Braun’s deal
Ryan Braun signed a monster deal through 2015 for $45m.
I had two thoughts:
– for all my disagreement with the way revenue sharing’s been implemented, seeing teams lock up their youngsters to huge, long deals is exactly what it was supposed to help with, and it’s helped that
– Felix
Here’s hoping
A highly scientific study for your consideration
The Art of the Interview and Erik Bedard
The issue of a player’s responsibility to give decent post-game interviews came up with Felix now that he’s been ducking the press, putting him in the same company as Bedard, who doesn’t care for that stuff at all.
There are two ways to look at this.
One, they’re paid to play baseball, and that’s their job. If they don’t speak English, don’t like talking to reporters, can’t be bothered to pretend they enjoy baseball particularly, don’t do charity work…. doesn’t matter. Judge them by their play on the field and leave them alone. If they want to give interviews, good. Always ready with a cliche, good. If they’re college graduates who can speak intelligently, even better (actually, no, they get pegged as nerds and mocked throughout their careers).
Or two, they’re in the entertainment business, and it’s part of the job. People pay to see a good game, and part of that experience is the ballpark, the press coverage, the parasite-infested mascot, the team’s community relationships, and so on. As part of the team, a player has an obligation there.
It’s like expecting movie stars to show up for grueling publicity where they give 5m interviews to every local entertainment reporter in the country for eighteen hours.
These are both entirely valid. If you’ve been around for a while, you know I generally come down on the first side, which is a little weird since I devour all coverage of the team. But I understand that the team’s selling a product, and those things help. It’s why friendly faces who will make themselves available to the press during the 7th game of a losing streak are valued by their teams beyond their value on the field.
There are two problems that affect this that we don’t often talk about.
First, only the “players need to give good interview” viewpoint is ever presented, because the people who cover the team are strongly in that camp. Their jobs rely in large part on that access and ability to cover the team. Players who have bad relationships with the press get ridiculously bad coverage uniformly. They don’t get to be anointed team leaders, their contributions are often played down compared to their peers, and when they mess up they get harsher coverage.
I’ll skip Barry Bonds to avoid starting that conversation, but look at the career of Eddie Murray, who refused to talk to reporters. Compare the favorable treatment Derek Jeter has always received in the New York and national press with that given to his more-guarded teammates. It happens over and over.
Whether or not you feel it’s a player’s job to talk to the press, no one should think that that’s fair. But it happens, and because it does, it contributes to the general lack of respect for the press by players. No one respects the boss that plays favorites, and it’s hard to respect the favorites.
Second, the quality of interview is absolutely atrocious. It’s no wonder that players give crappy answers, because the questions are almost uniformly awful. I have all the sympathy in the world for players who try and get out of the post-game interviews. Watch one post-game press conference from start to finish and see if you don’t agree with me.
Much of the interviewing that goes on, particularly on the TV side, goes:
1) Corner player
2) Stick mike in player’s face
3) “Tell me about the home run in the 7th.”
4) Wait
That’s not interviewing. It’s not even an interrogation. It’s laziness. There’s no context, no insight, not even really anything for a player to start with. No wonder they often just open their mouths and start talking in cliches. They’re being asked cliche questions by unprepared, annoying people over and over.
Seriously– if you asked me the kind of questions Bedard gets asked, you’d get a lot worse answers out of me.
“Derek, it looked like you really had the chicken cooking for dinner. Was the chicken cooking?”
“Derek, in your last post you said the defense is awful. Do you think the defense is awful?”
It’s horrible.
And it doesn’t have to be this way. If you look at the times Baker’s posted really interesting, pointed questions to players/coaches, the answers can be great (which, if I may — how many times did Finnigan ever take a controversial question on core fans’ minds and chase the manager around to get it? Never. Never, never, never. Be grateful for what we have, that’s all). Ichiro likes to give weird, cryptic remarks that need to be unwrapped like a little candy, but we’ve seen repeatedly that if you ask him something intelligent that requires insight, his replies can rise to the occasion.
