Redbird Nation

Posted 10:03 PM by Brian
HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY EDGAR RENTERIA? I got an interesting email yesterday from Jeff Luhnow, the Vice President of Baseball Development for the St. Louis Cardinals. Jeff's a sharp guy who keeps tabs on a lot of baseball chatter around the Web -- he's a daily reader of this very weblog, and maintains relationships with some of the best seamhead analysts out there. His email to me reads, in part:

I thought it might be interesting to start a discussion about signing Renteria. We all know what he brings to this team and we all know his contact is up at the end of this year. I'd be very interested to hear from you and your fellow bloggers [about] what kind of contract you think would be most appropriate for the Cardinals and Renteria. Clearly we all want him here, that's not the issue. The issue is what would be a good contract for both sides, one that the fans would support and is "doable" based on other deals out there, his likely demands, etc. Years and money is the question.

Unfortunately, this will have to be a one way conversation -- you all talking, me listening, for obvious reasons, but I would like you to have a voice.

Let me say for starters that I find this kind of outreach incredibly gratifying. It's a testament to the discussions we generate here at Redbird Nation, and, I think, a testament to Jeff's receptiveness. Not many front offices would be so broad-minded about their own fans, much less willing to do something about it.

So here's your chance to contribute to the topic at hand: the worth of Edgar Renteria, due to become a free agent at the end of the year. If you're anything like me, your knee-jerk tendency, especially with players you love, is to say, "Pay whatever it takes to keep him. I mean, it's not my money."

And yet, in a sense, it is your money. Albert Pujols just signed a contract for $100 million. Where do you think that cash will come from? That's right -- you, the fans. The revenue will be generated by the tickets you buy, the merchandise you pay for, the baseball games you watch on TV and hear on the radio or over the internet, and so on and so on. You invest a lot of time and money in this ballclub, and you expect a good return. So how much would you invest for a talent like Renteria?

There are many ways to attack this question. And unfortunately, none of them are simple. Contract negotiations involve a bramble of complications and unknowns. A list of relevant questions might include:

• What is Renteria asking?
• Does he wish to stay in St. Louis? If so, how long? How important to him is job security? Is he open to a hometown discount?
• How much money is in the budget? What's our expected cashflow down the line?
• What are the alternatives at shortstop? Who else is available, both on the market and within?
• Who else might be bidding for Renteria's services? Boston? Los Angeles? Anaheim? Would those same teams trade for him at midseason? Would the Cardinals be willing to trade him at midseason?
• How old is Renteria? Officially he's 28, but how likely is it that he's a year younger than that, as many reports suggest? If he's younger than he says, how much weight do we give that?
• Is it a higher priority to sign Matt Morris at the end of this year than it is Edgar Renteria?
• What's the ultimate goal -- to win the World Series or merely to put a good product on the field? If it's to win the Series, is that realistic? I think we all agree that win #90 is worth more than win #81, but how much more?
• What about intangibles? Should you put a pricetag on service to the community, or exciting play, or memories?

Like I said, it's a messy affair, and there's no simple formula or flow chart to address all these variables. So perhaps we should zero in on one reasonably narrow question: how many wins can we expect Renteria to contribute over the next few years? Let's break that down into even smaller categories --

1) Comparable Players. When generating forecasts for future performance, Baseball Prospectus assembles a list of similar guys for every active player in the majors. These comparisons are based on age, production, career length, general body type, and fielding position. The 10 players most like Renteria, in descending order of similarity, are:

Ryne Sandberg, Alan Trammell, Derek Jeter, Steve Sax, Granny Hamner, Harvey Kuenn, George Kell, Johnny Logan, Lou Whitaker, and Buddy Bell.

And the next ten includes guys like Curt Flood, Robbie Alomar, and Barry Larkin. That's an impressive list. Most of them are tall, thin guys who began their careers as slap-hitting middle infielders and developed moderate power as they got older.

(A side note: just a couple weeks ago I made a big hullabaloo about Alan Trammell's eerie similarity to Edgar Renteria at this point in his career. Turns out there's a guy out there, Sandberg, who's even more similar.)

2) Future Performance. I took 18 of Edgar's 20 most comparable players (I discarded Jeter because he's only one year older than E-Rent, and Don Money because of gaps in the data), and figured out their Win Shares from the ages of 28-32. Why Win Shares? Because it's a handy metric that works across eras, and across both sides of the ball (run production and run prevention). Why five years? Well, Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez both signed six-year contracts this year, but both are younger than Renteria. I figure Renteria can ask for and receive 5 years on the open market, so those were my parameters.

I then weighted the Win Shares totals so that Sandberg, the most comparable player on the list, would have the most influence, Trammell the second most, and so on down the line. The weighted Win Shares for E-Rent's comparables look like this:

Age 28: 22 Win Shares
Age 29: 19
Age 30: 20
Age 31: 21
Age 32: 19

On average, that's 20 Win Shares per season. Those projections might seem a little low for a talent like Renteria, who garnered 25 Win Shares last season. But remember, for every Ryne Sandberg or Alan Trammell out there -- i.e., guys who had monster years in their late 20s and early 30s -- there's someone like Granny Hamner or Billy Goodman: a guy who tailed off soon after hitting the big 3-0. Besides, 20 is a very solid Win Shares total. Last season, for example, Pedro Martinez and Jeff Kent scored 20 WS (equal to about six and a half wins).

Now, one thing that jumps out at you is just how consistent those Win Shares projections are: 22-19-20-21-19. Of course, those are aggregate totals. Most guys fluctuate a lot from year to year. Robbie Alomar, from ages 28-32, was 31-21-19-35-20. Barry Larkin, at the same age, was 18-19-30-31-12. But we can still get some answers from the mean totals. For one, they indicate that players like Renteria, as a group, don't suffer any sharp declines in their late 20's and early 30's. And that's important to know.

3) Assigning a Dollar Amount. A guy named Studes, who has become the amateur guru of Win Shares analysis, recently ran a column in The Hardball Times in which he tried to put a dollar amount on each win contributed to the team.

I'm going to confess two things in regard to this article: (a) it's incredibly astute, and I shamelessly borrowed its logic for the last portion of this post; and (b) I can't fully reconstruct its conclusions for our purposes here. That is, Studes determines that players generally earn about $860,000 per year per Win Share above replacement. Problem is, I don't know what a replacement level Win Share total is at shortstop, and I'm not sure how to figure it out. My best guess is that a replacement-level player derives about 8 Win Shares, which means that Edgar Renteria, for the next few years, should be worth about 12 Win Shares above replacement. (If I'm way off base here, please let me know.)

So 12 WSAR at $860,000 per WSAR equals $10.3 million per year. What I like about that total is that it jibes with my intuition -- Edgar could probably get $10MM per if he were a free agent this past offseason, and the above calculations indicate that he's worth it. If Miguel Tejada, an ex-MVP who's a year younger than E-Rent, can command $12 million for six years, you figure Renteria can get $10 million for five.

4) Putting It All Together. Let's walk through the steps and see what tweaks we can make (this is one of the main areas in which I relied on Studes for help):

• Based on recent salary payouts, Renteria is worth about $10.3 million a year.

• But the current market is tighter than years past, so you may be able to discount that $10.3 million down to $8.3 million.

• On the other hand, shortstops get paid more than any position except pitcher -- as high as $1.02 million per WSAR per year -- so let's move that dollar amount back to 10.3 million.

• The Cardinals play in a smaller market and don't figure to contend in, say, 2008 as well as they do now. (I'm basing this mostly on our farm system). That would argue for keeping costs down. On the other hand, despite a faint glimmer of hope for youngster Hector Luna, the Cardinals have few viable options at shortstop from within and must be willing to pay to keep superior talent on the field.

• The Cardinals could justifiably offer a 5-year, $50-55 million contract to Renteria and expect a good return on that investment. But -- and this is perhaps the key issue here -- the wisdom of that offer depends heavily on available resources. In 2005, the Cardinals will pay over $9 million to four different players: Jim Edmonds, Jason Isringhausen, Albert Pujols, and Scott Rolen. Not even the Red Sox do that. If Renteria becomes #5, that'll be roughly $50 million from our budget to our top five players.

Last season those same five guys were superb -- some of them had career years, dream years -- and yet it was only good for third place. If a $10 million contract to Renteria (not to mention an additionally large contract to Matt Morris) hamstrings the Cardinals and makes them unable to flesh out the rest of their roster, then all of this is moot, especially if the goal is to win another World Series. We also know from experience that Walt Jocketty has a poor record of plugging holes with cheap, creative alternatives, so it's not at all wise to leave him with a tight budget.

However, if the Cardinals have enough dough on hand -- perhaps from new season ticket and seat license sales -- then $50 million to Edgar Renteria is a reasonable sum. After all, superstars are rare commodities.

Posted 5:54 PM by Brian
DUBYA HONES HIS SPLIT-FINGER As you may know, our Commander-in-Chief has been invited to throw out the first pitch of the Cardinals season opener on Monday. What you may not know is that this isn't some spur-of-the-moment formality -- the Cardinals brass has been chummy with Bush for years. Big time.

Bill DeWitt, the team's principal owner, helped G.W. get started in the oil business, and has already raised over $200,000 for his re-election campaign. In return, Dubya let him spend a cozy evening in the Lincoln Bedroom. (Remember when Bush slammed Clinton and Gore in 2000 for opening the White House to campaign donors? Haven't heard him say much about the practice now that he's calling the shots.)

Even Walt Jocketty is a Bush man. He and his wife both donated $2,000 to his re-election campaign, the maximum permitted by law.

Posted 5:39 PM by Brian
MR. MEDHEAD REVISITED Want more Will Carroll? Read Josh Schulz's fine interview with him over at Go Cardinals.

Posted 5:36 PM by Brian
SPOILED SUPERSTARS So Jay Leno will be making about $26 million per year, but I doubt we'll see newspaper editorials claiming that he's a greedy overpaid bastard. And he's worse at his job than A-Rod is at his.

Posted 5:34 PM by Brian
DESKTOP GIBBY Reader Jason Russell sends along a link to some new Cooperstown figurines by Todd MacFarlane. Those things rock. In fact, that little six-inch Gibby looks like he could punch out Willie Horton in his prime.

Posted 5:28 PM by Brian
ONLY IN MILWAUKEE In an attempt to justify his team's dearth of power hitters, Brewers manager Ned Yost has come up with a new method of scorekeeping:

"[W]e're trading home runs for doubles and the ability to manufacture runs. Doubles are almost better. I mean, home runs are great, but when you've got guys who smack those doubles, you're in good shape, you've got a lot of guys in scoring position.''

I'd like to play poker with Ned and convince him to trade his four of a kind for a two pair, which is really almost better and leaves you in good shape.

Posted 10:57 PM by Brian
MR. MEDHEAD In today's Baseball Prospectus, Will Carroll does a Team Health Report for the St. Louis Cardinals. And it ain't pretty. Nearly every starter on the Cardinals roster has yellow or red warning lights, making Cavity Sam the new unofficial mascot for our ballclub.

Will Carroll is one of the first writers to popularize the intersecting fields of baseball and medicine. He's a tireless worker who writes a regular column for Baseball Prospectus called "Under the Knife," hosts Baseball Prospectus Radio, has just written a book called Saving the Pitcher (I've had my copy pre-ordered for months now), and even expounds on baseball, politics, Prince, and other urgent matters over at his lively weblog. He somehow found time in his schedule to answer a few of our questions about the Cardinals and the state of medhead research in general:

RBN: A few websites have noted that Scott Rolen had an off-year defensively in 2003. Tom Tippett over at Diamond Mind speculated that this may be due to the aftereffects of his shoulder injury in '02. I myself haven't noticed anything (Rolen's arm still seems like a bazooka to me), but I'm wondering if you've heard anything about Rolen's wing. Is it at or near full strength?

WC: There were some upper back problems that may have been related to the shoulder, but that's speculation. I think the lower back problem was more of an effect. You'd have to ask Clay Davenport or Mitchel Lichtman for more info on range and arm, but the Rolen of 2003 wasn't the Rolen that struck fear into bunters or pull hitting righties.

RBN: Apparently Jim Edmonds was lifting weights in November, noticed that his shoulder still hurt, and scheduled off-season surgery. Who decides if and when players get surgery in the off-season? I've always thought this was more the team's discretion than the player's, but Edmonds' case (as well as Shaq taking his own sweet time with toe surgery a couple years ago) suggests that different teams handle things differently. How does this work?

WC: Ultimately, it's the player's body, but the team owns the rights to it on the field. I doubt he did this in a vacuum, but more players are beginning to exercise their rights to second opinions, using their own doctors, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to see this become more common as questions about team doctors' objectivity keep coming up.

RBN: I'm puzzled by the yellow light you gave Renteria [which indicates he's a moderate health risk]. You said it was "almost entirely" because of his position - and yet, you give the huge majority of shortstops green lights (obnoxiously enough, I checked). You also suggest that the yellow light was because of back problems last year. But the man averages 150 games a year in a Cardinals uniform, set a career high for games last year, missed only one game last year with a sprained back, and you yourself admitted the sprain was more fatigue-related than anything else. So what gives?

WC: Shortstops start with the highest positional adjustment, better than 50%. It's a bit skewed, but the numbers are what they are. Renteria is pushing 30, so a back injury that came up because of fatigue is likely to happen again and worse if there's not a suitable backup -- and there isn't. I spoke with some people with the Cardinals and their subjective reports pushed him up into yellow. It's not completely scientific, but I'd rather err towards caution.

RBN: What did the Cardinals do differently with Isringhausen than the Giants did with Nen or the Padres did with Hoffman that allowed him to stay healthy for most of last year?

WC: The Cards were very very conservative. They didn't know what they'd get from Izzy, so they went with his own timeframe. It's just a different situation from the others. Hoffman had a very unusual surgery, so they had no idea what they were working with, while Nen's still trying to overcome a series of surgeries.

RBN: I've heard that Adam Wainwright, the Cards' #1 prospect, may be even taller than 6'8". Do tall, lanky guys like Wainwright face particular mechanical or injury problems? And have you seen anything in Wainwright's delivery that might account for his reduced velocity?

WC: No more than anyone else. There's no mechanical difference for short or tall -- anyone can pitch properly or improperly. Tall guys have errors magnified by their length, so it's tougher to get them right. I haven't seen Wainwright pitch, so I can't comment on the last part.

RBN: Medically speaking, the current Cardinals regime has probably had more downs than ups. I'm not going to ask you to rank the organization in terms of medhead correctness (for one, that's probably unfair to your sources) but I will ask: what are the relative strengths and weaknesses of our medical team?

WC: There's no way I'll ever rank based on anything but numbers. Every team has a qualified, committed, hard-working staff. It's a matter of results for me and over a period of years, we can get a good picture of who's getting the best results. Using that, the Cards rate just below the midline, but trending down.

RBN: Last Fall I did a study of Tony La Russa's legacy, and I wanted to know how responsible he was for injuries to Alan Benes, Matt Morris, Bud Smith, etc. Unfortunately, I soon found myself over my head. There SEEMED to be some causality between pitcher usage and injury, but there was unclear evidence on both sides. Can we say with any kind of certainty what causes catastrophic injury to pitchers, or, put another way, can we fairly blame La Russa for ruining Alan Benes' career?

WC: Again, we have to look at results. I wouldn't give La Russa and Duncan a young pitcher if I didn't have to, but they work miracles occasionally with guys like Williams or Izzy. We're not at a stage of certainty because we don't have enough data. Its a poor comparison, but imagine Bill James without access to statistics. That's the stage I'm at -- I see patterns, I see results, but we're still trying to find things to quantify these properly. Give me a couple years...

RBN: During a spring training broadcast a couple weeks ago, Gary Thorne said about the Cardinals' chances (paraphrasing here), "One thing you can't determine are injuries. No one knows when or how they'll hit." Now, I feel that injuries are like coin flips -- you can't predict heads or tails on any given flip, but over extended trials you can make reliable predictions. Do you think we'll ever see a day when we can predict injuries year-to-year with as much reliability as, say, batting average, or minors-to-majors stats, or things like that?

WC: I'm not sure whether I'll get that good, but I think we're getting closer. The THR [Team Health Report] system works pretty well overall -- a player who had a red light last year ended up having a significant injury in 50% of cases. Now, that may sound like a coinflip, but it's not. I think the system will be better. Instead of predictability, I'm using a risk management paradigm -- is the risk of player X worth the potential reward?

Thanks, Will. As always, good stuff. And keep your eyes peeled this summer, as Will hopes to make it to St. Louis as part of a Pizza Feed (basically, an excuse to eat pizza and talk baseball) with other BP writers, and if so, you'll all be invited.

Posted 4:46 PM by Brian
TODAY'S TRADE For anyone out there who still clings to some hypertrophied version of Whiteyball, you can rejoice today: the Cardinals now have both stolen-base champs from 1997: Brian L. Hunter (who won the crown with Detroit) and Tony Womack (who won with Pittsburgh). We got Hunter in a swap with the Padres in exchange for outfielder Kerry Robinson.

When players from the same position are traded straight-up, it's called a "challenge trade" -- i.e., I think my new guy's better; you think your new guy's better; let's throw down and find out. But I doubt anyone will get too exercised about this deal, for Hunter and K-Rob are basically the same guy, especially if you squint your eyes just right. They're both speedy singles hitters who hack at too many pitches but make enough Web Gems to please the home folks.

So what do we make of this deal? The Cards do get a little older (K-Rob is younger than Hunter by two and a half years); but then again, Hunter probably has a higher ceiling -- he turned in a nifty little season as recently as 2002, even if it was in the hitter-friendly confines of Dick Cheney Field (to borrow a phrase from Will Leitch). Then again, Hunter's OBP has been falling for the last few years, and it wasn't too high to begin with (last year he reached base as infrequently as K-Rob himself). All in all, I'd say this deal is about as exciting as trading Kerry Robinson for Kerry Robinson.

