Category: Baseball 2006

I’m sort of OK but not thrilled with the Mets getting Shawn Green, which is widely reported but not yet confirmed. Obviously, Green is expensive (he’s owed $9.5 million next year plus a $2 million buyout for 2008, and for that kind of money you might as well just suck it up and get someone like Abreu).
Money aside, he’s really no better than Xavier Nady at best at this stage, although he’s a little more patient at the plate. And who knows? By October, Lastings Milledge could be on a tear – he’s that kind of talent. But there’s also a substantial risk that Milledge could be in a .210-with-no-walks type of funk, and when combined with Floyd’s health you can’t risk going into October with nothing but Milledge, Chavez, Tucker and Ledee as your corner OF options. Hopefully, the D-backs are eating a good chunk of Green’s 2007 salary, so this deal doesn’t constrict the Mets’ financial flexibility. If the money’s not a problem, the deal is OK.

How’s this for identical pitching lines (except for the walks)?

Pitcher	W	L	PCT	G	GS	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	K	ERA
A	13	8	.619	27	27	0	174.2	166	76	73	22	75	122	3.76
B	12	9	.571	27	27	0	180.1	174	79	76	23	36	142	3.79

A is Barry Zito, and B is his teammate Dan Haren. Zito is defying the usual rule that K/BB/HR rates are the biggest determinant of ERA, but then there’s some reason to believe that his big sweeping curveball may make him more effective on balls in play. The bigger lesson here is that Haren is really on the verge of something big if he can ever cut his HR rate a little.

Because he doesn’t do things like this.

Well, yesterday afternoon had to be the coup de grace for the Red Sox. The Sox remain pretty close to the top of the AL in runs scored, so despite the failures of Coco Crisp and the injury to Varitek, the offense really can’t take much of the blame here.
Boston started the season with a projected 5-man rotation of Schilling, Beckett, Clement, Wakefield and Wells. Schilling hasn’t quite been the Schilling of old, but given his age and injuries he’s done about as well as could be expected (14-5, 3.84 ERA) and Wakefield was pitching in typical Wake style until he got hurt. And rookie Jon Lester (6-2, 4.72) has pitched some great games, albeit without the consistency of a more experienced pitcher.
The problem has been the rest of the rotation. In 45 starts, Beckett, Clement and Wells have gone a combined 20-16 with a 5.67 ERA, averaging just 5.8 innings per start, 1.67 HR/9 and 1.47 baserunners per inning. Now, the Sox knew going in that Wells was a gamble, but they had reasonably depended on Clement to be halfway decent and Beckett to step up and shine.
The other five starters – Josh Jason Johnson, Lenny DiNardo, Kyle Snyder, David Pauley and Kason Gabbard – are people the Sox never envisioned having to start this season, and they have sealed the team’s doom: 3-11 in 19 starts, just 4.8 IP/start, a 7.00 ERA, and a staggering 1.92 baserunners per inning.
Like the Yankees’ acquisition of Abreu and Lidle, there’s nothing more complicated to Boston’s collapse than that – the starting pitching just isn’t there. The bullpen has been thin all year (Rudy Seanez and Julian Tavarez being unreliable), but with better starters they wouldn’t have had to lean so hard on a couple of guys.

Yankees through July 31: 61-41 (.598), scoring 5.59 Runs/Game, allowing 4.80 Runs/Game.
Yankees August 1-20: 13-7 (.650), 6.15 Runs/Game, allowing 4.50 Runs/Game.
The difference: Bobby Abreu, batting .397/.526/.500 and scoring 113 runs per 162 games; Cory Lidle, 3.86 ERA in 3 starts. It really is as simple as that. Abreu, now second in the majors in OBP, batted .529/.706/.652 in this weekend’s demolition of the Red Sox. Apparently Abreu didn’t get the memo about how he wasn’t supposed to be a big-game player.

I don’t really know what else to say at this point about the dire situation the Mets face in October if they can’t get Pedro and Glavine healthy. Matt Cerrone has the grim outlook. But let’s think about it this way: if the season ended today, the Mets would face the Reds in the NLDS, with the Cardinals facing the Dodgers. If Pedro but not Glavine is available, the matchups would be something like this:
Game 1: Pedro vs. Bronson Arroyo. Significant advantage: Mets.
Game 2: El Duque vs. Aaron Harang. Harang’s been better two years running, but I’d feel OK about this matchup given the Mets’ offense. Glavine vs. Harang would be much better.
Game 3: Trachsel vs. Eric Milton. Tie on your hittin’ shoes, boys, this is gonna be a long night. Advantage Mets solely on the basis of their offense.
Game 4: Maine vs. … Elizardo Ramirez? Kyle Lohse? Anyway, someone I would trust significantly less than John Maine.
Game 5: Pedro/Arroyo again.
How about the other two NL teams? The Cards have Carpenter, whose odds of staying healthy through October are similar to Pedro’s. Beyond him, though, Mulder has been injured and ineffective, Jason Marquis has a 5.70 ERA and Jeff Suppan a 5.03 and Jeff Weaver 6.07 – none of those guys looks much better than Trachsel. Young Anthony Reyes, with less big-league experience than Maine, may be their #2, and their offense has all sorts of cavities.
The Dodgers are another story, with Brad Penny apparently healthy for the moment, Derek Lowe in a second-half groove, and Greg Maddux having righted the ship since arriving in LA, plus a good if likely unsustainable ERA from wild rookie Chad Billingsley (much like Maine and Reyes, Billingsley has all of 12 big-league starts to his name). Even Aaron Sele has, inexplicably, not been awful. I don’t like the Dodgers’ rotation all that much, and a healthy Pedro-Glavine would match the Mets up with them fairly well, but right now they are the only team on the NL playoff slate that really puts the Mets in a hole even if they go with Pedro + grab bag.
Of course, the World Series is another matter.
UPDATE: Of course, Oliver Perez flirting with a no-hitter in AAA is good news, and makes some of his peripheral stats at Norfolk halfway respectable, but I’m not ready yet to trust Perez with a significant assignment. On the other hand, the performance of Dave Williams underscores the wisdom of his acquisition – not that he will ever be better than mediocre, but he’s the kind of guy it helps to have hanging around AAA when you are desperately short of starters and want to avoid Lima Time.

From my 9-year-old son: “If the Yankees games are on the YES Network, that must mean they show the Royals on the NO Network.”

Omar Minaya tries yet another reclamation project with the acquisition of Guillermo Mota. Since Mota is a free agent after the season, Minaya must be hoping to get him straightened out soon.
Presumably, this would have been impossible if Piazza was still the catcher.

Maxim’s look at 10 great baseball mustaches, at least in the modern era (the 1880s was an earlier golden age for facial hair). A few quick thoughts:
*They probably should have included at least one black and/or Latino player. What, Jose Valentin wasn’t available? Or how about this valiant effort to link mustache and sideburns?

*Doesn’t that picture of Al Hrabosky make him look – otehr than the facial hair – like Will Ferrell?
*Actually, Keith Hernandez did shave the mustache in 1987, leading to him having the “phantom mustache” effect, where it’s gone but you keep thinking it’s there. Keith didn’t stay clean-shaven long enough for this effect to wear off.

Lenny Dykstra, successful stock picker. Which brings to mind the old Wall Street Journal contest where the investment pros would match wits with stocks picked by throwing darts at the Journal’s stock tables. The darts held their ground pretty well.

Or at least a little less indecency. Now that my 9-year-old son reads the sports pages regularly, I’d really rather not have daily articles about Paul Lo Duca’s sex life, thank you.

More on this later, but this year’s AL MVP race looks wide open; Joe Sheehan (subscription only) breaks things down at Baseball Prospectus. Who is your pick and why? Vote and explain. (For now, I’m with Joe Mauer narrowly over Big Papi. You just don’t everyday get a catcher leading the league in batting and OBP, throwing well, running well, staying healthy and handling a rotation with a rookie ERA leader for a contending team. No catcher has won a batting title since Ernie Lombardi. Of course, Big Papi is still unearthly in the clutch, but when you line him up against Manny, Hafner and Thome you can’t say he’s unambiguously the best hitter in the league this year, which is my baseline requirement for giving the MVP to a DH.)

