Jeff Manto, hitting coach
Being a great hitter doesn’t always help a player become a great coach. It may even be a liability. The Mariners have run through a series of hitting coaches lately, and none seem to have done the team any good, and few seem to have done any player any good.
Paul Molitor’s in the Hall of Fame, he was here for a year and then left.
Don Baylor had over 2,000 hits and some great years as a hitter. He got a year, too.
Pentland, who replaced them, has no major league experience but is highly regarded for his work as a hitting coach. So major league success isn’t a requirement for being a hitting or pitching coach, but it certainly does get players to listen, while at least in that way, coaches without credentials have to work harder to establish that they can offer something to a player.
Which brings me to Jeff Manto, who by the hand of fate, was hired as the Pirates hitting coach.
Manto was a Mariner in 1996 and played in 21 games as part of his long, seemingly random career. He played here and in Japan, in many different organizations, he hit well, and really badly, and in the later part of his career he hung around Buffalo, playing for the Indians’ AAA team, knocking the snot out of the ball, sometimes getting a couple at-bats for a major league team, and sometimes just wowing International League fans.
As a player, he’s an anti-Molitor, almost: a long career (1985-2000), but with most of his playing time in the minors, often a spare part when he was carried on a roster at all.
It’ll be intersting to see if Pentland can get any better results than the hitting stars the M’s have had lately, and if Manto, as a hitting coach with a different background than either Pentland or Molitor and Baylor, can find success with the Pirates.
Free agent compensation
This has come up in talks about free agents: the Mariners, if they sign Burnett or Millwood, would lose a second-round draft pick. They can’t lose a first because the’re in the first half of the draft order on account of being really bad last year. And let’s be frank, second round picks aren’t nearly the bee’s knees that a first round pick is.
For a complete listing of who’s classified as what, Jim Callis at Baseball America wrote it up for you.
Left-handed sock on the move
A couple of guys the Mariners might have been considering in trade to fill the perceived need for more LH power have switched teams:
Carlos Delgado goes from the Marlins to the Mets
Jim Thome, it appears, is moving from the Phillies to the White Sox to make room for Ryan Howard, who will no longer be availble for trade rumors
Interesting times.
Oops! Cubs did it again.
Remember a month or so ago, when I made fun of the Cubs for signing Ryan Dempster to a three-year deal? Well, they did it again, this time signing lefty specialist Scott Eyre to a three-year, $11M contract with incentives that could push the total value to $13.4M.
It’s not that Eyre’s a bad pitcher, but c’mon, there are guys like George Sherrill floating around who can do the job for a much smaller paycheck. On the other hand, I heard Buck Martinez on XM Radio the other day saying he thought Eyre was one of the most important free agents on the market (huh?). Also, some writer thought Eyre was the 10th most valuable player in the National League this past season (no joke — check out the voting).
MLB, players reach new agreement on drugs
New penalties: 50 games for the first test, 100 games for a second test, and a lifetime ban for a third (which may, in practice, only last two years). Details are scarce, but it does not appear to address the “Mike Morse double-jeopardy” problem, where players can be punished repeatedly under both minor and major-league testing plans and suspended each time.
New testing: amphetamines will finally be tested for.
This alone is a huge story, and despite the focus on increased penalties, will have by far the greater impact. It’s just as large as the deal to begin steroid testing, or the follow-up agreement on penalties and treatment for “drugs of abuse” like heroin.
To put this another way: amphetamine abuse is as widespread as the most hysterical anti-steroid advocate believed juicing was. We are much more likely to see a significant and measurable performance decline by players in general from this than we were from even the most rigorous steroid testing regimen. I’m a little surprised that this came without a decrease in schedule length or larger rosters.
The new problem is testing for amphetamine abuse. It’s a lot tougher to detect than steroids, though some versions of the story say there are also going to be more frequent random tests. It’s also on a different penalty schedule than steroids: testing positive for amphetamines leads to more testing. A second result gets a 25-game suspension, and then a 60-game suspension for a third test (fourth positive test? new Cadillac).
Even limited testing of modest effectiveness will change the risk/reward calculation players are making before games, and that may have effects far more wide-spread than I’ve seen anyone mention yet. This is huge.
Schwarz on PECOTA in NYT
Don’t miss officially endorsed Alan Schwarz writing about Nate Silver’s PECOTA player forecast system in the New York Times. Read it quickly, before it falls behind the terrible “Times Select” wall of paid content.
Rookies of the Year announced
No Felix, of course.
Huston Street for the AL, and Ryan Howard for the NL (man, if only we’d traded for that guy). Read more
Reds sold, what a stadium’s worth
Carl Linder, owner of the Reds, is going to sell them to a local group. News stories say the acquisition sets the value of the team at $270m.
Assume that’s true. In 2002, before the team moved into their new digs, they were worth $204m by Forbes estimates.
In 2004, having moved in, they were valued at $245m.
Even as the team flirted with year-to-year unprofitability, their value increased by about $70m in three years, with the only real difference in the franchise’s health being the new stadium. That’s a nice return.
DePo, Theo to form joint venture team
This is a USSM exclusive: outsted new school GMs Theo Epstein and Paul DePodesta have joined forces and are seeking venture capital for their new venture, tentatively titled “TheoDePo Co.” The two whiz kids will attempt to acquire the Las Vegas 51s, reach a deal with Las Vegas development companies to build an entertainment complex that includes a baseball-only stadium, and then petition Major League Baseball under a set of rules they believe force the league to bring the matter of admitting the team to a vote, as long as the proposal meets certain financial and market critiera… rumored backers of the development deal are a dream team of Las Vegas companies, headed by Steve Wynn, and including Boyd Gaming Corp. and Park Place.
This could set into effect a series of even crazier events: owners may be swayed to vote for the proposal by the chance to use the Las Vegas team’s cash payment to contract one of the leagues worst franchises that constantly suck revenue-sharing money, like the Twins or Devil Rays, leaving those cities to pick up a minor-league affiliation instead. Under the current CBA, such a franchise swap is not prohibited because it would not affect the total number of teams in existence.
Whether a new, well-financed franchise is added to the mix or supplants an existing poor one, this would dramatically change the dynamics of free agency in this off-season and may send the price of premier free agents like Paul Konerko skyrocketing.
Baseball analysts note that this is all totally not true, and they’re correct, I totally made this all up. But would it be any weirder than what’s been going on in Boston this last week?
Epstein out in Boston
ESPN.com, elsewhere I’m sure.
Unlike DePodesta in LA, this was Epstein’s choice; he turned down a reported three-year, $4.5M deal (reports vary from $3.6 to $4.5M) at the last minute, apparently looking for something closer to the $2.5M per year the Red Sox offered Billy Beane three years ago.
Somehow I can’t see him taking a job in Tampa Bay, Los Angeles or Philly. “Out of baseball for a year” seems the best bet.