There's something awfully weird going on around Roger Dean Stadium lately. All winter we've been saying that guys like Marlon Anderson, Bo Hart, and Kerry Robinson won't do, that they're productivity-sucking moray eels on the underbelly of the Great White Sharks in the middle of the Cardinals lineup. And, lo and behold, our prayers seemed to be answered -- La Russa and Jocketty indeed soured on each of those guys: Hart is likely headed for AAA, Anderson for the bench, and Robinson for San Diego.

But only half our prayers were answered (which brings up enough implications about the evil nature of God to make Leibniz lie awake in his grave). Our replacements for our replacement-level parts are frequently no better, and in some cases worse, than what we're letting go. Even more bizarrely, our new imports are the same types of guys as Hart, Anderson, Robinson, et al -- nimble Scrappy Doos with no power or on-base skills. So it's not like the club has found a new philosophy: they're just pulling levers willy-nilly, throwing spaghetti against the wall.

At least we can take solace that K-Rob, a good-hearted U. City boy who grew up a rabid Cardinals fan, went out on a high note -- his bases-loaded single against the Mets today gave the Cards a come-from-behind victory. The hit scored Bo Hart and So Taguchi, but it just as easily could have been Womack, or Anderson, or even Brian L. Hunter. They're all merging into the same fungal mass in my head.

Posted 4:20 PM by Brian
THE LATEST CUTS Greg Vaughn is out -- no surprise there. But so is Kevin Witt, who is reportedly "shocked" by his demotion to AAA. Now, normally when a player expresses shock that he didn't make the cut, I chalk it up to a whiny overestimation of his own abilities.

But I'm with Witt here. He was in good shape during spring training, bats lefthanded, and is in the prime of his career (and he's years younger than both Kerry Robinson and So Taguchi). He's consistently put up big slugging numbers in the minors, and he even hit okay during his stint with the Tigers last year (with 10 homers in 270 ABs in an extreme pitchers' park).

So the question now becomes: will the Cardinals bench ever hit a home run in 2004? They're filled with the biggest bunch of jackrabbits and banjo hitters you ever saw -- Womack, Robinson, Taguchi. It's a joke. So Taguchi gets a spot on a major league roster while Kevin Witt is thinking about playing in... where else?... Japan.

Posted 4:07 PM by Brian
WELFARE FOR STADIA A new study claims that large public subsidies for the construction of major league baseball stadiums are unnecessary. That doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that Andrew Zimbalist, a sports economist and author of the fine May the Best Team Win, has some doubts about the study's conclusion. He thinks that privately funded parks might actually need taxpayer assistance to recover their costs.

Busch Stadium III, of course, is (apart from a few breaks from the Mo. Dept. of Transportation and things like that) wholly financed by the Cardinals ownership. And if they get declining rates of return on their investment, then this would be a bad thing for us Birdnals fans.

Posted 3:45 PM by Brian
BAREKNUCKLE BASEBALL Will Leitch has his annual preview of the upcoming baseball season, which is, as usual, a wild and robust affair. Definitely a lot of fun.

Posted 3:37 PM by Brian
GEMS Alan Schwarz has a cool series over at ESPN.com on the greatest catches of all time. It's not meant to be authorative, which is sorta the rule when it comes to great catches -- everyone has their own favorite. (Although I suspect I share my favorite catch -- the one where Ozzie glided over Curt Ford -- with lots of other folks out there.) You can check out Alan's picks by position: pitcher and catcher, first and third, second and short, right, left, and center.

The best recent catch I saw was by Andruw Jones a couple years ago. I don't remember the particulars, I just know that it ended the game and (like Swoboda's famous catch in '69) it didn't look like he had a chance to catch it no matter how many times you saw the replay. Even after the fourth or fifth replay on my TiVo, I thought, "this time he's not gonna make it..."

Posted 3:19 PM by Brian
NEPOTISM WATCH Josh Schulz isn't thrilled with the possibility of Cody McKay as the Cards' backup catcher. McKay, as you know, is the son of Cards first-base coach Dave McKay, and he's had an undistinguished career in the minors, so you can't blame anyone for throwing around the N-word (nepotism). After all, this is the same organization that grabbed Tom Pagnozzi's nephew in the 8th round of last year's draft.

But I gotta say, I don't see any big difference between McKay and Chris Widger. (I can't help but think of Derek Smart's pet theory that "all backup catchers are the same guy.") Both figure to reach base about 30% of the time, with a slugging percentage around .350 or so. Neither is a defensive liability. And given McKay's age (he's two and a half years younger than Widger) and health history (Widger has missed parts of the last few seasons with various ailments), I think McKay may be the safer bet. And besides, he's got that name -- Cody McKay. That's like something straight out of Duane Decker.

Posted 2:59 PM by Brian
SEARCHING FOR STEVE BARTMAN Sean Biehle sends along this fine article, which updates the trials and tribulations of the elusive Steve Bartman.

Posted 1:44 PM by Brian
HOW RICH ARE THE YANKEES? According to Doug Pappas, a new deal for YES (the Yankees network) will rake in about $185 million in subscription revenue per year. That's more than the total operating expenses of almost every team in the league.

How much will it help the Yanks? We'll make a few guesses based on current estimates, plus the Yankees' 2001 budget:

Incoming
Game receipts: $100 million
Local TV/cable: $185 million
Postseason: $10 million (it was $16MM in '01; we'll assume half that)
Other operating revenue: $50 million
National revenue: $25 million
---------------------------------------------
Total revenue: $370 million

Outgoing
Player compensation: $215 million (includes luxury tax & benefits)
Other expenses: $85 million
----------------------------------------------
Total expenses: $300 million

That adds up to $70 million in profits. Considering that's the exact pricetag for the year's biggest signing, you can expect the Yankees to land yet another giganto free agent for next season. Their shopping list will include Carlos Beltran, Jose Vidro, Derek Lowe, Pedro Martinez, and Matt Morris.

Posted 1:21 PM by Brian
HARD-WIRED Everyone's getting online -- Barry Bonds, Mark Cuban, even Jody Gerut. This is good for sports, I think. I mean, sure, Barry's chat sessions will probably be about as illuminating as a press junket for Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London, but anything that brings fans closer to players, owners, and managers is a step in the right direction.

Posted 10:52 AM by Brian
THE NEW SPRING LINE Paul Lukas takes a look at some of the new uniforms for 2004.

Posted 9:41 AM by Brian
MARK PRIOR UPDATE No one really knows how long he'll be out, but according to the Chicago Sun-Times, "it's hard to envision Prior pitching for the Cubs any earlier than May." If so, that's a pretty hefty chunk of the season. He lost a month last season, and it probably cost him somewhere around 35 innings (and one or two wins for the Cubs).

The likely substitute in the Cubs' rotation is righthander Sergio Mitre (if you're looking for a comparable, think Jason Simontacchi). This might sound like a nightmare scenario for Cubs' fans, but at least it gives Dusty Baker fewer opportunities to throw Prior's arm off.

Posted 9:40 AM by Brian
THE BIGSHOT As Philip Johnson is to architects or Saul Bellow is to Jewish-American writers, Bill James is to a generation of baseball analysts -- he's become the eminence grise of his field, the Yoda-like figure who presides over countless offspring and imitators. Unfortunately, as official advisor to the Boston Red Sox, he doesn't get to speak as publicly as he used to, but it's still nice to hear him when he does.

Posted 9:39 AM by Brian
YE OLDE BUCOLIC DAYS OF BASEBALL Here's one of the silliest articles I've read in a long while. It's by a guy named Mark Hulet, who says he's finding it harder and harder to root for the sport of baseball because recently, he says, "it became a business." Mark, I hate to break the news to you, but from its very beginning baseball was riddled with labor strife, player poachings from rival leagues, penny-pinching owners, gambling scandals, fire sales, hold-outs, franchise mergers, and every shady business practice you can imagine.

The funniest part of Hulet's article is when he asks wistfully, "Where have all the Ty Cobbs gone?" Cobb, a maniac who bragged about pistol-whipping a man to death (which turns out not to be true), was also a notorious miser who carried around paper bags full of cash and was reportedly worth over $12 million when he died. But of course, that was before baseball became a business.

Posted 12:29 AM by Brian
GONE TRAVELIN' I took a day-off from Redbird Nation today to do some guest writing for The Hardball Times (a great new site, if you haven't checked it out yet). So head on over there if you get a chance and read my take on 5 central issues facing the Cardinals this season.

Posted 1:26 PM by Brian
THE 12TH MAN Evan Rust, Josh Pearce, and Jason Ryan were all sent to AAA yesterday, which means the Cardinals pitching staff is shaping up like so:

Morris
Williams
Suppan
Carpenter
Marquis

Isringhausen
Kline
Eldred
Tavarez
King

Lincoln
Simontacchi
Calero
Alan Benes

That's 14 guys left, and La Russa has indicated he'll take twelve of them up north. The first five are pretty much set in the starting rotation, so they're all in. The next five are shoe-ins as well -- they've all had decent springs, and the Cardinals have shown faith in them with larger contracts.

Lincoln, Simontacchi, Calero, and Benes are officially fighting for the final two spots. Lincoln is pretty much in. He hasn't been touched all spring (no runs in 9 innings of relief) and he had a good major-league track record before last year. Alan Benes is all but out. He admitted that the Cards brass told him, "We want you to throw on the side a few more times and then face hitters and then go to Memphis."

That leaves Enrique "Kiko" Calero vs. Simontacchi for the role of 12th man. Both players have pitched well in spring training. Simontacchi had surprisingly good numbers in '02, even if skeptics chalked them up to high run support and a good defense behind him. Simo's ERA zoomed to 5.56 last season, and in some ways he pitched even worse than that.

At first blush Calero's record (a 2.82 ERA last year) makes him the easy choice. But there are caveats: that ERA was compiled in only 38.1 innings; he had no big-league experience before that; he's not any younger than Simontacchi (well, okay, a year younger); and he's rushing back to service after severely rupturing his right patella tendon last June.

But it's clear, at least to me, that Calero has much better stuff than Simontacchi. You can tell how good a guy's stuff is partly by looking at some of his peripheral numbers, and Calero bests Simontacchi in almost every category (I've used BP's equivalent stats to weed out some of the background noise):

K/9 innings:..............
Calero 10.6
Simontacchi 4.7

BB/9 innings:............
Calero 4.1
Simontacchi 2.7

H/9 innings:..............
Calero 7.2
Simontacchi 10.9

HR/9 innings:............
Calero 1.2
Simontacchi 1.5

Simontacchi has a much better walk rate, and he can hold his own when it comes to keeping the ball in the park, but that's it. Calero's arm is much livelier, and his numbers are more attractive going forward.

If the Cardinals were frontrunners in the Central and just needed someone to plug a hole (i.e., hold the fort, not walk everyone in sight), then you might be able to make a case for the Simo Man. But we're underdogs, and we need guys with as much upside as possible. That's clearly Calero. He should be our choice for 12th man.

Posted 9:39 AM by Brian
MASTER FISHERMAN It's been a rough week for Walt Jocketty here at Redbird Nation. We've jabbed at him on three separate occasions for acquiring Tony Womack and then, just to be picky, I gave him some grief for failing to land a legit back-up catcher. So perhaps it's a good time to honor his legacy. I direct you to Daniel over at Get Up, Baby!, who forms an all-star team of Jocketty's biggest and best trades.

The "all-acquisition" team shouldn't surprise you much. It includes boppers like Mark McGwire, Scott Rolen, and Jim Edmonds. (In the wake of the Womack deal, John Yuda doubted Jocketty's credentials as a GM and said he could win a division for the Cards as long as he had players like Rolen, Edmonds, Renteria, Pujols, and Isringhausen. I had to remind him that Jocketty is the guy who actually acquired those players in the first place. A classic case of amplifying a guy's failures while muffling his successes.)

Anyway, what's almost as impressive as Jocketty's "all-acquisition" team is his "all-traded-away team." Who did we give up for all those superstuds? Here's Daniel's trade-bait roster:

C - Alberto Castillo
1B - Chris Richard
2B - Adam Kennedy
3B - Todd Zeile
SS - Jack Wilson
OF - Bernard Gilkey
OF - Ron Gant
OF - Dmitri Young

And then the pitching staff includes guys like Braden Looper and Jose Jiminez. Do any of those departures keep you up at night? Didn't think so.

So let's give a little love to Trader Walt. And for those of you still mad at the guy, just remind yourself that career retrospectives like this are something you normally do when a person is either retired or dead.

Posted 9:20 AM by Brian
A MIX OF PIX All-Baseball.com, which contains some of the sharpest baseball minds on the Web, has its predicitions for the 2004 season. Not surprisingly, the Cardinals aren't picked to win the division by any of the 11 contributors. Most of them consider the Cubs the class of the NL Central (although, oddly, none of these folks pick the Cubs to go all the way... is that some anti-jinx ritual?).

Of course, the Cardinals are well aware that they aren't favorites this year, and a few articles have tried to spin this as a good thing: as in, "we like flying under the radar." But personally I enjoy seeing the Cardinals atop these preseason predicitions. It generally means you have a pretty good team. Then again, when you are ignored it makes it sweeter if you actually do win...

Posted 9:07 AM by Brian
THE SANDMAN Matthew Namee asks himself if Mariano Rivera, who just signed a contract extension with the Yanks, is a Hall of Famer. His answer: no, not really. Not yet, anyway. And he uses some very orderly analysis to demonstrate that Rivera is only about the 10th best pitcher of his era.

I can't really argue with Matthew's logic, which is impeccable. And yet, me personally, I'd name Rivera to the Hall if I had a vote. And it's not because I think Rivera saved his team more runs than any active pitcher, or anything like that. It's because I don't get too analytical when it comes to the Hall. I think Rivera is the best postseason pitcher (if not the best postseason player, period) of all time, and that should count for a lot.

See, the Hall of Fame, to me, is not simply a warehouse of the best players. I think it's more a meeting of our collective memories, and as such voting should be almost as much literary as it is mathematical. Does that sound old-fashioned and mystical? Fine -- so is the Hall. Besides, the rules for election are pretty broad:

Voting shall be based upon the player's record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.

That's a pretty wide net, and you can interpret the wording any number of ways. Sure, performance and numbers are key, but given these guidelines it also seems fair to consider more elusive qualities -- players who changed the game, or who moved us, of who stood at the center of a number of signature moments.

Take Nolan Ryan. I could use some pretty sophisticated sabermetric tools to "prove" to you that Ryan was no better than Chuck Finley or Rick Reuschel. (Actually you don't even need to be that sophisticated to put some chinks in his armor -- the guy walked 50% more batters than anyone in history, which ain't so hot.) But Nolan Ryan is the embodiment of the power pitcher, a legend in our shared conscience, and the heart of a lot of great moments. Is it voodoo to include those points when discussing Ryan's candidacy? Maybe. But it's our Hall of Fame, and we can do whatever we want with it.

Now, some might think this populist voting philosophy is unfair to people like Edgar Martinez, who never got to play in a World Series. Perhaps (although I would think Edgar has made enough unique contributions to make it over the top). It might also be unfair to people like Barry Larkin, who never played in a huge media market. Again, that's possible (although I would think his performance helps him despite a lack of signature moments). But I'm comfortable giving some leeway to the "fame" in Hall of Fame, and by that standard I think Rivera looks pretty solid.

Posted 6:31 PM by Brian
THE WOMACKALYPSE There's been some pretty strong reaction to the Cardinals' acquisition of Tony Womack, both here and elsewhere around the Web. A sampling:

"This trade has so many awful implications it makes my head spin." -- Rob

"Chin up, guys. We only gave up Matt Duff." -- Bob Reed

"This is manna from heaven to Astros, Cubs, Reds, Brewers, and Pirates fans." -- Doc Scott

"Personally, I think everyone is making way too much of this trade." -- Sean B.

"[N]ow [the Cardinals are] worse at second and still don't have a left fielder?! Ugh. Two-team race in the central, folks." -- Cliff C.

Everyone I've read agrees that Womack does nothing to help the Cards. But how much will he hurt us? It sorta depends on when he returns from elbow surgery and whether or not he starts, which has been hinted at here and there.

But let's suppose that Womack does indeed start and compare that to the alternative. Before the Womack trade, I think we could have expected a time-sharing arrangement like this:
.................
Anderson 110 games
Hart 52 games

I'm just sorta pulling those numbers out of my ass, but it seems like a reasonable breakdown. For argument's sake, let's say the new 2B arrangement works out as follows:
.................
Womack 110 games
Anderson 26 games
Hart 26 games

What kind of run differential are we talking about under each scenario? Well, let's use Baseball Prospectus' projected Marginal Lineup Value Rate for each guy. (MLVr is how many runs above or below average a hitter will generate per game. So if Albert Pujols' MLVr is .629 and he plays in 157 games, he will generate 98.1 runs more than an average player, which is exactly what he did last year.) So here are the runs for each scenario:
.................
Anderson -10.2
Hart -6.8
------------ ------
Total -17.0

.................
Womack -26.7
Anderson -2.4
Hart -3.4
------------ ------
Total -32.5

There are a lot of strings attached with this kind of analysis, but you can see that starting Womack could cost the Cardinals around 15 or 16 runs, which translates to 1½ wins.

To be honest, that's a lot higher than I would have guessed. I thought that starting Womack would cost us around half a win, tops, and I fully expected to write some piece about how the sky isn't falling and how the Womack acquisition says more about Jocketty's decision-making process than it does about actual wins and losses.

But damn -- one and a half wins. That's quite a hit. Again, we don't know if Womack will start at second base for the Cards, or even if he'll make the team. And if Anderson or Hart gets off to a quick start, La Russa might just pencil him into the starting lineup over Womack.