Who should be the 2006 AL MVP if you had to vote today?
	David Ortiz
	Derek Jeter
	Joe Mauer
	Manny Ramirez
	Jim Thome
	Travis Hafner
	Carlos Guillen
	Grady Sizemore
	Jonathan Papelbon
	Curtis Granderson
	Vernon Wells
	Johan Santana
	Someone else
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Resuming, with Part 4, my look at young or still-establishing-themselves players whose stock has fallen dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005 – the NL East. (Parts I, II and III here, here and here, respectively)
Mets
Victor Diaz: Seems like a lot longer than a year and a half ago people were calling him “mini-Manny” with a straight face, given his power bat, improving patience and – yes – fits of vapor lock in the field. Many Mets fans wanted him to take Mike Cameron’s job and were surprised when he lost out to Xavier Nady. By late May, Diaz’s stock had fallen so far there was nearly no consideration of bringing him up to sub when Nady went on the DL. The 24-year-old Diaz is batting .223/.334/.275 at AAA Norfolk, and now seems a longshot to have a significant career as an everyday player.
Oliver Perez: Thrown in by the Pirates in the Nady deal, perhaps unwanted by the Mets (who were planning to flip him back to the Padres for Scott Linebrink the day they acquired him), maybe nursing an undisclosed injury and surely suffering a severe loss of command and a drop in velocity, the pitcher who posted a 2.98 ERA with 239 K to only 145 hits allowed in 2004 will now be Rick Peterson’s Everest. The early returns are ugly – 12 hits, 9 walks and 3 HR in 6.1 innings in two starts at Norfolk.
For what it’s worth, Baseball-Reference.com’s 10 most similar pitchers to Perez through age 23 (entering this year), in order:
1. Sandy Koufax
2. Jerry Reuss
3. Pete Falcone
4. John Sowders
5. Jose Rosado
6. Billy Pierce
7. Tom Underwood
8. Hal Gregg
9. Johnny Podres
10. Tom Glavine
I’m not so sure what the list will look like after 2006.
Heath Bell: Bell’s stock has slid only slightly among those who were his fans a year ago based on his fine K/BB ratios and reasonable HR rate, but even with the Mets’ habit of demoting him whenever he has a bad outing, Bell has been hit awfully hard at times at the major league level (34 hits in 25.1 IP this season; he’s continued to dominate AAA hitters), dimming his prospects for making the immediate leap forward he needs to overcome his doubters in the Mets’ front office.
Anderson Hernandez: A legitimate contender for the Mets’ starting 2B job before the season, the 23-year-old Hernandez was utterly overmatched at the plate (6-for-41 with no walks or extra base hits) and hasn’t been much better back at Norfolk (.252/.301/.291). Hernandez’ fine glovework in his brief tenure did have the benefit of making Kaz Matsui all the more unsustainable by comparison, and with the 36-year-old Jose Valentin holding the 2B job for 2006 and Jeff Keppinger traded away, Hernandez should get another crack at the bigs soon. But the doubts about his bat have mounted.
Aaron Heilman: Heilman showed flashes of brilliance as a starter last year, but was perhaps permanently relegated to the bullpen by his brilliance in a setup role – only to suddenly hit a long stretch of inconsistency in that role, too.
Alay Soler: Soler has had a roller-coaster year, winning himself into the Mets’ good graces with a strong performance at AA Binghamton after a poor spring, hopping well into the rotation in Flushing, only to suffer a string of bad outings and an injury that have him off the Mets’ radar screens.
Phillies
Ryan Madson: Madson’s past as a successful setup man led to hopes that he could transition to a larger role as a starter. As I’ve noted before, Madson has proven not at all up to starting, but the Phillies keep trying him in that role despite an ERA this year of 6.28 in 17 starts and 2.95 in 12 relief appearances.
Cole Hamels: Hamels was supposed to be an instant star, but a 4.50 ERA says otherwise. Hamels doesn’t really belong on this list in terms of his long-term outlook, which if anything is brighter as a result of his staying comparatively healthy, but his short-term expectations have been tempered a bit.
Marlins
Joe Borchard: Borchard opened the season with the Mariners’ CF job tantalizingly within reach, as Jeremy Reed’s wrist injury left only Willie Bloomquist as immediate competition. But the perennial prospect Borchard got only 9 at bats before Reed got himself back in the lineup and Borchard was shipped to Florida. Now 27, Borchard has run out of future – his .225 batting average may have dragged his career mark up to .204, but that won’t win him more chances. We can now safely say Borhchard will never hold a regular job.
Yusmiero Petit: It’s a testimony to the success of Florida’s youth movement that there isn’t a much longer list of Marlins here. File Petit, like Hamels, under “dial back your expectations for immediate success” rather than “lower your long-term expectations.” An 8.68 ERA, 3 HR and 32 hits in 18.2 IP say that Petit, at 21, is no major leaguer yet. (I could have included Mike Pelfrey on the same theory as Hamels and Petit).
Nationals
Luis Matos: Much like ex-teammates Larry Bigbie and David Newhan, Matos has his moment of glory, batting .303 and slugging .458 at 24 as a fleet-footed center fielder for the O’s in 2003, and batting .280 last year. Sent to the Nationals after hitting .207 in 121 at bats this year, Matos is now a bench player in a crowded Washington outfield.
Felipe Lopez: After his breakout year at 25 last season (.291/.486/.352, 97 runs, 23 HR, 15 steals), the onetime Blue Jays phenom looked like a cornerstone of the Reds franchise, but he became expendable in a hurry this year when his power dried up (especially his doubles power) and he got traded down in the standings. A .358 OBP and 31 steals suggest that Lopez still has much to contribute, but comparisons to Miguel Tejada won’t be forthcoming soon.
Ryan Church: Church, yet another prospect from the old Montreal system, batted .287/.466/.353 last year at 26. This year, he was sent out to AAA New Orleans batting .215 in mid-May. He’s recovered lately to bat .281/.526/.354 since his mid-July recall, so the jury’s still out.
John Patterson: With a 3.13 ERA and 185 K in 198.1 IP last year, Patterson finally looked ready to assume the mantle of an ace and put behind him years of injury-plagued inconsistency. Instead, he’s been back to the operating table, the rest of his season in doubt after just 8 starts.
Braves
Jeff Francouer: Francouer’s struggles have been no shock to those of us who doubted his strike zone judgment and lack of big-star minor league pedigree, and his youth (he’s still just 22) gives him time to learn and grow back into a serious hitter, and he’ll have a steady job for some time to work on it. Perversely, the fact that he’s continued to drive in runs (81 so far) may retard his development if he thinks he’s still hitting well. A .256/.447/.281 line says otherwise.
Ryan Langerhans: Unlike Francouer, Langerhans, at 26, isn’t young enough to regard a .244 average and 6 homers as anything that will lead to a productive career as a corner outfielder. Without a serious improvement, Langerhans will be an endangered species as an everyday player by next May.
Pete Orr: Orr has suffered the vissicitudes of fate as a bat off the bench with less than 200 at bats a year, plunging from .300 to .216 and a .232 OBP.
Kyle Davies: Davies started hot and finished mediocre in 2005 (4.93 ERA), but this season started bad (6.12 ERA) and has ended with surgery.
Horacio Ramirez: As you can see, Atlanta’s youth movement has been bumpier than Florida’s, although the Braves did get a division flag in 2005 from these guys . . . Ramirez has been another injury case, plus between 2005 and 2006 he’s struck out 117 batters in 278.2 IP, a rate (3.78/9 IP) well below the survival rate for major league starters.
Jorge Sosa: This, again, was predictable failure: Sosa regressed badly in 2006 from a 2.55 ERA to 5.46 before being packed off to St. Louis. He’s now officially a journeyman at age 29.

With Pedro pitching badly and leaving early with a calf injury tonight (Pedro pitching badly and being hurt are practically synonymous), I’m assuming another DL stint is in the works, which probably means a few more weeks of Pelfrey.
UPDATE: I am reminded in the comments that Pelfrey’s also hurt. As, unless I’m mistaken, is Soler. And Bannister doesn’t seem ready to go yet, nor Oliver Perez. We may be compelled to see Darren Oliver starting soon, which would be a very bad thing on several levels. (Humber can’t be ready yet).

