Turning Over A New Leaf

As I’ve done in the past, I’m creating brand-new categories for the new year. You’ll now go to Baseball 2005 for new baseball entries, Politics 2005 for new politics entries, War 2005 for new war entries, and Law 2005 for new law entries (the Law category hadn’t needed an overhaul last year). I’ll shortly be updating the link to baseball-only posts at the top of the page as well to send you to Baseball 2005.
Happy New Year!

Bust Cycle

For many years, the number of original prime-time TV programs (i.e., shows with actors and a script), or at least the number of hours of original prime-time TV programming, was basically fixed. There were three networks, and after the collapse of prime-time game shows in the 1950s, only a few hours of prime time were set aside for movies, newsmagazines, Monday Night Football, and other non-scripted programs like Candid Camera and That’s Incredible! The main variable in the number of shows was how many 1-hour dramas would be on vs. how many half-hour sitcoms.
That started to change in the mid/late-1980s, with the arrival of the FOX network as the first credible fourth network. Over the following decade or so, the supply of original programming exploded, with a fifth and sixth network (The WB and UPN), as well as original programming on pay cable (HBO, Showtime) and basic cable (USA Network, Comedy Central).
Of course, expansion of the supply of shows can only mean one of two things on the supply end – expansion of the supply of good writers and good ideas, or dilution of quality. Rather obviously, it has meant the latter. Worse yet, I suspect that what results is less a sharp division between good ideas written well and bad ideas written poorly, but fewer shows being able to sustain a core of good writers, as writing talent gets dispersed more widely. And writing talent is the key variable: there’s always more good actors and actresses than there are well-written TV shows and films for them to populate (it’s far more common to see good actors struggling to save bad material than the other way around).
The other inevitable consequence of increased supply is that, in the absence of increased demand – and the evidence is that with the rise of movie rentals and the internet and the proliferation of other entertainment options, overall demand for original TV programs has dropped – the increased supply will be chasing a smaller and smaller audience.
The consequences of this should have been obvious, and they are being manifested today. “Reality TV” may be a fad as far as TV viewers are concerned. To network execs, though, reality shows, expanded newsmagazine lineups, and prime time game shows are a rational response of substituting cheap-to-produce substitutes (reality shows, with few writers, essentially volunteer casts, and often poor production values, are famously cheap). Another consequence is that networks are taking a harder line with replacement-level actors and actresses – witness ABC’s attempt to save “The Practice” before its final season by firing everyone on the show who made decent money (i.e., everyone but the ugly people), or CSI’s abrupt firing of two cast members (later re-hired) who wanted more money. Even USA took a hard line with Bitty Schram, now-former co-star of “Monk.” “Frasier” went off the air in large part because its cast was so expensive.
Of course, it’s not an anomaly that, in such an environment, as in the movie business or in pro sports, the elite who can guarantee big ratings get an even bigger salary – like Ray Romano, who’s both a star and writer of his own show, or James Gandolfini on The Sopranos. But the overall dynamic of network TV is unmistakable: with more players and a shrinking pie, networks in the future will allot fewer prime-time hours to original programming, and will spend less money on all but the biggest stars of those programs.

Check, Please

David Pinto notes the $85 million bill the Yankees have to cough up between the luxury tax ($25 million) and revenue sharing ($60 million). Ouch. Still, considering their free agent and Big Unit pursuits this offseason, it’s hard to say that’s put a crimp in the Yankees’ budget. But you have to wonder how many more Giambi-sized mistakes they can eat before the team’s behavior is affected (assuming they can’t get out of contracts, as they may with Giambi).

Small World, Part XVIII

Lileks complains today, in the course of discussing the Nick Coleman-Powerline dustup, about “the inability of Police Chief Tony Bouza’s police department make law-abiding citizens feel as though they had the momentum” in Minneapolis some years back. I don’t have anything to add to that except that my dad knew Bouza from his NYPD days (he also knows plenty of people who knew Bernard Kerik at the NYPD, and who had a rather low opinion of Kerik, for what it’s worth).

Thought for the Day

“I have long since learned that a man may give offense and yet succeed.”
–John Adams, on diplomacy (in a letter to Congress from the Netherlands defending his decision to press aggressively for Ducth support in the American Revolution, against charges of, among other things, having offended the French)

PATRIOT GAMES: Not Just A Fantasy

Eighth in a series of reflections on sports by “Andy Tollhaus,” an Army officer currently serving in Iraq.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
FOB Speicher, Iraq

The Red Sox have been World Champions of the World for almost two months. I just keep visualizing Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling reenacting that scene from the end of Top Gun. You know� the one where Maverick and Ice Man make up and say, �You can be my wingman anytime!� Only this time, they�re on a baseball diamond in St. Louis instead of on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Indian Ocean. �Petey, you�re still dangerous, but you can be my Ace anytime!� �BS, Curt! You can be mine!�
Ah� if it were only that simple. As it turns out, Pedro would never offer to be the number two starter�anywhere. Oh well� all that really matters is the first sentence I wrote.
Since October, I�ve spent a lot of time realizing that other sports actually do exist. There have been plenty of other sports to follow, sometimes whether you like it or not. Mike Ferlazzo, the satin jacket hater from Long Island, jokingly got upset with himself for knowing that Ty Willingham had been fired. He prides himself in not following sports, but around here, you really can�t help it. Since sports are almost always on TV in the Dining Facility, people who never cared about basketball now know that Ron Artest is producing an R&B album and Peyton Manning has a little brother playing in New York.