But if you trust the above numbers at all, you'd have to say that Womack is a ticking time bomb on the Cardinals roster.

Posted 1:25 PM by Brian
DOWN GOES VETERANS, DOWN GOES VETERANS! Rocky proves he's the champ once and for all.

Posted 1:24 PM by Brian
IN ARREARS USA Today has put together a chart of each team's deferred salary obligations. Naturally the Yanks lead the way with the debt of a small South American country -- they're on the hook for three times as much salary as the second most team, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Which team comes next? Why, it's your St. Louis Cardinals, who will pay over $9.5 million to three different players (Edmonds, Pujols, Rolen) in 2006. None of these contracts are Steve Phillips-brand anchors (i.e., the Mets will shell out over $25 million this year to Roberto Alomar, Tommy Glavine, and Mo Vaughn), but they do hurt our maneuverability a bit down the road.

Posted 1:13 PM by Brian
BASEBALL PRIMER has this interesting (if uneven) preview of the 2004 Cardinals. It includes some food for thought about Ray Lankford:

There's a principle here: If you have a bunch of candidates for a job, root for the guy who, if he has a good year, will have the best "good year" among the candidates. Lankford's main contenders for the Cardinal left field job are Kerry Robinson and So Taguchi. If either of those two succeeds, you get a decent average, mediocre walks, good defense, and base-stealing speed, but no power and not really enough on-base percentage for a leadoff man. If Ray succeeds, you get a slightly lesser average, good walks, decent defense, good speed, and decent power. Both Tony La Russa and I will take the walks and power over the speed and defense. Remember, this is left field, not shortstop. Sure, Ray is much older than the others, but his top end is still much higher.

Posted 1:07 PM by Brian
STAR-GAZER Astros lovers are a bit behind the curve when it comes to infiltrating the blogosphere (by my count the team has fewer blogs than Milwaukee or Tampa Bay). So it's nice to welcome Astro in Exile, a new weblog that keeps track of life inside enemy territory. You might want to go check him out.

Posted 12:58 PM by Brian
MR. APRIL Josh Schulz swears off his annual ritual of buying into the pre-season Mike Matheny hype. It's hard not to like Matheny as a person -- by all accounts he's a great guy, a real leader, and he works his ass off. I remember reading that he gets to the batting cages at about 6 a.m. every day during the winter, and he's obviously not too proud to take batting tips from a man ten years his junior.

Unfortunately, Matheny's character is sturdier than his performance. As Josh points out, he hits like gangbusters every March, then tails off once the ballgames actually count. And actually, Matheny's offseason work habits seem to bleed into April as well. His lifetime totals during the cruelest month:

AB: 502
H: 138
2B: 28
HR: 14
BB: 36
AVG: .275
OBP: .329
SLG: .414

Not bad. If he hit like that all the time he'd be a handy little backstop in the vein of Benito Santiago or Jason LaRue. Problem is, after April Matheny is downright awful, with an OPS below 700 every single month. Makes me wonder if Matheny is cut out to handle the rigors of catching every day (I'm talking about sheer durability here; I've never thought Matheny's performance warranting an everyday gig in the majors).

On the ESPN broadcast yesterday, Gary Thorne passed along a quote by Matheny, in which he said his knees go out after the All-Star break. And sure enough, last year Matheny sported a .109/.219/.172 line in August. It's possible that some guys around baseball would do worse than that -- Barry Weinberg, Garth Brooks, maybe Schoendienst -- but not likely.

Which makes it all the more crucial that the Cardinals have an adequate backup for Big Math. It's easy enough to figure out when to sit Matheny -- never let him start too many games in a row, and give him breaks against righties (the last couple years he's been fine against southpaws). In fact, last August we said, "finding a legitimate complement for Matheny at the plate will be one of Jocketty's prime chores this offseason." Unfortunately he phoned it in by simply re-upping this guy. Not too encouraging...

Posted 11:42 PM by Brian
KEYSTONE KAOS Josh Schulz has the inside scoop on why the Cards traded for Tony Womack (it includes Jocketty, La Russa, a hookah, and some embalming fluid). What's more, the latest chirpings from the Post-Dispatch indicate that the second base job is Womack's to lose:

Second base apparently will be his job... He also projects as the leadoff hitter the Cardinals sorely need.

Didn't Ron Shandler say he'd be a sanity check for the Cardinals front office? Makes me wonder if he was on an office Arby's run while Jocketty got on the phone and closed the deal before he could get back.

Posted 11:33 PM by Brian
A FEW GOOD SWINGS Brady Anderson has a pretty wild response to Jim Palmer's innuendoes about his supposed steroid use in 1996:

"I know what I accomplished, am proud of it, and know that it was done with integrity. I'll state this once again: It was 26 more home runs than I hit in any other season, but that's just one more home run per week, just one more good swing. That is the data that simultaneously comforted me and haunted me, the small difference between greatness and mediocrity."

Posted 11:30 PM by Brian
MY LEADOFF OBSESSION, CONT'D Steve Goldman brings up a point that's so academic it's easy to overlook:

In the end, the batting order is a tool for distributing playing time on a plate appearances per game basis. Over the course of the season, the leadoff hitter will bat more often than the number two hitter, the number two hitter more often than the number three hitter and so on.

Indeed, Cardinals leadoff hitters last year came to the plate 754 times. Compare that to, say, the 684 plate appearances from our number-six hitter (usu. Edgar Renteria). That means if you move a hitter from 6th to 1st in the lineup, he'll bat about 10% more often. Ten percent. I'm sure I don't need to connect the dots for you...

Posted 11:24 PM by Brian
THE END OF AN ERA Remember the old days, when the Cubs were all about getting belly-sunburn in the bleachers, listening to Harry Caray slobber all over his microphone, and smelling hot dogs BBQ-ing from the Waveland Ave. rooftops? Well, these aren't your father's Cubbies, and they ain't messing around no more.

Posted 11:17 PM by Brian
ANOTHER FIRE DRILL Baseball sure loves a crisis. The sport is downright promiscuous about 'em -- this year alone we've had the Pete Rose crisis, the competitive-imbalance crisis, the steroid crisis (which percolated all the way up to Capitol Hill), and, a leftover from last year, the "dearth of African-Americans" crisis. The latter is based on a seemingly troubling fact: black representation in MLB has been cut almost in half in less than ten years (from 19% in 1995 to 10% in 2002).

Flynn did a great post about this a few months ago, in which he suggested that the numbers were hardly cause for alarm. But if you are worried, take solace in the fact that the 2004 Cards stand to quintuple the number of African-Americans on their roster. A year ago, Kerry Robinson was our only black player, but the offseason netted us Ray Lankford, Ray King, Reggie Sanders, and Marlon Anderson. Without checking, I'd guess that we have as many black players as any team in the league, which is pretty cool in a white-liberal-guilt sorta way.

Posted 10:59 PM by Brian
WAR ON THE EGGHEADS This article by Dan O'Neill, which skewers the so-called "genius" of A's GM Billy Beane, is useful only as a primer on how to write a reactionary baseball column. You gotta hand it to O'Neill -- he's got the formula down pat:

(1) reduce Beane's management philosophy to one or two simplistic chestnuts;
(2) find an example of how and when said chestnut actually failed;
(3) use said failure as proof that Beane isn't as smart as he thinks he is.

What O'Neill fails to understand is that Beaneball, at its core, isn't about "on-base percentage" or "station-to-station baseball" or "drafting college players" or anything -- it's about exploiting market inefficiencies. If OBP is undervalued, then Beane can acquire high-OBP guys at a premium. If glovework becomes undervalued, then Beane can land good defenders without blowing his budget. And so on.

Such an approach is necessary given the A's financial limitations, and there's no reasonable argument -- at least none that I've heard -- that suggests it isn't working.

Posted 2:42 PM by Brian
THE JULES VERNE OF SPRING TRAINING Reggie Sanders, who's been with seven teams the past seven years, has the lowdown on the best and worst spring training spots.

In today's game Reggie took a bad pitch from Russ Ortiz and hammered it into left center for a two-run double. It's always been my impression that Reggie will jump all over hanging curveballs, but a good pitcher (especially one with a live heater) will carve him up and eat him for breakfast. So I looked at a few of his batter vs. pitcher matchups to see if that idea held any water. Mind you, this is hugely unscientific, and it has an inherent selection bias, because I'm judging Sanders against only the best hurlers. Nevertheless, Sanders does seem to struggle against top pitchers, even more than you'd expect.

He seems to have special trouble against fastball pitchers: 8-34 vs. Schilling; 5-34 vs. Kevin Brown; 0-11 (with eight K's) vs. Kerry Wood; 6-47 vs. Smoltz; 0-12 vs. Billy Wagner; a little better, at 8 for 31, vs. Big Unit. In fact, I couldn't really find any good fastball pitchers that Sanders hits well. Of course, this is just a quick snapshot, nothing more, but it does jibe with the "book" on Sanders, that he's vulnerable to fastballs up and out of the zone.

Posted 10:02 AM by Brian
TURN ON ESPN The Cardinals game is starting right now...

Posted 11:04 PM by Brian
OH JESUS... So you've probably heard by now that the Cardinals acquired Tony Womack. Back in January I wondered why the Red Sox -- you know, the team run by the brain trust of Theo Epstein and Bill James -- would sign Womack to a minor-league deal. Now I know the answer: they knew there were enough suckers out there who would trade actual talent for the guy.

Womack adds nothing to the Cardinals. He can't hit for average, he can't walk, he can't hit for power. He can't hit righties; he can't hit lefties. He can't field and he can't throw. He doesn't have room to grow (he's 34 years old) and he's not durable (he had Tommy John surgery in October). He's worthless.

Okay, to be fair, he can bunt a little.

But honestly, I have no idea what the Cardinals see in Womack. He's just an older, more rickety Brent Butler with bad footwork and a weak arm. If this is Walt Jocketty's idea of an answer at second base, then you have to assume that he's asking all the wrong questions.

Posted 10:13 AM by Brian
LEFT FIELD UPDATE Mark Quinn is out. He strained his groin last week, which hampered his chances of making the team. Greg Vauhgn is hitting like, well, Greg Vaughn, so he's probably out of the picture too. K-Rob is having a decent spring, but the frontrunner at this point is actually Sugar Ray Lankford.

Posted 8:01 AM by Brian
GOODBYE, BEHEMOTH Veterans Stadium, that unlovable concrete octorad, will be demolished today, unleashing a biblical plague of rats and dust on downtown Philadelphia. The Vet has one of the worst reps of any stadium in history, but it had its moments. Who can forget Tug McGraw jumping up and down after the Phils won their first (and only) World Series back in 1980? Or Mitch Williams striking out the last Braves hitter to nail down the 1993 NLCS? Or this wild game from 1989, when the Phils erased a 10-nothing first-run deficit and stormed back for the win?

But when I'm lying on my deathbed, and my neurons are evaporating into the ether, there's one memory of the Vet that'll be the last to go. It's from September 1982. The Cardinals were clinging to a 2-0 lead over the Phillies in the 8th inning. Phillies were batting, one out, bases loaded, Mike Schmidt at the plate. Whoever won the game would be in first place with two weeks to play.

So Whitey called on Bruce Sutter to try to put out the fire. Remember, Schmitty was the best player in baseball at that time, so I was thinking a tie ballgame heading into the ninth would be a blessing. But lo and behold, Sutter threw his wicked split-finger and Schmidt pounded it into the dirt, back to the mound. Sutter flipped the ball to Porter at catcher, who gunned it over to Hernandez at first for a 1-2-3 double play. Inning over, threat over, and the shutout held up. One week later, the Cards were 5½ games in front. Two weeks later they wrapped up the division. Five weeks later they were world champions for the ninth and, as of this writing, last time.

Posted 4:47 PM by Brian
YOUR FUTURE HEROES Ted Nye goes Metacritic (hat tip to Baseball Primer) and compiles a consensus pick of the top 599 prospects in baseball. The list is so complete I'm actually a little embarrassed I'm not on it.

Here's a capsule Cardinals version of the top prospects:

31. Adam Wainwright
56. Blake Hawksworth
128. Luis Martinez
161. Chris Narveson
209. Daric Barton
218. Yadier Molina
279. Jimmy Journell
359. Tyler Johnson
463. Rhett Parrott
557. Josh Teekel
577. John Santor
593. John Gall

I don't know about you, but I'm having trouble putting that in context. We all know the Cards farm system is lousy, but how lousy? Let's design a little system. We'll assign points for each prospect's ranking, so that the last guy on the list (Miguel Pinango) gets 1 point and the first guy (Joe Mauer) gets 599. The Cardinals' system, then, would have... let's see... 3,559 points.

Let's stack that up against other organizations around the league:
........................
1. Braves 8,745
2. Blue Jays 8,740
3. Indians 8,218
4. Dodgers 7,991
5. Pirates 7,802
6. Twins 7,482
7. Diamondbacks 7,421
8. Mariners 7,361
9. Cubs 7,231
10. Angels 7,107
11. Rangers 6,742
12. Brewers 6,426
13. Orioles 6,136
14. Reds 6,258
15. Devil Rays 6,020
16. Mets 5,886
17. Tigers 5,796
18. Rockies 5,349
19. Yankees 5,312
20. Marlins 5,259
21. Royals 4,850
22. Padres 4,727
23. Astros 4,682
24. Expos 4,446
25. Red Sox 4,361
26. White Sox 4,347
27. A's 4,264
28. Giants 4,064
29. CARDINALS 3,559
30. Phillies 3,097

A few thoughts:

• The Cardinals' farm system is, um, well -- what's the opposite of "super amazing"? They had the fewest real prospects (12) of any team in baseball and only the carcass of the Phillies organization saved them from last place. And at least the Phils can comfort themselves with hotshot pitching god Cole Hamels at #6.

• Can we safely say that Marty Maier, the Cardinals scouting director for the past three years, is the Ed Wood of talent evaluators? Luckily he was demoted this past winter, but not before Branch Rickey (who invented the modern-day farm system while GM of the Cardinals) rolled around in his grave a few times.

• Are we in for a changing of the guard in the NL Central? The Astros and Cards, who have combined to win 7 of the last 8 divisional flags, are near the bottom of the list. Meanwhile, the other teams in the NLC are all in the upper half, with the Bucs and Cubbies in the top ten.

• We may also be due for a sea change in the AL East -- the Blue Jays missed first place by a hair, and both the Yanks and Red Sox fared poorly. Fortunately for those two, however, they're among the few teams that can acquire ready-made major-league talent without going bankrupt.

• I was very surprised how high the Pirates' organization ranked. They're loaded with pitching prospects, and actually rate higher than the vaunted Brewers system (ranked as the best farm system by Baseball America). Other surprises: the Orioles at #13 and the Reds at #14. Both systems have terrible reps, despite some decent mid-tier talent.

• The Indians had the most overall prospects in the Top 599, with 31.

• Detroit had the lowest ranked "top" prospect of any organization, with pitcher Kyle Sleeth coming in at #88. But to be fair to the Motor City, some of their talent would rank higher if they weren't pressed into major-league service last season.

• What's up with the Athletics? According to this system, they have the fourth wost organization in baseball. There are two likely explanations: either (a) Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta aren't as wizardly as Michael Lewis would have you believe; or (b) the A's players are ranked too low by most scouting services, which is exactly how Beane was able to snatch them up in the first place. My gut says the truth is somewhere in-between.

• Needless to say, this ratings system isn't perfect. Hell, scouting itself isn't perfect (see Neugebauer, Nick, for illustration). But I do wonder if the point system I devised should be less linear. For example, is Joe Mauer twice as valuable as the #300 prospect? Is he worth more than that? Less than that? I really don't know. But in the meantime, this loose list -- a consensus of several different scouting philosophies -- will have to do.

Posted 3:38 PM by Brian
FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK Back in June, my brother The Judge officially named Rock Raines his favorite non-Cardinal of his lifetime (and contemplated getting a tattoo of Raines in his Expos road uni on his neck).

Jay Jaffe joins in the lovefest with this fine ode to the Man in Powder Blue (that's always how I'll remember him anyway), whose number the Expos will retire in June.

Posted 3:22 PM by Brian
THE REST Did you catch any of the Democratic debates over the winter? Didn't you hate how you'd want to hear something from Kerry or Edwards, but then the moderators would have to give equal time to spare limbs like Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun? That's sorta what I feel like when I read previews for the bottom-feeders in the NL Central -- you just want to rush through or tune out the Brewers and Pirates until you get to the real meat and potatoes, the Cubs and Astros.

But luckily The Hardball Times has been doing a great job making those lesser teams intriguing. The Reds, as they point out, have a fascinating group of youngsters, and the Brewers are undergoing some interesting changes within their farm system. The Pirates are, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your POV), still the same old Pirates, but Matthew Namee makes them sorta compelling anyway.

Posted 3:11 PM by Brian
LIDS A fun website called Talking Baseball critiques the baseball caps for every team in the NL East and Central. The Cardinals actually rank in the bottom half of the cap ratings. Why? I couldn't tell you, but it has something to do with the author's obsession with symmetry.

Posted 2:57 PM by Brian
TOTAL LOSER Life as a Loser is a new book by Blacktable writer (and longtime Redbird Nation reader) Will Leitch. The book is about Will's rocky life in and out of love, but it's also about his lifelong romance as a St. Louis Cardinals fan. It includes memories of playing at Busch Stadium in high school, watching his dad almost brawl with Dave Parker on a family trip to Cincinnati to see a Cardinals series, witnessing the longest home run in Busch history (but being too drunk to realize what had happened), and giving Willie McGee a cold during a 1983 Cardinals Caravan. You might want to check it out.

