On umpires and referees

This post is referencing a point from Buster Olney's column today (8/5/2011) regarding Yadier Molina's five game suspension for bumping and spitting on Rob Drake.  I made a comment regarding this under his column, and I want to repost it here as well because it's a fair talking point and in dire need of attention from MLB:

A-Rod the Idiot

The idiom goes: where there's smoke, there's usually fire.  If that's the case, then Alex Rodriguez has probably got a four-alarmer blazing right about now.  This isn't his first time being linked to an underground poker game - last time Selig essentially slapped him upside the head and sent him on his merry way.  One PED story and one decently put together but utterly useless magazine article later, A-Rod is back in the limelight for doing something stupid again.

To trade or not to trade...

The Yankees have a problem - the starting rotation behind CC Sabathia is full of question marks.  Burnett is enigmatic at best, Hughes may or may not come back from his injury, Colon and Garcia are on borrowed time, and Nova is at points brilliant while sometimes showing his inexperience.  With the Yankees offense the way it is this team is nearly a lock to make the playoffs - they're on pace for roughly 92-95 wins, which may not win the division but will surely lock up the wild card.  The problem, then, is where to improve the team for October.

A quickie: The Yankees and 7/31

OK, so the Yankees are hanging right with the Red Sox (even after last night's loss) and are always buyers at the trade deadline.  On ESPNNY, the Yankees' Daily Briefing (a must read for every Yankee fan; it goes up in the wee hours and usually leads the ESPNNY Yankees blog until a few hours before game time) asked here and here about what the Yankees should do regarding third base and the rotation.  I think it's fairly simple - they should do nothing major.

The Yankees best work is done between November and March regarding acquiring talent.  There's no reason to overpay for a player in July when you're already expected to be in the playoffs in some form (Baseball Prospectus has the Yankees at 93.8% after last nights loss), and with the playoffs being baseball's version of a crapshoot it makes no sense to try to acquire that which the Yankees likely already have in their system.  The bullpen is about to become crowded again when Soriano returns, the rotation has Nova backing it up (although Colon and Garcia could turn into pumpkins any minute now), and A-Rod is only out for another 3-5 weeks.

If Cashman can trade for a piece without giving up much of the farm (and without letting Levine negotiate), then he should do so.  The Yankees need a lefty bullpen guy besides Boone Logan to matchup with in the playoffs and possibly a backup infielder that can actually field his position (sorry Nunie, but you need "seasoning").  There's no reason to acquire a front-line starter because of the nature of the playoffs - one win in the standings before October will mean nothing once the playoffs start.

The Uselessness of the All Star Game

There are roughly 750 MLB players on active rosters, with (my guess) an average of four players per MLB disabled list. [Disclaimer: I could find no resource with total MLB numbers.  If someone can find one I would be grateful]  That makes a total of 870 players under contract in the major leagues, which would make it the second largest league in terms of players at the highest level (football being first, hockey behind and basketball way behind).  Of that 870, 67 players were voted and/or selected for the All Star Game to be played this Tuesday.  As of this writing, we're up to 84 "All Stars," which is roughly 10% of the total number of people that played in the majors this season by my count.

So, if you've been selected for the All Star game you're allowed to a) invent an injury, b) beg off the team, or c) actually get injured in order to get your three days off.  Obviously getting injured is not the ideal way to get out of the game, nor do I hold it against a player that is legitimately injured from not participating.  Begging off and inventing an injury to me seem to be the same thing - making an excuse to get out of the game.  Look, the fans voted most of you into the game...unless you're really hurt suck it up and play a few innings!  Nothing ticks off the fans more than being given the metaphorical finger.

After the famous All Star Tie Bud Selig made the All Star Game count - the winning league also won home-field advantage for the World Series.  This smacked of dumb on so many levels.  With this rule, the token picks of a couple of junky teams in whichever league can decide where Game 7 might be held.  As a fan of the Yankees, I don't like the fact that a member of the Royals (heaven forbid he's pitching) might give up the go-ahead run and force the Yankees to go to Philadelphia for game 7.