Continue reading PATRIOT GAMES: Not Just A Fantasy

Self-Esteem

Instapundit:

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has an article on exploding the self-esteem myth. Bottom lines: “Boosting people’s sense of self-worth has become a national preoccupation. Yet surprisingly, research shows that such efforts are of little value in fostering academic progress or preventing undesirable behavior.” This isn’t a big surprise. The Insta-Wife has noted for years that inflated self-esteem is often associated with negative behavior among teenagers, while teens with low self-esteem often behave well.


(Emphasis added). This is one of those so-obvious-they-shouldn’t-have-to-study-it points. Let me ask you this – take two 16-year old boys, one of whom does well in school, but is scrawny, has lots of acne, and is unpopular with girls (I speak from personal experience here); the other is a big, good-looking guy who’s successful in sports, has lots of sex, and is barely passing his classes. Which one do you think has higher self-esteem, really? Anyone who’s remotely familiar with teenagers should be able to tell you that teen self-esteem tends to be closely tied to whether they are on the giving or receiving end of various types of social ostracism and abuse, while perhaps the best of academic motivators among teenage boys, at least, is the desire to have a better life later than one’s crummy existence as a teenager.

Armers’ Market

Perhaps the most striking feature of this baseball offseason, coming during an era when effective starting pitching would seem to be in short supply, is the large number of starting pitchers with substantial track records – many of them quite successful in recent years – who have gone on the market. I’m probably missing someone here, but I count 30 starters – 20% of the starting jobs in the big leagues, and more than that as a proportion of guys with any kind of major league track record – who have either been traded or been free agents this off season (this is counting free agents who re-signed or, like Roger Clemens, are now committed to one team, as well as guys in the Randy Johnson deal who were publicly traded before the deal fell through). Of course, with so many pitchers available, it behooves buyers in this market not to overpay out of a concern for scarcity. To make sense of the available options, it’s therefore useful to look at them as a group.
In the past, I’ve found “established performance levels” to be a useful way to organize information about a player’s record, including my continuing “Established Win Shares Levels” studies. In that spirit, here are the established performance levels, Win Shares included, for those 30 pitchers, ranked by ERA+ (which I computed as a weighted average); I listed “U” next to the team for guys who are still unclaimed:

Age Pitcher Team W L ERA G GS IP H/9 HR/9 BB/9 K/9 ERA+ EWSL
41 RJohnson AZ 14 11 2.85 29 29 204 7.19 0.82 1.89 10.69 164 19
33 PMartinez NYM 16 7 3.12 31 31 203.2 7.49 0.77 2.33 9.81 163 18
29 THudson ATL 14 7 3.12 31 31 213.2 8.51 0.51 2.22 5.51 147 20
42 RClemens HOU 17 6 3.50 32 32 207.1 7.79 0.80 3.01 8.86 127 17
32 BRadke MIN 12 8 3.97 32 32 200 9.71 1.09 1.16 5.48 120 15
39 ALeiter FLA 12 9 3.53 31 31 180.2 7.97 0.84 4.55 6.65 120 11
27 MMulder STL 17 8 3.89 30 30 209.1 8.68 0.90 2.75 5.99 120 16
28 WMiller U 11 9 3.71 23 23 133.2 8.01 0.91 3.90 7.71 119 9
28 JVazquez NYY 13 11 4.13 33 33 214 8.58 1.28 2.40 7.78 117 16
29 CPavano NYY 14 10 3.68 33 30 200.2 9.10 0.78 2.17 5.79 116 14
29 JaWright NYY 9 6 4.29 34 17 114.2 9.10 0.71 3.80 7.70 116 7
28 OdPerez U 10 9 3.61 31 31 196.2 8.42 1.18 2.00 6.26 115 11
30 MClement BOS 11 12 3.82 31 31 191.2 7.55 1.02 3.71 8.82 114 11
27 BPenny LA 11 10 3.76 27 27 158.1 8.79 0.91 2.81 6.65 111 9
32 DLowe U 16 10 4.57 33 33 195.1 9.75 0.70 3.11 5.08 110 11
42 DWells BOS 14 8 3.88 31 31 203 9.63 1.02 1.07 4.75 109 12
38 WWilliams SD 13 8 3.91 30 29 185.1 8.93 0.89 2.50 6.28 108 10
31 RuOrtiz AZ 17 9 3.94 34 34 208.1 8.17 0.85 4.56 6.22 106 13
34 EDessens LA 5 7 4.42 41 20 140.2 10.31 1.21 2.73 5.74 105 7
35 JLieber PHI 8 5 4.21 17 17 111.2 10.77 1.01 0.89 5.28 105 7
31 MRedman PIT 12 12 4.26 31 31 192.2 9.41 1.02 2.93 5.58 103 10
30 GRusch CHC 5 8 4.65 32 20 140.2 10.13 0.87 2.83 6.36 101 6
30 MMorris STL 14 9 4.20 30 30 193.1 8.94 1.25 2.40 6.24 100 9
32 RaOrtiz CIN 10 9 4.57 33 23 160.1 9.58 1.40 2.88 5.58 98 8
29 EMilton U 10 5 4.68 23 23 134.2 8.81 1.75 2.86 6.88 95 6
30 KBenson NYM 9 10 4.52 26 26 156.2 9.69 0.87 2.92 5.90 94 6
31 KIshii LA 12 8 4.38 29 29 160.2 8.03 1.07 5.62 6.72 93 6
32 PWilson CIN 9 8 4.55 29 29 179.1 9.84 1.30 2.98 5.42 92 7
33 CLidle PHI 11 13 5.01 33 32 201.2 9.63 1.09 2.54 5.30 89 7
31 IValdez U 11 9 5.20 30 28 156 10.54 1.64 2.42 3.82 86 5