One of the subtle things in the media’s campaign to run down A-Rod is how he always seems (as this morning) to pop up on the back page of the Daily News after a Yankees loss, rather than a win. This, after he homered yesterday and batted .455 with 3 HR, 5 runs and 5 RBI over the past week.
The “trade A-Rod” movement, by the way – spearheaded by Steve Phillips, still (as Dr. Manhattan has pointed out to me) retroactively trying to justify his decision to pass on A-Rod in 2001 in favor of Rey Ordonez – is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard. Not only is Rodriguez the best player in the American League and still in his prime at 31, but no other team would take him without the Yankees eating a big chunk of his contract, much less give up anything resembling equal on-the-field value for him. (If you disagree, please cite examples of teams willing to do so.)
If A-Rod didn’t have the gigantic contract, trading him could make sense, at least because he’s more valuable to a team that could play him at short. But the contract is what it is, so he’ll be a Yankee for the duration of it. Live with it.
UPDATE: Yankee fans do have one legitimate grievance with A-Rod, aside from his struggles of late at third: against the AL East on the season he is batting .193/.340/.309, scoring 105 runs per 162 games and driring in 93, compared to .337/.605/.421 and a pace for 126 runs and 135 RBI against the rest of baseball.

Can someone tell me why Mr. Met was sitting behind the third base dugout tonight in Washington? I’ve never seen him at a road game before.

Former Met Rodney McCray is being honored with his own bobblehead for one of baseball’s most memorable moments, when he ran through a fence in a minor league game in Portland Oregon in 1991. McCray understands his unique place in the game’s history:

“I’m honored and tickled to death,” McCray was quoted as saying on the Beavers’ Web site. “I never get tired of talking about [the crash]. It’s kind of like the skier who epitomizes the ‘agony of defeat’ — I’m the guy who crashed through the wall. Usually, it’s the big-league superstars who get their own bobblehead, so I’m very excited.”

+++

“I might not be a Hall-of-Fame player, but I made it to the Hall of Fame with a film clip,” McCray said. “Not too many guys can say they’re in the Hall of Fame, some way, some form. It’s still pretty cool.”

Indeed.

Lastings Milledge is 21 years old. Jose Reyes was 21 in 2004. That is all.

One need hardly say more about the current state of the National League, now at its lowest ebb since the late teens, than that the Mets today completed a sweep of the division-leading Padres with Mike DeFelice starting at catcher, Jose Valentin at second base, and an outfield of Endy Chavez, Ricky Ledee, and Michael Tucker. All five of those players could have been had for a song before the season; three of them could have been had for a song last week.

Check out these two batting lines:

PLAYER	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	R	RBI	AVG	SLG	OBP
A	373	81	21	0	22	64	66	.217	.450	.338
B	383	124	28	0	37	83	108	.324	.687	.405

Player A is the combined batting line for Carloses Beltran and Delgado at Shea this year – B is their combined line on the road. The flip side, of course, is that Pedro and Glavine have an ERA of 4.57 on the road, 2.82 at Shea, and in particular have allowed 1.5 HR/9 on the road, 1.0 at Shea. Food for thought: all of John Maine’s starts have been at Shea.

So, I was away from the blog here the past six days attending a family wedding in St. Petersburg, followed by a couple of days at Disney World. Among our travels, we took the opportunity to visit Tropicana Field and take in a Devil Rays home game against the Red Sox on Sunday.
Now, it had not occurred to me until I was there that the Rays play in St. Pete, not in Tampa (hence the “Bay” in their name). And I hadn’t really seen outside views of the stadium before – when you approach it from the highway, the dome appears to be slanted badly to one side, like it’s halfway into a sinkhole. I’m not sure what this Leaning Tower of St. Pete look was supposed to accomplish – I could imagine a side-tilted dome being an ultra-modern, Jestons-ish look in the early 60s when they built the Astrodome, but the concept here is beyond me.
First impression of attending a Devil Rays home game: the parking/transportation is a nightmare. We were driving in view of the stadium 15 minutes before game time, and not in terrible traffic, and we didn’t get seated until the third inning. The parking lot was apparently too small to handle the crowd, the detours to “alternate baseball parking” were Byzantine and poorly labeled, and when we finally followed the circular route to the parking garage, it was too far away – and we were too lost – to walk with two kids and a baby in a stroller, so we had to wait on an extremely long line for trolleys that were ferrying about 20-30 fans at a time to the park. There were – more on this in a minute – a large proportion of the fans on that line wearing team paraphernalia of some sort, but only a tiny fraction were Devil Rays stuff. Being dependent on mass transit like trolleys to get to and from the game completely defeats the point of driving, which is to have control over when you get there and when you leave. The crowd was a big one but hardly huge – the box score says attendance of about 30,000, which filled most of the stadium except for big sections of the upper deck. If your parking setup isn’t designed to handle a crowd that cracks 30,000 fans, you do not have a winning business model.
To make the timing situation perversely worse, the Rays gave out coupons at the ticket window for free sodas and hot dogs. When we arrived in the third, my wife went off to get the free food, and due to the long line (I did mention it was free, right?) didn’t get back until the seventh inning. On the other hand, the dogs were good, similar to Shea hot dogs and far better than my experience with Dodger Dogs.
Now, our seats. We sat in right field, in fair territory, a few rows from the back wall. The Trop has a lot of seats in fair territory the outfield – all in one deck, like Yankee Stadium or Fenway – and they are really good seats, very close to the field and lined with prime catch-a-homer seats. Somebody at the front of our section got David Ortiz’ homer in the fifth inning. The one major disadvantage was that we could not see the main center field scoreboard – not even by turning around, like in Fenway’s CF section -so unless you knew them by uniform number (hah!) or heard them announced, it was impossible to tell who the Devil Rays’ relievers were (for the record: Edwin Jackson, Ruddy Lugo, Seth McClung, Brian Meadows and Shawn Camp).
The fans. Well, if I had three words to describe the fans at Sunday’s game, they would be “Red Sox fans.” Our section in particular was filled with Sox jerseys (probably 60% Varitek jerseys to 40% Ortiz, with the women almost uniformly wearing Varitek jerseys) and thicker-than-clam-chowdah accents, and pretty much exactly the same mix of attitude and bad language you get in the Fenway center field bleachers. I’m not sure where they all came from – the braying guys behind us (who were a little tongue in cheek, I think, when they started yelling for Manny to “hit it wicked wicked faaahhhh” late in the game) were apparently transplanted Bostonians living in the area, but were the rest bandwagon Sox fans, tourists who planned their vacations around this, or perhaps people who decided to abandon their livelihoods and follow the Old Towne Team Deadhead-style from city to city, supporting themselves by selling hairspray, stonewashed jeans and Dan Shaughnessy books? Hard to say. But as we did see Sox jerseys and hats all over our hotel and – on Monday – at Disney, I’m guessing there were a lot of vacationers in the house. When the fans did the “Yooooook” chant or cheered for Big Papi, you’d have sworn they were the home team. By contrast, we did see one knot of loud, profane but generally incompetent hecklers in Rays garb, who accomplished little other than to bring down retribution from smug Sox fans and demonstrate that the Tampa area lacks major-league quality hecklers (There was also a hyperactive guy in our section dressed as Fred Flintstone who was jabbering at Wily Mo Pena, but he pretty much defied generalization).
The part of the scoreboard we could see hectored the crowd with various alliterative slogans based on the hometown batter’s name (“Get Crazy for Carl!” “Get Zany for Zobrist!”) . . . let’s just say it’s impossible to imagine them doing this at Fenway, Yankee or even Shea. There’s also a mini blimp sponsored by a local energy company that drifts around between innings.
As for the game itself, even with an awful Rays starter, a lineup full of more sub-.300 OBPs than you could shake a stick at, and some amazingly bad fielding by Russ Branyan in right, it was a backbreaking loss for the Sawx, as the bullpen blew a 6-2 lead with homers by Travis Lee and Dioner Navarro, Papelbon blew the save (on Navarro’s dinger), and Greg Norton went deep for the walk-off in the tenth (after Manny ended the top of the tenth following an intentional pass to Ortiz).
We walked a block from the long line for the return trolleys – in the rain – until we could get a cab back to the parking garage. A good game and a fun time at the ballpark, but it would have been nice to see the whole 10 innings.

