Truck Day!

It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day. It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day It's Truck Day!

And not a goddamn day too soon.

Park Effects in Action

In an attempt to sneak a little baseball content into what is notionally a baseball blog, check out Adrian Gonzalez's 2010 spray chart from PETCO Park, superimposed over the layout of Fenway, his new home for the next zillion years:

(h/t "FoulkeHampshire")

We make that as 17 hits AGonz is picking up by virtue of his move to Boston, with probably 2/3 of those being XBH. Giggle.

Mike Scioscia is a Menace

Mike Scioscia has now not played Mike Napoli--a guy I kept, mind you--in EITHER of the first two games of the season. This despite the fact that he hit TWENTY-FOUR MOTHERF&$#ING home runs last year, and hit six more in spring training.

Scioscia--a good defensive catcher who couldn't hit his way out of a puff pastry--is instead starting Jeff Mathis because of his defense and game calling rapport with the Angels' starters. And that's worked out real well, seeing as how opposing baserunners are 1/1 on SB attempts, and the Angels' starters have given up 8 runs in 11 innings pitched.

Mike, baby, cut the sh%t. Re-consider whether it's a good idea to leave the second-best hitter on your team on the bench, OK? Thanks.

I swear, dealing with these f#$%ing people. I have enough problems managing my fantasy team without fat Mike Scioscia smearing meatball parm all over my lineup card.

[Deep breath]

OK, aura cleansed. But seriously, come on. Jesus.

(h/t to Walk-off Walk for the pic)

Interlude

Folks might recall that I "cover" the Mariners over on Sons of Sam Horn. For those interested, check out Part 1 of my increasingly ridiculously long Seattle season preview. The preview is at post #5, so you might have to scroll a bit. When it happens, you'll know.

It Crawled From The North

With football season only just now behind us, and just about everything north of Richmond under a blanket of snow, you might say that it's premature to start thinking about baseball season.

You would be wrong. Because today is Truck Day, Massachusetts' second-most well known semi-fake sports holiday (behind Patriots' Day).

Truck Day marks the departure of the Red Sox equipment from frozen Fenway for far-off Florida, where winter wilts in the sparkling sun (alliteration, what!). Even more than pitchers & catchers reporting day, Truck Day is the signal that the long wait for spring (and baseball) is nearly over after what has been a long winter to date.

With that in mind, we here at the GRBG declare that starting today, it's fair game to start looking over keeper lists, making unlikely trade proposals, and projecting enormous comeback seasons for J.J. Hardy while we wait for the snow to melt. We can all act as thought the season has officially begun to begin.

After all, it's either that or watching the ice dancing from Vancouver.

The Edible Eleven On the Hall of Fame Ballot

One of our favorite points in the baseball offseason is the release of the ballot for the Hall of Fame. Over the years, we, like everyone else, fondly remember the careers of everyone on the ballot more than we did as children. When we were kids, half the names on the ballot were familiar from reading box scores, and the other half were names that we had never heard of, but our fathers authoritatively told us were stiffs and bums. Now, we’re at the point where every new name on the ballot has been on someone’s fantasy team at one point in time, meaning that we’re fully equipped to opine on their career and place in baseball history.

This year’s cast of new nominees includes one shoo-in (Roberto Alomar), one guy who should be a shoo-in (Barry Larkin) and two guys that make interesting debates (Fred McGriff and Edgar Martinez). The other 11 new names on the ballot have no business being in the Hall of Fame unless they’ve paid admission. Even so, many of them had somewhat interesting careers, and the only other way they’re going to make the news again is by murdering a relative. We think it’s only fair to give these 11 their due by seeing what type of career they had (in summary) or seeing what other memories they trigger, especially because 4 (besides Alomar) spent quality time with Angelo’s beloved Mets and Teddy’s Sox have a forgotten ex-player on the list. So let’s have at it, in alphabetical order by first name.