Also, let's not forget that some of the best players on both sides have begged off the team - we're already into the second tier of backups being named for this season.  It's getting to the point where you don't even pay attention to the "fan voting" and you simply wait until the final changes are made a day or so before the game itself.  As a fan, I can't get excited if half (or more) of the players that were selected aren't playing.

How useless is the All Star Game?  Scott Rolen, he of the .276 OBP (yes, on base percentage, not batting average) is a replacement because he was third in the third-baseman voting.  Nothing against Scott Rolen - he's been a good player for a long time - but when we're putting a guy that makes an out MORE THAN 70% OF THE TIME into a game that could potentially decide the World Series location, it's time to reexamine what we're looking at.

I don't understand the problem here...

(H/T to Rebecca for pointing in the direction of this article at WSJ)

So Yankee Stadium II (the place that closed in 2008) was a fairly pitcher/hitter neutral park.  The eye would back this up - right field obviously plays short with the porch and the short foul line, but the left-center power-alley is immense at 399 ft.  Lefty pull hitters would find the park a homer haven but all but the best righty hitters will find their power sapped by Death Valley.  Yankee Stadium III plays as a hitter-friendly stadium, the most likely culprit being the wind currents in the new stadium since the dimensions of both stadiums are similar...but not the same (right field slightly shorter, center slightly longer).

So the Yankees have a stadium friendly to lefty pull hitters and have a philosophy of having switch hitters disbursed through the lineup with the ability to yank a homer every once in a while (Gardner and Jeter are exceptions, but their skill set compliments the lineup well).  So what do they build their lineup with?  Lefty power hitters!  With both Yankee Stadium iterations, the short porch helps them build the lineup to the stadium...which is exactly what you should do - it's called home-field advantage.

This brings us to the mammoth shot A-Rod hit last night to the high wall at Citi Field.  The ball he hit looked like it would have been a home run in Yellowstone Park, but Citi Field has a ridiculously high wall in left-center field, and A-Rod hit this ball all but one foot up the wall.  What was a homer in almost every other park was a ringing double in Queens.

Why is this a problem?  Shea Stadium was a pitcher-friendly park but absolutely fair - symmetrical along the centerline of the field.  They had power hitters in Delgado, Wright, and Beltran with Reyes providing some pop out of the leadoff spot.  2009 saw the move to Citi and it's bizarre dimensions compared to Shea, and the Mets' power numbers declined precipitously.  Their leading home run hitter was Daniel Murphy, and Carlos Beltran had a 20-homer pace.  Wright hit a grand total of 10 bombs - the same both Gary Sheffield and Jeff Francoeur hit in roughly half the PA's.  Wright improved back to 29 home runs in 2010, but had five more on the road as opposed to home.  This year is a bad year to measure Wright because of his injury-marred 2011 season so far, but Beltran seems to have figured out Citi.  Beltran has 12 homers this season and a couple more at home than on the road.

It seems like the Wilpons wanted a park to fit Jose Reyes alone...a triples haven, where old-school baseball reigned (even though one could argue that old school baseball includes a lot of homers) at the expense of power hitters.  The Wall Street Journal link above shows how a bunch of Yankee Stadium homers are fly balls at Citi, which I find an unfair comparison regardless...a team should cater to the stadium where it plays half its games.  But the Mets already had a decent team, and decided to build their stadium almost in the face of their team - besides Reyes, not too many players on the Mets for the last three seasons really fit Citi Field.  Francoeur famously called Citi Field "a joke," but then again I don't put too much stock the opinion of a guy that makes out 69% of the time for his career.

This took on more of a ramble than I planned.  My feeling is the Mets have a serious problem with their stadium...the playing field dimensions and fences need to be altered.  I can't see high-profile free agents coming to Citi Field when their offensive numbers will likely decrease, since (besides notable exceptions) high-profile equals power hitter.  Hopefully Sandy Alderson will be able to build a team to his park (assuming he is allowed to by the Wilpons or Einhorn), but hopefully the Mets are allowed to lower that confounded wall some before they lose Wright mentally.