From a player’s viewpoint, then — the bulk of their job is preparation for games or playing the games. Then they have an additional duty to talk to people, many of which they don’t have much reason to respect and who from all evidence appear to be totally bored with their jobs and lean heavily on the players to do it for them.
After the next game, watch the post-game press conference. I’m totally serious. Watch the whole thing. And then think “If I was a pitcher and I just had a really horrible game while trying to stop a bad team’s losing streak in a season that’s already lost, how would I feel up there?”
Because I find it’s made me a lot more sympathetic to the people answering questions than the people asking them. And if players are ducking interviews, the reason may not just be “they’re jerks” but something a little more complex that requires some recognition from the people wielding the cameras, micorphones, and steno pads that they’re not without blame for the state of relations.
Game 42, Mariners at Rangers
Carlos Silva v Scott Feldman. 11:05.
Clement’s catching, which should be interesting, Kenji goes to DH, and 1B-0 Cairo is still batting second. I don’t feel like saying a lot more about this game if McClaren cares that little about it.
Read more
A quarter down, three quarters to go
Before the season started, I said that we’d learn a lot about the M’s in the first month – that big questions like whether Sexson would rebound would be answered pretty quickly, and those answers would determine the course of the year.
We’re over a quarter done with the year now, and the team is 15-26, the worst team in the majors.
“Golden girls” by Kvetina-Marie, cc-licensed
We have some answers. For instance:
Is this the year the M’s get back to the playoffs?
No.
Overall
Offense: they stink
Pitching: pretty good. Well, it’s okay. It’s not horrible. It could be worse.
Defense: they stink
The offense
The Mariner team OBP is .309. That’s second worst in the majors. MLB average is .332.
Stat, rank in MLB
Batting average, 23
OBP, 29/30
SLG, 22/30
Their team line of .250/.309/.385 is like having nine 2007 Corey Pattersons, except they don’t play good defense.
Vidro’s done. Sexson’s rebounded a little, but he’s gone. His agent may already be working the phones looking for possible 2009 spring training non-roster invites. And in absolute terms, this shell of Sexson is the fifth-best hitter on the team so far. A .202/.294/.420 hitter is the fifth-best hitter.
They don’t hit for average, take walks, or hit for power. They have a couple players who can steal bases at an effective clip. They’re a lot like the wretched offenses we’ve seen the last couple of years, where a rally was three singles in an inning, scoring one run.
Offense, fortunately, may get better. Clement’s a helpful bat. Wlad’s an improvement over Wilkerson. Johjima’s not going to hit this badly all season. It may not ever be great, but the team they’re fielding a week from now is a lot better than the one they went into the season with.
Defense
It’s horrible. Before Tuesday’s game, the M’s were turning 68.7% of balls in play into outs. That’s 28/30th in the majors, dead last in the AL. I know that some people thought that Yuni would rebound, not making so many errors, but last year they were 27/30, at 67.8% — I never understood why the M’s had a good defensive reputation.
Defensive improvements are cheap, effective, and can turn a team around so fast analysts will be scraping for explanations. Take the Orioles, at .500. Baltimore’s defensive efficiency last year was middling – 18 out of 30 teams at .691. This year so far they’re 1st at .734.
There are three major defensive changes:
– Luis Hernandez replaces Miguel Tejeda
– Luke Scott replaces Jay Payton (who is still managing to rack up a lot of at-bats).
– Adam Jones replaces Corey Patterson, who was no slouch in center
Now they’re turning hits into outs, the pitching staff looks stronger, and they’re playing over their heads (or at least over expectations).
And it’s worth noting that it’s not enough to pick on, say, Raul, for his horrible defense. It’s been a team effort. Even when you can’t point at an error that costs a run or a game, poor defense has a cost. Every ball that drops in is important. The pitcher has to get another out, if nothing else, and that’s extra pitches that have to come from somewhere, so the bullpen’s ever so slightly more worn. It turns the lineup over again. Poor defense is death by paper cuts: singles into doubles, outs into singles, double plays broken, stolen bases into advancing to third on an error.