The following is cross-posted at Mike’s Neighborhood this morning:
The Mets again extended their lead to 13 games through a vulgar, muscle-flexing display for a divisional rival. Can’t speak for the Phils, but I’m impressed. A game that saw Jose “El Rapido” Reyes join the Grand Slam parade. A game that saw this whole John Maine Thing officially reach “weird” status (2.08/1.00; 31/13 K/BB in 39 IP). A game that I missed on television, but I’ll nevertheless guess saw Joe Morgan say a series of things so pompous, so unsubstantiated, so idiotic, that viewers were tempted to forget what a great player he was when he participated in, rather than called, the games. A game that pushed the Met’s lead over the Cards for NL dominance to 6 games.
None of which compares to the really good news:
David “Derek Who?” Wright will be a Met for at least 6 years. He really is The Prince of New York. Omar completed his most excellent week, penciling in Young Mr. Wright for six years at $55 M, with the option for an extemely expensive seventh year.
We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. All I know, fellow Met fans, is that we get 4-5 years, minimum, to watch the Dynamic Duo do their thing on the left side o’ the infield. Wooo-hooo! The price may seem high for two very young players, but (a) the Mets can afford it and (b) these guys look well on their way to stardom. Especially Wright. The list of guys who hit .300 with 27 HRs and 100 RBIs (not to mention fine peripherals) at 22 is a small one. Small, but strong, like Mel Ott, who failed to make the list at 22, but was a member at 20. Other names you may know who qualified? Ohh, fellas like Williams, DiMaggio, Foxx, Vlad, A-Rod. Wright’s easily on pace to do it again at 23. This is a great deal.
It reminds me of what John Hart did in Cleveland in the early-mid 90’s as guys like Thome, Manny & Belle came into their own as young sluggers. Thome, for instance, stayed with the Tribe through 2002, when he hit 52 homers . . . and earned $8M. He crossed the $3M threshold in 1998, the season after the Indians’ 2nd WS appearence in three years. And Thome himself? He’d already hit .300 twice, hit 30+ HRs twice (including 40 in ’97), driven in 100 twice, topped .400 in OBP three years running, etc. He was a bargain and it helped Cleveland remain competitive.
Manny? Even more ridiculous! In 1995, when the Tribe won 100 out of 144 games played, Manny put up the first of many 300/30/100 seasons (with his standard rock-solid peripherals) and earned $150,000. He ended staying with the Indians through 2000, never earning over $4.25 M a year, despite driving in 165 one season, hitting .328+ twice, all that Manny stuff we love. Then he went to the Sox, signing for the GDP of a mid-sized Central Asian Republic.
Albert Belle? With the Tribe through 1996. Never earned over $5.7 M per.
And the point of all this? I’m not completely sure, but I think I’m trying to show that signing young, top talent to long-term deals before they reach superstardom is the way to go, the way both to keep your young studs and avoid paying them A-Rod money too soon. They either fall apart — and then you’re doomed anyway, regardless of what they earn — or they emerge and eventually require $22 M/yr to “feed their families,” “earn respect,” “keep up with the Rodriguezes,” whatever.
But that’s then, this is now (S.E. Hinton allusion). In the meantime, the Mets got em, and they ain’t going nowhere. Niiiiiice.

Hey, Crank readers. My name is Mike, and a few of you may recognize me as one of the annoying guys who posts comments, complete with shameless links to my own blog, Mike’s Neighborhood, every darn day. Well, last night I received a very nice e-mail from the Crank, informing me that he’ll be out of town for a few days. Ok, you’re thinking, “Uhhh, gee Mike, that’s really exciting. And you’ve hacked into the Cranks’s blog to tell us this why, exactly? Now get outta here, and leave us alone.”
But the funny thing is, Crank invited me to “guest blog” for him in his stead. And, yes, I agree with you: he’s must be completely insane. But, far be it for me to correct someone else’s shocking lapse in judgment when my own self-interest is at stake. So, with no further ado, Met fans & baseball fans alike, I present for your reading pleasure — as well as for a great opportunity for me to crank it up and generate some traffic at my own site (“Crank” it up, get it? . . . as in Crank, you know the guy who’s blog . . . ohhh, never mind) — an inartfully edited compilation of the last two Mets posts from my blog, Mike’s Neighborhood. A few of the statistics cited may be sliiiiightly off, due to my posting these earlier in the week. But they’re close, So gimme a break, will ya?
Oh, and Enjoy:
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Forty-four. Henry Aaron’s number, yes. Also Reggie’s, after he went to the Yanks. And Everlastings Milledge is the latest in a long line of players to wear that super-cool number in Queens.
It’s also the Met’s magic Number: 44. And counting. A few Random Thoughts for your Friday morning pleasure:
Two Princes: The would-be “Prince of New York,” Young David Wright is tired. I think he needs a break. The guy’s 23 years-old, he’s played one full season in the majors before this, and he had an excellent first half. Then he appeared in the freaking Home Run Derby, then the All-Star Game itself, before quick stops on Letterman, at the White House, before the UN General Assembly, the Jedi Council, and the Interstellar Federation. Heck, he introduced Bruce Sutter at his Hall of Fame induction last week. (Very moving speech, by the way, what with crediting him for inventing the split-finger fast ball and all. Charming anecdote about watching him in the ’82 Series, two months before he was born . . .)
Mr. Wright hasn’t had any serious time off! And from the looks of things lately, he needs it.
Yes, I know Keith Hernandez’s saying Wright’s “pulling off the ball,” but Keith says that about everyone. Albert Pujols goes 0-for-3 with a walk? Pulling off the ball. Tony Gwynn hit only .312 one season? Pulling off the ball. Barry Bonds’ head grows to epic proportions and he’s so gimpy he can hardly walk? Pulling off the ball. China’s economic growth rate dips to 6.4 %?
Ok, you get the idea.
Maybe Wright’s pulling off the ball. Ok. But why is my question. His approach at the plate looks the same to me. Since the end of June, he’s walked 14 times in 94 ABs, a little bit more than earlier in the year. I don’t think the problem’s mental, or at least it wasn’t at first.
I think he’s tired. Last season, you may remember, Wright began to slow down a bit in July. I don’t have breakdowns of every game from last season, but I know he hit 307/345/505 for the month. Lowest OBP for any month, and still about 20 points below the season SLG. And that includes a very hot stretch immediately after the All-Star Break. And of course he went on to carry the team in August, behind 378/470/633 numbers.
I distinctly recall thinking last year that he looked sluggish before the break, and that I hoped he’d recover with rest. His numbers before the break last year? 281/369/470. After? 333/409/582. Yet this season . . . no break. No rest. The slight dip he experienced going into the break has continued. His July numbers of 282/384/494, while not bad at all, are the lowest of any month this year by a large margin. Since the break? An ugly 277/365/415.
So am I saying he’s doomed? No. Blaming him for living it up like a rock star, getting overexposed at J-Lo levels last month? Heck, no! The kid’s 23. Thinking we’ve got “An Abreu” on our hands, that he messed up his swing in the Home Run Derby? Absolutely not (though I wish he’d skipped the stupid event).
I just think he needs a rest, and needs it badly. I’d give him an entire series off, either before or after an off day. 4 days rest. Kind of like his own All-Star break. We don’t need him hitting 285/360/475 through August. We need him hitting 325/400/575 in October. That’s when he’ll really earn the “Derek Who?” label he’s been flirting with.
And the right to flirt with the hottest chicks in NY.
MVP! MVP?: Like the emotionless & rampaging cyborg he was contructed to be, The Beltranator continues to destroy all that stands in its path. Its basically a line-drive smashing, bases loaded clearing, crooked number creating, Braves pitcher humiliating (8 homers against Bobby’s Boys so far!), Met fan salivating monster. In the “Pure Power” department, other than late 80’s Darryl, ’00 Piazza, and maybe Wright last August, I’m not sure when I ever saw such a one man wrecking crew. I fully expect a homer from him every at-bat.
And I plan to lustily boo him if he fails in that regard. 4-for-5 with two doubles, a triple, 3 SBs and 4 runs scored? I’m booing. I want taters!
But seriously, as great as he’s been, he’s not the NL MVP at this point. Even with Beltran’s 7 extra games, superior baserunning, far more value in the field, a ballpark disadvantage, & the league-leading RBI total . . . Phat Albert’s the NL MVP. It takes a lot to overcome Beltran’s advantages — as of Tuesday — of 8 runs, 7 RBIs, 7 2Bs and 10 SBs.
And Pujols brings them: 1 extra 3B, 1 extra HR, and 36 fewer batting outs. Beltran’s been dominating. Just great. But in my opinion, he’s just not quite in Pujols territory, because he requires far more outs to put up his numbers. But as you can see, he’s probably the clear number two guy in the league. Amazing.
Tommy Strikezone: He’s not in the zone. I don’t wanna pile on, I really hope he turns it around, and I don’t know exactly what to say. But this ain’t working right now. He’s been a BP pitcher for a couple months, and his post-all star break numbers aren’t even acceptable: 21 2/3 IP, 30 H, 12 BB, 9 K, 3 HR. 6.65/1.94. And, as if we need to see this horror show more accurately . . . he’s yielded 3 unearned runs in those 4 starts, meaning he’s been giving up nearly 8 runs per 9 IP since the break.
Glavine’s 40 years old and hasn’t had a great season in quite a few years now. The Mets need 6 innings of 3 runs or less from him come October. This is a requirement. Just like Pedro got his suspicious one month vacation, it’s time for Tommy to have his. Free Pelfrey? How’s about Lock Up Tommy. Enjoy your August, big guy, you earned it. See ya after Labor Day.
Cliff Floyd Has Missed 30 Games: No point to make. Just felt I needed to point that out.
The Loathsome Yanks: Abreu and Cory Lidle for 3 retarded dwarfs and a rusty bicycle chain. I hate Steinbrenner. Jerk.
And, yes, that is unbridled envy. What do you want me to say? With a pitching staff giving up runs by the bushel every other start, I’m thinking a .425 OBP guy and a serviceable arm might have been nice. More runs on one side of the ledger, less on the other. That’s the idea of the game, right?
I Like The Pitching Portion of Our Trade: Omar, for whom I’ve had my share of unkind words, did what he had to do. Sanchez is out, he’s gone. So Minaya went out and got a major league reliever to replace him. Period. Roberto Hernandez isn’t great at this point, and while Duaner’s better, he wasn’t great either. Sorry, Met fans, but you’ll have to admit that. His K/BB was under 2, and his K/9 was falling as the season progressed. He was good, and he had a rubber arm. But he wasn’t dominating.
Anyhow, the key the trade isn’t Hernandez, who can’t be, won’t be, and doesn’t need to be as good as Sanchez. No, the key to the trade is . . . Aaron Heilman (the same guy who blew it last night. He has to step it up big time and start to throw like he did last year. And so far (or at least before last night’s debacle), it’s looking good. Before the blown game, since the end of his disastrous June, Heilman compliled 3.44/1.25 on 18 1/3 IP, 17 H, 6BB, 11 K. Not great, to be sure, and the K rate is waaaaay too low. But since the All-Star Break those numbers improve to 3.09/1.29 on 11 2/3, 11, 4, 7. Still not perfect, but they’re in Sanchez range and a lot better than the gar-bage Heilman put up in late spring. He pitched well last night. Here’s hoping he finds the magic of last year.
I Really Like the Hitting/Fielding Portion of the Trade: I didn’t like Nady, for the reasons I mentioned last month: bad glove, poor approach at the plate, little indication of improvement. I like Endy “Every Met Fan’s Secret Favorite Player” Chavez, even though I’m convinced he’s hitting way, way over his head this year. He’s an incredible fielder, only El Rapido has more speed, he’s been very clutch so far, and he brings a bag full of fundamentals like bunting, base stealing, hitting the cut-off man, hitting behind the runner, etc.
I don’t think Nady could spell “fundamentals.”
Sanchez’s injury meant Omar couldn’t really get top value for Xavier, but that’s what happens when your 8th inning guy has his cab rear-ended the day before the trading deadline.
(You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Look at Rule 37 (a) (2) (C) (iii) in the General Manager’s Trading Deadline Handbook. Under “Freakish Car Accidents Involving Goggle-Wearing Relief Pitchers.” Scroll down to the sentence beginning with, “Under such circumstances, you must move fundamentally unsound corner outfielders, even if you receive less than market value for their services . . .” Yes, that one. Read through it; Omar played it by the book, you gotta give him credit for pulling the trigger)
The Good Stuff: And finally, just to end things on the overwhelmingly positive note I feel it’s my duty to bring to you, a few “Staggering Post All-Star Break Numbers From Selected Individual Hitters”:
Carlos Delgado: 321/428/625, with 5 2B, 4 HR, 16 RBI and 12 BB in 56 official ABs. Ahhhhh, that feels better.
Endy Chavez: 333/385/500, albeit with only 39 plate appearences.
Oh, and this: he’s managed to drive in 9 during that span!
Paul LoDuca: (and, no, these numbers are not a misprint): 371/426/468.
He can go 0-for the rest of the season and improve his career post all-star break numbers.
And finally . . . (you knew this one was coming), The Beltranator: 310/390/732, with 6 2B, 8 HR, 10 BB, 17 R and 28 RBI in 18 games and 71 official at-bats. Now that’s some hitting!
Forty-four, folks. Forty-four.
* * *
Thanks for indulging me, folks. Guess what? That was the shortest Mets post I’ve ever written (and it combined two pieces!). If you’re curious — uh-oh, shameless plug time — swing on by my blog and check out some of my past Mets entries, as well as my irreverent take on politics, culture, religion, advertising, as well as an occasional appearence by talking elk and wise-cracking public figures.