Posted 2:45 PM by Brian
THE OVERLOOKED One thing about fantasy sports: it makes it harder and harder to find an actual underrated player. Every time some newbie goes 3-for-5 or pitches two shutout innings in spring training, you can bet there's a network of overeducated, underpaid drones clicking through his profile on RotoWire, hoping to scoop him up off the waiver wire.

Yet Straightaway CF has found seventy -- yes, seventy (hard to say that without hearing Bob Carpenter's voice) -- players he feels get the shaft when it comes to fame and respectability. It's actually a great list. Nearly every player on there really is underrated (and if this list gets widely circulated, every player will be overrated by the end of next week).

Posted 2:33 PM by Brian
HOW THE NORTHSIDE SEES US Damn, I like this guy.

Posted 2:20 PM by Brian
IVY, NON-WRIGLEY VERSION Every decade has its "hot field" for Ivy League grads. In the '70s it was Washington. In the '80s it was Wall Street. In the '90s it was Hollywood. And now, in the '00s, it's baseball.

Posted 10:30 PM by Brian
A CUBFAN ON THE CARDINALS Derek Smart, a great guy and a very objective Cubs fan, has a fine rundown of the 2004 Cardinals over at his blog, the Big Red C. Here's a smattering of what he has to say --

On our chances this season: "The St. Louis Cardinals haven't made the same splashy offseason moves that their main competitors in Houston and Chicago have, and many are using that fact as an excuse to write the team off in the NL Central race. This would be a mistake."

On the Cards leftfield situation: "[T]his 'competition' still reminds me of the round of Fear Factor where everyone has to eat something appalling."

On Pujols: "This may sound hyperbolic, but I would be shocked to see him win any fewer than three [MVP] awards over the life of his new seven year contract with the Cardinals, and wouldn't be surprised if he picked up a couple more."

On Mike Matheny: "[W]hen your starting backstop is outhit over the course of the season, any season, by the likes of Bengie Molina, it's time to start considering other options."

Read the rest of Derek's piece if you get a chance, and stay tuned for Part II of his analysis tomorrow.

Posted 10:17 PM by Brian
WHAT WOULD J.D. DO? Four things I learned from reading SI's article about J.D. Drew:

1) He's never had a beer, or smoked a cigarette, and he was a virgin until he got married two years ago.

2) An anonymous Cardinal said of Drew, "Do we miss him? I don't think anybody really does."

3) He's seen the movie The Passion twice. The movie caused tears to stream down his cheeks.

4) He was heartbroken when he learned he was traded away from St. Louis: "His goal had been to win a World Series with the Cardinals, and instead he was being shipped out."

Posted 7:55 PM by Brian
WHEN THERE'S NO ROOM IN HELL... If you get a chance, go see Dawn of the Dead this weekend. It's a truly scary, twisted, fun movie; and I'm not biased, even if, by some chance, perhaps, maybe, my brother wrote the script.

Posted 7:34 PM by Brian
THE ONE-HOLE I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I got to thinking about Edgar Renteria leading off again (maybe it was the microscopic possibility that Andy Fox could be leading off for the Cards this year). So I looked up E-Rent's lifetime numbers to see if, as his manager claims, he becomes a different player batting leadoff. Check it out, per 162 games:

AB H 2B 3B HR BB AVG OBP SLG
Leading Off 633 177 36 0 15 69 .280 .349 .411
Not Leading Off 611 177 31 3 10 55 .290 .349 .400

Do you see much difference there? Seems like Renteria would be just find no matter where you put him.

Posted 6:21 PM by Brian
NEW KID IN TOWN There's a new website called Management by Baseball. Forgive the lousy title -- it's really a good site, drawing on the author's experience as a baseball reporter and management consultant to talk about how to run (or how not to run) a baseball team.

Posted 6:16 PM by Brian
PORTARME FUORI AL GIOCO CON LA PALLA Jason Simontacchi throws his weight around with the commissioner's office.

Posted 5:54 PM by Brian
CRUDALE ON THE CRUD HEAP So Mike Crudale wore out his welcome in Milwaukee almost as quickly as he did in St. Louis. The Bru Cru released him yesterday.

Could Crudale be a member of the Ken Phelps All-Star Team? The Ken Phelps All-Star Team, if you're unfamiliar with the concept, was invented by Bill James in his 1987 Abstract:

They are players whose real limitations are exaggerated by baseball insiders, players who get stuck with a label -- the label of their limits, the label of the things they can't do -- while those that they can do are overlooked.

Ken Phelpsers are like original copies of Exile on Main St. at a garage sale -- they're practically free. Take David Eckstein. Textbook Ken Phelps All-Star. The Red Sox used to own him a few years back, but the knock on him (back in those pre-Theo days) was that he was too short, too weak. So the Sox simply waived him. He was picked up by the Halos, was given a shot, and turned into a pretty nifty little squirt. Not great, still not a slugger, but useful enough.

But Ken Phelps All-Stars are hugely important. Why? Because they're the types of players who win championships. Most contending teams (like, oh, say, the Cardinals) have a decent core of top players. What often separates them from a title is their inability to acquire cheap, useful, freely available talent.

The 2003 Marlins, for example, were full of good role players who were stigmatized before they wore teal for the first time: Dontrelle Willis (goofy delivery), Chad Fox (injury-prone), Rick Helling (washed-up), even, I guess, Jack McKeon (too old). And yet if you pick up those kinds of stocks on the cheap, you can turn 'em around for a big profit.

Which brings us back to Mike Crudale. The knock on him is that he's too fat and too lazy. That's why the Cardinals kept him in the minors for most of 2003, and I have no doubt that's why the Brewers cut him ahead of clowns like Leo Estrella and Wayne Franklin. But his big-league numbers are pretty solid: a 2.09 ERA in 73.1 innings, and 7.4 K's per nine innings.

But here's the trick to finding Ken Phelps All-Stars -- you have to be able to distinguish manageable limitations from unmanageable limitations. For all I know Crudale really is fat and lazy. But will he fail because of his fat laziness, or succeed despite it? Some team out there is bound to find out, but you can bet it won't be the Cardinals.

Posted 3:16 PM by Brian
A THRIVING BREED An article in the Boston Herald declares Reds shortstop Barry Larkin the "last of a dying breed" -- the franchise lifer:

Perhaps the most unique man in baseball will turn 40 years old in April, a month that will start his 19th and final season in the game. But what makes Barry Larkin a dinosaur, truly the last of an endangered species, is the fact that he has played all 19 of those seasons for the Cincinnati Reds.

The article goes on to mourn the loss of such cornerstones:

Times have certainly changed in the major leagues, and they have not necessarily changed for the better. One of the problems the game now faces is that there are not enough players and people like Barry Larkin, who have come to define the uniforms they wear. The unfortunate truth is that players like Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra can change teams with alarming regularity, no matter how good they are, because that is the business that baseball has become.

Strange that they mention Nomah -- who has spent all eight years of his career with one club -- as one of those players who "can change teams with alarming regularity." But does the Herald have a point? Is baseball losing those hearty loyalists who stick with one team their entire career?

No. First of all, it's easy to cherry-pick players like Musial, Mays, and Mantle and hold them up as the ideal of fidelity. But we often forget that even during the days of the reserve clause, players were sold or traded all the time. Babe Ruth played for more than one team. So did Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Hank Aaron, Rogers Hornsby, Joe Morgan, Eddie Collins, Jimmie Foxx, and on and on and on.

What's more, the "one-town athlete" is more alive than you'd think. Among active players, you've got Bernie Williams, John Smoltz, Frank Thomas, Bags and Biggio, and Edgar Martinez, to name a few. And if you look at the numbers across time, you see that Barry Larkin is not part of a dying breed. Last November David Pinto assembled a list of all players who played at least 12 seasons for only one major-league franchise. And if you break it down by the decade in which the players retired, you get something like this:

..............
1890s 3
1900s 0
1910s 1
1920s 5
1930s 8
1940s 13
1950s 10
1960s 10
1970s 16
1980s 17
1990s 15
2000s 11

Note that the 2000s includes active players (and one player on Dave's list, Javy Lopez, has since moved on). We can see, then, that in the early days, the owners (who held all the cards) were as finicky and disloyal as any of today's post-Marvin Miller superstars. In fact, you could make a case that Barry Larkin isn't part of a dying breed so much as a decades-long trend.

Posted 3:15 PM by Flynn
GUILTY PLEASURES Anyone particpating in a fantasy baseball league might find this to their liking. But, who am I kidding, if you are in a fantasy baseball league chances are you are also the type of guy who is ensnared in a giant bracket of college kids wearing shorts below their knees for the next four days. Read this on Monday.

Posted 12:08 AM by Brian
DUST-UP One of our readers, Marty, posted this in our "comments" section, but it's too good not to put center stage:

Dusty Baker really dissed the Cardinals on the Dan Patrick show Tuesday. In an interview they did live with Dusty Tues. afternoon, he said that the Astros and Reds would be the Cub's main competition this year. When Rob Dibble asked him if any other teams in the central would suprise anybody he mentioned Milwaukee as having a really improved ballclub.

Yow. Dusty has beaten us head-to-head for two years in a row now, so perhaps he's got some room to brag, but man, what a dick.

Posted 11:53 PM by Brian
OZZFEST The Yankees payroll this season is 212 million dollars. Their players have made, collectively, over 60 All-Star appearances. They're trying to win the 27th championship in franchise history. And their fifth starter is Donovan Osborne. Did we all fall down the rabbit hole?

I have one, clear-cut, overriding memory of Donovan Osborne. It's the 1996 NLCS, Braves/Cardinals. Game 7 is about to start, series tied at three apiece. Win and we go to our first World Series in almost ten years. The Braves have the mo -- they've won the last two games by a combined score of 17-1 -- and the home crowd, and they also have Tommy Glavine warming up in the bullpen before the game. The TV cameras focus on him, and he's so cool he could just as easily be sitting in front of the tube, half-baked, watching Barney Miller reruns.

The Cardinals counter with Donovan Osborne. Not a great pitching match-up for us, but remember, he did beat Glavine in Game 3, he pitched pretty well all year, and, what the hell, maybe the worst is out of our system. So the TV screen cuts over to Osborne down in the Cardinals pen, and I swear to God I knew the game was over right there.

Osborne was fidgety, glacing over his shoulder, and his eyes were as big as saucers. Like the eyes of a giant squid. And if I had a better TV back then, I'm sure I could have made out the palpitations from his quivering hummingbird heart, the trickle of urine twining down his leg, and the sweat matting his hair like it did my nephew Griffin when he came out of the womb.

There were two other lifelong Cards fans in the room and we all knew what that look meant. In fact, you could have handed me a blank scorecard right then and there and I'd have filled it out ahead of time: first-pitch single, first-pitch double, two quick outs, then walk-single-single-HBP-triple. By the pitcher. With the bases loaded.

6-0 and Osborne wasn't even out of the first. La Russa yanked him and the Cardinals played themselves into a 15-zip loss and a long flight back to St. Louis.

But I contend the disaster began with Donovan Osborne's look while warming up in the bullpen. In fact, I've seen that look a few times since: on Adam Melhuse's face when he made the second-to-last out of the ALDS last year; on Kerry Collins' mug every time he looked at Ray Lewis during the 2001 Super Bowl, and on replays of Michael Spinks before he got mauled by Mike Tyson. My brothers and I have long had a name for that look: the Donovan Osborne face.

Now, flash forward to the present day. Boston and New York are the new Sparta and Athens. And this baseball season will act out their ancient, tribal blood feud. Drums are pounding. Storm clouds are gathering. Both cities are assembling teams of orcs to grind out swords and axes and maces and hording them in some hellish pit. Old folks in Mass General are on life support, desperate to hang on for seven more months and die happy, with their beloved Sawx finally Winning It All. Meanwhile, Bronxsiders are kneeling before Moloch with rosaries coiled around their fists, praying that the mighty Yankees can chew up their mortal enemies one more time. And by the end of the year, one of the cities -- if not both -- will burn to the ground in either exaltation or humiliation.

And at the center of all this fury, prepared to go toe-to-toe against Pedro and Schilling and Lowe and whoever else the Red Sox can throw at them is none other than our old friend Donovan Osborne. I almost feel sorry for the guy.

Posted 6:22 PM by Brian
THE QUAGMIRE BP's Chris Kahrl throws a little salt in our wounds:

Steve Cox's fate was probably sealed once the decision to go with Albert Pujols at first started to be chiseled in stone. Kevin Witt's fate is probably similarly sealed; he's not a great bet to make the move to left. That leaves a left field mess with John Gall, John Mabry, Mark Quinn, Todd Dunwoody, Ray Lankford, Judge Crater, and the still standing, still-singing half of Milli Vanilli all gunning for the "established" duo of So Taguchi and Kerry Robinson. Are there really people still pretending that this team is a contender?

I don't mind pretending now and again.

Posted 6:10 PM by Brian
SELIG'S GAMBIT So Bud Selig might stiff-arm the union, invoke the commissioner's "best interests of the game" clause, and institute a stringent drug-testing policy for MLB. Today on SportsCenter, ESPN legal analyst Roger Cossack said this would be a serious mistake by Selig, as the MLBPA would simply file a grievance, submit the matter to a neutral arbitrator, and easily block the commissioner's policy.

But I'm not so sure Selig doesn't know exactly what he's doing. Consider: there's already broad public animus against the players and in favor of stricter testing. Bud proposes random testing of steroids in the best interest of the game, and, as expected, the union blocks him. (After all, MLB has its own legal analysts; surely they know this.) But what do you think the headlines would be in the next day's papers? "Union Blocks Move to Clean Up Baseball." "MLBPA Buries Baseball's Best Interests." "What Do the Players Have to Hide?" And so on.

I think this was actually a shrewd (if unseemly) gamble by Selig, and not out of line with his tactics regarding contraction, relocation, etc. Even if he loses the arbitration case, he ends up looking progressive while the union plays the role of obstructionist bad guys. Both sides know this, which is why the MLBPA may be compelled to negotatiate with Selig for some reasonable compromise, like regular random testing but performed by an independent third party.

If that's the upshot of all this, it's not a bad move. On the other hand, it could backfire and make the union more entrenched than ever, more distrustful of MLB's scare tactics. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out...

Posted 9:04 AM by Brian
HOW TO STEAL MEDIOCRITY Josh Schulz has a nice piece about the effect of the running game on productivity. The funniest part is at the end, where Josh speculates how many bases Kerry Robinson would have to steal to be a league-average leftfielder. After crunching a few numbers, Josh concludes that K-Rob would have to swipe 157 bases and get caught only 28 times to reach mere adequacy. We're all pulling for him.

Posted 8:42 AM by Brian
CATCH AND RELEASE Christian Ruzich has a nice take on the Cardinals release of Brent Butler and Steve Cox. Like Ruz, I'm surprised the Cards cut loose Butler -- he seems like the type of multi-positional, light-hitting, scrappy LaRussabot that they churned out at the factory. But his ability to contribute wins to our team this season was marginal at best, so that's no real loss. Cox is a trickier case. He doesn't do much of anything for me, but he seemed preferable to the other bottom-feeders still on our roster.

Posted 8:41 AM by Brian
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR CALCULATORS Here's a handy little article on the infusion of sabermetrics in baseball's front offices. It includes quotes from new Cardinals advisor Ron Shandler as well as new VP of baseball development Jeff Luhnow. Shandler reiterates that he and Jeff aren't there to displace Jocketty or the traditional scouting methods that have worked in the past. "The heavy lifting," he says, "will still be done in the Cardinals' front office, but we're here to be sounding boards and provide sanity checks, essentially provide expert input that they will then integrate into their processes." I like the job description: sanity checkers.

Posted 8:40 AM by Brian
GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT Jim Palmer suggests Brady Anderson took steroids back in 1996. His evidence: _________. Oh wait, he does have numbers to back him up, as Brady's home run total jumped from 16 to 50 in one year. Ergo, Palmer's old teammate Davey Johnson, who went from 5 homers to 43 back in 1973, also used steroids. So did Lou Gehrig, who went from 16 homers to 47 in 1927.

Posted 8:35 AM by Brian
WINDS A-BLOWIN' "The Birdhouse" is reporting a possible trade between the Cards and Angels -- Woody Williams, Bo Hart, and a third guy go there; Darrin Erstad, Adam Kennedy, and Jarrod Washburn come here. I don't want to comment on a trade that's all hearsay at this point, but it's fun to throw it out there anyway...

Posted 12:32 AM by Brian
OLIGARCHY All-Baseball.com does a bang-up breakdown of the NL Central. As they put it, the NL Central is like Central America -- "flush with rich and poor; but no middle class." Deep dark thought: the Cardinals, with 85 wins last year, and no significant improvements from last year, may be the embodiment of a middle-class team. Will Carroll seems to agree:

I'm curious if the Cards can hold up. They're fast becoming the Giants, on the field and off. By 2005, they'll have a privately financed field that's wonderful, but potentially hurts their financial flexibility. Their lineup will be one phenomenal player and a bunch of fill-ins. I don't think Jocketty pulls that recipe off as well as Sabean.

I've always thought Sabean and Jocketty were good comps -- both throwback types more comfortable with a telephone than a mouse in their hands. But one question for Will: does he expect Scott Rolen to be a "fill-in" player by next year?

And one final thing I learned from this piece -- did you know that no team from the NL Central has ever been to the World Series? Here's the breakdown since the beginning of the three-division format:

Series Appearances
AL East 6
NL East 6
NL West 3
AL Central 2
AL West 1
NL Central 0

Posted 12:18 AM by Brian
DREAM TEAM The Hardball Times is a new online publication with a writing staff that includes some of the biggest and best names in the baseblog biz. Go check 'em out (and stay tuned for a guest piece on the Cardinals, written by yours truly, that'll probably run next week).

