The White Sox signed Alexei Ramirez to a four year deal worth $32.5 million. Although Ramirez doesn’t hit well, his excellent defense at shortstop makes this deal well worth the money for the White Sox, even if he declines as he enters his 30s.
The Reds signed Edinson Volquez to a one-year contract, completing their signing of players and avoiding all arbitration hearings. It looks like their payroll will be around $68 million. That should give them plenty of flexibility to add players if the fans come out after their 2010 playoff appearance.
Update: I look at Edinson’s adjustments against left-handed batters at Baseball Analytics.
Rob Neyer goes out with a bang, nominating Bo Jackson for the Hall of the Amazing. I can’t agree more. Bo was not a classically great player; there were plenty of flaws in his game. In the late 1980s, however, he was the one player I’d pay to see, since he might do something amazing.
As for Rob, I can’t wait to see what he has planned. He is leaving The Sweet Spot.
Frankly, it’s a minor miracle that I’ve been here ever since. I was the new guy, didn’t know how I was supposed to behave, and somewhat routinely ran afoul of my bosses and their bosses. I owe a great deal to their good graces, and I’m sorry I can’t thank everyone who’s allowed me to do what I love for so long. I will toss extra hosannas to Geoff Reiss, David Schoenfield, and David Kull, for reasons they know only too well. Collectively, they’re No. 2 on the all-time list.
You’re No. 1.
Whether you’ve been reading my ramblings since 1996 or just since last week, you have my profound, impossible-to-express-in-words gratitude. There is not a working writer on Earth who’s more grateful than I for his readers. Without you, I would have nothing.
Best of luck, Rob!
You can watch a live feed of the installation of AstroTurf at Tropicana Field. Sure beats the dryer channel.
Hat tip, The Heater.
Justin Duchscherer decided to join the Orioles, and location was an important consideration:
Duchscherer, 33, chose the Orioles over the Washington Nationals and the Seattle Mariners, partially because he wanted to be close to his son in southern New Jersey and also because the Orioles will allow him to compete for a spot in their rotation and won’t be using him as a reliever, a role he held for much of his eight seasons in the majors.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when national television money still swamped local revenues, free agents often chose to play close to home, as the money wasn’t that different.
Justin is an interesting pitcher, as he sports a low hit rate for someone with just a decent strikeout rate. You can see it in his FIP, which for his career stands at 3.86, while his actual ERA comes in at 3.13. I wonder how much of that comes from his relieving, where he can be put into situations that best suit him. I wonder if that difference will hold up as a starter, assuming he can stay healthy.
Via Hardball Talk, the Wilpons involvement with the Madoff Ponzi scheme was the second time the Mets owner was taken in by fraud.
The firm Wilpon and Katz started, Sterling Stamos, was accused of having withdrawn money from a fund run by Bayou after detecting evidence of possible fraudulent activity. The firm took out nearly all of its $30 million from the fund months before it collapsed.
Lawyers for other investors in the fund went after not only what are known as fictitious profits — the difference between what Sterling Stamos put into Bayou and what it took out — but millions more, asserting the other creditors were also entitled to some of it under bankruptcy laws.
And that is, in both respects, exactly what the trustee for Madoff victims is doing to Wilpon and Katz now.
As Scotty might say:
Does Major League Baseball really want an owner so easily taken in by get rich quick schemes? The Mets should be one of the anchor franchises of the NL. Maybe Bud Selig should force a sale here.
Brian Duensing and his wife Lisa had a school shooting hit very close to home earlier in January.
Pablo Sandoval posted a new profile picture at Twitter. The gut is still there, but it looks much smaller.
Hat tip, The Sporting News.
Sully Baseball takes on defensive indifference:
Bob Dolgan reminisces about nicknaming Sam McDowell.
I christened him in spring training in 1961, in Tucson, Arizona. As the rookie baseball writer for The Cleveland Plain Dealer at the time, I deliberately set out to give him a nickname. I was trying to impress my editors and my colleagues. McDowell, then 18, was drawing a lot of attention because he had received an estimated $75,000 bonus to sign.
When McDowell pitched in his first exhibition game on March 13, 1961, I went into a trance and the words “Sudden Sam” appeared on my copy paper. You can look it up in the Plain Dealer microfilm of March 14, 1961. I did not get the idea from another ballplayer, another writer, a coach or anybody else. I made it up myself.
Needless to say, the name stuck.