Reported: Jose Reyes has agreed to a four-year, $23.25 million contract, with a fifth-year option. Via Always Amazin’. Treeeee-mendous news, and let’s hope for the same for Wright. With guys this good, a big-market team can afford to pay its stars more now for the benefit of locking them up and keeping them happy.
The Mets also sent down Mike Pelfrey and replaced him with lefty reliever Royce Ring (who may yet give the Mets more than did the man he was traded for, Roberto Alomar). I’ve completely lost track of which relievers are up and down . . . Pelfrey showed some flashes but he very clearly is Not Ready for Prime Time yet. Still, if the Mets could get Oliver Perez straightened out, they will have a bunch of options for 2006 between Pelfrey, Bannister, Maine, Perez, Humber and Soler to go with Pedro, probably Glavine, and possibly Zambrano and/or Heilman (though they seem convinced that he’s a reliever) as well as the chance to sign Barry Zito.

You have a better explanation for this? Good research by Allan Wood.

Sorry, took a while on the Iraq essay below. It may be next week by the time I resume the series on the great disappointments of 2006, especially since I have to keep straight a number of them that changed teams the past week.
In the meantime, discuss: after Pedro and Glavine, now that no additional help has arrived, who would you want starting Games Three and Four of a postseason series? I think at this point my trust in Trachsel is so low I’d go with El Duque (who at least hasn’t been terrible and has been known to pitch well in October) and (holding breath) Maine. Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

In a bottle.

OK, I just had to link to this post just for the Greg Maddux baseball card. I’d forgotten Maddux ever had that cheesy mustache. Although reading that anyone “was weaned on a steady diet of Bill Simmons during his formative years” just makes me feel very, very old.

Lyford offers some.

Guess who?
The results are even more pronounced since May 1.

We briefly interrupt our workday to bring you this:
*Duaner Sanchez is out, quite likely for the season, after separating his shoulder in a taxi accident (shades of Tom Glavine two years ago).
*The Mets have a number of potential setup men – Heilman is now the key guy – but to fill the hole, they’ve traded Xavier Nady to get back Roberto Hernandez plus Oliver Perez. Hernandez hasn’t been that great this year after pitching great in 2005 – a 2.93 ERA and just 3 HR in 43 IP, but his K rate has dropped in half, he’s allowing more than a hit an inning and he’s walking 5 men per 9 (3.56 per 9 if you exclude intentional passes). You hate to deal an everyday player for a 41-year-old setup man.
*Barring another shoe drop, Lastings Milledge now becomes the everyday RF. I see Milledge as about even with Nady at present, but obviously this leaves the Mets with less depth and no chance (or risk) of dealing Milledge for a stud pitcher.
*Perez isn’t a terrible gamble, since he’s a still-young (24) lefty with a great arm, but he’s obviously hopelessly lost at this point (Peterson presumably won’t promise to fix him in 10 minutes) – 121 BB and 36 HR in 179 IP in 2005-06. I can’t imagine that he’ll pitch any important innings in the majors the next three months.
UPDATES:
*Mad Dog says the Mets might send Perez back to the Padres (who dealt him in the Giles deal) as part of a deal for Scott Linebrink. That, I would like.
*If we don’t get Linebrink, it’s time to get more innings now for Heath Bell and Henry Owens and see what they can do. Ditto Maine and Pelfrey.
*Looks like no help on the way for the rotation.

Dan Lewis has some interesting thoughts on market efficiencies and deadline deals for free agents-to-be. I don’t have time to digest this, but a thought on a related matter.
With hue and cry from some quarters over the Abreu deal, I can suggest that – if you think it’s bad for the game for teams like the Yankees to be able to add a star player in season by bulking up payroll without parting for much talent – a debatable proposition – there is a relatively simple solution: an in-season salary cap. As with any cap, there would be some complex rules to make the thing work. But the general design would not involve the same set of skewed incentives provided by year-round caps; you could simply rule that a team needs to set its payroll (both current-season payroll and future committed payroll) by Opening Day, and can’t add more than a limited amount to the payroll (except, perhaps, extensions for guys already on the roster) during the season.