Posted 12:13 AM by Brian
MORE LF FOLLIES Last week I criticized La Russa for making roster decisions based on such small sample sizes in spring training. As if to prove my point, he had this to say about the competition for the leftfield starting job:

"All these guys will have 15 or 20 at-bats. If you’re in that position, as I have been in my career, that’s not a bad look. Sometimes, you have to make decisions based on less than that."

Ugh. Here's Joe Sheehan's take on the morass:

I don't think there's an acceptable solution here. None of these guys can be expected to be a league-average left fielder on their own, and of the group, only Quinn has even come close to holding down a regular job in the past three years. At least with Robinson and Taguchi, you know you're going to get defense, although using them at the top of the lineup is just going to hamstring an offense that already has outs in the #8 and #9 slots. Jim Edmonds could be one of the 10 best players in the league this year and tally 72 RBI or something.

This is a real failure on Jocketty's part. And don't tell me we didn't have the dough to sign somebody decent. Consider this: for the money we're paying Julian Tavarez, Steve Cox, and Brent Butler (the latter two have already been cut), the Cards could have signed either Jose Guillen, Rondell White, Jeromy Burtnitz, Matt Stairs, or Jose Cruz Jr.

Posted 11:48 PM by Brian
MARK PRIOR JR. Richard Lederer wonders if Jared Weaver (younger brother of Dodgers newcomer Jeff Weaver) will follow in the footsteps of the big righthander Prior. Both pitchers have lights-out stuff and a devastating college track record. And who has the first pick in the June draft? San Diego, home of -- who else? -- Mark Prior.

Posted 11:47 PM by Brian
CHECKING IN ON THE PARROT-WEARERS Yes, there are other teams in the division besides the Cubs, Astros, and Cardinals.

Posted 11:42 PM by Brian
ADGAR TRAMMELRIA Peter Gammons has this throwaway phrase in today's column -- "...if the Red Sox were to lose Garciaparra and Edgar Renteria, as expected, re-signs with the Cardinals..."

Renteria expected to sign with us? That's news to me. I've always felt that the Cardinals would retain either Morris or E-Rent (although not both; just a gut feeling), and Renteria looks like a much safer bet at this point.

By the way, in his preview of the Cardinals, Kent Williams notes that Alan Trammell has been the most similar player to Edgar Renteria for six straight years, from ages 22 to the present. Similar is right. In fact, ER and AT are goddamn peas in a pod. Check this out --

Baseball Prospectus has a forecasting system called PECOTA, which projects future performance based on the performances of similar major leaguers. There are ten influential factors in determining similar players. Let's take each one and compare Edgar and Alan:

1. Isolated Power: Renteria has an established isolated power of .138 (that's slugging pct. minus batting avg. for the last three years, weighted in favor of recent performance). Trammell's established isolated power at the same age was -- surprise! -- .138.

2. Walk rate: Again, we establish this figure by looking at ages 25-27, with the later years weighted more heavily. Renteria walks in 9% of his plate appearances. Trammell walked in 9% of his plate appearances.

3. Batting average: Here the two deviate somewhat. Renteria has an established AVG of .310, which bests Trammell's .287.

4. Historical playing time: Renteria -- 4,752 plate appearances. Trammell -- 4,499. Close enough.

5. Defensive position: Both shortstops, obviously.

6. Speed score: Renteria at age 27: 5.84. Trammell at age 27: 6.36.

7. Length of major league career: Both had their first full season at age 20. Through age 27, Edgar has played in 1,147 games. Trammell had 1,136 at the same point.

8. Weight: Edgar weighs 172 pounds. Trammell? 175.

9. Strikeout rate: From ages 25 to 27, Edgar struck out in 10.4% of his plate appearances. Trammell: 10.8%.

10. Handedness: Both Renteria and Trammell bat and throw right.

11. Height: E-Rent -- 6'1". Trammell -- 6 even.

12. Defensive rating: I don't have good numbers for this category. I do know that through 2000 Bill James had Renteria graded as a "C" shortstop and Trammell as a "B-".

Those guys have got to be about as closely matched as any two players in history, especially among good players (after all, so-so players are much more abundant). If they continue along the same career path, where is Edgar headed? Well, Trammell had a very good season at age 28 and an absolute monster of a season at age 29 (1987, when he was robbed of an MVP award by George Bell). Edgar will be 29 in his first year after free agency.

Posted 5:21 PM by Brian
THE SKY IS FALLING My dad is a classic over-reactor. I remember once my brother Sean spilled a tiny bit of milk on his pants and my dad furrowed his brow and blurted out, "aw, Sean, you've ruined everything..." I thought of this recently after reading Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy on the latest steroids flap:

So now it's all in doubt. They're all guilty. Brady Anderson's 50? A little suspicious, don't you think? Mark McGwire's 70? Had to be cheating. And Barry Bonds's 73? Please... This is never going to end. Bud Selig may as well just quit. Every baseball showcase is ruined... I hate it. I don't want to believe any of it. I love baseball and I want to enjoy the 2004 pennant race between the Red Sox and Yankees. But this steroid stuff is ruining everything. And it's going to get worse.

Did you get that? Once everything is ruined, it's going to get worse. Yikes.

And then there's a useful counterpoint in Slate from Josh Levin, who observes that "loving baseball is hating what it has become, then falling in love all over again." Every so often, says Levin, baseball goes through some trauma -- be it the Federal League, the Black Sox scandal, the Brooklyn Dodgers moving west, expansion, astroturf, free agency, interleague play, what have you -- and the pious among us mourn that our great National Pastime is dead. And then, as sure as winter turns to spring, some great player or great pennant race comes along, and the game rises from the ashes.

This tradition of eulogizing baseball is almost as old as the sport itself. In his 1985 Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James reprints a 1916 editorial from 19th-century ballplayer Bill Joyce, who laments:

Base ball today is not what it should be... The boys go out to the plate, take a slam at the ball, pray that they get a hit, and let it go at that. They are not fighting as in the days of old.

But you can't blame the guy for holding on too dearly to the game he grew up on. I mean, I suspect we all do this to some degree. Like me, I tend to think of the 1980s as the Golden Age of Baseball: nine separate World Series winners, an array of different ballparks and playing styles, a balance between great hitting and great pitching, no wild card.

But the more I think about it, the more I remind myself of those annoying baby boomers who constantly rail about the death of rock 'n' roll (a guy once told me that the release of the discoey Stones single "Miss You" marked the end of American civilization). Despite all my feel-good memories about the game of my youth, I should remember that the 1980s were also a time of nasty drug trials, big media consolidations, the "split season," and the downfall of greats like Steve Garvey and Pete Rose.

In the same way, it helps to highlight all the things that the current game has going for it: one of best young players of all time (Pujols), the best old player of all time (Bonds), three upstart champions in the last three years (all who knocked off the mighty Yankees to get there), a plethora of new ballparks (which outshine the old ballparks, even if they are redundant), a bevy of Hall of Fame pitchers (with Clemens, Maddux, and Pedro crucial to their teams pennant hopes), one of the two best shortstops ever (A-Rod), the next Tom Seaver (Prior), the spread of interesting new management philosophies (Moneyball, et al), and greater fan access than ever before (in the form of MLB's cable package, up-to-the-minute online scores, and a wide array of new voices over the internet). In fact, you could make a good case that baseball is better now than it's ever been.

And as for steroids, of course I don't like 'em, and MLB could do more to level the playing field. But in the meantime, let's put aside the ridiculous notion that baseball makes you a better person. It is not, as Dan Shaughnessy would have it, the instigator of social decay, nor is it, as Ken Burns would have it, a form of national baptism.

Baseball is (like that other great institution, the U.S. Congress) supposed to be messy. It has its highs and lows, its wonders and shames, its geniuses and its boneheads. That's what makes it what it is. It might be ungainly, but I don't think you'd want a "pure" game of baseball even if someone offered it to you. Imagine baseball without its scandals, slobs, and idiots. It'd look a little bit less like the game you grew up on, and a little more like this.

Posted 4:24 PM by Brian
WHO'S THE FASTEST PLAYER IN BASEBALL? Whitey Herzog often said that speed is the only thing you can use on both offense and defense. I would think strength, balance, endurance, flexibility, and hand-eye coordination work too, but why quibble -- speed is an important tool on both sides of the ball. More speed usually means more range afield, more infield hits, more extra bases, and, as research has shown, swift players tend to age better than slow players. But beyond all that, speed is, well, fun. Beaneball may be tactically attractive, but let's face it -- it's aesthetically ugly. Give me triples and bang-bang leg-hits over walks any day.

So what active player has the most speed? I dug up my old copy of the 1987 Bill James Baseball Abstract and unearthed a formula he came up with called "Speed Score." It's too complicated to spell out here, but basically it rates players in six different categories: stolen base percentage, stolen base attempts, triples, range, avoiding double plays, and runs scored as a percentage of times on base. Using that method, the ten fastest guys in baseball, based on their 2003 stats, are:

1. Rafael Furcal, Atl 8.33
2. Carlos Beltran, KC 8.26
3. Carl Crawford, TB 8.24
4. Alex Sanchez, Det 7.83
5. Jose Reyes, NYM 7.79
6. Dave Roberts, LA 7.66
7. Willie Harris, Det 7.63
8. Scott Podsednik, Milw 7.61
9. Christian Guzman, Min 7.60
10. Kenny Lofton, NYY 7.48

A few observations:

• Rafael Furcal wins the track meet with an extremely high number of runs and only 2 GIDPs in 664 at bats . But he still falls short of Vince Coleman's '86 season (8.75) and Willie Wilson's 1980 (9.23).

• I was surprised Ichiro didn't make the list. He finished in 13th, behind Juan Pierre, Coco Crisp, and of course, 36-year-old Kenny Lofton. But the fact is that apart from his double play rate (only 3 in 679 ABs), Ichiro's speed numbers weren't as impressive as they've been in the past. Is he slowing down as he approaches 30?

• If Alex Sanchez is on first and you're on the mound, pitch out. He tried to steal almost half the time he was on first.

• Carlos Beltran is the best percentage base stealer of anyone with more than 100 lifetime steals. His SB/CS numbers the past four years: 13/0; 31/1; 35/7; 41/4. His career success rate is 88.2%, which noses out (in order) Pokey Reese, Tim Raines, Eric Davis, and Henry Cotto.

• As good as Beltran is at swiping bases, Dave Roberts is even better at avoiding the DP. He didn't hit into any double plays last year in 388 at bats, and over 975 career at bats he's only grounded into ONE double play. Wow.

• The fastest Cardinals, in descending order: Bo Hart (6.33), Kerry Robinson (5.82), Marlon Anderson (5.80), Brent Butler (5.46), Edgar Renteria (5.06).

Posted 1:41 PM by Brian
STRETCHING Michael Wolverton points out that the Cardinals lost the 3rd fewest runners trying for extra bases of any team last season. Credit third-base coach Jose Oquendo, but I think Tony La Russa deserves some props as well. As we pointed out last Fall:

La Russa has been very successful putting runners in motion on hit and runs and squeeze plays. He rarely gets burned on pitch outs and his teams are well-stocked with guys who put the ball in play (this year the Cardinals had the second fewest strikeouts in the National League). Add in the heads-up players that La Russa favors, plus his dogged preparatory work, and I’d venture to say that the Cardinals have fewer guys lost on the basepaths than almost any team in the league.

Indeed, I usually think of TLR as a poor in-game strategist, but he's got a spiffy track record with baserunners. For example, Lou Piniella is regarded as the peerless mastermind of the stolen base, but Tony holds his own against him pretty well. Here's how their teams stack up per 162 games:

.............SB CS PCT.
Piniella 127 50 72%
La Russa 131 57 70%

I'll take it.

Posted 1:20 PM by Brian
FEHR PLAY Did you ever think that Donald Fehr would need to take PR lessons from Bud Selig? His performance the other day before John McCain and the Senate Commerce Committee showed horrible political instincts. I mean, look, I generally sympathize with the Players Union, and I get queasy when folks seem willing to throw aside privacy rights like chum to the sharks, but Fehr isn't even making a good case for his union. McCain is a straight shooter; he wants straight answers; but instead Fehr is giving him the kind of evasive legal gobbledygook that people tend to hate (see Gore vs. Bush for illustration).

Posted 12:56 PM by Brian
12 TO 6 CURVE Jays fan Kent Williams, who wrote the Cardinals preview piece for Batter's Box, issues this warning flare:

I have a feeling Carpenter will break your heart – his curve is so good, it can be high as it crosses the front of the plate, but land in the dirt before reaching the catcher. I mean it falls straight down. I’ve seen umps call that a ball; presumably he threw it over the strike zone, which isn’t easy. Yet he’s never had a really good feel for pitching, and he’s never worked as hard as a Halladay, Schilling or Clemens. Maybe Duncan and Matheny can figure him out.

CC claims he's been working harder than ever. Whether that translates into on-field results we'll have to wait and see...

Posted 12:49 PM by Brian
A WONDERFUL WASTE Reader Jack Wallace passes along this fond memory from back in the day:

My brother Lee and I grew up in the 1930s in the Knothole Gang at Sportsman Park. The depression was in full swing and it was all day games. Our mother gave us both 15 cents, 5 cents for the streetcar (Manchester to Grand Ave north) each way, and 5 cents for an ice ball at the park. Admission, of course, was free to kids, The Knothole Gang, in the left field bleachers. Ducky Medwick occasionally tossed a veteran baseball up into the bleachers. Wow, what a wonderful waste! I along with hundreds of other kids became lifelong Cardinal fans on the spot. Brother Lee, alas, moved to Chicago decades ago and defected to the Cubs, but we're still good buddies.

These days big bucks probably flow into the left field seats for most games, and management wouldn't think of letting anyone in free. On the other hand, how about resurrecting the Knothole Gang for a few games each year, letting kids in free? On top of being fun, it might even be good business down the road.

Not a bad idea -- the Cards should take a page from Ducky Medwick, give away tickets to kids, and make fans for life.

Posted 7:00 PM by Brian
BASEBALL AS BOUNCER King Kaufman has an interesting article in Salon about competitive balance [warning: you have to wade through a couple ads to read the whole thing]. As Kaufman sees it, baseball's so-called balance problem has very little to do with some giant flaw and very much to do with the fact that so few baseball teams make the playoffs every year. The other major sports are able to mask their own imbalances simply by letting everyone and their brother into the postseason.

Let's say that the NBA was as strict as MLB when it came to playoff eligibility. The Phoenix Suns, who in real life made the postseason 8 of the last 9 years, would make it only two of those years. Pro hockey is even more famously lenient. Under the present system, the Blues have made the playoffs nine straight years. Under MLB's system: 4 playoffs in 9 years.

Conversely, if baseball sent eight teams in each league to the playoffs, as the NBA and NHL do, the Dodgers would have made the postseason nine years in a row. The big tent would also include the White Sox (7 playoffs in 9 years), the Blue Jays (6 in 9), and the Mariners (8 in 9). If all those teams were waltzing into October each year, do you think anyone would be griping about baseball's "competitive balance problem"?

Baseball is a grand sport not only because it rewards greatness, but because it punishes suckiness. As my friend Val once said, "If God reached down to Earth and picked out something at random, there’s a 99% chance it’d be a piece of shit." That is, most things in life aren't very good. Movies, novels, songs, restaurants, species, systems of government: in each of these endeavors, many fail and few succeed. It's the way of the world. And baseball is perhaps the only major sport to recognize this.

Posted 6:59 PM by Brian
SPEAKING OF COMPETITIVE BALANCE Doug Pappas makes some interesting arguments against the notion that "small teams can't compete":

[A] snapshot of one season's "winners" and "losers" ignores the ebb and flow of team fortunes. If Major League Baseball had proposed contraction 10 years earlier, the Indians and Mariners would have been among the leading candidates for extermination. The Oakland Athletics, heroes of Moneyball for doing more with less, had the majors' highest Opening Day payroll in 1991, the same year the Pirates won their third division title in a row. Over the past 20 years, the Padres and Twins have played in more World Series than the Dodgers or Red Sox. Most tellingly of all, the original list of eight clubs considered for contraction, prepared in December 2000, included all three of the clubs which have won the World Series since then.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bud.

Posted 6:38 PM by Brian
HE'D RATHER FIGHT THAN SWITCH Jose Valentin, a swith-hitter whose OPS was nearly 500 points higher against righties last year, is thinking about hitting exclusively from the left side this season. I don't know why more players don't do this. Like Enrique Wilson -- over the past three years he has a .180 OBP vs. lefties. I mean, how much can the switch-hitting be helping him?

Remember a few years back when Greg Harris threw an inning as a switch-pitcher? Here's an account of what happened:

On September 20, 1995, Harris pitched for the Montreal Expos against the Cincinnati Reds. After his first lefty pitch sailed to the backstop, Harris worked a scoreless ninth inning. He faced four batters (two from each side of the mound), allowing a walk and recording three groundouts. It was the next-to-last appearance in the majors for Harris, who retired after the season.

That's gotta be one of the finest moments in baseball history, right up there with The Shot Heard Round the World and the time Mike Laga hit a foul ball out of Busch Stadium.

Posted 6:15 PM by Brian
PARTY LIKE IT'S 2004 Reason #153 why the Cardinals didn't go after Raul Mondesi:

"Tell me what players don't like to party, especially when they're young," the 32-year-old former Jay said prior to Pittsburgh's 10-8 win yesterday. "It's six months and you play every day. The game's over, there's no reason why you don't go out and party. Why not? Everybody likes to have a party. Everybody likes to have a drink."

It's my opinion that partying every night is not, in and of itself, a problem. But when you're drinking and partying every night, and you assume that everyone drinks and parties as much as you do, then either you're hanging with the wrong crowd or you're seriously self-deluded.