They should get a little better swapping out right field, but not that much. They’re not going to go worst to first in-season without a massive tear down. We have to bear this.
Bench
I wrote a lot about this as we went into the season, but this bench sucks, and it’s worse with Mike Morse out. Cairo sucks. Vidro’s not much better. There’s no good backup outfielder. They don’t offer McLaren good in-game options, not that he’d — I’m getting ahead of myself.
Pitching
I haven’t done this a while, and this is always a useful baseline.
Name IP H% HR% BB% K% Green 21.1 17% 1% 13% 21% Corcoran 10.2 18% 0% 9% 16% Morrow 8.2 18% 6% 6% 39% Rhodes 8 19% 0% 16% 24% Hernandez 55.1 23% 2% 9% 20% Bedard 33.2 19% 4% 12% 19% Rowland-Smith 16.2 21% 1% 10% 21% Silva 52 26% 3% 5% 9% Lowe 14 24% 0% 17% 18% Baek 25 19% 3% 12% 13% Batista 40.1 25% 1% 14% 16% Putz 8 26% 2% 17% 26% Washburn 44.1 27% 4% 5% 14% Dickey 7 26% 0% 6% 10% O'Flaherty 6.2 40% 5% 10% 10%
(updated to fix a calculation error)
An average pitcher is ~16% H, 3% HR, 11% BB, and 16% K
Surprisingly, the only pitchers really above average in all of the good pitcher-controllable categories are:
Felix
Ryan Rowland-Smith
Or, to review quickly:
Rotation:
Bedard’s gotten some strikeouts but has not been as advertised.
Felix is Felix, for all that entails.
Washburn is slightly below average but not by much, which means he’s below average at being bad
Silva is Ryan Franklin redux.
Batista has been better than Washburn except for the walks… oh, the walks
Bullpen:
Putz hasn’t been himself at all.
Morrow’s looked good but been homer-prone.
Green’s been good.
Baek’s mopping up for the starters and he’s been serviceable for that role.
Rowland-Smith’s been good when McLaren remembers to call him in.
Lowe’s been decent.
As a unit, though, wow, if there’s ever been a condensed argument in favor of bullpen roles and cohesion to refute my general skepticism, well, here you are. Putz went down and they all seemed to catch fire. It felt like a blessing to get a night when they could bring in more than one reliever without torching the game.
Manager
I know that every manager has flaws — Lou Piniella’s in-game tactics were quite predictable in some situations, for instance — that make their fans want to tear their hair out. They redeem themselves in other ways, though, that make them worth employing.
Here’s my question: what’s McLaren’s strength? What’s he doing well that makes him a better option than any randomly selected grizzled minor league manager with a couple thousand games of managerial experience?
What makes up for batting Cairo second?
Front office
The good is they cut bait on Wilkerson pretty fast. The bad news is that this is their team, constructed to their specifications and whims, just like the last couple of disaster teams. They thought this team was a couple of pieces away from contending for a pennant, and they traded the future on that premise. The farm system is in far better shape than it was a few years ago, and player development far more productive, but I don’t see how that can make up for what’s gone wrong, and if they’re just going to trade those players for the wrong veterans at the wrong time, rather than build around them, their success their means little.
I want more than anything for them to learn, to turn this around, but what have we seen of that in years? Veteran signs fail, veterans are signed. Talent is badly valued, and then badly valued the next year. The defense is degraded and then we see bafflement over poor pitcher performances. What reason do we have to think that they can, or will, make progress on the problems that have cost the franchise so many losses these years?
Ownership
If you only listen to us once, just once, take this advice: the next time you’re looking to hire a general manager, at least interview smart people who disagree with you and weigh their approach and plans against what you’ve reaped from the strategy you’ve used for so long. Give them a fair shot, because they’ll win the job and win with the team if given the chance.