Carlos Beltran’s slugging percentages by month, 2005:
.421, .494, .376, .458, .378, .378, .286*
In 2006:
.605, .603, .642, .656.
* – 7 at bats in October

A few very quick thoughts on the Yankees getting Bobby Abreu and Steamboat Cory Lidle for some prospects:
*Man, the Phillies should get a big tax deduction for this donation. Except, of course, that the Yankees are the least needy cause on earth.
*Abreu may be the best mid-season Yankees pickup since Johnny Mize, and at least since David Justice and David Cone. We’re talking a Hall of Fame quality player who’s 32 years old. Yes, his power and batting average have been off the past year or so, but he’s still an on-base machine and a dangerous hitter. The Yankees may be best suited leading him off, except that Damon is comfortable in that role.
*So Abreu doesn’t love the limelight. Neither did Gehrig or DiMaggio; plenty of guys with quiet personalities have thrived in the Bronx. And so he doesn’t like running into walls; big deal, neither does Sheffield. When you have a hitter like Aaron Rowand, you can live with losing him for two weeks because he ran into a fence making a game-saving catch. A guy with Abreu’s kind of bat, you want in the lineup.
*So Abreu makes a load of money. If he plays at his present pace, he’s not really that overpaid; if he plays like he did in 2004, he’s absolutely a $14-15 million player.
*From the Mets’ perspective, the deal is frustrating in one sense: you hate to see them miss a chance when a great player is on the market for peanuts, though even with a big payroll they don’t have the Yankees’ bottomless resources (nobody does) and they don’t need corner outfield help as badly as the Yanks. But it’s also good news; besides Miguel Cabrera, Abreu was the best player on any of the Mets’ four division rivals, and his departure ends the Philllies’ time as a contender.

The last stage of every pennant race is Miracle Time: the point at which a replay of 1995 or 1978 or 1964 or 1951 is still possible, but all other avenues to toppling the leader are closed. Entering this weekend, it was still Miracle Time for the perennially defending NL East champs in Atlanta – but the red-hot Braves needed to sweep the staggering Mets at Turner Field to keep that possibility alive. Instead, the Mets turned the tables and did the sweeping (as my son has pointed out, this means the Mets have now swept a series from each of their division rivals this season, which has to be an unusual accomplishment). Now, with the Braves having been swept and the Phillies having given away their best player and one of their few semi-reputable starters, we can finally say definitively: it’s over. The division belongs to the Mets. The Braves will, for the first time since entering the division, finish a season in October out of first place.

Part III of my look at young or still-establishing-themselves players whose stock has fallen dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005 – the AL West.
Mariners
Jeremy Reed: The guy who inspired this list, a very high-average hitter in the minors for the White Sox who hit .397 in a 58 at bat cup of coffee in 2004, Reed struggled in 2005 (.254) and has struggled even worse this season (.217) after returning early from a wrist injury.
Rangers
Robinson Tejeda: 85.2 IP, 72 K, 67 hits at age 23 in 2005 – Tejeda has always been wild, but he showed promise last year. This season has been a bath of cold water, a 9.78 ERA in 5 starts, and 42 baserunners in 19.1 IP.
Kameron Loe: 3.42 ERA at age 23 in 2005 now looks like a fluke.
Laynce Nix: The 25-year-old outfielder had holes in his game in 2003 and 2004; the past two years, it’s been all holes, as he’s surfaced just for a 3-for-32 slump this season.
Angels
Jeff Mathis: Never a top prospect, opportunity knocked this season when Ben Molina’s departure left the Angels without a regular catcher, but the 23-year-old Mathis wasn’t home. He went 4-for-37 in April and has batted just twice since, while Mike Napoli has seized the catching job. He’s at best now on a train for Backup Catcherville.
Dallas McPherson: McPherson’s a classic guy whose star has dimmed due to injuries; he’s continued to flash decent power when healthy long enough to get into a groove, but he missed April in the minors and has missed July with back spasms, and you can’t establish yourself that way.
Casey Kotchman: With Darin Erstad breaking down and offense in short supply in Anaheim, the 23-year-old Kotchman’s time to shine was now. But he batted .162 in April and .091 in May before the Angels had to DL him with mononucleosis.
A’s
Rich Harden: No questions remain about the 24-year-old Oakland ace’s performance, but the questions about his durability only mount a he’s thrown just 163 innings in 2005 and 2006 combined.
Dan Johnson: Despite a bad late-season slump that marred a fine rookie campaign, the 26-year-old Johnson entered the season with a hammerlock on the A’s first base job but potentially a narrow window of opportunity ahead of super-prospect Daric Barton. The good news, for Johnson: Barton has struggled badly at AAA Sacramento, raising questions about his own prospect status, and the A’s had the patience to sit out a terrible early-season slump (Johnson batted .196 with with 2 HR and 8 RBI as the everyday 1B in April and May) to be rewarded with a hot June in which he batted .321/.543/.406. But Johnson tumbled back into a slump in early July and the A’s finally sent him down, indicating that Billy Beane’s faith in him may be waning.
Joe Blanton: Blanton’s another cold-hot-cold story – he won over some early skeptics in 2005 by raising his K rates as he came down the stretch to a 3.53 ERA in 201.1 innings last year, but regressed and struggled with his command in April and May, and has yet to post an ERA below 4.00 in any month. Blanton projects as a fourth starter now.
Bobby Crosby: An assortment of nagging injuries in 2005 and 2006 and a .231/.343/.298 line this season have taken much of the bloom off the 26-year-old Crosby. I still expect good seasons from him, but a long and smoothly successful career seems much less likely than it did a year or two ago.
Mark Ellis: Ellis looked to have hit his stride with the bat last year with a .314 average to go with a great glove after missing all of 2004. At 29, Ellis could have been entering a nice couple of year run, but his .220/.328/.286 line this season means he’ll be fighting for jobs again in the near future.
Keith Ginter: Having lost out to Ellis, Ginter – who came to Oakland at age 29 in 2005 with a career .257/.448/.344 line – batted .161 part-time last season and has spent most of 2005 and 2006 at Sacramento, despite a major league contract. His .278/.431/.361 line at AAA this season is solid but not enough to attract the suitors he needs to bring him back to the majors.
UPDATE: Of course, this is probably where I disclose that my AL list here includes three members of my 2006 rotisserie team – Dan Johnson, Brian Anderson, and Josh Towers – five if you count the reserve draft (Willie Harris and Kyle Lohse).

And I mean everything.
H/t DB Light

Part II of my look at young or still-establishing-themselves players whose stock has fallen dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005 – the AL Central.
White Sox
Brian Anderson: A well-thought of prospect, Anderson batted .161 in April, .167 in May and .196 in June, all but frittering away an everyday job he was given every opportunity to keep. He’s batted .308 and slugged .462 in July (though with a weak, if much-improved, .315 OBP), so Anderson’s case isn’t hopeless; as likely as not he’ll be playing regularly into October.
Tigers
Omar Infante: Infante’s only 24 and was the Tigers’ everyday 2B in 2004 & 2005 until Placido Polanco arrived. After batting .264 and slugging .449 in 2004, Infante slumped to .222 last year, and while his batting average has recovered to .263 this year, his power hasn’t and neither had his playing time.
Indians
Jason Michaels: A lifetime .291/.442/.380 hitter entering 2006, Michaels had to be salivating at the chance to finally prove himself as a regular at age 30. But his .270/.397/.331 line won’t give him much job security.
Jhonny Peralta: At age 23 in 2005, Peralta made the sudden step up – as guys that age sometimes do – from non-hitter to “young Nomar”-type slugger. His regression to a .258/.397/.330 line this season has to lower expectations for the future, and the signs are that his glove work hasn’t been quite as stellar either.
Fernando Cabrera: The one-time future Indians closer was passed over for that title in favor of Fausto Carmona when Bob Wickman left town, and for good reason, with a 5.65 ERA inflated by 22 walks and 6 dingers in 36.2 IP. Cabrera’s 42 Ks mark him as a guy who still has potential, but not for today.
Cliff Lee: Lee’s failures haven’t been as dramatic, but there was talk before the season that the 27-year-old lefty was ready to jump to the elite level of starters; a 4.78 ERA says otherwise.
Twins
Kyle Lohse: His long descent from adequacy ended with a 7.12 ERA and a pink slip from the starting rotation. Lohse will be lucky to have a roster spot in 2007.
Scott Baker: Baker got the nod over Francisco Liriano as the fifth starter in spring training, a decision that now seems very long ago. Baker looked like a quality pitcher in 2005 (3.35 ERA in 9 starts) and April (3.47 in 4 starts – a total K/BB ratio of 48-18 in that stretch) but has been pounded unmercifully since, allowing 58 hits and 12 homers in 37 innings. Unlike some of the others on this list, Baker is probably just taking needed lumps as a learning experience, and should have more chances.
Jesse Crain: 15-5 with a 2.53 ERA as a setup man in 2004-05, the 24-year-old Crain has struggled this year (4.31 ERA). Probably in the same boat as Baker: he’s suffering but isn’t losing out on opportunities that he’ll never have again.
Royals
Zack Grienke: You know this story.
Denny Bautista: Major velocity, but like more Royals than we have time to discuss here, no sign of pitching talent shows up in his box scores, as Bautista has started just 7 times with a 5.66 ERA, no wins, and a 22-17 K/BB ratio. (See also: Jeremy Affeldt, Mike Wood)
Andrew Sisco: Perhaps the brightest spot in the 2005 KC wipeout was Sisco, a 6-10 southpaw Rule V pick with blazing heat; 76 K and just 6 HR in 75.1 relief innings gave visions of a future rotation star. But Sisco’s control problems (28 walks in 40.1 IP) have sent him back to “project” land this season (7.14 ERA).