Of course, this chart is just past performance; it doesn’t show the severe injury risks associated with a large number of these guys, most notably Pedro and Brad Penny . . . Just a few more quick thoughts for now:
*You can clearly see that the Mets overpayed for Kris Benson. While I’m not a fan of Benson, I wasn’t opposed to re-signing him, which seemed like a necessary move to avoid opening a hole in the rotation. But it’s now clear that there were many other available alternatives of comparable quality, and the Mets should have relied on that to avoid overpaying and, if necessary, sign or trade for someone else.
*The difficulty of sustaining a serious workload in this day and age is apparent from the fact that only Hudson and Vazquez have been able to establish a level of 210 or more innings over the last three-year period.
*Context matters: Carl Pavano’s numbers look better than those of Vazquez because he was pitching in a friendlier evironment last year. Derek Lowe’s ERAs are actually better than those of David Wells, when you adjust for Fenway.
*Matt Clement is indeed a useful pitcher, and his power would have made him especially valuable to the Mets, but the guy does have weaknesses (mainly walks) that will be exposed at Fenway.
*I continue to think that Billy Beane will be vindicated in his decision to deal Mark Mulder now rather than later as far as Mulder’s declining performance and uncertain health/durability is concerned – but that doesn’t justify the trade, because it doesn’t look like Beane got enough value in return. Good strategy, bad tactics. The same applies to a lesser extent to the Hudson deal.
*Matt Morris’ performance no longer lives up to his reputation.
*Somebody could still really make a quiet impact on their rotation by snagging both Odalis Perez and Wade Miller.

Keep Me In The Briar Patch!

So, after all the speculation about Javier Vazquez not being able to pitch in New York, Vazquez apparently scuttles the Randy Johnson deal by refusing to report to the Dodgers for a physical. Of course, it could be that he or the Yankees have something to hide about his physical condition, and it could be that Vazquez is trying to squeeze some extra money out of the deal. But for now, he seems to have decided that he’d rather try to make it here, and prove he could make it a-ny-where . . .

Punch Drunk

Bill Simmons has a fun recap of last night�s Patriot loss, including his take on how he would do the obligatory Monday Night Football introduction of himself:

I would give the “Bill Simmons, College of the Holy Cross” instead of just the “Holy Cross,” to squeeze the extra three words in for more camera time. And I think I would grow a cheesy porn mustache just for the occasion. But that’s just me.


However, I can�t help but wonder: can a regular season loss by a team that was 12-1 really qualify as a �stomach-puncher�?

Log Cabin Republican?

The New York Times has an article about a historian’s rather thin-sounding argument that President Lincoln was gay. This sounds like wishful thinking on the part of the Times, but, for more, see here.
UPDATE: Actually, it is misleading to call the author of the book in question a “historian” – the Times, in fact, describes him as a “psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey.” Make of that what you will.

Dispatches

* Today, another terrible and cowardly attack in Iraq claimed the lives of more good men and women. Recent news from the Middle East has recently been a mix of hopeful signs (see here, here and here) and desperate violence. I think that the former is a major incentive to the latter, an unfortunate dynamic that we�re going to struggle with for the foreseeable future.
* Indonesia�s second trial of one of the founders of al Qaeda�s Southeast Asian partner, Jemaah Islamiyah, is under way.
* David Adesnik dissents from the view of David Ignatius that the U.S. should engage in covert operations to influence the Iraqi election (as Iran is almost certainly doing).

Slate Sale

Things you don’t really want to hear from your company’s executives on the day of a new acquisition:

Ann McDaniel, a Post Co. vice president, said: “Our goal is not to in any way change Slate. We think it’s important that it keep its personality. Over time, we hope to find a business model that will make money. You’re not suddenly going to see a different kind of Slate.”


Hope is not a business model. Then again, maybe the market believes that model is out there:

Following the news of the acquisition, Washington Post stock today rose and closed up more than $26, about a 2 percent increase. Microsoft was nearly unchanged, up about 13 cents.


via Instapundit

On and Off in Houston

Two of the Astros rotation slots remain up in the air: Wade Miller is leaving town, but Roger Clemens has accepted arbitration, meaning that if he comes back again it will be as an Astro.
Miller’s a good pitcher who’s been scarred by injuries and Minute Maid Field; if he’s healthy, he’d be a great pickup for someone.
Clemens can certainly still pitch, so it’s more a matter of motivation. If he does return, Clemens – the winningest righthander since Grover Alexander – could become only the second pitcher (after Warren Spahn) to break 330 career wins in the post-1920 lively ball era.

