Baseball 2007 Archives

I've been writing on the web since 2000 and blogging since 2002, and in all those years, 2007 has been perhaps the toughest in terms of being satisfied with my ability to produce consistently new and interesting content for my readers - so with things a little quiet here over the past week or so and probably staying that way for the next few days, I hope you will indulge me here if I run a retrospective look back at my best work from this year, or at least the posts I enjoyed the most. For newer readers, it's a chance to catch up on things you may have missed. Posts are grouped in three subjects and listed chronologically within those. As you can see, the 2008 presidential election is somewhat overrepresented here, while the baseball postseason is underrepresented.

Sports

A look at Hall of Fame and Hall of Fame candidate middle infielders.

Critiquing Baseball-Reference.com's translated statistics.

Review of Michael Lewis' The Blind Side.

Taking a victory lap on the BALCO leak.

EWSL review of 2006 and EWSL age analysis.

EWSL previews for the AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL West and NL Central.

A brief history of the rise of lefthanded pitching.

Assessing Scott Boras.

Is Billy Wagner the best lefthanded reliever ever?

That high-flying Mets defense, before it collapsed down the stretch, and after.

Baseball's most impressive records. Probably my favorite post of the year, and definitely my favorite baseball post.

Tom Glavine's 300th win, and the career path of the average 300 game winner.

My BBC Radio debate with David Pinto on Barry Bonds.

Michael Vick and the NFL players union.

Reviewing The Bronx is Burning (the book).

The role of pitching in the history of the Detroit Tigers.

Willie Randolph: the motivational poster.

The home run imbalance between the leagues.

The greatest late-season runs of all time, including the 2007 Rockies.

The horrible almost Yorvit Torrealba signing.

The Milledge deal.

The Cabrera/Willis deal.

The Hall of Fame ballot: Yes on Gossage, No on Dawson.

Isiah Thomas: the most hated figure in NY sports history?

Tim Raines and the Tablesetters.

Politics, War and Law

The wrong way for Rudy to argue about abortion.

Why I'm with Rudy.

Obama's plan to withdraw from Iraq beginning May 1, 2007.

Mike Huckabee: the right man for the wrong job.

The Iranians in Iraq.

The case against a national minimum wage.

John Edwards' amnesia on Iran and Israel.

Barack Obama, pandering to cannibals.

Bill Richardson, sucker for tyrants.

A culture war roundup from the courts.

On Imus and the Rutgers press conference.

A look at campaign finance laws through the lens of Torii Hunter's bat.

Those tax hiking Democratic governors. More here and here.

Eliot Spitzer's pro-abortion zealotry, and the Seven Stages of Liberal Legal Activism.

Tax amnesty for illegal immigrants.

John Edwards' fantasy foreign policy.

Obama's health care plan.

The elements of a third party presidential run.

Harry Reid, the Insult Comic Senate Majority Leader.

The Libby pardon. I'm not even sure if I still agree with this post, but I did put a lot of thought into it.

A satire on the (then-)sinking McCain campaign.

Trying to nail the Hillary jello to the wall on Iraq.

Two cheers for the hypocrites.

John Edwards doesn't want to know.

A taxonomy of the presidential candidates.

Why Fred Thompson needed to get specific. (He since has).

Uncivil litigators.

The Spitzer/Hillary posts on drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Trouble With Mitt Romney, Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Smearing John Edwards.

Expanding the battlefield.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Michael Gerson.

Yes, Hillary will win the nomination.

Pop Culture and Other Fun Stuff

The Star Wars prequels as they should have been.

Predictions and a wrapup on the end of The Sopranos.

Reviewing the fifth Harry Potter film and the final Harry Potter book.

Pennsylvania Travelogue.

I have a long-in-the-making column up at The Hardball Times this morning on the Hall of Fame candidacies of Tim Raines and similar players - the tablesetters.

FYI, I left Amos Otis out of the article because I wasn't sure where to classify him. Otis was sort of neither fish nor fowl, not exactly a slugger or a tablesetter but, as Bill James has noted, one of the most well-rounded players in the game's history, doing well at almost everything. Anyway, Otis' translated stats for the 10 years of his prime (age 23-32, 1970-79) rates him at .285/.477/.351* in 623 plate appearances for a "Rate" of 104.1, with 30 SB and 7 CS and 11 DP per year.