Andres Galarraga

A consistently solid hitter, the Big Cat had 2333 hits for his career, good for 128th on the all-time list. This sounds pretty impressive. Is it? Actually, no. Others in his neighborhood of career hits include Bernie Williams, Stuffy McInnis, Joe Judge, and B.J. Surhoff. Still, his comeback from cancer was somewhat inspiring.

David Segui

A Rico Brogna type first baseman (good glove, good average, zero power) whose name was repeatedly pronounced incorrectly, Segui is the first player from this generation on the ballot that has publicly admitted doing steroids. Considering that he wasn’t very good to begin with, this can’t end well, unless you enjoy self-righteous screeds from Jon Heyman.

Ellis Burks

Burks’ best years came after he left Teddy’s beloved Sawx and, like all hitters looking for the fountain of youth, went to Coors Field. In 1996 he had a season that looked great even by Colorado standards (.344/.408/.639, 40 HR’s, 32 steals), and finished third in the MVP voting. And if you’re looking for a Steroid User Cheat Sheet, the voting for the 1996 MVP is a great starting point:

	AL MVP	NL MVP
1st	Juan Gonzalez	Ken Caminiti
2nd	Alex Rodriguez	Mike Piazza
3rd	Albert Belle	Ellis Burks
4th	Ken Griffey	Chipper Jones
5th	Mo Vaughn	Barry Bonds
6th	Rafael Palmeiro	Andres Galarraga
7th	Mark McGwire	Gary Sheffield
8th	Frank Thomas	Brian Jordan
9th	Brady Anderson	Jeff Bagwell
10th	Pudge Rodriguez	Steve Finley

Wow.

Eric Karros

The 1990 NL Rookie of the Year, he’s in the conversation for greatest Greek-American athlete ever with Milt Pappas, Rony Seiklay and Kurt Rambis. Nick Markakis, here’s your idol.

Kevin Appier

The early 90’s Royals were good pitch-bad hit teams with a motley cast of characters on the staff: a multiple Cy Young winner (Bleach Saberhagen), a flashy Rookie of the Year (Tom Gordon), an underrated closer (Jeff Montgomery), a bust Cy Young winner (Mark Davis), and some personal favorites (Storm Davis and Mark Gubicza). The guy with the best career was Appier, who was living proof why wins are a stupid category. Somehow, Appier finished 3rd in Cy Young voting in 1993, which would have never happened today, given that some voters actually look beyond wins:

Pitcher	Record	ERA	K’s	WHIP
Jack McDowell	22-10	3.37	158	1.286
Randy Johnson	19-8	3.24	308	1.112
Kevin Appier	18-8	2.56	186	1.106

How the hell did Eddie Vedder’s wingman win the Cy Young when two pitchers had better years than him? Here’s one other chart to note:

ChiSox: 94-68

Royals: 84-78

Mariners: 82-80

Just one more reason to be happy that Zack Greinke won this year. As for Appier, like a few others on this year’s ballot, he wound up on the Mets in the waning years of the Steve Phillips Administration, roughly when all his ideas were bad (and this was pre-Brooke Hundley). This doesn’t mean Appier wasn’t a good pitcher though: he was 169-137 for his career with a 3.74 ERA, 1.294 WHIP and a smattering of Cy Young votes in his career. Had eked out another 5-6 good years in his late thirties instead of falling apart, he’s be an interesting case to discuss.

Mike Jackson

We’re sure Mike Jackson is a nice guy, feeds the homeless, cares for stray cats and was a joy to have in the clubhouse. But we cannot figure out what the hell he is doing on the Hall of Fame ballot. Jackson has a 62-67 career record, a mere 142 saves, and defined journeyman reliever. He made zero All-Star teams. He received zero votes for the Cy Young Award. The only category he ever led in a season was Games Finished in 1993. Even his two seasons as closer for Cleveland, where he hit 39 and 40 saves, he didn’t crack the top 3 in saves. He may be the worst player on the ballot since Jim DeShaies.