Posted 9:08 AM by Brian
MR. OLD SCHOOL In an interview with the Chicago Daily Herald, Dusty Baker proudly and defiantly pooh-poohs the sabermetric revolution. This is the kind of talk I love to hear from a rival:

"I think walks are overrated unless you can run. If you get a walk and put the pitcher in a stretch, that helps. But the guy who walks and can't run, most of the time they're clogging up the bases for somebody who can run."

But if you look at the guys who have scored the most runs over the past few years, a bunch of them -- Giambi, Thome, Manny, Delgado -- don't have wheels. They score because they're on base; and in fact, you'll find a far greater correlation between runs and OBP than you will between runs and speed.

How 'bout this one from Baker?

"Who's been the champions the last seven, eight years? Have you ever heard the Yankees talk about on-base percentage and walks?"

Actually, yes. The Yankees were one of the first teams to explicitly build their team around walks and OBP, and it paid off handsomely. From 1996 to 2003, the Yankees team OBP was a staggering .356 -- does Baker think this was by accident?

Baker goes on --

"It's called hitting, and it ain't called walking. Do you ever see the top 10 walking?"

Actually, I have. And a good manager should probably take a look too. Although when your team finishes 14th in the league in walks, as the Cubs did last year, perhaps it's best to take a page from Dusty and change the topic.

Posted 6:20 PM by Brian
DOUG ON BUD Is there any sweeter tradition than Doug Pappas correcting, disassembling, and generally embarrassing Bud Selig?

Posted 6:18 PM by Brian
TEN YEARS AGO TODAY... Did this really happen or did I just dream it?

Posted 6:15 PM by Brian
HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THE LONESOME LOSER? From this week's Onion:

Every Song On Radio Reminds Man Of Red Sox Loss

BOSTON—Every song on the radio reminds Red Sox fan Patrick O'Malley of the team's loss to the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series. "'One Call Away' on 94.5 reminded me of how [manager] Grady Little's call kept Pedro Martinez on the mound in the eighth," O'Malley said Monday. "So I flipped over to 97.9, but then Van Halen's 'Poundcake' reminded me of how Yankee batter Aaron Boone pounded Tim Wakefield's knuckleball over the fence." O'Malley then switched to AM radio, where a farm report reminded him of that corndog he threw on the ground when Boone crossed home plate in the game's 11th inning.

Posted 6:11 PM by Brian
WINNING IS BELIEVING Dave Pinto passes along some thoughts about Ozzie Guillen, who has the inside track on winning the Eddie Stanky Memorial "I'm Managing As Fast As I Can" Award for 2004. Guillen says he's going to fire up his boys in spring training, put runners in motion, call for more bunts, and perhaps even don a Patch Adams clown nose to keep things hopping.

I don't generally like managers like this, but to be fair, they sometimes have a positive effect on their players. As Pinto points out, Tony Pena was another sunny, energetic Latino who connected with his team in spring training and got them believing they were winners. Last year the Royals had the best record in spring training and pommel-horsed their way to a 16-3 regular season start.

Everyone knows that established vets, who have nothing to lose, tend to loaf through spring training. It's the rookies and upstarts who hustle, bustle, and grind out every advantage they can. I wonder if teams work the same way. Take the 2001 Yankees. They went 9-20 in spring training because, what the hell, they just won three straight flags and had nothing to prove. Their putrid performance in the Grapefruit League translated to 95 wins in the regular season.

On the other hand, every year some scrappy team comes out of nowhere to surprise everyone. Last year two teams improved their record from 2002 by twenty or more games, the Cubs and the Royals. They also happened to be the two best teams in the Cactus League, with records of 19-8 and 17-11 respectively. Did their turnaround begin in spring training? Is Guillen right -- can a positive attitude in the spring translate to winning well into the fall? And does our point from the other day -- that records in March mean jack shit -- not apply to teams who need to start believing again?

Let's see. Over the past four years, 10 teams improved their record by 15 or more games from the previous year. I tossed out the 2001 Seattle Mariners from the study because they had won 91 games the year before and were apparently in no need of a spring training "attitude adjustment." But of the other teams, here were their spring records for the years that they improved:

2000 Marlins 11-19
2000 Cardinals 17-11
2000 White Sox 18-14
2001 Twins 19-15
2001 Phillies 12-13
2002 Angels 17-16
2002 Expos 15-14
2003 Cubs 17-11
2003 Royals 19-8
--------------------------------
Total spring record: 145-121

I'm not sure what to make of that. It's a noticeably good record, but it only goes back five years (I couldn't find spring records before 1999). And although turnaround teams seem to do pretty well in March, there are counter-examples both ways. For example, the 2001 Phillies won 86 games -- 21 more than the previous year -- but had a pretty flat spring. On the other hand, the 1999 Expos lost 94 games, went 18-11 in spring training the following year, then went out and lost 95 games.

So make of it what you will. You could say, like Guillen, that a good spring will turn you into a good team. But I think it's far more likely that a good team will just so happen to win some games in the spring.

Posted 1:43 PM by Brian
HOW'S THE WEATHER UP THERE? Joe Sheehan has an interesting column today about Twins uber-prospect Joe Mauer. Unlike most baseball folks, Sheehan isn't so rosy about Mauer's future. Why? Because, says Sheehan,

I just don't agree that Mauer is a future star behind the plate, and it has everything to do with his height. Mauer is listed at 6'4", and people that height or taller just don't have long, successful careers at the catching position.

In fact, as Sheehan points out, only 28 catchers in history have collected 200 or more PA's while standing 6'4" or taller. And none are that impressive -- the best is three-time All-Star Tom Haller.

Now, it may be true that excessive height poses unique problems for a catcher. As Sheehan notes, all that bending and squatting can't be good for the knees or the back. On an intuitive level, I'm not sure I buy this -- wouldn't excessive weight be more trouble on the knees and back than excessive height? And there are plenty of catchers who have thrived while carrying heavy loads (Roy Campanella, Yogi Berra, Charles Johnson).

But beyond that, the simple fact is that not many players are 6'4" at any position. Do you know how many second baseman were 6'4" and had over 200 plate appearances in the majors? Three -- Andy Fox, George Kelly, and 2B/guard/GM Danny Ainge. How about shortstops? Just two. One was Cal Ripken, but still, that's a pretty small class. How about third basemen? Only 17. In fact, there have been just 159 non-pitchers who were 6'4" or taller and had 200 PA's in the bigs. The fact that only 28 were catchers just isn't that telling. (In fact, that's more catchers than you'd expect given the total pool of tall players.)

All super-tall players are exceptions, and if Joe Mauer succeeds he'll be one by definition. Mike Piazza is perhaps the greatest hitting catcher of all time. He's 6'3". Ernie Lombardi was 6'3". So were Lance Parrish, Bill Freehan, and Carlton Fisk. So you're gonna have a hard time convincing me that the extra inch on Mauer is going to do him in.

Posted 5:25 PM by Brian
BIRDS OF A FEATHER If you've got some time, rush over to Batter's Box and luxuriate in this entertaining breakdown of the 2004 Cardinals. I'd quote snippets from it but I fear I'd be cutting and pasting for the rest of the day. Thanks to Kent Williams, who daylights as a Jays fan, for his first-class work.

Posted 5:18 PM by Brian
CARDS WIN! Okay, so the other day I said that spring records don't matter -- it still feels good to get off the schneide. (Perhaps the worst legacy of Chris Berman is that I can hear his obnoxious voice in my head when certain words come up, and 'schneide' is one of them.) Today Mark Quinn hit a two-out bomb in the bottom of the ninth to walk off with the victory.

Posted 5:13 PM by Brian
DORIAN GRAY Here's a nice little article about ageless wonder Julio Franco. It includes his retort to professional moron Andy Van Slyke, who recklessly accused Franco of using steroids. Replied Franco, "I am on the juice. The juice of Jesus of Nazareth." (I'm not sure I want to know what that is exactly.)

Then there's this priceless bit about Franco in this year's Baseball Prospectus:

Back in the days of leopard prints and Huxtables, how many kids in Lorain and Shaker Heights messed up their baseball careers by attempting to imitate Franco's tornado of a swing? A generation later, those kids are accountants and lawyers and gas station attendants, and Franco is still making a living playing major league baseball.

By the way, if you haven't yet obtained a copy of this year's Prospectus, I can assure you that it's well worth it. In fact, the chapter on the Atlanta Braves -- which is one of the most cogent pieces of baseball analysis I've ever read -- is alone worth the $12.57 pricetag.

Posted 5:03 PM by Brian
WELCOME If you get a chance, stroll on by and say hello to a new Cardinals weblog called The Cardinal Nation. Contrary to popular belief, the Cardinal Nation and Redbird Nation are not enemies -- they belong to a number of mutual alliances, and we hope to someday cooperate with them on various international pacts and treaties.

Posted 4:52 PM by Brian
LINEUPECTOMY Is Tony La Russa turning over a new leaf? Check out this tidbit from Gammons:

Tony La Russa is thinking about batting Jim Edmonds second in front of Albert Pujols in the Cardinals' batting order. "For my leadoff hitter, what I care about is on-base percentage; it doesn't do any good to steal 40 bases if you're on base 30 percent of the time. But in that two hole I like the pull power, through the holes and the gaps, and Jim will get some good pitches to hit in front of Albert."

I like the thinking from TLR. Last year I presented my ideal lineup for the Cardinals, but things get trickier now with Drew, Marrero, and Perez out of the picture. Drew gave us some left-handed pop, and Perez and Marrero made good platoon partners. I guess if I had to make out a lineup today I'd do it like this:

vs. RHP
1. Renteria, SS
2. Edmonds, CF
3. Pujols, 1B
4. Rolen, 3B
5. Sanders, RF
6. Anderson, 2B
7. Lankford??, LF
8. Matheny, C

vs. LHP
1. Renteria, SS
2. Rolen, 3B
3. Pujols, 1B
4. Sanders, RF
5. Edmonds, CF
6. Matheny, C
7. Quinn??, LF
8. Anderson/Hart, 2B

A few things jump out at me. First, I have no clue who to play in left; all options are bad. And in general our parade of substandard players out there points up the obvious: we have a sick top half of the lineup and a sickly bottom half.

Second, Edmonds (.426 OBP vs. RH the last three years) is a fine top of the lineup hitter. You waste some of his homerability up there, but not much -- his isolated power was actually higher last year against southpaws. And then against lefties you bat Rolen second. He's the reverse of Edmonds: incredible on-base abilities vs. lefties, better power vs. righties.

I have Reggie Sanders batting cleanup against left-handers -- last year he mashed 'em to the tune of a .611 slugging percentage. He's not nearly as hot against RHers, but he's better than our other options in the #5 hole. I also slid Matheny up against lefties. Historically he's been an equal-opportunity annoyer against pitchers from either side, but he showed some vigor vs. lefties last year, so maybe it'll stick. I wish he didn't have to start against righties, but with Widger as our backup, the only solution is to hide Matheny in the 8 spot.

Unfortunately both Anderson and Hart hit lefties well, and both have problems against starboarders. I'd probably pencil in Anderson as my usual starter, but La Russa might want to get creative with some kind of platoon -- like start Hart (who's a better fielder) with a groundballer like Morris on the mound, and start Anderson with a flyballer like Woody Williams. Or start Hart, who does well in sunshine, during day games. Something like that.

One other casualty: last season the Cardinals were in position to go righty-lefty-righty-lefty-righty-lefty-righty from the 1 through 7 spots, which was quite a gauntlet for opposing managers trying to maximize the platoon advantage in the late innings. This year Edmonds is our only legit threat from the left side, which not only hurts us in the late innings, it could be downright deadly against Clemens/Oswalt/Miller, and especially against the Cubs' all-righthanded rotation.

Posted 4:15 PM by Brian
BEWARE Technically, I guess, you could call our new stadium Busch III -- Sportsman's Park was renamed Busch Stadium from 1953 to 1965, and our current ballpark is known as Busch II. But there's trouble a-brewin' with B3: apparently it's being built on ground that was once used as holding pens for slaves; and later the site was used as a military prison.

Some historians don't like that the Cardinals are disrupting a possible archaeological treasure. But screw history -- I'm more concerned about those pissed-off slaves and prisoners haunting us for decades to come, maybe even rising out of the ground to throw lightning bolts at Scott Rolen like the ghouls in Poltergeist.

Posted 4:01 PM by Brian
IDLE SPRING I had a conversation today with my cousin Mark and my friend Dan which included the following:

Mark: Who's the fattest player in baseball?
Dan: Jorge Posada's ass. I'm serious, it looks like Brian DePalma's.

Posted 9:17 PM by Brian
PITCHING WINS CHAMPIONSHIPZZZZZzzzz The infamous Phil Rogers speculates that 2004 will be Tony La Russa's last in St. Louis. Makes sense: if he wins it all, he'll go out in style; if he falls short, well, then, that's yet another season he failed to do what he was hired to do.

So why hasn't TLR brought home a ring to St. Louis? According to Rogers, it's the dearth of arms:

The Cardinals have won with their lineups. The Oakland teams that went to the World Series three years in a row (1988-90) were built around the will of pitchers Dave Stewart, Bob Welch, Dennis Eckersley, Gene Nelson and Rick Honeycutt. If you want to win in October, you had better have superior pitching. Jocketty simply hasn't given La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan enough to work with.

I'm not so sure about that. The Cardinals have gone to the postseason in four of the eight seasons since Tony donned the birds on the bat. Here's our league rank in runs scored for those seasons --

1996 7th
2000 4th
2001 4th
2002 2nd

Pretty nifty, that's for sure. Now here's our rank those same years in terms of team ERA --

1996 6th
2000 7th
2001 3rd
2002 4th

Do you see any huge edge there? In our division-winning years, our hitters have finished, on average, fourth in the league at scoring runs. Our pitchers have finished, on average, fifth in the league at preventing runs.

One could certainly make the point that our '96 and '00 clubs were short on pitching -- they were sorta middle-of-the-pack (although our hitters in '96 weren't any better). But our '01 and '02 teams had plenty of firepower from the mound. In fact, those staffs even picked it up a notch in the postseason:

2001
Reg. Season ERA: 3.96
Postseason ERA: 2.06

2002
Reg. Season ERA: 3.70
Postseason ERA: 3.44

So I don't think you can claim that La Russa hasn't had the horses to win. He has. In fact, from '00 to '02 the Cardinals were -- along with the Astros, D'backs, and Giants -- among the most balanced teams in the National League. Two of those teams went to the World Series, and two didn't, only because they didn't execute in the playoffs.

And that's what this boils down to. Some of La Russa's teams have fared poorly in the postseason because of forces beyond his control -- like Ankiel melting down in 2000, or the Cards hitting horribly with runners in scoring position in 2002. But some of these series were lost because of crucial tactical errors in the heat of battle. I think it's fair to lay those at the feet of our skipper.

Posted 9:16 PM by Brian
THE SOLUTION Do you think we could hide one of these under Taguchi's uniform during games?

Posted 8:52 PM by Brian
TOOLING So Jason Marquis is trying to tame the sinker. In the past he's relied more on a four-seam fastball, but Dave Duncan has steered him toward the two-seam sinking fastball. (Briefly, two-seamers have more sink action, and four-seamers, which sink less rapidly, fool the batter into swinging below where the ball crosses home plate.)

The effect of good coaching is one of the hardest things to quantify -- it's basically unchartered territory for sabermetrics. Flashback to winter 1997: Cubs hitting coach Jeff Pentland gives Sammy Sosa a better trigger mechanism with his front foot, teaches him to drive pitches to right field, and drills him on the virtues of taking pitches. Sosa responds with 292 homers over the next five years.

August 2001: Dave Duncan teaches Woody Williams a good, hard changeup -- in fact, I was at Dodger Stadium the night Woody first tried it out -- and Woody steps up with a four-hit complete game. Before the changeup Woody's ERA is a roomy 4.92 in 28 starts; afterwards, 0.94 in six starts. In fact, that pitch changed WW's career around -- since that night at Chavez Ravine, he's lopped nearly 40 points off his lifetime ERA as a starter.

You just can't account for stuff like that. Does this mean that Jason Marquis will experience a similar turnaround? That's my point -- it's almost impossible to tell when someone will become the next Sosa or Williams, and when they're just monkeying around.

Posted 6:57 PM by Brian
FROM UP NORTH Christian Ruzich lobs a friendly stinkbomb our way with a dig about Albert Pujols' age. And just for that I've decided not to release the photo I have of Pujols shaking hands with John F. Kennedy.

By the way, if you want to read a good breakdown of the 2004 Cubs, read Christian's roundtable discussion with an all-star lineup of Cubs bloggers. I read Baseball Prospectus' chapter on the Cubbies last night, and I still favor them to win the division, but, like all teams, they have a number of weak pressure-points: their ability to generate runs, the age of their corner outfielders, Patterson's wheels, the overwhelming righthandedness of their lineup, the health of their middle relievers, workload issues with Zambrano, Wood, etc.

Don't get me wrong -- the Cubs' strengths far outweigh their weaknesses, but there are ways for this team to lose. And at this point I'm making like Tony Soprano, itching to go bear-hunting.

Posted 6:28 PM by Brian
OL' SOFT HANDS During Sunday's spring training game, Alex Rodriguez got his first upfront glimpse of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry:

[O]ne tasteless Red Sox fan walked around with a sign bearing a picture of Derek Jeter's face superimposed on Cynthia Rodriguez's body. It created a far different image of the original Sports Illustrated swimsuit picture of A-Rod and his wife. On one side, the sign read, "A-Rod and Derek Cowboy Up N.Y. Style." The other side said, " 'A-Rod has such soft hands' -- Derek."

Can you imagine working that hard on a sign that lame?

After the game A-Rod said, "the major craziness is behind us." Somehow I have a feeling that's not quite accurate...