* - The THT folks switched all my Avg/Slg/OBP numbers to Avg/OBP/Slg, which still looks wierd to me but has become the convention in the last 10 years or so, I guess.

The grittiest ballplayers ever, proven statistically! Thanks to a couple of readers for passing this along, it's really a must-read.

*Studes says Jose Reyes' problem down the stretch last season was not hitting too few ground balls.

*TIME Magazine looked into Vladimir Putin's heart, too, and named him their Man of the Year for discarding the remaining constitutional breaks on dictatorship in Russia. Unlike President Bush, TIME can't excuse this as diplomacy.

*You'll shoot your eye out! Mike Huckabee may have a serious problem with granting too many clemencies to violent criminals, but Mitt Romney's refusal to grant any pardons or clemencies at all took him to the ridiculous length of refusing to expunge the conviction of a decorated Iraq War veteran who was convicted at age 13 of shooting a friend in the arm with a BB gun.

*Britney Spears' 16-year-old sister, who was supposed to be the responsible one, has announced that she is pregnant. At least she's keeping the baby.

*Businesses that should exist but don't.

This goes rather too far even for dedicated Clemens-haters.
To say nothing of the mental image.

In other news, somebody needs a hug.

I'm traveling on business today and so can't blog at length, but just to chime in quickly: we've all had a lot of amusement with the various unofficial and then official blacklists of steroid users circulated through the good offices of one of my all-time least favorite U.S. Senators, George Mitchell. It's natural to have some schadenfreude - or angst, depending on whose ox is gored and how much you enjoy German - over this, but at the end of the day, we've ended up with various lists circulated that were not officially sourced, plus lists that were and may not have been the result of a particularly fair or thorough process* and thus aren't necessarily the final word that both the accused players and the fans deserved.

Which is a shame, just as the shoddy and tendentious Dowd Report was a shame even though it was ultimately proven to be correct in its core conclusion. Fans and the game's posterity do deserve an accounting, not least because an unfair cloud of suspicion has hung over many players who likely did nothing wrong.

Maybe we will learn more - and I'll learn more when I have time to get a longer look at what has come out - but for now I'm not ready to hang anybody for their having been named on George Mitchell's list.

* - To the surprise of nobody who remembers Senate investigations from Mitchell's days as Majority Leader

I participated in a roundtable discussion of this year's Hall of Fame ballot over at Armchair GM, arguing in favor of Gossage and against Andre Dawson. David Pinto, Dayn Perry, Matt Sussman, and Rich Lederer also participated (no points for guessing who Lederer argues in favor of). Go check it out, along with the other fine submissions.

Barry Bonds wants only the best legal representation - but only at a discount.

Of course, this begs the question of who is familiar with these negotiations that is blabbing them to the press.

A few thoughts on the big Marlins-Tigers trade of Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis for Cameron Maybin, Andrew Miller, Mike Rabelo and minor league pitchers Eulogio De La Cruz, Dallas Trahern and Burke Badenhop:

1. Is This A Good Return For These Two?

It's a good package - Maybin and Miller are high-upside prospects; Rabelo seems like a typical backup catcher type who will hit .250-.270 but do little else. It's tough to get a read on Miller, who has thrown 74.1 innings in the majors and 83 in the minors after a storied college career, but he could easily be an ace in the making, and Maybin is just 20 and has tremendous tools and a fine minor league record. Trahern has thrown over 500 minor league innings striking out less than 5 men per 9, so he's a non-prospect. Badenhop seems to have great control, but really I don't know much more about him or De La Cruz.

Straight up for Cabrera, as huge as Cabrera's value is, this seems like a solid package of prospects. Still, it has to be a sign of how far Willis' market value has fallen that you couldn't get more by dealing them separately.