Pat Hentgen

A passable pitcher for the Blue Jays in the mid-90’s, Pat Hentgen’s entire reason for being on the ballot is two starts Andy Pettitte made on April 30th and July 30th, 1996. Pettite’s stat lines for those games:

4/30/96 at Baltimore: 1 IP, 8 H, 8ER, 2BB, 0K

7/30/96 at Texas: 2.2 IP, 10H, 10ER, 1BB, 5K

That’s pretty ugly. Let’s play stupid and assume Andy gets food poisoning the first game and Ramiro Mendoza makes the start instead, and oversleeps and misses his second start, leaving Brian Boehringer to be Juan Gonzalez’s cannon fodder. Here are the new stats for Hentgen and Pettitte at the end of the season:

Pettitte: 21-6, 3.19 ERA, 157K, 1.30 WHIP

Hentgen: 20-10, 3.22 ERA, 177K, 1.25 WHIP

Given that Hentgen won the 1996 Cy Young by a whopping 6 points and spent the rest of his career as the 90’s answer to Jon Garland, is it fair to say that he should be sending Pettitte a muffin basket for getting him on this list?

Ray Lankford

We were about to put some words together about this St. Louis stalwart, and then saw what his baseballreference.com sponsor had to say about him:

The best Cardinal of the decade and the most underappreciated in franchise history. How long will it be before there's another 200/200 Cardinal? Those underfunded, overachieving Torre Era teams of the early '90s are not forgotten.

Interesting proposition. Was Lankford the best Cardinal of the 90’s? He certainly wasn’t the best player to don a Cards uniform in the decade—that had to be Dennis Eckersley, Mark McGwire or Ozzie Smith. But he was steady, consistent and a reliable #5/#6 hitter in a lineup that put fear in absolutely nobody. So sure, that’s an accomplishment that’s underappreciated.

Robin Ventura

A good fielder and solid hitter for a decade, he will always be remembered for getting five hits off of Nolan Ryan:

Man, that photo never gets old.

Shane Reynolds

We’re sure thousands of people have great memories of Shane Reynolds. For us, the only memory is Dave Bartolacci trying to include him in every single trade proposal he made in the inaugural season of this league (2002). We’re not alone—original members, was there anything else in his career that topped this?

Todd Zeile

The standard joke for the 2001 Mets—

Q: Who bats after Todd Zeile?

A: The other team.

A personal highlight of Zeile’s career was seeing someone at a Met game once with a Zeile jersey spelled “ZIELE.” Which just sums up everything you need to know about his career and candidacy.

Hobble The Angels

After watching Bobby Abreu run into what seemed like the 8 millionth dumb baserunning out of recent Angels playoff history, I was inspired to take a look at just how badly they've bungled the bases come October. Full results are here, but the upshot is that they've cost themselves about six expected runs in only 30 games, an exhibition of basrunning so bad that it rivals Mike Lowell's 2009 season on the basepaths. Check out the full post if you have a spare moment; it should be in a public part of the linked site.

Not to Beat a Dead Horse, But...

Runs scored rankings during the regular season for the remaining N.L. and A.L.:

A.L....................................N.L.

New York (1).....................Philadelphia (2)
L.A. Angels (2)..................L.A. Dodgers (3)

Pitching and Defense

Remember, kids, winning teams are built around pitching and defense. As proof, here are the top ten A.L. teams pitching and defense teams as measured by runs allowed, with playoff teams bolded:

1. Seattle
2. Chicago
3. Boston
4. Texas
5. Detroit
6. New York
7. Tampa Bay
8. Minnesota
T-9. L.A./Anaheim
T-9. Oakland

See? All the playoff teams are in the top ten. Compare that with A.L. team offensive rankings, as measured by runs scored, again with playoff teams bolded:

1. New York
2. L.A./Anaheim
3. Boston
4. Minnesota
. . .
Wait.

Never mind.

Lastings Milledge, NL All-Star

As some of you know, I post a fair amount over at Sons of Sam Horn. Usually I keep my SoSH stuff out of the GRBG, because I don't want this to turn into the four-zillionth Red Sox blog out there. Recently, however, SoSH has come up with a cause that is equal parts diabolical and stupid, one which we at the GRBG endorse with all four thumbs available at our disposal.