Posted 6:18 PM by Brian
THE CLOWN PRINCE OF VERO BEACH I get a kick out of Jose Lima. He's annoying as hell if he's beating your team, and entertaining as hell when not (and over the last few years, that's been pretty much all the time). After pitching a shutout in 1:41 in 2002, Lima said, "I think the home plate umpire might have had a date tonight, because he had a big zone. I don't have a date, but I might be able to get one after this."

Now here's his take on his sojourn last year with the Newark Bears: "I was nowhere. I was making $3,000 a month. My cell phone bill is higher than that." Later he said "It's still Lima Time, trust me. There's a lot of Lima Time left."

I don't know why, but this reminds me of Andre 3000 accepting the Grammy for Album of the Year and saying to the crowd, with the utmost solemnity and gratitude, "We love you alls. Stank you. Stank you. Stank you very much."

Posted 6:06 PM by Brian
OUR RESIDENT SUPERSTAR Peter Gammons finally turns his attention west of the Adirondacks with a fine portrait of Prince Albert Pujols. I like how Pujols goes about things -- always trying to achieve Max Q.

Posted 6:05 PM by Brian
BENES VS. BENES Poor Alan Benes. It's bad enough that his arm nearly fell off a few years ago, even worse that he's had to go through life as "the other Benes" (the other being Andy, not Elaine.) Remember that game a couple years ago, where Andy beat Alan head to head, even knocking a couple hits off his own brother? Well, now we have this article in the Post-Dispatch. The webpage has since been changed, but when I first read it last night, it had lots of encouraging words about Alan -- and a photograph of Andy.

Posted 5:48 PM by Brian
IF BALLPLAYERS WERE CATHODE RAYS Aaron Gleeman has a post in which he compares ballplayers to TV shows. Aaron has excellent taste, as evidenced by his kudos to the Sopranos (TV's version of Barry Bonds), the Daily Show (Manny Ramirez), and the Wire (A-Rod). But then he compares Six Feet Under to Albert Pujols, perhaps the greatest insult ever to Phat Al. I'd say a better comp for Six Feet Under is Mike Matheny -- long on hype and hardware, short on substance.

Posted 5:01 PM by Brian
OUT OF LEFTFIELD Get Up, Baby! has a nice breakdown of the Cards' logjam in leftfield. He recommends a platoon of Ray Lankford and Mark Quinn as the starters, but for the most part he is, like me, totally unimpressed with any of our options.

Walt's solution to the hole in left is an eerie reminder of the way he handled our bullpen shortages heading into last season: collect a crudload of has-been's and never-was's, throw them all against the wall, and see if something sticks. And we all know how that plan worked out...

Posted 4:47 PM by Brian
SMALL SAMPLE SIZE FEVER Check out this note from the Post-Dispatch:

Second baseman Bo Hart, grabbing the early lead in the second-base derby, had his second successive multihit game Saturday, collecting three singles.

Naturally whatever Bo Hart did yesterday or tomorrow or the next day will have no bearing on who he fundamentally is as a ballplayer. My fear, however, is that La Russa will set his depth chart based on a handful of ABs over the next couple weeks. If you recall, that's precisely how he axed pitcher Al Levine, who had a 7.20 in only 10 spring training innings last year (RBN later called cutting Levine the worst move the Cards brass made all season).

To put spring stats in perspective, consider some of these batting averages from last year's Grapefruit season: Joe Girardi (.379), Mike Matheny (.373), Miguel Cairo (.358), Edgar Renteria (.208).

The fact is, anyone above AA can hit over .300 for a couple weeks against good pitching, but the distortions are compounded in spring training: an abundance of minor leaguers and non-roster invitees, unbalanced schedules, veterans treating games like calisthenics. Bo Hart certainly deserves some kind of spot on the Cardinals team this year, but the thousands of professional at bats he took before this week are better indicators of how he'll do than a 3-for-5 afternoon on Saturday.

Posted 4:14 PM by Brian
HEAVYWEIGHTS Fun with Win Shares stays true to its name and takes a fun look at the greatest hitting franchises of all-time. I wish he'd have run the numbers since 1900 (as far as I can tell he went back to 1876 for some clubs), but that's a small quibble. The Yankess, as usual, come in first, whereas the Cards finish in fourth place behind the Gints and Trolley Dodgers. The weakest hitting franchise? The Padres. Among original teams, the Phillies.

Posted 4:02 PM by Brian
CALM DOWN Someone needs to get Matt Morris some relaxation tapes, or a good yoga instructor, or simply a box of Nembutal. After getting pounded by the Mets on Friday night, he said

"I was a little amped up the first time out there. My [pitches] were up and they seemed to be sitting back on my curveball."

Morris frequently gets over-adrenalized at the beginning of starts, which is part of the reason teams have an OPS 150 higher against him in the first inning as compared to the rest of game. And if Matty is getting too amped up against a bunch of hangers-on from Tidewater in early March, then you gotta wonder how he'll fare when he tangles with, say, Clemens and the lumber company down in Houston.

Posted 3:45 PM by Brian
THROWING DAYS Josh Schulz has a great response to our post suggesting the Cardinals give the four-man rotation a whirl. Josh suggests that the Cards try, instead, a modified five-man rotation with the best starters working out of relief on selected off-days.

Indeed, there are plenty of reasons to buy into this strategy, not least because it was used successfully in the big leagues for generations. Hall of Famers like Lefty Grove and Waite Hoyt were frequently used out of the pen, and the practice still survives today in the form of oddities like Miguel Batista (who's had at least 9 starts and 7 relief appearances every year since 1998).

Posted 3:23 PM by Brian
PINSTRIPED PIN-UP BOY Who's the biggest star in baseball? According to this recent Harris Interactive Poll, it's Yanks shortstop/Visa pitchman Derek Jeter. Wonder if that's why A-Rod is playing third instead of short.

On Harris' site I also found a 2003 poll asking people to name their favorite baseball team. The Cardinals finished #14, with only 3% of the vote, in between the Rangers and (gulp) Tigers. This Kucinich-worthy performance is a freefall from 1999, when the Cards, no doubt fueled by McGwirelust, finished in fourth.

Posted 3:02 PM by Brian
KNOWN UNKNOWNS David Pinto has a welcome reminder when it comes to the issue of steroids:

There is way too much we don't know here. We don't know who used steroids and who didn't. We don't know which drugs were used. We don't know how much the results of a weight training/steroid regimen are attributable to steroids. We don't know if the doses taken can be severely reduced with the same results. We don't know if there is a level of use where health risks are acceptable.

That's precisely why I have so little patience for the sports call-in mentality that's already lynched Bonds, Sheffield, and, while they were at it, McGwire and Sosa too. Are those guys guilty? Should their records be stripped? I don't know, and I won't know until we have some clear-eyed answers to some of the above questions.

(If you want to read some more solid writing along these lines, read this article from the Miami Herald by columnist Dan Le Batard. And thanks to reader Mike Hamel for the link.)

Posted 2:51 PM by Brian
DOES SPRING TRAINING MATTER? On some level, of course it matters, if for no other reason than as an act of national foreplay before the vernal equinox. But should we be concerned that the Cardinals haven't yet won a game in the Grapefruit League? Michael Wolverton studied the issue a year ago and came to an emphatic conclusion: won-loss records in March don't mean jack shit.

Posted 2:42 PM by Brian
ET TU, JAYSON? I missed this offseason roundup item from Jayson Stark in February -- the third most outrageous contract handed out this winter:

Cardinals give two-year deal and $4.2 million to a pitcher (Julian Tavarez) who struck out 39 in 83 2/3 innings and has worked for five teams in five years.

For 5 more reasons to question the money we shelled out, just dip into our archives.

Posted 2:36 PM by Brian
TONY C. Here's a loving tribute to Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro, cut down before his prime by a Jack Hamilton fastball. It includes this gruesome account of the beanball itself:

I got an eye-witness account of the tragedy after I had befriended a longtime usher who had frequented the bleachers since the early ‘40’s. The attendant, a portly curmudgeon we always called, "The Whale," gave me the particulars as I watched a game with him from centerfield in July 1969. "Just as Tony was about to hit, some @#%$ let off a smoke bomb which encircled the field in no time," the Whale informed me. "It took about five minutes for the smoke to settle. During that time, Jack Hamilton never even warmed up. When the smoke finally cleared, he threw a high fastball to Tony. The kid never had a chance. The sickening thing about it was the fact that when the ball struck Tony’s cheek, it sounded like a loud clap..."

The rest of the piece goes far beyond these dramatics, and serves as a fine reminder to anyone who grew up with baseball heroes.

Posted 5:19 PM by Brian
THE HAMSTER WHEEL Rob Neyer has a column today about this offseason's biggest gainers and losers. The Orioles, Cubs, and Angels are among the biggest scavengers, larding up on winter nutrients for the long summer months ahead, whereas the White Sox, Twins, and Braves re-enacted Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound" when it came to top-flight talent.

The Cardinals, predictably, made neither list. We're considered neither winners nor losers heading into the regular season, which is why we're ranked a ho-hum 17th in ESPN's offseason power rankings, which is also why commentators describe the Cardinals as "standing still," "running in place," and generally tripping behind the Astros and Cubs like Bill Murray on the treadmill in Lost in Translation.

On the face of it, this analysis makes sense. Yes, the Cardinals bulked up their pen, but they also lost some lineup staples (Tino, Vina, Drew), and did little more than move some pawns around in our starting rotation. It seems as if Walt Jocketty took an 85-win team, shuffled some parts around, and came out with an 85-win team, much like a woman who took miracle breast-enlargement oils while her bust size remained exactly the same.

Let's look a little closer and see if this hold true. One way to quantify the talent drain is to see how many Win Shares we lost from last season:

Drew 13
Tino 11
Perez 7
Palmeiro 6
Tomko 6
Stephenson 5
Vina 5
Cairo 3
Marrero 3
Hitchcock 2
DeJean 1
Yan 1
Fassero 0
Girardi 0
Painter 0
Springer 0
------------- --
Total = 63

That's a lot of piddly little losses, but they do add up. Now let's see who we added:

Sanders 18
Suppan 14
Anderson 12
Tavarez 10
King 5
Lincoln 2
Marquis 1
Butler 0
L. Martinez 0
Cox n/a
Rust n/a
Wainwright n/a
------------- ----
Total = 62

Wow. That's a pretty striking illustration of the "hamster wheel" effect -- 63 Win Shares lost, 62 gained, for a net loss of one Win Share, or one-third of a win, or, basically, no change whatsoever.

But, ah, you might say -- that's based on performance from last season. What about this year? Is there any way to size up how the new talent might do against the ex-Cardinals? As a matter of fact, there is. We can take the projected Values Above Replacement Level for our imports and exports and see how they do. (Mind you, these projections are awfully inexact when it comes to individual players, but they work much better for lump groups of players.) So here goes:

Projected VORP
Drew 23.7
Vina 12.4
Tomko 12.3
Tino 10.1
DeJean 9
Perez 8.7
Fassero 7.1
Cairo 6.1
Hitchcock 4.6
Marrero 3.8
Palmeiro -2.7
Yan n/a
Stephenson injured
Girardi retired
Painter retired
Springer retired
------------- -------
Total = 95.1

That's something like 9 wins right there -- not a ton, but obvioiusly not negligible. Now let's do the same thing for our reinforcements:

Projected VORP
Suppan 16.7
Sanders 16.5
Anderson 13.8
Lincoln 10.2
King 9.5
Butler 9
Tavarez 8.8
Marquis 8.3
L. Martinez 2
Cox n/a
Rust n/a
------------- -----
Total = 94.8

As Bob Carpenter might say, "Are you kidding me?" Once again our additions and subtraction finish in pretty much a dead heat. Jocketty's plan all winter was to add pitching, but he had to give on the hitting, as the above projections show:

Net VORP, pitching: +22.5
Net VORP, hitting: -22.8
Net VORP, hitting and pitching: -0.3

So it seems as if our hypothesis is right: the Cards do seem to be standing still. However... this analysis is still pretty crude, and comes with several caveats. Namely:

• Some of the above projections seem awfully fishy. Jeff Fassero, 7 runs above replacement level? I think BP's PECOTA forecasting system accidentally used Fassero's numbers from 1997 to figure out what he'd do next year. On the other hand, that projection for O-Pal seems disrespectfully low, so maybe, as I said above, this all balances out at the group level.

• The Cardinals had easily the best offense in the NL Central last year, as well as the worst bullpen. So apportioning runs away from the hitting side of the ledger and over to the bullpen ledger is not a bad idea. After all, filling a few bullpen slots with replacement-level arms would still constitute an upgrade over last season. The question is whether we'll be able to field replacement-level talent at, say, second base or left field.

• There are other nuances that don't factor into the numbers. For example, we did make our team younger with the additions of Marquis and Wainwright. We also made our team somewhat cheaper, which allowed us to sign Pujols to a long-term deal. And finally, there are things that PECOTA does account for (like the injury histories of Drew, Sanders, and Marrero), but it does so rather bluntly, so you might want to adjust accordingly.

Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that the 2004 Cardinals, even after some minor cosmetic surgery, should bear a striking resemblance to a team we're all familiar with: the 2003 Cardinals.

Posted 3:11 PM by Brian
NATTERING NABOBS I really like this tidbit from Jon Weisman:

Listening to NPR on the way home from work last night, Nina Totenberg was continuing her series on the release of the papers of late Justice Harry Blackmun. Totenberg found a note, passed between two justices during hearings on October 10, 1973, of national importance. The note read:

Vice President Spiro Agnew has resigned.

Mets 2, Reds 0.

Looking at Retrosheet, the score was an update just after the first inning of the final game of the National League Championship Series. Big stuff for the highest court in the land.

I love that kinda stuff. Reminds me of when my brother Jimmy got married a few years back, during the clinching game of the Cardinals-Braves divisional series. As the ceremony went on at the altar, my Uncle Mike sat near the back of the church with an earpiece tuned into KMOX, and flashed hand signals through several relatives, up to the front pews, so that us groomsmen could keep track of the score. I think my brother and sister-in-law exchanged I do's right about the same time Jim Edmonds yanked a two-run homer off Kevin Millwood. Happy day.

Posted 3:05 PM by Brian
HOT SCOTT Dayn Perry recommends we all take a moment and count our blessings:

Remember when Scott Rolen was considered a disappointment in some circles? Check out these career numbers: .282/.374/.510, 192 homers, 528 walks. Throw in five Gold Gloves and don't forget that he's still 28 years of age. Rolen's not a disappointment; he's a future Hall of Famer, health permitting.

A future Hall of Famer? Why not? Here's the list of most Runs Created Above Average among all third basemen through age 28:

1. Eddie Mathews, 482
2. George Brett, 278
3. Home Run Baker, 258
4. Chipper Jones, 253
5. Dick Allen, 231
6. Wade Boggs, 217
7. Ron Santo, 212
8. Mike Schmidt, 197
9. Scott Rolen, 189
10. Harlond Clift, 139

Not bad company.

Posted 2:51 PM by Brian
DIZZY IZZY Beyond some rumors and random insights, I don't know much about the personalities of the various Cardinals player. Take Jason Isringhausen: grew up in a farming community in southwest Illinois; always seemed to me like a shy, softspoken, respectable sort. Or, as Newsday reminds us, maybe not:

Isringhausen nearly killed himself during spring training in 1993 when he was climbing up the side of an apartment building -- drunk -- and fell three stories, landing on his head. He needed 22 stitches to close the gash in his head, and he also cracked his sternum and broke both of his big toes. Doctors told him he was lucky to have been so intoxicated because it helped relax his body. Otherwise, he might have been killed.

Ah, spring training memories. But wait, there's more:

1997 was a particularly bad year for Isringhausen. After shoulder and elbow surgery, he punched a trash can with his pitching hand during his first rehab start, breaking his wrist. He contracted tuberculosis and stabbed himself in the thigh with a large knife while trying to open a package containing an anti-theft device for his car. Isringhausen also infuriated the Mets when they discovered he had been playing slow-pitch softball for a local strip joint during one of his rehab stints in Port St. Lucie.

Izzy says he's no longer the drunken fratboy he was a few years back. Perhaps he funnelled all that lunacy into the vaunted 'closer's mentality' I've heard rumors about...

Posted 2:43 PM by Brian
DUBYA IN ELBA Speaking of reformed-drunk fratboys, Elephants in Oakland has some interesting speculation on what our Commander in Chief might do after he packs his bags at the White House.

Posted 2:39 PM by Brian
MAC IS BACK So Big Mac will be back at Busch to be honored before our April 17th game against the Rockies. Rest assured plenty of media types will be buzzing about, just waiting to make some snarky comments about McGwire's deflated muscle mass.

But it's fitting that Mac should be around, if only because the current Cards team reminds me so much of the late-'90s McGwirebirds. As Baseball Prospectus 2004 stated in its section about the Cardinals:

Ultimately, 2003 turned out to be an echo of Mark McGwire's healthy years in St. Louis -- historical achievements run to seed because of a sub-optimal supporting cast.

And on April 17th, Bo Hart, Kerry Robinson and the rest of our sub-optimal supporting cast will be there to make McGwire feel at home.

Posted 2:23 PM by Brian
PIRATES CLINCH NL CENTRAL That's because Dave Parker has officially lifted the hex he placed on the team back in 1983. Said Parker,

"I think I said they wouldn't win anything for 20 years when I left in '83. So it's time to lift that and let them go on. It was something I said, and I thought about it coming down here. Lift that hex off Pittsburgh now."

Forgive me for being picky, but by my reckoning Parker didn't lift any hex -- the 20-year curse simply expired at the end of the 2003 season. Either way, it's great news for the people of Pittsburgh.

Team record with Dave Parker: 931-789 .541
Team record since he hexed them: 1,487-1,682 .469

Posted 4:57 PM by Brian
FOUR IN THE HAND BEATS FIVE IN THE BUSH Rany Jazayerli has a cause: he thinks the five-man rotation is a historical anomaly, a glitch, with no more logic behind it than using your ace reliever exclusively in the ninth inning with a lead, or waiting an hour after meals to go swimming.