2. Is This A Good Deal For The Tigers?

Absolutely. They're a contending team and they surrendered no proven major leaguers and got one of the three or four best hitters in baseball in return, who is young and durable and still reasonably priced. Cabrera presents challenges given his weight and poor glove, but if Renteria holds up at short, they won't have the same problems the Marlins had of Cabrera's weaknesses being exposed by combination with Hanley Ramirez. And Detroit can move him to DH in a year or two if they have to. As for Willis, you have to think there's at least a chance that a change of scenery and better defensive support could help him, but I'd bet on him spending some quality time with Dr. Andrews before long; his downward spiral seems more likely the result of injuries leaching his effectiveness than just a funk.

3. Does The Marlins' Business Model Make Any Sense?

If you start with the assumption that you had to deal these guys because they were getting expensive and needed to get prospects in return, this trade makes some sense. But I question the underlying assumption that Florida can't bring in enough revenue to afford keeping a home-grown superstar like Cabrera - an assumption that also implies that three or four years from now, they will be dealing Maybin and Miller as well (in fact, if that's your business model, Maybin being 20 years old is a minus, since it means he'll be free agent ready before he hits his prime). Granted, the Marlins have managed to win two championships, but the frustration of these continual firesales probably costs them more in fan loyalty than it saves in salary. It's not like South Florida is a sparsely populated area or filled with people unfamiliar with baseball, after all; a commitment to building a consistently competitive team that hangs on to its players would stand a fair chance of being rewarded. With the death of the Expos, the Marlins have become the prime example of what Joe Sheehan has called anti-marketing, i.e., a franchise that is more interested in convincing the fans that they can't afford to compete - so as to panhandle for a new ballpark - than in doing the contrary to put fans in the seats.

The Mets' deal of Lastings Milledge for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church is a pretty classic example of a deal I didn't love but didn't hate at first glance, but quickly started hating the more I thought about it. Let's go through the lessons of this deal:

1. There's no such thing as a mistake you only pay for once. This deal is the wages of Omar letting Jesus Flores go in the Rule V draft; Flores now becomes the Nats' starting catcher, and had the Mets still had Flores, they would not have felt that the catching position was a need to be filled.

2. Short term, this deal may not hurt the Mets that much, as it brings in two everyday players of some use. Schneider is a great defensive catcher, probably the best in the game; he's probably good enough to be worth carrying his weak bat, which at 31 isn't going to get better. And Church is a solid player, a career .271/.462/.348 hitter (.279/.484/.355 on the road), albeit one who doesn't hit lefties real well; he's 29 and could have a bust-out year getting out of RFK. My guess is that Chuch will still be a better hitter thah Milledge in 2008. Then again, I'm not sure I want the inevitable Alou injury being the only thing standing between us and Church/Chavez/Gomez holding down the corners.

3. However, dealing Milledge, one of the system's crown jewels, for this pair almost certainly means no deal for a top starting pitcher, as Milledge was constantly mentioned in potential packages for the likes of Danny Haren or Johan Santana.

4. More to the point, long term, we could easily regret this big-time. At 23 next season with great athletecism and no real weakness other than immaturity and sporadic glovework, Milledge still has definite star potential. Add him to the list of young hitters abandoned by the Mets - sometimes for something of value, sometimes not - and while he is less accomplished than some, he's moreso than others and among the youngest:

I don't think you could really say Milledge has less upside at this stage than any of those guys at the time they left the Mets.

5. I assume this also means the Mets will non-tender Johnny Estrada. Estrada's not as much better as Schneider with the bat as he seems, given that Scneider gets on base more and has also suffered from RFK, but he's a pretty useful guy to just give away for nothing.

6. Along with the departure of Lo Duca, Glavine and Mota, this smacks of housecleaning, although actually we have not seen as many guys cleaned out as you might expect.

*The Cubs re-signing Kerry Wood as a closer candidate makes all sorts of sense; Dempster was just terrible for much of 2007, and Wood clearly can't stay healthy unless handled very, very carefully; the steady, manageable workload of a closer may give him the chance to finally unleash his nasty stuff without hurting himself, while keeping super-effective Carlos Marmol in the setup role.