Phil Hughes does what he's supposed to...

(Extreme hat-tip to Mike Ashmore, who live-tweeted and posted video from each Phil Hughes at-bat.)

So Phil Hughes took the hitters from the NH Fisher Cats to school....6.1 IP, 1 ER, 2 BB, 8K in 88 pitches.  He sat low-90's for the whole start and was touching mid-90's.  He attacked the plate and got a bunch of quick outs, keeping the Blue Jays' AA affiliate at bay for the majority of the game.

By my reckoning Hughes looked much better on the mound than he did to begin the year.  He appeared much looser on the mound and a helluva lot more relaxed.  At the start of this year it looked like Hughes didn't have the confidence in his fastball (borne out by his DL stint and rehab) and he could not pitch around that.

(No, I'm not saying Hughes should try to pitch through injury...simply pointing out that his secondary stuff wasn't terribly sharp either.)

Anyway, this start looked much better than any start he made in the majors this season.  He's got that swagger back...like he knows he's getting you out.

He'll likely have one more rehab start to bulk up his workload - I imagine that'll be in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and will occur on July 4th.  Assuming all goes well, the Yankees have a pretty easy decision to make either just before or just after the All-Star break.  It looks like Hughes could start just before the All-Star break on July 9th against Tampa Bay to keep him on rotation, but that projects to be Burnett's regular turn (and he's not pitching terribly).  More likely I see Hughes staying in Scranton until after the MLB break, with Brian Gordon getting one more start with the Yankees before the break before they are forced to make a roster move.

I'm hoping Gordon will accept an assignment to Scranton.  He'd be wonderful to have as depth in the minors in case Garcia falters or Colon doesn't come back right away.  Nova needs to stay in the rotation because it looks like he has nothing left to learn at the AAA level...his best education will be facing the lineups of the AL East and the rest of the league once every five days.

After the break the Yankees rotation should look like CC, AJ, Hughes, Nova, Garcia with Colon on the way.  This is not a bad rotation - it has questions but there's no rotation in the majors that doesn't, even the Phillies.  With the lineup starting to get warm and the bullpen turning into something that can be trusted, I've got a feeling this season will turn into something a bit more special that the standard Yankee playoff appearance.

Jim Riggleman, (Permanent) Former MLB Manager

So Jim Riggleman resigned as manager of the Nationals today after the team's 11th win in 12 days.  In a nutshell, Riggleman demanded that GM Mike Rizzo pick up his option for next year and Rizzo called his bluff.  Riggleman said he needed "a longer leash" and wasn't as free to make decisions because of his tenuous contract situation, fearing any "out of the box" thinking would be an easy way to get himself fired.  (Hmm, seems like he found an easier way)

There's obviously more going on than a simple contract demand from a manager that's had three winning seasons among the nine full seasons he's managed.  Riggleman has probably been bugging Rizzo about this option since spring training and Rizzo (rightly, in my eyes) decided he had no reason to rush into paying his manager for next season.  It's not like Riggleman was some sort of managerial guru that reinvented the baseball wheel while simultaneously convincing his bosses that he is indeed a good manager.  As Mike Vaccaro mentioned, he'd have to go ONE FULL SEASON OVER .500 in order to get back to .500 as a manager.

So Riggleman played his hand wrong and lost.  He says he felt disrespected when what he did was disrespect his organization by making a contract demand in-season.  This is a Nationals team with many young players that would have gotten the idea that "Hey, our manager threw a hissy fit and got paid, why can't we?"  Rizzo was backed into a corner - placate his manager and weaken his authority regarding the team, or call Riggleman's bluff and deal with the consequences.  Rizzo would have been seen as a weak-kneed GM if he allowed Riggleman to dictate when the team would pick up his option, so he chose to protect his authority.