Reading List

From the archives: my favorite books.
For what it’s worth, what I’m reading right now: John Keegan, The First World War (more on this later; I can’t put it down); Michael Kelly, Things Worth Fighting For; and a few others I started and have made slow progress on. I was very close to finishing John Fund’s Stealing Elections and Stephen Hayes’ The Connection before the election, but haven’t made much headway since then. I also recently finished PJ O’Rourke’s new book Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism, which was OK but I’d already read the best stuff in article form.

Chavez vs. Bonds

The Baseball Savant gets carried away with Eric Chavez, comparing his numbers through age 26 to Barry Bonds:

The only real difference between the two at this point is that Bonds was showing a greater degree of plate discipline at this early stage than is Chavez. On the other hand, Chavez is showing much more power than Bonds at this point.


Link via Pinto. Of course, Bonds through age 26 had won back-to-back MVP awards; Chavez has never placed in the top 10 in the balloting. That’s because the offensive context Chavez plays in is radically different; for example, the rough measure of OPS+ shows Chavez at 131, 122, 132 and 132 the past four years, compared to 147, 125, 170 and 161 for Bonds.
Even if you ignore context, though, the comparison doesn’t hold. Chavez missed 37 games to injury last season, something that didn’t happen to Bonds until he was 34. And the comparison totally overlooks a factor of great significance in projecting player development: speed. Chavez has stolen 14 bases and grounded into 35 double plays the past two years, compared to 97 steals and 16 GIDP for Bonds at the same age. (As to the plate discipline, Chavez has drawn 90+ walks once; Bonds had done it three years running). Even with just the raw numbers, you could see several reasons why Chavez’ future as a hitter – even ignoring the post-2000 Bonds surge, which is entirely without precedent – shouldn’t be compared to Barry Bonds.

The Saga Continues�

Some new developments in the D.C. stadium saga:

D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams and Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp have reached an agreement tonight on the terms of a baseball stadium financing package that they believe likely will satisfy Major League Baseball by guaranteeing construction of a future home for the Washington Nationals, aides said�
Details are still emerging about the new agreement between Cropp and Williams, but the full 13-member council will be asked to vote on an amended plan today�


Hopefully, they have better options on the table than just this.

Some Things Never Change

Aaron Gleeman on Luis Rivas:

The Official Twins Beat Writer of AG.com, La Velle E. Neal III, wrote an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune over the weekend that carried the headline: “Team worries Rivas has become stale.”
As you can imagine, I got a nice chuckle out of that one. I also wondered about someone like Luis Rivas becoming “stale.” I mean, if you have a bucket of, say, feces, and you leave it out for a week, does it become something worse than a bucket of feces? Does it become “rancid feces” or something? And how big of a bucket would you need to fit Rivas into it, exactly?

Spanning the Globe, 12/19/04

* Orin Kerr looks at some sloppy reporting of a recent survey about �civil liberties� and Muslim-Americans. (Via The Corner).
* A new RAND study has some good suggestions for winning the ideological component of the War on Terror.
* I�m no expert on military logistics, but Powerline has a link to an Army press conference that puts the armor issue in some useful context. (Via Instapundit).
* On the other hand, as critics of Donald Rumsfeld go, Greg Djerejian is among the most credible. (Via Just One Minute).
* The evidence against Ali Hassan al-Majid (a.k.a. �Chemical Ali�) is finally being aired. It is about time.
* Finally, Indiana Jones and the Battle for Fallujah?
UPDATE: Speaking of context, I�m curious as to the context of attacks against Rumsfeld for writing, but not personally signing, some �condolence� letters. In World War II, did George Marshall? In Vietnam, did Robert McNamara? In the Gulf War, did Dick Cheney? In Somalia, did Les Aspin? I honestly don�t know and would like to. There is an issue of time, but it does seem to me that a personalized letter from a subordinate would be preferable to a form letter from the Secretary. Anyway, it does sound a little tacky, but some context is necessary for me to know if this is something that is at all unique to Rumsfeld.

Unit Adhesion

Well, you knew Steinbrenner had to do something to top Pedro coming to Shea, and there was only one pitcher out there (well, other than bringing back Clemens) who fit the bill. Just wait for the first time Pedro and Randy Johnson square off in the regular season . . . although Joe Torre traditionally tries to duck the head-to-head matchups of aces.
Short term – over the next two seasons, maybe three – this deal is a bonanza for the Yankees, who give up the struggling Javier Vazquez and bring in the dominating Johnson plus, apparently, as of the latest report, Kaz Ishii, who can also be potentially useful. I’ll have to digest the broader pitcure for the Yankee pitching staff later, but the minimal changes to the everyday lineup, combined with the addition of Johnson, Ishii, Pavano, Wright, Stanton and Rodriguez leaves no doubt where the Yanks felt they needed to improve.
If Vazquez isn’t nursing an undisclosed injury – a very real possibility- I envy the Dodgers getting him out of the Bronx, where Torre had lost confidence in him, and into Dodger Stadium, although the Daily News suggested this morning that he could be headed to the White Sox . . . of course, the deal is still cotngent on Brad Penny passing a physical with Arizona, among other things (think the D-Backs ever thought when they traded Penny for Matt Mantei that they’d need to part with the Big Unit to get him back?)
The rationale for dumping Johnson and bringing in Penny makes sense for Arizona, and Shawn Green is still young enough, but Green’s injuries and high salary obviously make him a less than ideal return on Johnson.
More to follow on all this, as well as Tim Hudson to the Braves, Beltre to the Mariners, and Renteria and Clement to the Red Sox . . . the moves are just coming too fast to make sense of them all.