The cause is simple--get AAA outfielder and aspiring rapper Lastings Milledge elected as the token All-Star representative for the execrable Washington Nationals. The idea began in this thread, in which a number of Sox fans adopted the Nats in all their anti-splendor as their NL rooting interest for the season. That led to a discussion about the Nats' inexplicable decision to send Milledge to the minors when (1) the Nats were pretty much already a minor league team themselves, and (2) the team had previously been so high on Milledge that it had submitted his name to appear on the '09 All-Star ballot.

That in turn led to a grass-roots movement to send Milledge, an actual minor leaguer, to the ASG as the rep for the functionally minor league Nats. The cause has already been endorsed by Joe Posnanski, Keith Law, and some guy who blogs for the NBC affiliate in DC. It's time for the GRBG to get in on the ground floor.

How can you help? Easy. Go to MLB.com and vote for Milledge all 25 times you're allowed. Only by getting Milledge elected to the All-Star team can we erase the shame of him having been drafted and traded for by notionally competent owners in the league so far this year. Get on board--it's the year of Thrilledge.

I give Larry credit

My least favorite baseball player of all time knows exactly how to get under the skin of me and every other Met fan out there. From BP:

While much has been made about this being the last year of Yankee Stadium, Braves third baseman Chipper Jones says he will be sad to see the other New York ballpark torn down at season’s end, as he has always loved hitting at Shea Stadium, home of the Mets. Jones has lifetime slash stats of .310/.399/.561 at the stadium in the shadow of LaGuardia Airport in Queens, and has hit 19 home runs in 359 plate appearances. Among the homers was the first of his major league career, on May 9, 1995, off of Josias Manzanillo.

Jones loves the park so much that he named his now four-year-old son Shea, and asked Mets public relations director Jay Horwitz during this week’s All-Star festivities to make sure he saves him a memento from Shea Stadium. "I was like, 'You’ve got to hook me up, whether it’s a seat, whether it’s a sign, something that I can put in Shea’s room,'" Jones said. "I’m going to try to get him up here this summer and walk him around before they tear it down. The Mets and the Braves have had so many epic battles over the years. It’s just been a special place. It’s been a place where I’ve really enjoyed playing. It just made sense. I love the name."

The Braves play six more games at Shea Stadium during the regular season, a three-game series from Aug. 19-21 and another from Sept. 12-14. "I love the stage," Jones said. "I love the atmosphere of playing in New York. The fans make it awfully hard walking back to the dugout with your tail tucked between your legs, so it gives you a little extra motivation to make left-handed turns when you get to first base."

See you in hell, Larry.

Josh Hamilton 1, Everybody Else 0

We never knew methadone was performance enhancing. Yikes.

The Five Stages of Being Awesome, by Manny Ramirez

1. With 1 out and runners on first and second, make improbable full stretch running catch:

2. Immediately following catch, leap over outfield wall in order to high five Red Sox fan attending game in Baltimore:



3. Remember the play is still live, throw ball into infield:



4. Double off runner at first base, ending inning:



5. Commence disco with teammate Jon Van Every, who has been called up that very day and now has a fantastic anecdote for his grandkids:



Awesome. It's the play of the year, and we're not even to Memorial Day yet.

The 2008 San Florida Nationals

With the baseball season opening right around the corner, it's prediction time, and the pundits all seem to agree on a few things: the National League is wide-open, the Angels are by far the best team in the AL West, and the Nationals, Giants and Marlins all suck. And they are proof that you can suck for a variety of reasons:

• The Marlins have absolutely no pitching of note, and traded away one of the 5 best players in baseball for the hope that they can have a competitive nucleus together in time for Ralph Nader's 2016 presidential run.
• The Nationals have no players of note with the exception of a potential stud third baseman and a stockpile of outfielders that range from injury prone to intriguing to just plain nuts.
• The Giants have one of the neater pitching staffs in baseball, and a lineup that's ancient and crappy.
  

