Wednesday’s random transaction news
Apologies, I thought I posted this this morning before I headed out but I got back and it never went up
Red Sox have reached an agreement with Matsuzaka
Astros dealt three for Jason Jennings and Miguel Asencio – Willy Taveras, Taylor Buchholz, and Jason Hirsch
Marcus Giles is a free agent. ESPN lists the other non-tenders
Future Hall of Fame denials
(I wrote this on commission for a different media outlet, but they sat on it until it wasn’t fresh. So, like day-old bakery goods, I present it slightly stale – but free – for your enjoyment)
At long last, Hall of Fame decisions look like they’re now based as much on suspicion and petty motives as merit. Finally! Every year, we have tiresome debates over who sports decide to honor. Was Bert Blyleven great, or just really good for a long time? Can one wide receiver be elected over another based on their performance in three playoff games? Can a great point guard make his team better in ways that don’t show up in the statistics and, if so, how should their contributions be considered in thinking about their worthiness for the Basketball Hall of Fame?
Boooooooooooooring. Let’s get to the juicy gossip, the personal axe-grinding, the knife in the back. And the sooner the better.
A survey conducted by the Associated Press found that of voters “one in four who gave an opinion plan to vote for McGwire this year.†McGwire’s being punished for not denying steroid use, like angry finger-pointer Rafael Palmeiro. For some, he’s being punished for admitting steroid use. And yet McGwire never failed a drug test, and the closest thing to evidence against him is Jose Caseco stories — and Canseco initially denied that a home run bounced off his head.
If suspicion and resentment can keep a 12-time All-Star from serious consideration in the Hall of Fame voting, what’s next? Here’s how future elections will play out for ten deserving Hall of Fame players.
The first election swayed by personal reasons not related to baseball’s drug problems comes in 2008, when all-time great Rickey Henderson is left off most ballots.
“Can’t Rickey write Rickey in his own Rickey self?†said one voter. “Oh man, that cracks me up.â€
“I don’t know, didn’t he say something dumb once?†another voter said. “He stole some base and said ‘Now Rickey be the greatest’ and pointed at Lou Brock in the stands, didn’t he?â€
“What?†a startled Henderson said when asked for comment. “I didn’t say that! Or do that! And Lou was there, I went over the speech with him! Where does this stuff come from?â€
Henderson is forced to hire a public relations firm, send out videos of the actual speech, and finally, accompanied by Lou Brock, visit each voter at their home or work to clear up common misperceptions using a 30m audiovisual presentation followed by a question-and-answer session.
“I could have sworn someone told me talked to himself or something,†a chastised voter said after his visit. “But he never referred to himself in the third person at all when he came over.â€
But steroids returned to the forefront in 2012, when despite having over 350 wins and nearly 5,000 career strikeouts, Roger Clemens is denied election. Anonymous voters say they never got over the suspicion raised when Clemens was named in the 2006 Jason Grimsley deposition, and combined with his surprising effectiveness into his forties, they felt his career was “fishyâ€, even though Grimsley’s charges were never substantiated and Clemens never failed a drug test.
A furious Clemens declared that at 49, he would make a comeback and prove, once and for all, that he isn’t human and doesn’t age. Though initially the subject of jokes, twelve teams tender him a contract. Clemens goes 15-3 with a 2.90 ERA, wins the National League Cy Young Award and is named the Comeback Player of the Year. Clemens, still simmering, retires again and in 2018 a still-terrified electorate votes unanimously to induct Clemens, and asks if he would please stop glaring at them.
Ron Artest, meanwhile, surprised analysts when he cruised into the NBA Hall of Fame. Voters expressed sympathy with his anti-fan actions. “I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to charge through the phone and strangle some reader who calls me up to tell me I’m a moron,†a West Coast beat writer said. “I don’t even care that he went after an innocent fan. They’re not that innocent. Good for him. Put a little fear into the rabble. Oh, I’m sure they’re going to yell at me, tell me Artest wasn’t good enough to vote for, and I’ll stand there and imagine him charging after them in the stands… yeah, that’s nice.â€
The next year, things got even stranger. Greg Maddux doesn’t just miss induction despite his stellar career, but almost drops out of consideration entirely when unsourced reports circulate before 2014 balloting alleging that he doctored balls using brother Mike’s moustache wax during the early 1990s.