Let’s Go Tribe writes on what it’s like to read about the Indians in the national media:
But, as a fan, an obsessive, off the rails fan, the kind who knows the difference between Clayton Cook and Austin Adams, I sometimes have to squash an impulse to write Crasnick and his cronies a strongly worded electronic mail, one that essentially asks: “You came here to tell us the team was bad? As if we didn’t know that? As if we didn’t know our own lives?”
There’s another line in Graceland, “She said losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart; everybody sees the wind blow.” That’s both the best and worst part of cheering for a team this bad, a team where it’s obvious that the marital bed is empty. The worst part is that your heart, or some part of it, is constantly somewhere on the spectrum from exploding to exploded. The best part is that every other Indians fan you meet, you can see right into who they are. No one’s here to keep up appearances.
On the other hand, the Indians have a smart front office, and they did come within a game of the World Series in 2007. I think the era of waiting 40 years between periods of dominance is over. They won’t win every year, but they should be able to build to two or three dominant years every decade, and once in a while they’ll everything will click like it did in the 1990s.
The Angels were given the option of building a stadium on a reservoir in 1964. The dam burst and flooded the area the previous year. The configuration would have been very strange for baseball.
At Baseball Analytics, I look at a similarity between Matt Cain and Andrew Cashner.
Curtis Granderson finished his trip to New Zealand and posted video highlights.
John Tomase wonders if the 2011 Red Sox can be the first team in 20 years to boast two players with 50 stolen bases. One thing in favor of this happening is the Red Sox manage the running game very well. Over the last six seasons, the Red Sox posted great stolen base percentages in five of them:
| Season | SB | CS | SBPct |
| 2005 | 45 | 12 | 78.95 |
| 2006 | 51 | 23 | 68.92 |
| 2007 | 96 | 24 | 80.00 |
| 2008 | 120 | 35 | 77.42 |
| 2009 | 126 | 39 | 76.36 |
| 2010 | 68 | 17 | 80.00 |
Note that when the Red Sox have high percentage base stealers, they let them run. When they don’t, they pick their spots. Since both Carl Crawford and Jacoby Ellsbury steal at a high percentage, the Red Sox should allow them to run at will. Of course, how much someone should want to run in front of Adrian Gonzalez is another matter.
There is a clause in Carl Crawford‘s contract that prevents him from being traded to the Yankees if the Red Sox trade him to another team. I assume the Red Sox, not Crawford, wanted this, although it’s not clear from the post. I would think that if Carl ends up playing poorly, the Red Sox might want him to go to New York. 🙂
More people are interested in buying a piece of the Mets, including Martin Luther King III. As far as I can tell, however, none are willing to be silent partners. That’s actually good for the Wilpons, as more interest means they’re more likely to get their price, although it’s becoming clear they’ll have to share power with whoever buys.
It might be better for suitors to allow the Wilpons to get deeper in trouble. That might lead to a complete sale, possibly at a discount to the present value of the Mets.
At Baseball Analytics, I look at how Jeff Francoeur’s focus on fly balls hurts him with men on base.
Martin Silver wants to buy a minority stake in the Mets.
Silver, a liquor distributor and owner of the Georgi Vodka brand, said he is only willing to invest if he has some say in day-to-day operations of the team.
“Anybody who is going to the bank to borrow money and invest in the team isn’t going to be okay with having no say in operations,” said Silver.
Baseball and liquor go together, so it’s nice to see Mr. Silver get involved. He also appears to realize that without other buyers coming, the Wilpons will likely cede to his demands for some control of the team.
Joe McDonald provides more information on the lawsuit facing the Mets owners:
Well according to multiple sources, the law suit filed by Madoff Trustee Irving Picard, not only is trying to seize any profits the Mets received, but also is going for punitive damages since the Wilpons referred clients to the Ponzi swindler. That number has been reported to be $1 billion, so you can see why Mets ownership is scrambling.
The Wilpons are looking for a settlement with the court, so they probably won’t have to pay the billion, but will still have come up with a large chunk of change.
Unless the Wilpons knew Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, the punitive damages seem a stretch to me. Still, the treat of losing that suit will likely bring them to a settlement.
Albert Pujols owns a little more leverage over the Cardinals. As a player with ten years of service and the last five years with the same team, he can veto any trade:
The understanding within the St. Louis front office is that Pujols will not accept any trade going forward, according to sources. He has the right to veto any trade proposal, and would do so. No matter what happens, Pujols will play the 2011 season in St. Louis.
This means that there are only two possible results now in the negotiations in the Pujols talks: Either he signs a contract extension with the Cardinals or he will become a free agent next fall.