Baseball is an unforgiving game: the flip side of a crop of young players on the rise is that somebody has to be on the way down. And it’s not always just old guys. Let’s take a look at players who are young or still establishing themselves whose stock has tumbled dramatically in 2006 and/or 2005, starting with the AL East:
Yankees
Andy Phillips and Bubba Crosby: Crosby was never really a guy with a bright future, but in both cases the simultaneous injuries to Sheffield and Matsui provided the best opportunities these two guys were ever going to see. Crosby has played poorly and sporadically, underlining the fact that he’ll never be more than a 5th outfielder. Phillips, who is 29, is about out of chances to be a regular, having batted .237/.411/.269 this season in over 200 at bats.
Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small: Two more guys who people like me never thought much of, but a lot of folks expected that their remarkable stretch runs in 2005 would translate into full-season rotation gigs as reliable starters. Didn’t happen. Chacon’s 6.67 ERA and Small’s 8.46 prove that midnight came once again for Cinderella.
Red Sox
Willie Harris: Two years ago, Harris was a 26-year-old first-time everyday player, shutting between second base and center field with a .343 OBP and good speed. Shunted to the bench in 2005 by the arrival of Tadahito Iguchi, Harris had chances to impress this year if Coco Crisp or Mark Loretta was injured or faltered. Loretta hasn’t let go of the 2B job, but Crisp got hurt, and Harris has batted .156 in just 45 at bats.
Coco Crisp: Like Carlos Beltran in 2005, Crisp’s off year may just be a combination of nagging injuries and high expectations; his future isn’t as grim as others on this list. But bigger things than .266 with 4 HR were expected from Crisp coming to Fenway at age 26 after two years of steady progress.
Blue Jays
Josh Towers: 13-12 with a 3.71 ERA in his first 200 IP season last year, Towers seemed to be establishing himself as a rotation mainstay in Toronto, albeit as a third or fourth starter. Instead, his 9.11 ERA has has led to one too many calls to the fire department. Towers’ future is in serious jeopardy.
Jason Frasor: A 3.25 ERA, down almost a run from his rookie year, and good peripheral numbers marked Frasor in 2005 as a quality steup man for BJ Ryan. His K rate is still good, but a 5.18 ERA and a rise in BB and HR rates has moved Frasor down the depth chart. He’s not a bad bet to rebound, though.
Russ Adams: A regular SS at 24 last year, Adams didn’t embarrass himself with the bat, and could have expected plenty of time to establish himself. Instead, John Gibbons’ shuffling of the lineup – and its success with other hitters – has limited Adams to 199 at bats as he has hit just .226/.337/.280 on a team that’s batting .294/.488/.361.
Jason Phillips: Phillips cooled drastically after a hot start as the Dodgers’ #1 catcher in 2005, and ended up in the minors this year, only resurfacing this week with the Jays. Now battling to re-establish himself as a backup catcher.
Orioles
Bruce Chen: The talented Mr. Chen threw nearly 200 innings for Baltimore last season, 50 more than he’d ever managed in one uniform in one year, going 13-10 with a 3.83 ERA. But his home run rate grew alarming as the season went on, while his K/BB rate drifted. This year has been a train wreck, with 22 homers in 71.2 innings leading to a 7.03 ERA, an 0-6 record, a loss of his rotation slot and perhaps the last chance for Chen to find stability in the majors. Who will now look at a guy who couldn’t hack it under Leo Mazzone in two different cities and think they can straighten him out?
David Newhan: .311/.453/.361 in 373 at bats marked Newhan as a possible late-bloomer rookie in 2004 (he was 30), but Newhan batted .202 last year and broke his leg in April, an injury he hasn’t returned from.
John Parrish: Promising young pitcher who has missed most of 2005 and all of 2006 with arm surgery.
Devil Rays
Jae Seo: OK, I was as big a Seo enthusiast as anyone after he rang up a 2.59 ERA in 90.1 innings last year, walking just 16, and I was horrified when he was dealt for a setup man. But Seo has bombed in a big way in LA and now Tampa, a combined 2-9 with a 5.78 ERA, 19 HR and 39 BB in 97.2 IP.
Sean Burroughs: Having at last worn out his welcome in San Diego, Burroughs at least brought a career .340 OBP in more than 1500 plate appearances to Tampa, and he’s just 25. Instead, he lost his job in spring training and has batted .190 in just 21 at bats. A return to a regular job seems unlikely.
Seth McClung: Granted, McClung’s never been any good, but he throws hard and struck out 92 batters in 109.1 IP in 2005; from that you can make something. Except that this year, even the whiffs have deserted him: 38 (to 47 walks) in 80.2 IP on his way to a 6.81 ERA.
Edwin Jackson: Once a hot Dodger pitching prospect and still just 22, Jackson has struggled at all levels for the third year in a row, with a 7.17 ERA in a brief major league trial. Think “Ed Yarnall.”

Sorry for the outage in the site last night (my hosting company was sending bills to an old address and an expired credit card number), and for the general lack of baseball content of late. Should be back to normal here by tomorrow.
Two quick thoughts from last night –
1. Greg Maddux is just done. I had thought before this season that he might be a good mid-season pickup who can dependably take the ball for 6-7 innings every fifth day, throw strikes and let the defense work, but Maddux just looks finished. I assume he’ll keep showing up to cash his paychecks and eat up innings (from the injury-plagued Cubs’ perspective, the innings alone still make him worth the money), but I have to believe that 2006 will be the end.
2. One of the standard arguments of stat-head types vs. old-fogey sportswriters is that blowouts, rather than close games, are the test of a quality team: good teams beat people up and rarely get blown out, while most teams will play much closer to .500 in close games. Last night was a perfect example of why this is true. If the Cubs were a good team, they would have been more likely to bury the Mets once they had them down 3-0 or 8-4. If the Mets were not a good team, they would have been more likely to stay down. Instead, they mounted rallies to tie the game 3-3 and to draw within one, 8-7 (the latter including a fine effort by Bell, Bradford and Sanchez in relief), to give the top of their lineup a chance to win it in the bottom of the ninth.
They didn’t win it, of course, so this one goes down as a failure in a 1-run game. But that obscures their success in making it into a 1-run game in the first place.

Just saw this. This is good news for baseball, when you think about it.

Let’s hire Steve Phillips just so we can fire him again. Via Pinto. I couldn’t find a post in the archives, but I know in conversations I’ve given Phillips some credit for drafting Wright (with the pick the Mets got for Mike Hampton). I now renounce that.

While I’m in one of my busy-with-work modes, I’ve been meaning for some time to link to Bob Sikes at Getting Paid to Watch. Bob is a former assistant trainer with the mid-80s Mets; between posts on the current Mets he has some interesting stories that will eventually be published in a book.

Jose Valentin‘s OBP in 2005: .326
Jose Valentin’s OBP in 2006: .325
Which is funny, since in 2005 Valentin batted a punchless .170 and slugged .265 and looked completely finished, whereas this year he’s batting .284 and slugging .528.

Cliff Floyd is batting .307/.567/.417 since May 5 (good for fourth on the team in slugging and first in OBP in that period).