I can't see any team hiring Jim Riggleman anymore...he just walked out on his team because he wanted his money guaranteed.  Now a team couldn't hire him if they wanted to because a) they'd be condoning throwing a tantrum when you don't like your contract situation, and b) if Riggleman isn't happy with his "job security" he could walk out at anytime.  Perception has a tendency to be reality, and Riggleman has given the baseball world the perception that he is a potential malcontent with no redeeming qualities as a manager besides.  Maybe he can find a college somewhere, but an MLB team should be wary to hire Mr. Riggleman.

Pleas to the silent

This is gonna sound like begging...because it is.  I'm sure there's at least five people out there reading my drivel - yet no comments, followers or anything.

I crave feedback!  As long as it's not mean-spirited or useless please feel free to tell me what I might be doing wrong or right.  I want nothing more than to have friendly dialogue with whatever readers I may have.

Also, if you haven't noticed I'm not a blind-to-the-world, Sterling-esque Yankee fan.  If you want that, there's places for the on the interwebs.  You won't find it here.

Bryce Harper, future HBP victim

Bryce Harper, he of the eye black and massive bat, avoided a big bruise after an incident while playing for Washington's Single-A affiliate in Hagerstown, MD.  Basically, Harper stood and watched his big fly for a few seconds - much more than baseball protocol allows - and then trotted his way around the basepaths.  The pitcher for Greensboro said some things to Harper, and Harper blew him a kiss at the end of his home run trot.  The next at bat, he got a pitch up and in from a different Greensboro pitcher in obvious retaliation.

Young Bryce is lucky - had this happened higher up in the minors, and definitely on the major league level, either he or one of his teammates would have taken a fastball to the rear or the back and no one would have batted an eyelash one way or the other.  Baseball has a funny way of policing itself - rules about HBP's or not - especially when you see your division rivals 18 times a season.  If he had done that with Roy Halladay on the mound, it's safe to say he'd be sporting a baseball-sized bruise as a reminder to not show up your competition in that way..

That all being said, Harper has been called out for his immaturity and it has been said this incident could hold him back in the minors.  That's purely a bunch of junk - he's 18 years old for crying out loud!  The purpose of the minors for Harper is to learn how to be a professional baseball player so when he comes up to Washington he doesn't pull this kind of crap again.  The team used it as a learning experience - the manager of Hagerstown should be commended for using what could have been a total negative and teaching these kids baseball as it should be played on the field.

I imagine that Harper will learn his lesson the hard way - since he didn't feel the full consequences of his actions on the field, he'll probably do it again and get a slightly more painful result.  But that's OK...I can't remember too many 18-year olds that were fully mature adults and starting their professional career.  What he has to do is keep working hard and keep stuff like this to a minimum lest he get a reputation as disrespectful, which will grate on his teammates as well as his opponents.

Catchers are not to be bulldozed; or, The tools of ignorance are not a bullseye

**NOTE: I haven't posted in a while, and if anyone does read this I apologize.  Been a rough week at work...I'll try to get back to it regularly in the coming days.**

Let's start with a confession: I've never been a catcher on a baseball field.  I never liked the idea of people that didn't know what they were doing on the mound throwing as hard as they could at me...which is where I imagine the nickname "tools of ignorance" came into being.  I need a reasonable assurance that the pitcher is going to hit my glove with some accuracy, otherwise no thanks.  I was never worried about a runner bowling me over - I'm a pretty big dude and was reasonably sure that I was the immovable object compared to most of my friends.  This was before I had a basic understanding of the physics involved with collisions.

Buster Posey had surgery on his leg this week after a collision with Scott Cousins last week to repair ankle ligaments torn in that collision along with a broken leg.  The Giants put Posey on the DL and have stated he will be out for the year - no real shock there.  Posey is a young player and a championship-caliber catcher and there's no sense rushing him back for the end of the season, playoffs or not.  Let him heal right and rehab the injury - the investment in time will be well worth the wait, I'm sure.

As for the play itself, the commentosphere and blogosphere has been a mixed bag.  Posey and the Giants management said there was nothing dirty about the play - that Cousins made a clean hit on Posey in the name of scoring the winning run.  Bochy even said he understood the the play was "a part of baseball."