Retired center Shaquille O’Neal is lambasted by the press and voters alike when, only a month before balloting, he scores an even 400 points, collects 92 rebounds and blocks 87 shots in an interdepartmental charity police basketball game between Shaq’s own Miami Beach and neighboring Fort Lauderdale. “There was no need to run up the score so badly,†one voter said. “That’s just showboating, and disgraces our sport.â€
Shaq was placed on administrative leave by his department for use of excessive force in both his rejections and dunks, but returned to active duty within a few weeks and was elected a year later when the incident was covered up.
Brett Favre fails to be elected to the Hall of Fame the same year when voters, confused by his Prilosec ads, ask their doctors if voting for Brett Favre is right for them.
Then in 2014, Ray Lewis is elected to Canton in his second year of eligibility. “Lewis was a dominant linebacker and won a Super Bowl,†a voter said. “Sure, he was charged with murder in 2000, but he only pled guilty to obstruction of justice. It’d be different if we thought he’d killed someone but we didn’t have any evidence. Then there’s no way I’d vote for him.â€
Skip ahead to the strangeness of 2020. Tom Brady is denied election after a voters’ cousin’s uncle complains that he didn’t get the outstanding service Brady was claimed he’d receive at a Boston-area car dealership. Brady offers to reimburse anyone who had a bad experience at a car dealership he did any kind of commercial for, and ends up having to hock his Super Bowl rings when angry Chevy owners sue him because their trucks played a loop of “My Country†continually and could not turned off or even muted, making them unsellable. In his induction speech at Canton, Brady makes a point to curse out both Chevy and John Mellancamp over his newfound poverty.
Peyton Manning, meanwhile, is also rejected the same year despite his long record of regular season success. Rumors circulate that the constant exposure to initially amusing commercials that through repetition quickly turned into grating, unbearable torture so annoyed voters that they were willing to overlook his impressive career achievements in order to get him back. .
Tim Duncan is turned away from the basketball Hall of Fame. A survey of voters indicates that they found the center “too clean†to the point of suspicion. “Guys like that, quiet, kind, never attracts a lot of attention, they all turn out to be serial killers or something,†one voter said. “Duncan’s hiding something, I can feel it.â€
“If that’s how people feel, that’s how they feel,†Duncan said at an impromptu press conference at his home, before stabbing 14 reporters to death with a pen. “I just played the best I could and hoped that I’d be recognized for my accomplishments.â€
Duncan is elected next year by surviving voters, reassured that now they know the whole story.
But the most dramatic incident of all will come in 2025, when Albert Pujols misses election to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot when it’s revealed that he consistently voted for gray-and-white kittens on Kittenwar.com over other kinds of adorable kittens. His ugly prejudice revealed, Pujols issues a public apology in which he admits that while he holds a special place in his heart for grey and white kittens, he loves kittens and puppies of all colors and breeds. The voters say “Awww,†in unison and elect him with an extra-fuzzy 150% of the vote the next year.
Oh, you may think I’m joking. But is this any more laughable than the Judge Dredd imitation the baseball voters are already doing with real ballots, real players, and the wisps of suspicion and doubt?
Pretty boring Tuesday
The Red Sox and Boras/Matsuzaka are sparring
Jeff Bagwell might retire today
Rangers get Gagne for a year
Today’s when the M’s will offer arb to arb-eligible players. So we’ll see if Pineiro gets an offer and heck, Broussard for that matter.
[Updated to clip my bafflement at weird ways people use RSS feeds, which ends up looking a lot like plagiarism, which we know too well).]
Piazza not such a hot deal
I thought the Piazza deal was an interesting gamble for the A’s, especially in that it gives them a particularly weird tool to work in and out of games using the DH, but that certainly was a lot of money for them to wager.