Which lead us to quasi-steal one of Bill Simmons' ideas: rather than have 3 teams that will struggle to win 62 games, what if we combined their roster into an uber-franchise? Would this team be competitive? Let's look at the starting 25 that we'd have:

C: Bengie Molina, Paul Lo Duca
1B: Dmitri Young, Mike Jacobs
2B: Dan Uggla, Ray Durham
SS: Hanley Ramirez, Felipe Lopez
3B: Ryan Zimmerman
OF: Aaron Rowand, Jeremy Hermida, Josh Willingham, Lastings Milledge, Austin Kearns
SP: Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, Scott Olsen, Noah Lowry, Barry Zito
RP: Chad Cordero, Brian Wilson, Kevin Greggggg, Jonathan Sanchez, Tyler Walker, Jon Rauch

How would this team do? Well, it's a decent staff with nice upside, and a solid enough bullpen. The lineup's pretty okay 1-9 with a fair bench, but there's no star power besides Hanley, and it lacks a big bopper. In other words, it would be competitive in the NL, but it's tough to place this squad above the Mets or Diamondbacks.

Which is pretty pathetic. You would think if had a choice of 75 major-league players, you could form a pretty damn good team. The problem, of course, is that the Nats, Marlins and Giants have combined about 40 major league players and 35 guys who should be in AAA or changing oil. Bad for them. Good for the rest of the league.

You'll Get Nothing And Like It

There have been a run of recent stories coming out of spring training highlighting the fact that young, team-controlled stars like Prince Fielder, Cole Hamels, and Nick Markakis have been complaining about having their contracts renewed at drastically below-market rates. While arguably unfair, the contract renewals are perfectly permissible under baseball's current system, which provides that players with less than three years of big-league experience have to play for whatever amount of money their team decides to give them, so long as it meets the league minimum. But these young guys (along with others like Jon Papelbon) have complained regardless.

The general press reaction to these complaints is pretty well encapsulated by King Kaufman's remark that:

Fielder, Hamels and any other young ballplayer who doesn't like the terms of his renewed contract should remind himself that he's operating under a system that was arrived at in collective bargaining, and it's a system that lavishly rewards those who make it through three years. It isn't exactly chicken feed in the first three, either. . . . Any young gun who doesn't like the bargain that was struck should take it up with the union, but of course they all stop complaining about the system once it starts working in their favor in Year 4.

(Link to article.) I think the basic thrust of Kaufman's argument, that these guys need to suck it up and stay quiet about their renewals, is correct, but just about everything else in the quote above is off base.

For starters, none of the specific players mentioned above participated in the collective bargaining that led to the creation or ratification of the current system. And, perhaps more importantly, rookie players in general were not really represented in that bargaining.

After all, the system was collectively "bargained" for by two groups with strong incentives to lessen the amount of money given to rookie players: the owners, who want to give players as little money as possible, and the union, whose team representatives are all experienced veterans who want to direct as much of the incoming money as possible to experienced veterans. At no point have rookies or minor leaguers had a real voice at the table. The result, unsurprisingly, was one in which the veterans obtained the right to be paid essentially whatever they can get, in return for allowing the owners a period of indentured servitude for rookie players.

Also, the fact that the league minimum salary is a lot higher than the average ditch-digger's salary also doesn't really matter. The rookies know that they are one ligament tear away--and maybe even one bad slump away--from being kept off the gravy train and left to fend for themselves. For a kid drafted right out of high school who thinks Sartre is a company that makes designer baseball caps, that might not be a particularly appealing option.

But, despite all of the above, there's no getting around the idea that these guys need to put a sock in it. Not because their complaints aren't valid as such, but because they represent the single most important market inefficiency that keeps the baseball rich from getting even richer. Without the ability to construct a team based around cheap, cost-specific young players, smaller market teams would be even harder-pressed to build a competitive roster, If every player costs exactly as much as he is worth, barring front-office idiocy of a Steinbrennerian order, the richest teams are going to be at a massive advantage.

So, sorry, guys. Hang in there for another year or two, and you'll be set. And in the meantime, just make the Annies pay for drinks to save some cash.