I'm going to have to disagree with both viewpoints in some fashion.  First off, the Giants saying there was nothing dirty about the play does not make it a clean play - Cousins had the option to slide around Posey and still hit the plate.*  I've always been taught that baseball is not a contact sport and only under the rarest of circumstances should there be contact between opposing players, and that includes both sides of the play at the plate.  A catcher responsibility is to tag the guy out, not necessarily block the plate.

*It didn't help that Schierholtz misplayed the ball slightly, not getting a run up to the ball and shuffling his feet before the throw which made the throw a bit slower and made the play closer.  Not to blame Schierholtz - his throw was pretty darned good - but that was the first part of the chain of events.

Second, delivering a shoulder block is not "a part of baseball."  Posey probably didn't see Cousins coming - he might have heard him, but by then it was too late to get out of the way - and it's wrong to think that hitting a defenseless player is "a part of baseball."  The idea is to score runs, not points with your teammates by trying to put an exclamation point on the game.  If the catcher is giving you a part of the plate, there's no reason to clear the other side of the plate too.  It's (usually) far easier to score by going around a catcher than going through him.

On the flipside, Posey doesn't get off scott free here.  His technique was horrible...he was squatting on his knees to receive the ball instead of being on his feet as well as not securing the ball before trying to tag Cousins.  By being on his knees, instead of being knocked on his butt by Cousins he had his leg folded under him when his cleat planted in the ground and wouldn't give way while his foot nearly ripped from his ankle.  He needs to know when to block the plate and when to swipe the tag.

As for rules changes, it's a bad idea for a few reasons.  First off, legislating the game too much simply takes whatever fun is in the game out of it.  There's already a ton of rules on the MLB books, some specifically involving catchers blocking the plate...enforce those better before you think about adding more lines to an already bloated volume.  Second, umpires already have enough to worry about...subjective enforcement of the rules is already a problem (hello, HBP's) and giving fans and teams another reason to hate umpires just isn't worth it.  I also don't think it would stop home plate collisions - the temptation for a catcher to not give a runner a lane is too great and too instinctual.  Suspending players for a collision would lead to too many subjective questions: who instigated? /did the catcher leave an opening to the plate? /did the throw cause the catcher to move into the baseline?  That's just too much second guessing in my opinion.

I don't want to get into the physics of the runner/catcher collision...I'm sure Mythbusters has done something with a collision between two similarly massed objects, one at rest and one in motion.  The Cliff's Notes: The object at rest receives all of the force of the collision while giving little back in return.  People want to talk about Posey wearing "armor" - that armor protects the catcher from batted balls and wild pitches, not baserunners.  Catcher's equipment is not football pads and is not designed to take that kind of force.

This has the chance to be a great teaching moment for Buster Posey if the Giants allow it.  Find a catching instructor that can drill this into Posey while he's rehabbing his leg and maybe they'll be able to save themselves from dealing with this sort of injury again.

Quickie: Recent Cashman Scorecard

This is quick, dirty, and incomplete.  Add as you like:
-Trading for Granderson: Pretty darned good
-Trading away Coke and Kennedy: Not so good, but used properly to improve club
-Trading away Melky: Opened CF for Granderson, so very good
-Signing Feliciano: Very VERY bad...and don't whine that his previous team overused him.  Don't sign a guy that was overworked.
-Publically disavowing the Soriano signing: Good, and it's always good to show up Levine.
-Signing Martin to catch: Very good, eh?
-Not ponying up more cash for Lee: Considering he signed for more per year but for less years, I don't blame Cash for this one.  Can't really blame anyone.
-Treading carefully with young pitchers: So far that's a fail.  Joba's never going to start for the Yankees again, Hughes is on the shelf, Kennedy was used for a trade (albeit a good one)...As much as I want to see Banuelos and Betances in the majors, I fear for their arms.
-Jeter's contract: Cashman could have handled that better...that needed to stay in house.

Anyone else have anything to add?  Anything to disagree about?