Often teams can flip potential free agents for prospects in the middle of the season. The Cardinals will need Albert’s permission. I suppose if the Cardinals are out of the race in July, Pujols might accept a trade to a contender. Without an extension, however, the Cardinals won’t get much in return.
I also wonder how strictly Pujols will stick to this deadline. If in June, the Cardinals say they want to meet Albert’s demands, will he say no? I’m still guessing St. Louis gets a deal done in the next three weeks. There is no reason for them to rush the decision.
Kevin Long talks to Ben Shpigel about altering Derek Jeter’s stride. I love this part, where Long talks about Jeter’s swing always having a flaw:
Molitor recorded 3,319 hits in his Hall of Fame career. Jeter has 2,924, most of which have been collected with mechanics that, according to Long, are slightly flawed. All hitters have a mechanism that they use to time pitches, and Jeter has always taken a stride toward the mound with his left leg. Long figured it would need to be addressed at some point, but for more than 15 seasons Jeter has overcome it with a preternatural ability to let the pitch travel deep and then get his hands through the hitting zone.
“It would have been asinine for me to go in and try to change him before,” Long said. “He’s been so good for so long, what really needed to be done?”
But that stride grew longer and drifted toward the plate, which caused Jeter to lean over. It altered Jeter’s bat path, and his timing suffered.
“Now,” Long said, “he starts to get jammed a little more. Maybe his bat slows down just a hair, but that’s significant. We can say age all we want, but I’m not buying into that. I think if we fix this, that age factor dissipates.”
Molitor shortened his stride as he got older and stayed productive. Watch Jeter’s front foot in spring training.
The Mets may need to raise some money due to a lawsuit that arose from the Madoff scandal. After reading the story, I really want Emma Span to own the team.
Actually, I’ve had a longstanding fantasy about what I would do if I owned a baseball team. Note that even if I were to win the lottery, I STILL wouldn’t be able to afford to do that, but we’re just daydreaming here. I’d move a team to Brooklyn, where the Nets’ new eyesore of a Stadium is going (as long as we’re fantasizing), and keep ticket prices low, and have weird funny Bill Veeck-like promotions and giveaways, and sell lots of women’s team gear that wasn’t pink or sparkly, and hire as many knuckleballers and players with amusing names as possible, and…
Of course, she would trade for Denard Span. 🙂
I don’t believe the Wilpons lost that much money in the Madoff Ponzi scheme. They were early investors, and in a Ponzi scheme, the early investors do okay. I believe the late investors are suing the early investors for their money back, since it was that late investment money that was funneled to people like the Wilpons.
Devon Young sends along this link to a beautiful picture of League Park in Cleveland, circa 1910:
At the time, the Naps had a great intersecting of careers among their players… Nap Lajoie, Cy Young, Joss, & a 20 year old Shoeless Joe on the team.
Sounds like a good time to be a Cleveland fan.
U.S.S Mariner likes the idea of the Athletics sending Kevin Kouzmanoff to the Mariners for Chone Figgins. Kouzmanoff has been extremely consistent throughout his career in terms of value produced. You might get a great season out of Chone, but you might get a horrible one, too.
If the M’s have a chance to unload Figgins’ contract, they have to do it. I wrote about why they should trade Figgins back in August. Circumstances have changed since they signed him last winter, and at this point, he’s unlikely to still be a positive asset by the time the Mariners are ready to challenge for the AL West title again. Unless the A’s are asking the M’s to pick up significant amounts of money, the answer to any deal where the M’s get to dump the rest of his contract should be yes.
Figgins likely bounces back from his poor 2010, which helps the A’s, and saves the Mariners some money while improving the defense for their great pitching staff. I’d like this deal, too, if it happens.
At Baseball Analytics, I look at how David DeJesus‘s line drive rates contribute to his clutch hitting.
The Twins will retire Bert Blyleven’s number. Why did it take so long? Unlike the Hall of Fame vote, the Twins should have realized Bert was one of their great pitchers. They retired the number of Kent Hrbek, who did not make the Hall of Fame. Maybe if the Twins had retired Bert’s number, he might have made the Hall sooner.
Brian Wilson had a lot of fun in Thailand. I wonder if George Lopez thought he was getting a Beach Boy? 🙂
Adam Kennedy is trying to get ahead of his DUI arrest:
In a phone interview with The Associated Press on Thursday afternoon, Kennedy said he was leaving dinner with some friends around 8 p.m. on Wednesday night. He said he was originally pulled over for speeding, which turned into a DUI arrest.
Kennedy said he was slightly above the legal limit, but that it was “not acceptable to be driving in that situation.”
“It’s not a great way to start off with a new organization,” he said.