Details

Lileks shows his eye for the telling detail, even in an otherwise innocuous essay about a trip to Chuck E. Cheese:

[W]hile we played air hockey some limber kids were hurling basketballs into the net a few feet away, and three � Three! � balls flew over the backboard and struck me in the head. A woman clad head to toe in Muslim clothing apologized; all I saw were her eyes, but they were wide and beseeching, and for the first time I wondered what it would be like to live in a culture where the eyes were all you had to read. Would it be enough? Would it be all you needed to know, really?

Sorry, Harry

Prominent left-wing Yale constitutional law professor Jack Balkin gives no comfort to defenders of Harry Reid’s baseless attack on Justice Thomas’ competence, and grounds his objections to Thomas in purely results-oriented terms:

Having seen his work over the course of more than a decade, I have no reason to think that Thomas is appreciably better or worse in terms of his lawyerly skills than many other Justices who have sat on the Supreme Court. The positions he takes are often quite striking, almost to the point of being “off-the-wall,” but sometimes ideas once thought “off-the-wall” become orthodoxy later on depending on how the political winds blow. If I have an objection to him, it is that his constitutional vision is very different from mine, and so I think he interprets the Constitution in ways that lead to very unjust and uncalled for results. I think his arguments are often wrong and his assumptions misguided, but that does not make him an embarrassment. It makes him a powerful person who is using his power to move the law in what I consider to be the wrong direction. I would oppose appointing more Justices to the Supreme Court who agreed with him not because they believed in natural law, or original understanding, or disagreed with legal realism, but because they would be likely to push the practical meaning of the Constitution in very unjust and inappropriate directions.

Habeas Extended

Judge John Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued an opinion today in Omar Abu Ali v. Ashcroft (the kind of case that pretty well announces what it’s about in the caption) refusing to dismiss a habeas petition brought by a US citizen who has been detained by Saudi Arabia since June 2003. Ali, who alleges that he has been tortured by the Saudis, also alleges that he is being held at the behest of the US government. The court concluded that habeas jurisdiction was not necessarily barred either by the fact that Ali was held outside the US nor by the fact that he was in the custody of a foreign power, but ordered further discovery proceedings to develop the factual record.

Spanning the Globe, 12/15/04

* Not to point any fingers or anything, but this is a cool article on the KGB�s historical fondness for using poison (complete with spring-loaded umbrellas!).
* The Washington Post covers Germany�s frustrating inability to prosecute anyone in connection with the 9/11 attacks. The more one reads about modern-day Germany, the more clear it is why it has been a favorite rest stop for terrorists: the legacy of the Nazis has left the country unwilling to take responsible security measures, both internally and externally.
* Like the Abu Ghraib case, this should be investigated and any wrongdoers should be severely punished.
* In criticizing Bernard Kerik, who clearly had some issues, a few of which might even be relevant, I�m pretty much in agreement with Rich Lowry�s argument that the first rationale for his withdrawal was the most important.
* Speaking of which, John Derbyshire doesn�t like the way some caricature the immigration debate.
* One of the contributors over at Slugger O�Toole provides a nice reminder as to which side in the dispute in Northern Ireland was recently praising the late, unlamented Yasser Arafat. (Hint: it�s not the one many Irish-Americans like to demonize). That said, from my limited knowledge, the anti-Catholic Rev. Paisley is someone I�m pretty loathe to defend.
* Finally, Ed Morrissey looks at the recent statement by Mahmoud Abbas calling the intifadas a �mistake as well as having some good suggestions as to how to support the troops this Christmas.
UPDATE: There is some dispute over the facts of the Kerik �nanny� situation. I have nothing to add about that, one way or another. My point was a more general one: for a potential head of DHS, or for anyone that matter, allegations of violating of U.S. immigration law should be viewed as a deadly serious matter in a post-9/11 world.

Answering Josh Marshall’s Call

(Also posted in The Corner after I emailed this to Jonah Goldberg – Welcome, Corner readers!).
For all of Josh Marshall’s huffing and puffing about the effort to expose how Joe Wilson got picked for the Niger trip, it’s worth taking a little trip in the Wayback Machine to what Marshall had to say on July 8, 2003, less than a week before Bob Novak’s now-infamous column identifying Wilson’s wife, CIA officer Valerie Plame, as the person who picked Wilson:

Continue reading Answering Josh Marshall’s Call

Pray They Don�t Alter It Any Further

The D.C. Council has pretty much rewritten the city�s agreement with Major League Baseball, leaving the future of the former Montreal Expos once again in doubt.
I�m sympathetic to the argument that D.C. taxpayers shouldn�t get stuck with the whole tab for a new stadium, but the City Council should honor the city�s original agreement with MLB. Doing otherwise only gives baseball an excuse to look elsewhere for a less inept city government that won�t renege on its deals.
UPDATE: David Pinto has a different take, which I agree with in principle, except to say that, if D.C. wanted to draw a line about demanding private financing, the time to do that was when it first made a deal. With baseball already committed to moving and renaming the team and local baseball fans prepared to support it, I think it�s wrong to reverse course like this. Hopefully, an owner or investor will ride in to pony up the money, but the track record of D.C.�s local government can�t be much of an incentive.
SECOND UPDATE (from the Crank): I like the image of Bud Selig as Lando . . . Eric McErlain has been all over this story, and has links aplenty here.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Chris Lawrence makes a valid point.