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Starting Pitching, or why it should be easier to hit a home run today

I used to get all high and mighty about PED's - "they ruined the game, the users cheated, it was against the law if not baseball rules..." - and used to rail to my friends when they said Barry Bonds was one of the best baseball players of all time. (**DISCLAIMER** I wholeheartedly endorse that stance, but I use the arbitrary endpoint of 1998)  I, on the other hand, have come to the conclusion that PED's kept people on the field longer and made them healthier (relatively speaking) without improving their performance so much that it would account for the spikes in stats that occured during the early 2000's.

The funny part, or the part I don't understand, is why no one (at the time) ever talked about the pitching?  We had an expansion in 1993 that added 10 new starting pitchers, and then again in 1998 with 10 new starting pitchers (it's actually a lot more, because no team uses exactly five starters in a season anymore).  Without looking at statistical evidence, it would seem logically that the talent pool got extremely thin on the bump and the talent on the batting side stayed relatively normal.

---Yes, I know the teams that formed were stocked up by drafting from other MLB and MiLB talent.  But it is usually easier to replace batters in lineups rather than pitchers, even if the defense might not follow right away.  The other teams had to fill in their rosters from their own MiLB teams and the draft as well, but a hitter can reach the majors quickly, and pitching will lag behind.---

So, using strictly logic we've surmised that the pitching talent has lagged significantly behind the hitting talent, and offense thrived during this time period.  Last year, we noticied a reversal of this trend..."The Year of the Pitcher."  We saw no hitters, perfectos (including one near perfecto pitched by a guy that got DFAed last night) and (generally speaking) less offense than we were used to seeing.  Batting averages are down, slugging percentages are down, and ERA's are down.  We seemingly have a no-hit bid reach the 6th inning every night.

The speculation is that PED's are generally out of the game...that some people are getting around testing but most players have stayed as clean as they can.  Others speculate that increased testing for amphetamines.  I have very little doubt that these two statements are true - less old guys, more young guys and an emphasis on the draft and the minors.  But maybe pitching simply came back around?  Baseball has always been cyclical, with hitting and pitching vying for top spot and doing so in, well, cycles.  Maybe it's nothing, but maybe it's something - maybe the pitchers in baseball have simply caught up to the hitters?

It pains me to think that it is only drug testing that has brought both sides of the ball back into balance - it could also be incredibly naive of me to think PED's didn't have the effect others say they did.  The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, and I'm ok with that.  But while number two starters are throwing gems and 2-1 seems just as likely a score as 11-9 (the Indians not withstanding), I would challenge people to look at the sport as a whole and look for the more generalized viewpoint.  Pitching is coming back up to hitting, and I think it may stay that way for a while.

Diving right in: the Jorge Posada Lovefest

Tons of digital and real ink have been spilled regarding Jorge Posada taking himself out of the lineup when Joe Girardi dropped him in the order to ninth, which I thought was really nice - dude is making $13MM at the end of his (most likely) last contract in MLB, is batting a cool .165 at the time, and showed very little sign of coming out of his funk.  I get that he's prideful and arrogant - both qualities are fine and dandy in MLB players.  Along with that should come a certain amount of intelligence regarding your own production and your team's performance.

He's lucky the Yankees haven't benched him.  Besides the six homers, he's done nothing at the plate that would suggest he can still hit major league pitching.  Mistake hitters need to have some endearing quality that allows them to stay in the lineup - great defense, solid baserunning, taking lots of walks...something.  All Posada's good for right now is sucking up a roster spot that could go to another bench player until he figures out a way to be a productive DH.

I think Posada has been a fine player and a heckuva good catcher - never great but usually pretty good.  His game-calling always left something to be desired (there are other pitches besides fastball) and his receiving skills were spotty, but his bat was (until last season) enough to more than make up for his defensive shortcomings.

I'm always going to remember Posada as the guy that backstopped four World Series winners (he was barely with the club in 1996).  I can't hold a "bad day" against Jorge, but at this point he should know he's probably the 25th man.