You don’t like me and I don’t like you. You want to market to women and children instead of baseball fans? You own a baseball team. Trying to please particular demographics with distractions, promotions, and playgrounds might work for a while until someone else finds something shinier to dangle in front of the babies. Put a good baseball team out there, and you’ll get women fans and men fans and you’ll turn children into lifelong fans.
Do it. Do it or hand the team over to people who can. There are some good candidates in your minority owners. If you want to run a daycare or a Body Shop, go rent some retail space and knock yourself out. If you want to run a successful baseball team, figure out how to do that.
Stacked for your convenience
“Towels!” by Ross C, cc-licensed
Game 41, Mariners at Rangers
Felix versus Kason Gabbard. 5:05
One of the unexpected side-effects of unbalanced play that I don’t see discussed — and I say this as someone who hugely favored unbalanced play despite its problems — is that it makes you feel like you’ve seen the same team over and over. I feel like over the last few years I’ve seen Texas so often the sight of their uniforms makes me a little nauseous. Those guys again? Millwood for the 200th time in two seasons? Noooooooooooooooo.
So!
CF-L Ichiro
1B-0 Cairo
3B-R Beltre
LF-L Ibanez
2B-R Lopez
C-R Johjima
RF-R Balentien
DH-L Clement
SS-R Betancourt
What a bizarre lineup. Lopez at 5? Why in the world would you do that? I don’t get it. And why play Cairo at first? Or bat him second?
Let’s assume for a second you want Cairo to play. He should bat last, because he’s the worst hitter. Maybe second-to-last, if you want to get the Betancourt-Ichiro sequence. So
1 = Ichiro
9 = Cairo
Then you want your best hitters in the middle, so
CF-L Ichiro
?
3/4: LF-L Ibanez, 3B-R Beltre
Then really, Lopez fits in nicely at 2, which sets up a nice L/R sequence:
CF-L Ichiro
2B-R Lopez
LF-L Ibanez
3B-R Beltre
?
?
?
?
1B-0 Cairo
Then, sorting on current performance and general L/R-ness, a decent lineup comes together pretty quickly.
CF-L Ichiro
2B-R Lopez
LF-L Ibanez
3B-R Beltre
DH-L Clement
RF-R Balentien
C-R Johjima
SS-R Betancourt
1B-0 Cairo
See? Piece of cake.
Texas:
2B-R Kinsler
DH-L Catalanotto
SS-R Young
CF-L Hamilton
RF-L Murphy
LF-B Boggs
C-R Laird
1B-R Shelton
3B-L Vazquez
I’m not a superstitious guy
But you may have noticed that I didn’t put anything up at midnight on what day it is. The last couple haven’t worked out for the team, and they really need the win, so I thought I’d skip it and see how things worked out. That’s all.
Medium sized fish, tiny pond
You may have noticed Jeff Clement sees a lot of pitches. It’s something he’s always done, and on its own it’s not a sign that he’s a good or a bad hitter, but it is good that despite his struggles after being called up he hasn’t become dramatically more or less patient.
The interesting thing is that Clement, seeing over four pitches an at-bat, is by a fair margin the team leader right now among anyone seeing regular playing time. If nothing else, it’s a skill that’s certainly lacking in the rest of the lineup, and welcome.
Stone on Griffey return
Larry knocks out a fine piece on Griffey rumors.
A Griffey homecoming could end up an anti-climactic letdown just as easily as it could be a triumphant valediction for a homegrown Hall of Famer.
Mind you, I think it’s going to happen. Griffey to Seattle is starting to have the distinct feel of inevitability, if all the rumblings in the baseball world are true. The fact that the Mariners had one of Bill Bavasi’s top advisers, Duane Shaffer, in New York over the weekend to reportedly watch Griffey at Shea Stadium is just more fuel to a burgeoning fire.
It’s definitely worth a read. And I believe Dave’s got something on this for later today.