Grand Slam Trivia

A reader emailed me this question:

“Who is the only player to hit an Inside the Park Grand Slam pinch hit Home Run and have it be the only Home run of his career?”


Well, I didn’t know the answer, and haven’t yet been able to verify that it happened that way (maybe someone can confirm this in the comments). But assuming that there is, in fact, precisely one such player, I think I found the answer.
This link lists the 12 major leaguers to hit both a pinch hit grand slam and an inside the park grand slam in their careers:

Randy Winn is the 12th major-leaguer, third in the past 50 years, to hit an inside-the-park grand slam (Oct. 3, 1999) and a pinch-hit grand slam (April 4). The others, according to SABR home run analyst David Vincent: Mike O’Neill, Beals Becker, Cy Williams, Marty Kavanagh, Rogers Hornsby, Harvey Hendrick, Les Bell, Hack Wilson, Pete Milne, Tim McCarver and Cesar Cedeno.


(A purportedly complete list of inside the park grand slams is here).
Of the 12, precisely one player had just one career home run: Pete Milne of the 1949 New York Giants. Milne batted 29 times in 31 games for the Giants that year while making just one appearance in the field, so it stands to reason that he was used mostly as a pinch hitter. (The list above identifies the date of his grand slam as April 27, 1949, a game the Giants won 11-8 over the hated Dodgers, so it’s not surprising that it won him a job as a pinch hitter). So that appears to be the answer.

San Pedro de Shea

As you can tell from my commentary the past few days, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the Mets’ signing of Pedro Martinez to a four-year, $50 million contract. Some thoughts, some original, some not, in no particular order:
1. Four years is obviously too much guaranteed time for a guy with Pedro’s injury history. On the other hand, the cost of the deal is money ($50 million), players (the draft picks the Mets give up) and opportunity cost (the innings Pedro takes away from other players). Given that Pedro seems unlikely to reach the point where he’s pitching a lot of innings but pitching ineffectively, an extra year only costs the Mets one of those, the money. On the other hand, you can hardly blame the Red Sox for deciding that this was crazy money.
2. In the same vein: finding good young hitters is not that hard; finding good young pitchers these days – guys who can consistently take 30 turns in the rotation with a better-than-league ERA – is next to impossible. And Barry Bonds notwithstanding, in general, hitters decline much more predictably with age than do pitchers. And, a starting pitcher usually does much less to block the progress of good young arms, since few teams are so glutted with pitching that they can’t quickly find room for a good youngster. All of which are a way of explaining why, as a general matter, I’m more willing to see even a rebuilding team take on an expensive starting pitcher in his 30s, as compared to a Sammy Sosa-type declining slugger.
3. Pedro is, as I discussed yesterday, a pitcher of historic levels of greatness. If you are going to gamble, better to gamble on a guy who’s an inner-circle Hall of Famer than on . . . well, on Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano, for example. Given his track record, I view Pedro as much more of a proven commodity, and not a significantly greater injury risk, than Carl Pavano or Jaret Wright, both headed to the Bronx after precisely one year of being healthy and effective. (Of course, all pitchers are greater injury risks than almost all everyday players).
On the durability front, well, Pedro is replacing Al Leiter, who is six years older and was never an iron man himself. Leiter, working for an average salary the past 3-4 years of about $2 million per year less than Pedro will make, averaged 194 innings a year in his seven seasons at Shea, only once throwing more than 210 (Pedro threw 217 last year, but with diminished effectiveness compared to 2001-03). If we get about the same from Pedro, I’ll be happy. I don’t expect 230 innings.
4. Shea is a great place for a power pitcher, especially with Mike Cameron in center field, and facing a pitcher instead of some Frank Thomas/Edgar Martinez type DH every nine hitters is a great way to cut down the number of stressful pitches thrown. Both of which are a way of saying that Pedro may wind up being more valuable with the Mets than he would have been with the Red Sox. Bringing a power pitcher to Shea is like bringing a power hitter to Wrigley (see, Dawson, Andre; Alou, Moises).
5. Of course, none of this should be viewed as a substitute for the long-term strategy the Mets need to develop young talent. But frankly, I’m not about to hold my breath waiting for that to happen. Given the existing strategy of trying to half-rebuild while continuing to prop up the team with veterans, Pedro is a decent fit in that context.
6. I know the market has changed a lot, but $50 million really doesn’t look like an extraordinary amount of money compared to past contracts given to Mike Hampton, Kevin Brown, Darren Dreifort, Kevin Appier, Mike Mussina, Tom Glavine, Chan Ho Park . . . yeah, there’s a lot of bad decisions there, but this isn’t a Mo Vaughn style 7-year $100-mil-plus millstone here; it’s basically one Kris Benson plus one Kaz Matsui. If this deal deters the Mets from two more middle-market contracts like those, where’s the harm?
7. Just for a little perspective, if you look at the most similar pitchers at the same age, Pedro is around the same age at which Tom Seaver went to the Reds, Roger Clemens to the Blue Jays, Mussina to the Yankees, and Lefty Grove to the Red Sox. Most of the guys on that list had their ups and downs in their mid-30s, but in general they had some real high points as well. Of course, physically, Martinez resembles Mussina, Grove, Greg Maddux, Whitey Ford or Juan Marichal much more than he does Seaver or Clemens. On a more sobering note, Pedro is also about the same age Frank Viola and Bret Saberhagen were when they left the Mets.
8. Can we finally have a no-hitter now, please?
9. Dan Lewis asks Five Questions:
1) Will this guy improve the team next year?
2) Does the move cost us too much in players?
3) What would our plan have been if we didn�t make this move, and is the gain signficant?
4) What is the effect of the deal if it goes badly?
5) If the deal goes awry, how will we fix it?