Jazayerli first laid out his case a couple years ago in a series of articles for Baseball Prospectus, and he revisited the idea just yesterday. I encourage you to read the whole series, but if you're too lazy, or stoned, or your boss yells at you for spending too much time on the Internet, I'll summarize Rany's thoughts for you:

1. The five-man rotation does not keep starters any healthier than the four-man rotation.
2. Arm injuries do not result from throwing more innings per se. They result from throwing more innings while tired, i.e., if pitchers are kept in games too long.
3. Statistical data suggest that pitchers have better command on three days' rest than four.
4. There are obvious tactical benefits that come from taking innings away from the worst pitchers on your staff and giving them to your best.

I consider this is some of the soundest baseball analysis of the last couple years -- as with the best of Bill James, I felt clouds parting and scales falling from my eyes. But moreover, I could see how teams with limited arms and limited resources (like, oh, say, the Cardinals) could benefit hugely from this seismic shift in the rotation.

The Cards' 2004 rotation stacks up as Morris, Williams, Suppan, Carpenter, and Marquis. Here are their projected Value Above Replacement Level numbers for the upcoming year:

Morris: 30.8
Woody: 24.4
Suppan: 21.3
Carpenter: 12.0
Marquis: 8.2
-----------------
Total: 96.7

That's middle-of-the-pack, at best. Now let's consider what they might do if you drop the 5th starter and shift each remaining starter's workload by -- abacus, please -- 25% (which is what would occur if each guy got 8 extra starts per season). Here's what you'd get:

Morris: 38.5
Woody: 30.5
Suppan: 26.6
Carpenter: 15.0
---------------------
Total: 110.6

If every ten runs above replacement level is equal to one win, that's one and a half wins right there. What's more, you'd have Marquis out of the bullpen, or as backup if any of the above starters got injured of experienced an off year. With Marquis in the pen, you can then drop your worst reliever into the minors, carry an extra hitting or fielding specialist off the bench, and increase your team's overall flexibility. You'd also ensure that your best starters are pitching more often, which, beyond the obvious tangible benefits, would increase your drawing power at the gate.

Is this just a pipe dream? I don't know -- if you accept Jazayerli's premise, it should work to some degree. But it might not be feasible PR-wise. Consider the Red Sox situation last year. They decided not to go with a traditional closer, which raised a shitstorm in the Boston media -- so much so that it became a distraction to the team; players started believing the hype and revolting against management. And if players are too stubborn to go along with the program, well, then, that's a problem.

I could easily see the same situation with a four-man rotation. It might go well for a couple weeks, or even a couple months, but what happens when Matt Morris or Woody Williams throws out his shoulder? Even if the bad shoulder had absolutely nothing to do with the four-man rotation, you can sure as hell bet it would take the heat for it.

Of course, some pitchers might welcome the increased workload (more innings = bigger numbers = more $$$), but I can just as easily see it fomenting dissension in the ranks. You would need a trustworthy, persuasive leader to pull it off, and I'm not convinced TLR is the guy to do it. (Then again, players do seem to respect him, and he's certainly survived other roster eccentricities in the past.)

So maybe the four-man rotation would be too big a risk for this team at this time. But what about one of those teams going nowhere, like, say, the Brewers? What do they have to lose? I mean, there's always a chance that a stunt of any kind would downgrade them from "pathetic losers" to "desperate laughingstocks," but let's be honest: aren't they flirting with the latter already?

Let's see how their starting five projects for this season:

Sheets: 32.3
Davis: 4.3
Kinney: 2.5
Franklin: 1.1
Obermueller: -2.6
-----------------------
Total: 37.6

Egads. Now here's what they might do if they went with four starters:

Sheets: 40.4
Davis: 5.4
Kinney: 3.1
Franklin: 1.4
--------------------
Total: 50.3

Not a huge upgrade, no, but at least it's something. Hell, if I were them I'd try it. Billy Beane was able to institute a lot progressive changes up in Oakland a few years ago because the team was otherwise screwed, and ownership was ripe for gambles. What's more, there's not an owner out there who wouldn't like to pinch a few pennies, and if you could convince the boys upstairs (or the girls upstairs) that they'd save cash by paying a pitcher reliever-money rather than starter-money, well, they just might go along for the ride.

Posted 9:41 AM by Brian
THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE Fire Brand has a post up in which he speculates that Barry Bonds began using steroids in 1988. His evidence? Well, that's when he started walking more and stealing fewer bases. Fire Brand uses the same reasoning to conclude that Bonds pumped up on 'roids in 1988, 1990, 1994, and 2001.

This, frankly, is silly. By the same logic, Norm Cash used steroids in 1961, Jeff Blauser did in 1997, and Bret Boone did in 2001 and again in 2003. There are several better explanations for these performance blips -- age, random fluctuations, etc. What's more, the effects of steroids aren't like some water valve or toggle switch that you can switch on and off whenever you feel like it.

For a much more logical take on steroids, read Jon Weisman over at Dodger Thoughts. He approaches the problem from the ground up, with no baggage, and arrives at some eminently reasonable positions.

Posted 9:12 AM by Brian
THE PROTO-PUJOLS Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus explains exactly why his PECOTA forecasting system isn't ready to enshrine Albert Pujols in the Hall of Fame:

[T]here are basically two things that can happen with Albert Pujols. He can hold steady, perhaps improving a little bit, and be the next Hank Aaron (his #3 comparable). That's entirely likely. But he could also have a cataclysmic decline on the order of somebody like Bob Horner (his #10 comparable). If you take the average of the career values of ten Hank Aarons and ten Bob Horners -- that's essentially what PECOTA is doing -- the result is somewhat worse than the level at which Pujols has currently been performing, because the Aarons improve only a little bit, whereas the Horners decline tremendously. The thing is, it's tough to see the Horners before they happen; nobody thought, in 1983, that Horner would be out of professional baseball by the time that he was 30. But there are a lot of Bob Horners.

In January we compared Albert to DiMaggio, Foxx, and Aaron, but this comparison works just as well --

Hal Trosky through age 23:
AVG .314
OBP .363
SLG .568
HR 104

Pujols through age 23:
AVG .334
OBP .412
SLG .613
HR 114

Okay, Pujols is still better, but it's not an outrageous comparison, and Trosky had his last good season at age 27. I still think Albert is right on track for Cooperstown, but it's worth remembering that he has a lot of baseball yet to play.

Posted 8:53 AM by Brian
GLASS HALF-EMPTY The caricature of your average Cubs fan is someone who looks up at a beautiful blue sky and waits for it to fall on top of his head. Yet Christian Ruzich finds some legitimate cause for concern about Mark Prior's inflamed achilles tendon.

Posted 8:48 AM by Brian
LIKE GHOST RUNNERS, EXCEPT THEY'RE NOT GHOSTS While doing some research for the Bonds piece from Tuesday, I stumbled across this weird fact over at Retrosheet:

As late as the 1940s, with the permission of the opposing manager, teams used courtesy runners. These were pinch runners for a player who was hurt, but would be able to return to the game after brief attention or treatment. The courtesy runner was not a real pinch runner since the player replaced was allowed to return to the game when his team took the field, and the runner could still be used later.

Could it be that our National Pastime is not baseball, but... wiffleball?

Posted 8:42 AM by Brian
THANK YOU, P.M. ROGET "Eccentric." "Tough-talking." "Outrageous." Perhaps the greatest legacy of former Reds owner Marge Schott is that she gave newspaper editors new euphemisms for the word "bitchy."

Posted 10:14 PM by Brian
ROID-O-RAMA Back in November, I wrote a little piece arguing for Barry Bonds against those who accused him of steroid use. I still stand by my basic point in that post -- that is, you can't diagnose a roid-monster by weight gains and performance spikes alone -- but I will admit that it's becoming increasingly difficult to buy the notion that Bonds (and his veins) are squeaky clean.

We do know this: Bonds has been accused of receiving steroids and HGH from a nutritional supplements lab implicated in a steroid-distribution ring. What we don't know is how federal investigators received this information or how the San Francisco Chronicle (the paper that broke the story) learned of it. Until those details come to light, I prefer to remain agnostic about whether Bonds received steroids, much less used them.

In the meantime I've been educating myself about steroids and their effects on users. Perhaps the best article from the anti-hysteria crowd comes from Dayn Perry, writing for Reason Online. I urge you to read the whole thing, but if you're looking for a capsule of his views, this paragraph pretty much sums it up:

A more objective survey of steroids' role in sports shows that their health risks, while real, have been grossly exaggerated; that the political response to steroids has been driven more by a moral panic over drug use than by the actual effects of the chemicals; and that the worst problems associated with steroids result from their black-market status rather than their inherent qualities. As for baseball's competitive integrity, steroids pose no greater threat than did other historically contingent "enhancements," ranging from batting helmets to the color line. It is possible, in fact, that many players who use steroids are not noticeably improving their performance as a result.

Chris Yeager, who wrote a fascinating PhD thesis on hitting technique a few months back, supports this idea:

"Mark McGwire hit 49 home runs as a 23-year-old rookie. And, while I think he probably used steroids at some point in his career, he hit home runs primarily because of his excellent technique, his knowledge of the strike zone, and the length of his arms. Barry Bonds could be on steroids, but his power comes from the fact that he has the closest thing to a perfect swing that I've ever seen."

For a more technical and legal take on the steroid controversy, check out this article by Patrick Cox called "Pumping Up the Steroid Hysteria." Although Cox says nothing about the performance-enhancing effects of steroid use, he agrees with Perry that its dangers are greatly exaggerated.

NOW, ABOUT THOSE 73 HOMERS... No matter how much you or I or Dayn Perry or Patrick Cox apologizes for steroids, there has been, and probably always will be, an implied asterisk next to Bonds' single-season home run record. Is there any way to show whether Bonds' tremendous power surge in 2001 is linked to steroids?

JC of Old Fishinghat thinks he's found a way. I'll let him explain:

Steroids ought to increase a hitter's ability to hit the ball harder. This will result in every ball he hits generating more power (i.e. outs become singles, singles become doubles, flyouts become HRs, etc.). This means both his batting average and SLG should go up with steroid use; although, I suspect the effect on batting average would be much less. But, one thing steroids should not change is Bonds's hitting discipline, as measured by his walk rate.

And as JC shows, Bonds' rising home run rate goes hand-in-hand with his rising on-base percentage, meaning his power surge comes more from plate discipline than from steroid use.

JC's conclusion may be accurate, but I think his methodology is all wrong. He assumes that Bonds patient eye, as evidenced by a rise in walks, is what allowed him to take the right pitches and hit more home runs. But why put the cart before the horse? Isn't it just as likely that Bonds' increased power caused him to be pitched around more often, hence the greater walk totals? Isn't it possible that the homers preceded the walks rather than vice versa?

To answer that, we've got to look at Bonds' 2001 season more closely. Through the Giants' first 39 games, Bonds had 15 homers -- a nice clip that would have put him at 62 jacks by the end of the season. But his walk rate was still very ordinary, at least by his standards. He walked 30 times in 144 plate appearances, or .208 of the time. That's consistent with the .195 walk rate Bonds had since he arrived in San Francisco in 1993. In other words, through roughly one quarter of the 2001 season, Bonds was not walking more frequently than usual.

And then something happened. Starting with Game #40 in mid-May, Bonds went on a tear -- I mean a sick tear: a home run against the Marlins on Thursday, then a Bondsapalooza over the weekend that saw him jack a tie-breaking 8th inning homer on Friday against the Braves, three moonshots on Saturday, and then two more on Sunday. For good measure, he parked one off Curt Schilling on Monday, then hit a ninth-inning bomb on Tuesday. Six games, one week, nine home runs. I can still remember the boys on SportsCenter trying to come up with new adjectives to describe the performance.

By that point Bonds was on pace for 86 HRs on the season, and word got out around the league: Do NOT pitch to Barry Bonds. Sure enough, for the rest of the season Bonds' walk rate skyrocketed to .292, which is pretty much where it's been ever since (for the '02-'03 seasons it was at .304). That explains how Bonds was on pace for around 135 walks in May of 2001 and finished with a (then) record 177 when all was said and done.

So I think the pattern is clear: Bonds' homer surge in 2001 came before his walk surge, not the other way around. His on-base percentages bear this out:

OBP through 5/16/01 -- .426
OBP after 5/16/01 -- .543

Again, the .426 figure is very much in line with his career totals up to that point. It was only after the 2001 homer barrage that Bonds started reaching base in more than half his trips to the plate.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the increased power was due to steroids. As Dayn Perry has pointed out, Bonds experienced significant gains in muscle mass by the mid- to late-'90s, but at the time he was still hitting about 35-45 homers per year. In fact, from 1993 to 1999 his HR/100 ABs was "only" 7.93. That figured balooned all the way to 12.18 from 2000 onward, which was years after he packed on the pounds. Surely something accounts for this huge upswing, but it's too easy to chalk it up to sheer brawn.

Posted 10:47 PM by Brian
ONE TOUGH COLOMBIAN We know how revered Edgar Renteria is in his native Columbia -- a few years back he was given the nation's highest honor, the San Carlos Cross of the Order of the Great Knight by Colombian president Ernesto Samper at La Casa de Narino.

But he's been landing some pretty lofty honors in America too. In fact, the notion that Renteria is one of the game's elite shortstops -- right up there with Jeter, Garciaparra, Tejada, and quasi-shortstop Alex Rodriguez -- turned from agitprop to conventional wisdom in the space of about two weeks last summer. It's something you now hear all the time, as in this Post-Dispatch article: Cards Shortstop Earns Comparisons to Elite.

Are those comparisons deserved? Does Renteria belong in a company with the best shortstops in the game? Or does he rank among the best by default, the beneficiary of a shallow talent pool among NL shortstops? Let's poke around some of these issues and see how the local boy stacks up.

First of all, how old is Renteria? Officially he turned 28 last August. But as we mentioned in two posts (here and here) last May, E-Rent might actually be a year younger than he says he is. If so, he's only 27 and his accomplishments become much grander. But in lieu of anything definitive, let's just say he's 28, and if anyone wants to give him extra credit for the age thing, feel free.

How good was he last year? Real good. Not A-Rod good, but arguably the next best big-league shortstop. Superficially Nomar Garciaparra's numbers look better than E-Rent's: he had more hits, runs, RBIs, homers, and extra bases. But he also had 65 extra outs, didn't reach base nearly as often, and, according to the most advanced metrics, was just slightly less productive than Renteria last season. With both Jeter and Tejada experiencing off years, I think it's safe to say that Edgar was the second best shortstop in all of baseball last year.

But was it a fluke? Depends how you look at it. On one hand, 2003 was easily Renteria's best season -- he established career highs in almost every category you care to name. His season may have been among the top 50 ever by a shortstop. It's not unknown for shortstops to register only one truly great season before tailing off (see Rich Aurilia in 2001, or Rico Petrocelli in 1969), and logic says that E-Rent will shrink a bit in 2004.

But there's no reason to think Renteria's year wasn't legit. In fact, the only flukey season on Renteria's resume is 2001, when he set career lows in batting and on-base average, and was worse than he was at age 20. Take out that Rentarrhea season and you see E-Rent steadily improving each year -- he's walking more, striking out less, hitting for more power, rapping out more hits, and becoming more adept on the basepaths. You expect players to spike from ages 26-29, and with E-Rent right in the thick of his prime, you can trust that his growth is the real deal.

So how does he stack up against the Big 3? The Big 3 has always been A-Rod, Jeter, and Garciaparra, but with A-Rod moving to third, we'll have to pencil in Miguel Tejada instead (who deserves to be in this class anyway).

I designed a little study in which I figured each shorstop's established level of production. My formula was simple: I first looked up each guy's equivalent runs (which is similar to runs created) for each of the past three years, then weighted them so that 2003 was 50% greater than 2002, and 2002 was in turn twice as great as 2001. Here's what I ended up with --

Established Equivalent Runs, current shortstops:

1. Miguel Tejada 101.3
2. Nomar Garciaparra 94.3
3. Derek Jeter 94.2
4. Edgar Renteria 91.8
5. Rafael Furcal 81.5
6. Orlando Cabrera 79.3
7. Rich Aurilia 74.0
8. David Eckstein 68.2

And then after that it's a bunch of riffraff.

A couple quick notes before we get back to E-Rent: A-Rod will be playing third this year, so I didn't include him here, but if you're curious his value was a stratospheric 134.3. And Nomar would rank higher were it not for all that time he missed with a bum wrist in 2001. Obviously, injuries should count against a player's record -- after all, it points to a lack of durability -- but if you did factor out that season Nomar would lead the pack with an establish EqR level of 110.8.

Also, I chose not to add defensive prowess into this equation. Renteria is not, in my opinion, as skilled in the field as his reputation suggests. But no one on this list (save Eckstein) is all that handy with a glove, so E-Rent shouldn't be penalized either. And given Jeter's ironworks in the 6-hole, you could argue that Renteria should move into the top 3.

All in all I'd have to say that Renteria does indeed deserve to be included as one of the best players at his position. This is partly due to Renteria's recent surge, and partly because guys like Jeter, while still great, aren't quite as great as they used to be (his best season to date was at age 25, and he turns 30 in June). E-Rent will have to have another stellar season to maintain his status, but he's probably in the best position of all the above players to do that -- he's a couple years younger than Jeter and Nomar, and he's much more patient than Tejada. (In fact, he had the most walks of any shortstop last year besides Alex Rodriguez.)

Unless Furcal or Cabrera goes bonkers this year and widens the circle of elites, I think we can indeed amend the Big 3 to include the Cardinals' #3, the Great Knight of Colombia.