Over at BP’s blog o’snippets, Nate Silver went through a lot of convolutions to try and get Piazza’s projected value up, tweaking things to give him a break, but the best he got to was .272/.336/.436.
The A’s do make mistakes. We can hope this is one, for the division’s sake.
(Also, Gil Meche’s projected ERA is 5.40)
Thursday’s fun
Freddy Garcia traded to Philadelphia for Floyd and Gio Gonzalez.
Gil Meche, the pitching coach’s dream, signs with THE ROYALS for 5/$55. Supposedly. So Jason Schmidt gets 3/$47 and Meche 5/$55. I’m going to make a wild guess and bet Schmidt returns more on that investment than Meche does.
The last three years, the Royals have only seen him four times, and Meche’s line has been decent but not superficially stellar: 5.73 ERA, 2-1, 22 IP, 26 H, 2 HR, 8 BB, 15K. I… they’re the Royals. Whaddayagonnado.
Lilly to Cubs.
Pettite’s going to pitch somewhere.
Luis Gonzalez got $7m to play for the Dodgers.
“There’s probably [only] a handful of guys in baseball who permeate the clubhouse like he did with us,” Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin told the Arizona Republic before Gonzalez signed with the Dodgers.
That’s an interesting choice of words.
Rule 5 (5! It’s 5!) draft was today. 19 players picked. Baseball America has a ridiculous amount of coverage including the wrap-up a blog and other good stuff.
Wednesday winter meeting fun
JD Drew gets 5y/$70m from the Red Sox
Julio Lugo gets 4y/$36m
Maddux headed to the Padres on a one-year deal
Mets and Royals swap bad pitchers
LaTroy Hawkins gets $4 million from Rockies to suck
Schmidt is one post up.
Edit: There’s nothing to the Manny for Sexson/Beltre rumors – that one’s bogus.
Don Carman is in your house, autographing your things
Slate has a cool story about former Phillies pitcher Don Carman answering his fan mail a decade-and-a-half later. It’s not what you think: he didn’t just procrastinate. Apparently the box of cards was misplaced while Carman was being traded, and he happened upon it again years after the fact.
There are amusing stories here — would you expect to get a signed card back now, years after 12-year-old you had sent it out with high hopes? — and one touching, sad one.
All of the tales bring back my bitterness at Ryne Sandberg, who kept the rookie card I sent him back in the 1980s. Maybe Ryno’s just waiting to clean out the garage before he returns that sucker.
A short discussion of McGwire and the Hall of Fame
Two names are on the Hall of Fame ballot this year that have sparked controversy:
Mark McGwire
Jose Canseco
There’s already a media frenzy over McGwire: ESPN’s running an article on their baseball page that says “Time Will Tell” and has an article on how a survey of voters says many won’t voter for McGwire. Jayson Stark’s article is linked as “Sad start to process”. Buster Olney’s link is “Hall enters ‘Roids Era”.
I spent a lot of time thinking about steroids (and, indirectly, my own culpability in same) while writing my book “The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball” and I have mixed feelings about this.
Not just because the writers who are saying they won’t vote for him acted badly during the whole era, ignoring use by home-town players, making suggestions about the other guys rarely, but doing little to agitate for rule changes. The people closest and most able to write about the problem didn’t, because their jobs were compromised. We only got “Game of Shadows” because the San Francisco Chronicle put reporters from off the sports side on the story. And baseball people once removed (like me) engaged in hysteria or shrugged and said “look, I can’t tell who is and isn’t, so without better evidence, I’m not saying anything,” both equally unhelpful. Now the same people who let baseball’s slide into widespread steroid abuse from the late 80s on get to throw rocks at McGwire? Does their earlier failure as baseball writers now demand they act as vigilantes, enforcers for rules that didn’t exist at the time?
McGwire’s being punished without evidence. There are no positive drug tests. The andro bottle was legal and baseball allowed its use at the time (see the reaction when other players failed international testing for its use). McGwire’s admitted nothing as far as I know, under oath or otherwise. Unlike Canseco, who cheerfully talks (and writes) about advocating and spreading steroid use, McGwire is at best an indirect motivator. When I agree that players shouldn’t have to make a choice between their health and keeping up with the Joneses, it’s guys like McGwire we suspect are the Joneses.