Go see his answers; I do think there’s a missing factor here: the deal has upside. Although I don’t regard it as the most likely possibility, it’s certainly one of the plausible scenarios to get 800 innings, 800 strikeouts and an ERA below 3.00 from Pedro over the next four years. Given the scarcity of highly effective pitchers these days, that would be worth more than $12 million a year, in my view. (A return to something close to vintage Pedro, which is not going to happen, would be worth much more). That’s one thing that distinguishes this from the contracts that a lot of mid-30s hitters get, where you are paying them a salary equal to the best value they are likely to give you. Hey, you win in baseball by taking risks. This deal is a big risk, but then Vladimir Guerrero last year was a big risk too. This is one that could pay off. Better that than give out more $25 million contracts to guys who are a safe bet to turn in a 4.25 ERA.

The Very Best

Long-time readers will recall my Translated Pitcher Records project from four years ago. Hopefully, I’ll get back to that one some day. But a simpler way of comparing the very best pitchers over time is ERA+, baseballreference.com’s comparison of a pitcher’s career ERA to a park-context-adjusted league average. There are two problems, however, with the baseballreference.com leaderboard: it has a very low innings pitched threshold, and thus is loaded at the top with relief pitchers; and, unlike my Translated Records, it isn’t translated back into a recognizable ERA benchmark.
So I thought I’d do both; I separated out the pitchers by groupings of innings pitched, and translated their ERAs back into a uniform context of a league ERA of 4.50, which is around midway between the NL and AL ERAs in 2004:
3000 Career Innings or More

# Pitcher ERA IP
1 Lefty Grove 3.04 3940.2
2 Walter Johnson 3.08 5914.2
3 Randy Johnson 3.13 3368
4 Roger Clemens 3.19 4493
5 Greg Maddux 3.19 4181.1
6 Kid Nichols 3.24 5056.1
7 Three Finger Brown 3.26 3172.1
8 Cy Young 3.26 7354.2
9 Grover Alexander 3.33 5190
10 Christy Mathewson 3.33 4780.2
11 John Clarkson 3.36 4536.1
12 Whitey Ford 3.41 3170.1
13 Kevin Brown 3.46 3183
14 Carl Hubbell 3.46 3590.1
15 Amos Rusie 3.46 3769.2

You can see why I stick to the view that Walter Johnson was the greatest of all pitchers, as he stands second only to Lefty Grove here, and in 40% more innings. This list is dominated by pre-1920 and active pitchers, other than Grove and Ford. While I knew he was on the edge of making a Hall of Fame case, I was as surprised as anyone to see Kevin Brown on a list this elite. And this is also further confirmation of precisely how great Kid Nichols was, and why he really gets a raw deal when the great pitchers of old are being ranked.
2000-3000 Career Innings
This second list is guys who have had fairly substantial careers but not a full, 15-years-at-200-innings career:

# Pitcher ERA IP
1 Pedro Martinez 2.69 2296
2 Hoyt Wilhelm 3.08 2254.1
3 Ed Walsh 3.10 2964.1
4 Addie Joss 3.17 2327
5 Al Spalding 3.17 2890.2
6 Rube Waddell 3.36 2961.1
7 Noodles Hahn 3.41 2029.1
8 Sandy Koufax 3.44 2324.1
9 Curt Schilling 3.44 2812.2
10 Hal Newhouser 3.46 2993

You can see here why, for all my mixed feelings about the warning signs and the Mets overpaying, I’m still excited about the possibility of Pedro coming to Shea: he’s been head and shoulders above anybody else who’s ever pitched, he’s still just 33, and a guy that good is worth a gamble. . . Noodles Hahn? Yeah, I’m not too sure about that one either, but Hahn’s the classic forgotten type of pitcher, a guy whose big years came with the turn-of-the-century Reds, a dismal franchise in a quiet period in the game’s history. . . Curt Schilling is close to qualifying for the next list up, although he’s also close to dropping off the bottom if he finishes with a few bad seasons.
The rest of the guys in the under-2000 IP bin fall into three groups: relievers, starting with Dan Quisenberry at 3.08 and including John Franco, Bruce Sutter, John Hiller, Lee Smith, Kent Tekulve, and Doug Jones; very-short-career starters, from Smoky Joe Wood at 3.08 down through Jim Devlin (who was banned from baseball for throwing the 1877 pennant race), Harry Brecheen, Spud Chandler, and Dizzy Dean; and one active starter, Tim Hudson at 3.26.