Take this quiz, via John Salmon. I got 49 out of 50, missing only #44; none of the ESPN analysts broke 45 (Rob Neyer got 43). (Kevin Mench got 40, topping the ballplayers who took the quiz, which proves that Mench knows baseball history better than he knows his own feet). Many of these are easy if you know basic history, but a few are quite tough. I got a couple by educated guesses (I would probably have scored around 38-40 if this wasn’t multiple choice), and got #4 & 43 right through more random guesses. I’ll have to try this one out on my son.

There are few bigger stories this season than the massive youth movement sweeping baseball. I leave it to the reader to judge whether the ability of young players to supplant the older generation has been accelerated by the (presumed) reduction in steroid use resulting from the institution of drug testing. Either way, the youngsters are dominating the game as they haven’t in some time. Look at the under-24 age groups:
20-Year-Olds
Felix Hernandez is the only one in this age group, and he’s taken his lumps to the tune of a 4.95 ERA. But Hernandez is 4-2 with a 3.70 ERA since June 1, and his 98/31 K/BB ratio suggests future growth.
21-Year-Olds
*Ryan Zimmerman, the Nationals’ 3B, is batting .287/.478/.349 with 59 RBI. [Note: I added Zimmerman as an update – I unaccountably forgot him despite having added him to one of my rotisserie teams over the weekend]
*Flamethrower Jole Zumaya has a 2.08 ERA and 54 K in 43.1 IP and has been a key contributor to the Tigers’ hot first half.
*Mariners SS Yuniesky Betancourt is playing everyday and batting .288.
*Matt Kemp is batting .281 and slugging .504 for the Dodgers.
*Melky Cabrera has a .358 OBP in 200 at bats for the Yankees.
*Others are still learning, like Matt Cain (80 K in 91.1 IP but a 5.12 ERA), or haven’t had a complete shot yet, like Lastings Milledge, Fabio Castro, and Yusmeiro Petit.
22-Year-Olds
*Francisco Liriano is 10-1 with a 1.83 ERA and 102 K in 88.1 IP.
*Brian McCann is batting .343/.506/.406 and has all but established himself as the best catcher in the National League.
*Marlins starter Josh Johnson is just short of the innings for the NL ERA lead but would be out in front with a 2.21 mark and 74 K in 85.2 IP.
*Scott Kazmir is 10-6 with a 3.27 ERA and 125 K.
*Hanley Ramirez’ batting average has dropped off to .271, but he’s scored 69 runs and stolen 26 bases playing everyday as the Marlins’ SS.
*Huston Street has 19 saves and a 37-8 K/BB ratio. Street’s ERA is 1.74 since June 1.
*Jose Lopez is batting .280, slugging .454 and has 58 RBI as the Mariners’ everyday 2B.
*Prince Fielder is slugging .479 and has 16 HR and 46 RBI.
*Jeff Francouer has come down from last year’s rookie sensation, but is at least a reliable RBI man, with 17 HR and 63 RBI in the first half.
*Jeremy Hermida has been injured, but when healthy the Marlins’ OF has posted a .378 OBP.
*The Marlins’ Scott Olsen’s 4.24 ERA is 20th in the NL.
*Jon Lester is 4-0 with a 3.06 ERA and 30 K in 32.1 IP in six starts with the Red Sox.
*Matt Capps has a 3.21 ERA and a 35-5 K/BB ratio in the Pirates’ bullpen.
*Ambiorix Burgos has reclaimed the Royals’ closer job and now has 14 saves and 43 K in 40.2 IP. With a 5.98 ERA and 8 blown saves it would be hard to call Burgos a success, but he shows promise.
Other 22-year-olds with more mixed or incomplete results so far: Cole Hamels, Nick Markakis, Dioner Navarro, Brandon McCarthy, Craig Hansen, Mike Pelfrey, Kyle Davies, James Loney, Howie Kendrick, Rene Rivera, Zack Greinke.
23-Year-Olds
*Joe Mauer is a leading candidate for the AL MVP, batting .378/.535/.446 with good defense behind the plate.
*David Wright, of course, is batting .316/.575/.386, has 74 RBI, and has been arguably the best player on the best team in the National League.
*Miguel Cabrera has been even better, at least with the bat: .334/.566/.432, with 25 doubles and 51 walks.
*Jose Reyes leads the majors in runs, steals and triples and the NL in hits.
*The AL leader in runs is Grady Sizemore, .291/.516/.363, with 46 extra base hits.
*At 10-4 with a 3.01 ERA, Justin Verlander has been a crucial contributor to the Tigers’ improvement.
*So has Jeremy Bonderman, with a 3.46 ERA and 111 K and just 6 HR allowed.
*Rickie Weeks has scored 65 runs, stolen 17 bases and posted a .361 OBP (due largely to leading the majors in being hit by pitches) while playing second for the Brewers.
*Ervin Santana is 10-3 with a 3.96 ERA for the Angels.
*Jered Weaver is 6-0 in six starts, with a 1.12 ERA and a 36-7 K/BB ratio and just 23 hits allowed in 40.1 IP.
*Robinson Cano was batting .325 before he got hurt.
*Josh Barfield is batting .289 with 15 doubles and 12 steals as the Padres’ everyday 2B.
Other less successful 23-year-olds: Zach Duke, JJ Hardy, Ronny Cedeno, Yadier Molina, Chris Resop, Ricky Nolasco, Anderson Hernandez, Casey Kotchman, Andrew Sisco, Jeff Mathis, Gavin Floyd.
24-Year-Olds
*Carl Crawford is batting .319/.521/.359 with 32 steals and 55 runs scored for Tampa.
*Francisco Rodriguez has 21 saves, a 2.89 ERA and a 47-10 K/BB ratio in 37.1 IP as the Angels’ closer.
*Chris Ray has 22 saves and a 3.19 ERA as the O’s closer.
*Mike Napoli is batting .286/.579/.412 in 140 at bats as the Angels’ catcher.
*Ian Kinsler, when healthy, is batting .320/.553/.379 as the Rangers’ SS.
*Rocco Baldelli, when healthy, is batting .315/.537/.373.
*Aaron Hill is batting .297 with a .344 OBP alternating between second and short for the Blue Jays.
*Wily Mo Pena, when healthy, has batted .321/.482/.370.
*Dontrelle Willis has a 3.94 ERA but should remain one of the NL’s premier pitchers after winning 22 games in 2005.
*Zach Miner has added to the Tigers’ wealth of young arms with a 6-1 record and 2.57 ERA in 7 starts.
*Chad Cordero has 13 saves and 43 K in 42 IP, coming off a tremendous season in 2005.
*Conor Jackson has a .370 OBP and 15 doubles as the D-Backs’ 1B.
*Adrian Gonzalez is slugging .457 as the Padres’ 1B.
*Manny Delcarmen has a 3.52 ERA and a 21-7 K/BB ratio and just 1 HR allowed in 23 IP for the Red Sox.
Other less successful 24-year-olds: the effective but injury-plagued Rich Harden, Jhonny Peralta (60 runs, but a comedown year with the bat), Willy Taveras, Oscar Villereal (8-1 but not that effective for the Braves), Ian Snell, Nate McLouth, Paul Maholm, Oliver Perez, Brian Anderson, Jesse Crain, Fernando Cabrera, Matt Murton, Kameron Loe, Brad Thompson, Brandon Watson, Corey Hart, Victor Diaz, Jerome Williams, Mark Teahen, Franquelis Osoria.
(This is before we get to the 25-year-olds, like Jonathan Papelbon, Curtis Granderson, Justin Morneau and Dan Uggla.) The next few years should be a great time to be a baseball fan.

There’s pathetic, there’s really pathetic, and then there’s stalking Bob Uecker.

While we remain on the subject of our least favorites, Metstradamus is taking votes for his Hall of Hate. What I found amusing is that Dick Young is running fourth in the voting with 118 votes at last check, despite having been dead for something like two decades. Not that this is uncalled-for. It’s never too late to hate Dick Young.
And also, while we’re at it:
FACT: If the NL wins the All-Star Game, the NL team gets home field advantage in the 2006 World Series.
FACT: As the team with the NL’s best record, the Mets are as likely as anyone to benefit from this.
FACT: Kenny Rogers is starting the All-Star Game for the AL.
Life is good. Now, an entire league of fans has a chance to be let down by Rogers all at once.

“David [Wright] should get Jose [Lima] to throw to him. He’d win for sure.”

–An unnamed Met, on how teammate David Wright could win the Home Run Derby.
Via Dales.
UPDATE: With Paul Lo Duca pitching to him, Wright finishes as the runner-up to Ryan Howard.
SECOND UPDATE: For those of you who get the reference, the third comment on this post is a classic.