*Mark Prior for sale - well, now, that all depends on the price, doesn't it? The Cubs now have the pitching depth to prefer to cash in Prior and put the era of waiting on his and Wood's return to health behind them, and certainly Prior has upside. I'd think the best match would be someone like Tampa that can afford to wait on a guy who could still turn it around someday, though if I'm Prior I'd like to go to an organization with some track record for reviving injured pitchers (Cincinnati? St. Louis?).

*The Torii Hunter signing is fairly convincing evidence that Arte Moreno has turned into the late-70s Gene Autry or mid-90s Angelos, with more money than he knows what to do with. Sure, Hunter can probably marginally help the Angels in 2008; he's a good player, an excellent glove man with power. But 5 years and $90 million? Hunter is 32, he's never had a .340 OBP in his career, and his value is in his range as a CF; he's a terrible bet to hold his value in his mid-30s. Plus, they spent too much money last year on Gary Matthews for no other reason than his ability to play center field; I suppose you could deal Matthews and eat his contract (he's 33 and fell off the cliff in the last two months of the season after a solid enough first half, batting .180/.324/.269 from August 2 through the end of the year). I had thought the smart play for a team seeking a center fielder, especially a non-desperate team like the Angels, would be Mike Cameron, although after 2005 and 2007, Cameron will probably refuse to sign with any team that wants him to play alongside another center fielder.

The Hunter signing presumably sends Reggie Willits to fourth outfielder status, where if he plays his cards right he could have an Orlando Palmeiro-style career with his good OBP and speed; Willits' total lack of power doomed him as an everyday player, and from what I saw this season he's a terrible outfielder.

*It should surprise nobody familiar with the last decade and a half of Kansas City baseball to see the Royals pursuing Jose Guillen. At age 32, Guillen is essentially the same offensive player as Hunter, maybe a slightly better hitter for average, but without Hunter's good attitude, durability, consistency and glove. That's exactly the guy you want to pay millions to add to a young rebuilding team. Icing on the cake? "Guillen faces a possible suspension next season after being linked to the purchase of steroids and human growth hormone earlier this month in a story appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle."

*No, I can't see how anybody but the Yankees gets Johan Santana. The loss of Hunter probably means that Melky Cabrera would be a logical way to make a deal happen without the Yanks parting with both Hughes and Chamberlain. But that's a deal I'd make in a heartbeat if I'm the Yankees; there's no pitching prospect in history who had a better than 50/05 chance of becoming as good as Santana is now, and Santana's lefthanded, still reasonably young and healthy.

The Mets ... I just don't see what they offer that gets a deal done without Wright or Reyes, and they're not dealing one of those guys.

*The Daily News has a long profile of Duaner Sanchez's comeback trail (from the pictures, Sanchez looks skinnier) and an interview with Randy Niemann about Sanchez's rehab, both of which are necessarily inconclusive about how much the Mets could count on Sanchez this season; he would be a big help.

*The Mets appear to be pondering cutting newly acquired Johnny Estrada, who is coming off elbow bone spur surgery and - like nearly every catcher the Mets have had lately - is coming off a terrible year throwing out baserunners. I'm not wedded to Estrada, but he's an adequate enough alternative that I'd be skeptical of making a deal for Ramon Hernandez unless it can be done cheaply; Hernandez would be an upgrade, but hardly a huge one, as he's 32, coming off a season in which he slugged .382, and has caught 110 games just once in the past four seasons.

*The Reds' signing of Francisco Cordero seems like the classic move that hurts the Brewers more than it helps the Reds; Cordero is a solid but hardly a great closer, despite a gangbusters start to 2007 (he had a 4.66 ERA from June 9 through the end of the season, although his 51/10 K/BB ratio and 4 HR in 38.2 IP in that stretch suggests that he wasn't really throwing that badly), and his absence probably leaves the Brew Crew to trust to the erratic Derrick Turnbow again, but the Reds are far from being in a position to really take advantage of an upgrade at closer, and you'd think they would focus their efforts on other positions. Then again, given the bandbox they play in, Cordero's career 0.64 HR/9, even after spending much of his career in Texas, may have been irresistable.