But we don’t know. There was no drug policy for steroids, except the thinnest coverage if they were controlled substances. There was no testing. It was tacitly encouraged by owners and MLB in the wake of the 1994 strike.
Is the suspicion standard really going to be the writers look at this? Will players be judged on the checklist of symptoms, their chances determined by the vehemence of their denials? Did Rafael Palmeiro really teach them nothing?
Edgar Martinez is going to be a tough case for the hall in a few years. He’s a DH, one of the best right-handed hitters ever, but a DH who got a late start on his career. And, like many of the hitters who have fingers pointed at him, you could check off the boxes on the “suspected steroid user” list. He kept hitting past 30. He got bigger and bulkier through his career. He suffered a lot of hamstring injuries.
He’s already likely going to be a borderline Hall of Famer, if the partisans can make a decent case in the press. Is their consideration of possible steroid use going to make the difference between election and refusal? With or without testing, can the question of a player’s steroid use ever be settled definitively?
And what happens to current sluggers when the next batch of secret designer drugs are uncovered in 2010, and again, and again? In the Hall of Fame elections of 2025, are voters going to ding Pujols becaause they suspect he might have been using NGR-4, the super-steroid that baseball found a testing for in 2021? Where does this stop?
The Hall of Fame rightly provides voters wide latitude to consider a player’s contributions to the game off the field. There can and should be no statistical test for a plaque on the wall. But there are really no analogs in the history of the Hall of Fame for excluding a player of McGwire’s accomplishments on the basis of things he may have done while playing, for which there is no evidence, and his possible association with a larger, greater baseball scandal.
This may indeed be the start of a new era for the Hall of Fame voting. It’s a sad moment.
Igawa to Yanks for $25m, rumor has it
ESPN purports posted pitcher to put on pinstripes.
And you thought Daisuke’s bid was high. Remaining options for the M’s include…uh… yeagh.
Manny trade rumors, I lash out at the messenger
Buster Olney at ESPN reports on the talks for Manny Ramirez. The M’s aren’t involved because.. I don’t know. They want to block Snelling with someone horrible to make me even more miserable.
Who’s in the bidding?
• The San Francisco Giants, who might have to involve a third team to become a serious player in this market, or perhaps swallow some of Boston’s worst contracts, like that of pitcher Matt Clement.
• The San Diego Padres, who can build a deal around reliever Scott Linebrink.
• The Dodgers, who are starved for power hitters, loaded with prospects and could probably offer the best possible package of youngsters, from third baseman Andy LaRoche to pitcher Chad Billingsley to outfielder Matt Kemp.
If the Red Sox manage to loot a bunch of top-tier prospects off the Dodgers, I’m going to vomit with disgust. One? Not so bad. But really, if they get a whole package of deliciousness that includes Matt Kemp, that team’s going to be ridiculously well-prepared for the next few years.
And, because I’m feeling depressed and obnoxious, here’s this on David Ortiz without Manny.
“That guy will draw about 200 walks next year without Manny hitting behind him,” said one scout. “I don’t care who it is who bats fourth instead of Manny — J.D. Drew, or Wily Mo Pena, whoever — he won’t be as dangerous as Manny was, because Manny can hit good pitching.”
Really. 200 walks. The single-season all-time leader for walks was Barry Bonds in 2004. He had 232. Followed by Bonds 2002, with 198, and Bonds 2001 with 177.
In 2004 you could have batted a bowl of cream of mushroom soup behind Bonds and he’d have been better protected, and he only walked 232 times. In 2002 he was frequently protected by BENITO SANTIAGO because Bonds was batting behind Jeff Kent. In 2001 he had decent protection with Kent behind him and he still got walked 177 times.
David Ortiz will not walk 200 times next year. You know how we know this? Because it’s only happened once in all of baseball history.