2003-04 Traffic Report

I checked my traffic stats last night with the “Webalizer” feature at Hosting Matters. . . thought it would be interesting to chart this out. This is visits per day, but less important that what the actual number is is that it’s a consistent measurement of the site’s daily traffic since I moved to the Movable Type site:

Month Visits
Apr 2003 115
May 2003 192
Jun 2003 243
Jul 2003 321
Aug 2003 283
Sep 2003 329
Oct 2003 403
Nov 2003 394
Dec 2003 410
Jan 2004 544
Feb 2004 726
Mar 2004 735
Apr 2004 798
May 2004 799
Jun 2004 837
Jul 2004 879
Aug 2004 982
Sep 2004 1152
Oct 2004 1513
Nov 2004 1580
Dec 2004 1781

Wow. And the thing is, you go around the blogosphere, you see a lot of people whose traffic patterns look something like this. Of course, it remains to be seen if I can keep up the momentum of the election, the 2004 postseason and some of the huge links I’ve had lately.

Following The Glavine Trail

Well, this would put the Mets one Mike Mussina acquisition from ensuring that no active pitcher wins 300 games . . .The fourth year for Pedro strikes me as the one year too many. I’m more encouraged by the fact that they’re pursuing Delgado and Sexson, especially now that they wouldn’t need to surrender draft choices to get Delgado (I’d rather have Sexson, although he may be close to signing with Seattle).
UPDATE: At least the Mets aren’t doing anything nearly as stupid as trading Carlos Lee for Scott Podsednik. The mind staggers at that one.
SECOND UPDATE: It certainly looks like this is happening, given Larry Lucchino’s email referring to Pedro’s Red Sox tenure in the past tense.

SCIENCE/ Getting Warmer

The Mad Hibernian’s post on Friday on Michael Crichton’s new book questioning “global warming” and similar environmental dogmas (which followed on this powerful speech by Crichton last year denouncing global warming theories) prompted some interesting comments and links. Now, I’m no expert on the subject myself, but I did think it was worth repeating here something I said in the comments to that post. I’m very skeptical of hearing “global warming” discussed as if it is a single concept, like “the earth is round.” Basically, “global warming,” as I understand its popular meaning, is really three different concepts:
1. The earth has, for some period of time, been getting warmer.
2. This past warming trend is not a random or cyclical phenomenon but is a trend that will continue into the future unless interrupted by human intervention.
3. The past trend and its continuation into the future are the results of specifically identifiable human activities, i.e., carbon emissions.
It is entirely possible to believe #1 without believing #2 and #3, or even to believe #1 and #2 without believing #3. Beware of anyone who tries to use evidence supporting just one of those propositions to convince you of all three.

2004 Bedfellow Awards

Well, as promised back in late October, it’s time to award the 2004 Bedfellow Awards. The Bedfellow Awards are named in honor of the comic strip “Bloom County,” in which Senator Bedfellow was defeated on the strength of an election-day headline, “WARNING: VOTING FOR BEDFELLOW MAY CAUSE HERPES“. Although the award gives special points for attacks that are false and/or unfair, the simplest definition of a Bedfellow Award nominee is a news story that (1) comes out shortly before the election, and (2) has a much larger impact on the election than it would have if it had come out earlier.
I solicited nominations, although I didn’t get a whole lot of them. You can see some of the nominees here and a very early candidate here as well as in the post linked above and its trackbacks. Let’s run through the awards:
1. Overall Winner: Osama bin Laden
Political experts will debate endlessly which candidate it helped and whether it had much of an impact one way or another (Kerry says it cost him the election), but there’s no question that the big, knock-everything-else-off-the-front-page surprise story of the campaign’s last weekend was the emergence of OBL himself from his gopher hole with a video message aimed directly at the American people and obviously timed deliberately to influence the election. (I’ll leave aside here as well the debate over whether he was actually trying to help Kerry or just to show he could influence an American election as his minions had in Spain). The story, once out there, was a legitimate story, which is why I’m giving the award to bin Laden himself rather than the news media or the candidates, who had no choice but to react to it.
2. Anti-Bush Winner: The Al-Qaqaa Explosives Story
This was a favorite nominee, and it would have been an even more outsized story if CBS had succeeded, as planned, in sitting on the story until the Sunday before the election (instead, because the NY Times broke the story a week earlier, 60 Minutes had to settle for a story attacking the Bush Administration over the sufficiency of equipment for the troops in Iraq). The explosives story got more heat and less light than it would have earlier in the campaign because there was so little time to get to the bottom of the thing.
3. Anti-Kerry Winner: The Dishonorable Discharge
On November 1, the New York Sun’s Thomas Lipscomb finally broke through Kerry’s long stonewall on the circumstances of his discharge from the military, but the day-before-the-election timing wound up making the story a late hit. Of course, unlike late hits against Bush, this one got ignored and buried.
4. Senate Race Winner: The Kentucky Senate Race
Nasty, nasty, nasty, full of allegations of whispering campaigns, the most late-hit-filled and under-the-radar campaign of the year turned out to be the Kentucky Senate race, with Democrat Dan Mongiardo openly challenging the mental competence of Republican righty Jim Bunning, and Bunning accused of a whispering campaign to convince voters that Mongiardo was gay.
I didn’t get enough nominations or pay close enough attention to pick a House winner, but the latest of the late hits had to be the attack on Louisiana Republican Billy Tauzin III for a citation for trespassing and illegal hunting of nutria, a kind of rodent.
Anyway, there were plenty of candidates from this year’s presidential elections. Feel free to suggest additional honorable mentions in the comments and trackbacks.