*I'm still convinced that Tom Glavine is going to completely hit the wall next season. If he gives the Braves 95% of what he gave the Mets this season, they'll be happy, since they are desperate for someone to come in and eat innings, and Glavine can always do that. But I'm fairly certain that his bag of tricks has run dry, and it was only his tremendous savvy and experience that let him paper over that for much of 2007.

*Cerrone quotes Dayn Perry on Bartolo Colon:

Colon has some near-term upside. He’s coming off injury and his conditioning habits leave much to be desired, but he's still got excellent stuff, and his performance down the stretch last season proved he’s still got something in the tank. He makes sense provided he's willing to sign a low-base, incentive-laden contract. If the market is such that he commands a multi-year deal, then consider him no longer worthy of this list.

I agree with that in the abstract - Colon was horrendous last season, but if you look at the numbers his 76/29 K/BB ratio in 99.1 IP indicates a guy who may not be entirely finished, though I don't trust him further than I could throw him (which is not far). But "down the stretch"? He threw just 13.2 innings after July 23, and his 3.95 ERA in three starts is way too little to draw any conclusions from. If anything, the season trend indicates a guy who came back solid but ran out of gas, as his ERA was in the threes into mid-May. Anyway, I agree with a number of the guys on Perry's list as being potentially low-profile signings who could help a team.

The Onion nails this one.

Via Pinto, you really have to go read Phillies blog crashburnalley's email exchange with Bill Conlin (you may remember Conlin as the dumb, obnoxious, loudmouthed guy from ESPN's The Sportswriters Sports Reporters, which is saying a lot in that crowd). Honestly, I was surprised to learn that Conlin had email. This is a highlight:

The only positive thing I can think of about Hitler’s time on earth–I’m sure he would have eliminated all bloggers. In Colonial times, bloggers were called “Pamphleteers.” They hung on street corners handing them out to passersby. Now, they hang out on electronic street corners, hoping somebody mouses on to their pretentious sites. Different medium, same MO.

Leave aside the familiar forms of statistical illiteracy that gets Conlin to this point in the argument, let's consider an analogy in which Conlin:

1. Praises Hitler for the very thing that made him Hitler
2. Wishes for mass murder of bloggers

and

3. Somehow paints the pamphleteers who called for American independence as the bad guys.

It's a depthless hole.

The abortive Yorvit Torrealba experiment at least made me a lot happier to see the Mets deal Guillermo Mota for Johnny Estrada. Mota, of course, had to go, and I was surprised they didn't have to pay someone to take him - but then, he has a good arm and OK control, so there's always someone who thinks they can get a good year out of him.

As for Estrada, who's 32 and in the last year of his contract, the danger sign is his declining plate patience - 25 walks in two years, a .296 OBP last season - but he batted .278 and slugged .403 last year, and did better than that (albeit in Arizona) in 2006; if that's your #8 hitter, you could do worse. (As a switch hitter he might be available to platoon with Castro, but Estrada hits lefties just fine).

Matthew Cerrone, always the best source for compiling all the Mets trade/free agent rumors, notes word here and here that while the Mets were focused for some time on David Eckstein, and while Tadahito Iguchi - who I had thought might be a reasonable, inexpensive option - is asking for a 3-year deal, the team may now be on the verge of a 4-year contract for Luis Castillo.

Save us from such options. Iguchi is a solid enough bat, though he has benefitted from playing in hitters' parks, but he's 33 and coming off an off year; Eckstein's 33, has no power, hasn't played 130 games since 2005, and his value depends entirely on hitting singles and getting hit by pitches. And Castillo, who is still a useful player and was once a very fine one, is 32, has less power than Eckstein, and most of all has such bad knees that a 1-year contract is a risk, let alone 4.

I understand the need for stopgaps, but this is ridiculous. I really like Castillo, but there is no way you are going to get more than two good years out of him. At some point you might be better off taking the offensive hit to get a glove wizard like Anderson Hernandez out there. All in all, this offseason has been a frightening reminder of how slim the pickings are these days at C and SS.

Best news of the week: Mets have not signed Torrealba after all, and have broken off negotiations. Somebody - apparently his agent - obviously screwed up big time by leaking this as if it was a done deal.