in the top 5 in the league in batting average 17 times. Repeat that to yourself a few times (Clemente did it 10 times, still an impressive figure). There were seven batting titles in there, to Clemente’s four. And hitting for average was Clemente’s strong suit. Musial was Top 5 in slugging 14 times to twice for Clemente, top 5 in on base percentage 15 times (Clemente did it twice, although he was sixth three times), first or second in the league in on base plus slugging (OPS) ten times to Clemente’s one. First or second in runs scored nine times (Clemente was in the top 10 three times, finishing as high as fourth); top 10 in RBI 15 times to Clemente’s three. Fifteen times.

In 1948, Musial led the NL in batting, slugging, on base, runs, RBI, doubles, triples, hits, and total bases. He was second in at bats, third in homers, seventh in walks. He led the league in more offensive categories in one season than Clemente did in his entire career. He was one of only two NL players to have 400 total bases in a season between World War II and the opening of Coors Field.

--4. Baseball-reference.com lists the career leaders in “black ink” (league leads, with special weight given to the most important categories) and “grey ink” (finishing among the league leaders); Musial trails only Ruth, Cobb, Hornsby and Williams on the black ink list (Clemente is 80th) and only Cobb and Aaron in grey ink (Clemente is 74th). Talk about not even being in the same class.

--5. OK, the stats aren’t everything. What about the respect of the people who saw them play? Musial’s nickname wasn’t just a catchy rhyme; from 1943 to at least 1954, Stan Musial really was “the Man” in the National League – the one guy nobody wanted to face. He won three MVP awards and drew more votes for the MVP, over the course of his career, than anyone else. Ever. More than Mays or Aaron, more than Mickey or Yogi or Joe D., more than Williams or Barry Bonds or any other legend you can think of (the modern MVP started in 1931). He terrorized the Dodgers, the Cards’ chief rivals in the NL in those days; it was the Brooklyn fans who gave him his nickname.

Clemente was selected to the All-Star Team in 12 different seasons? Try 20 for Stan the Man. Now, Clemente was very well respected. In 1966, Sandy Koufax went 27-9 and had a league-leading 1.73 ERA in 323 innings for a team that won the pennant with a below-average offense. The writers gave Clemente the MVP even though he failed to finish in the top 5 in the league in slugging or on base percentage. That says a lot. On the other hand, Clemente clearly outhit Orlando Cepeda the following year, and Cepeda (playing first base by this point) won the award unanimously. But you could win 7 MVP awards and get fewer votes than Musial did over the years. That is respect.

ITEM: CLEMENTE vs. THE FIELD
I’ll sidestep, for now, the question of whether Clemente was more deserving than Ken Griffey Jr., the other questionable outfield choice, which is a tough question because Griffey played just 11 seasons in the 1900s. Because there were clearly outfielders left off the team who were more deserving than Clemente.

Let’s try Clemente against the field – here are his lifetime numbers again compared, in order, to two contemporaries (Frank Robinson and Al Kaline), one dead-ball era star (Tris Speaker), and two from higher-scoring eras (Mel Ott and Barry Bonds). Note again that Clemente played fewer games (about two full seasons’s worth) than any of these guys but Bonds and, unlike all except Bonds, he had no declining years:

(I left out Bonds’ 2000, since that was after the team was selected and the century ended)

On the raw numbers, everyone but Kaline outclasses Clemente by a wide margin, and Kaline also comes out ahead. There has to be a pretty hefty adjustment for the times they played in to make up for that, but the first three of these guys played mainly in the same years as Clemente or under even worse conditions, and the other two are just miles ahead of Clemente. Three (Speaker, Kaline and Bonds) were tremendous fielders in their own right, and Ott was also known to have a great arm.

Let’s look at the two most obvious cases:

* Frank Robinson’s career ran nearly parallel to Roberto Clemente’s. At what point in their careers would anyone in their right minds have traded Robinson for Clemente? In 1966, when Clemente won the MVP award, Robinson won the Triple Crown, hit 49 homers, led his team to a World Championship and was World Series MVP. In the early sixties, when Clemente was just another outfielder, Robinson was the 1961 NL MVP and slugged .604 over a four-year span. Clemente hit 240 homers; Robinson hit 586. Though a year younger than Clemente, Robinson drove in or scored 100 runs in a season three times before Clemente even reached 70. And Robinson’s fiery personality and gung-ho style of play left a stamp on both the Reds and Orioles that persisted years after his departure.

* Then there’s Tris Speaker. Maybe Clemente was really the second-best outfielder ever, but Speaker was the best, a revolutionary centerfielder who played close behind second base and could go back to get nearly anything. That 76-point advantage in on base percentage is huge. In 1912, Smokey Joe Wood went 34-5 with a 1.91 ERA; they gave the MVP award to Speaker, who batted .383, had 75 extra base hits, and scored 136 runs. In 1916, he hit .386, cracked 41 doubles and drew 82 walks in a league where the average team scored 3.68 runs a game. When the lively ball arrived, Speaker was 32; he batted over .375 four more times, with line-drive power and walks. He played for three World Champions – two for the Red Sox and one for the Indians – the third as player-manager.

I’m willing to grant that Clemente belongs ahead of Kaline, despite the disparity in the numbers. First, while Kaline was a truly outstanding outfielder, Clemente was better. Second, Clemente was better at his best – unlike Kaline, he had his best years at the pit of the sixties rather than in the higher-scoring 1955-62 period. But the comparison is a very close one, and nobody would take seriously the idea of Kaline as having been insulted at being left out of the top 9 outfielders of the century. And I’m not going to run the whole analysis on Ott and Bonds here. But you can’t just dismiss them out of hand, the way Clemente’s boosters do.

ITEM: WAS THE BALLOT UNFAIR?
Saraceno argues that Clemente got shafted because fans in Latin America couldn’t vote: “Now, how many fans in the Caribbean, Central and South America, Mexico and Cuba do you suppose own a personal computer or have access to a major league stadium or Kmart?”

Now, I’m not going to defend the fan balloting, which made some really egregious errors (Honus Wagner finishing third among the shortstops was the worst, and if anyone has a beef it’s Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson), but Saraceno misses a few details. First, most of the people who actually saw Clemente play are here in the US, and it should mean something if those people voted for somebody else. Second, Luis Aparicio (who had no business getting anyone’s vote as one of the two best shortstops ever) did unexpectedly well due to an online campaign on his behalf in Venezuela. Third, the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente’s old employers, staged a push to get Clemente (and Wagner) elected. Now, maybe it says something about the Pirates that they couldn’t even get Wagner – the greatest player in National League history and by far the greatest of all shortstops – elected to the team. But Clemente didn’t lack for his boosters.

CONCLUSION
If you were drawing up a list of the 20 or 25 greatest outfielders, Clemente has to be on the list, probably somewhere between 15 and 20. You can move him up that list if you stretch a bit. But was Clemente's greatness so definitive that you would be snubbing him by not ranking him among the nine greatest outfielders of all-time? Don’t be silly.

*****

TRIVIA QUESTION
If Roger Clemens wins 300 games, he will be the third 300-game winner ever to pitch for the Yankees. Name the first two.