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January 23, 2012

Carmona points out an MLB inequity

Goodbye Fausto! Hello Roberto!

As reported last week, 28-year-old Fausto Carmona is Roberto Hernandez Heredia and perhaps 31 years old.

There are implications here for Carmona-Heredia, for the Indians and, most importantly, for professional baseball and the uneven way it deals with international players.

Since being released on bail, The Sinkerballer Formally Known as Fausto has been apologetic but tight-lipped. He reportedly paid for a false identity that may have incorrectly represented his age. He may have been making periodic payments to maintain the false identity. He eventually balked at paying and somebody talked, leading to his arrest.

He is not the first Latin-American player to take this route. (Last year's most publicized example was Leo Nunez.)

So Heredia lied. But did he do anything wrong to the game of baseball? Does lying about your age and name affect anything about playing the game?

It does not.

While the lies are certainly deplorable, they do not affect the player's ability on the field. People will say that, because his age is uncertain, it could be advantageous for him to have people think he is younger. It could lead to larger bonuses and salaries. He’ll appear more successful since his ability will be compared to that of players younger than him.

But these are issue of deceit based on the current economic model and do not affect the play on the field.

If the same player was actually three years YOUNGER, would we be willing to rectify the situation financially? What happened, as before, is a player found a way to take advantage of the economic system in baseball. For him to be successful, he still had to demonstrate ability and skill.

In doing so, he allegedly broke laws in at least two countries* but he never de-skilled the game. While the misreported younger age would have been helpful during his development, the lying did not give him specific extra ability, or his ability to ignore Lake Erie Midges that Joba Chamberlain could not. Carmona’s lies do not hurt the on-field play of baseball.

* I have no idea if Canada would say anything about a player such as Carmona entering the country with false paperwork. I’m not even sure Canada would prosecute, but I am fairly certain that it is against Canadian law.

When looking at a situation like Carmona’s, I look directly at those running Major League Baseball and the teams. Lying about one’s identity is so advantageous for a specific set of players that it outweighs the risk of punishment. Instead of demonizing players like Carmona and Nunez, it is time to look at the system.

In Japan, younger players are able to develop in a system that gives them the ability to play in their homeland with the possibility of moving to the major leagues in America. In Latin America, players feel the need to break the law to be part of the system. So in one week, Yu Darvish, who has never pitched in even the minor leagues in America, got a $60 million contract after a team paid $51.7 million for the right to give him that contract. During that same week, we learned that, once again a player lied about his identity in an effort to get a portion of that amount of money.

In the end, both players will succeed or fail based on what they do on the field. How they got the opportunity doesn’t affect their ability on the field.

Major League Baseball needs to address the differences. If baseball officials are going to continue to encourage teams to deal individually with international players, they need to address the extreme differences in the system. It is not an easy task. How can baseball expect players not to take the route of Carmona and Nunez when the Darvish situation points out the inequity?

As for the Indians:

While Carmona has not lived up to the promise he flashed in 2007, he has shown, when healthy, to be able to provide a decent set of 30-plus starts and 200-plus innings each year.

In conjunction with this news, it appears the Indians finally pulled the trigger on obtaining Kevin Slowey. The Indians have been interested in him anyway, so this was not in direct relation to Carmona’s issues, but the trade was probably hastened. Carmona will likely end up on the restricted list, leaving the Indians with a hole in the rotation but with an extra $7 million. The Indians gave up Zach Putman, a young pitcher who may have competed for a bullpen position this year.

The Indians have other options for the rotation. David Huff and Jeanmar Gomez will be among those who compete with Slowey for spots behind Justin Masterson, Ubaldo Jimenez, Josh Tomlin and Derek Lowe. In the end, the Indians' depth should be able to cover for Carmona's absence with limited hardship.
Posted by: Mat Kovach

April 08, 2011

Bear territory will still be baseball territory

Today, the University of California, Berkeley announced the reinstatement of its baseball program. According to press reports, $9 million was has been raised and the $10 million target will most likely be reached with ongoing fundraising. Thanks to Stu Gordon (former Cal pitcher, and the leader of a Cal Athletic fundraising program, Bear Backers) for heading up the fundraising efforts.

As background, faced with budget cuts last September, the university was planning to cut four sports programs—baseball, men’s gymnastics, women’s gymnastics and women’s lacrosse, with rugby being pushed into an intramural category. So far, only men’s gymnastics has failed to raise enough money to be reinstated.

I wasn’t expecting this to happen. With the constant talk about cuts in the UC system, it seemed like these sports were more of an afterthought for students. At a college where football is the main talk of the campus, it’s refreshing to see community members find resources to continue fielding these teams.

And as mentioned by Rory Paap, the Bears’ baseball tradition since 1892 and its development of many major leaguers are now preserved for the time being.

The team comes back to Evans Diamond on April 19, facing the UC Davis Aggies. And yes, the rivalry with the Cardinal will continue.
Posted by: Kevin Lai

February 23, 2011

Golden Bear baseball nears extinction

Here’s a list of people you may have heard of:

Les Claypool – the God of Bass – is from the band Primus, Julia Morgan was the architect of the Hearst Castle, Aaron Rodgers is a Superbowl MVP quarterback, Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, Gregory Peck won the Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Jeff Cohen played Chunk in the awesome and unforgettable film The Goonies and Tom Anderson is the co-founder and president of MySpace – though whether or not such an internet destination still exists is unknown to me.

What do they have in common? I’ll tell you, but not just yet. First, know they also have something in common with a handful of others…

Men like Jeff Kent who, according to FanGraphs, produced 61.9 over his career. He won the National League MVP in 2000 and has more home runs than any second baseman ever (377). For these reasons and others, I recently advocated his worthiness of Cooperstown while also admitting he may not be a slam dunk.

There’s also Xavier Nady. He netted the Padres Mike Cameron in a 2005 trade. The Mets received Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez (back when he was promising) for him back in 2006. He netted Jose Tabata, Ross Ohlendorf, Daniel McCutchen and Jeff Karstens for Pittsburgh from the Yankees in 2008. So he may not be Lance Berkman, but he’s fetched a decent prospect or two in his day as a major leaguer. That’s worth something.

Conor Jackson nearly hit for the cycle in 2008, would have in his final at bat with a double off Greg Maddux. Instead, he motored to third for his second triple of the day. You don’t see that too often. He then got Valley Fever in 2009 which wiped out his season. He’s now playing for the A’s, until Billy Beane decides he is not—hey, it seems to happen pretty often.

Darren Lewis won a Gold Glove as a San Francisco Giant in 1994. That same season, his major league record was finally set at 392 straight games without an error when he let a Cliff Floyd hit slip under his glove after 938 consecutive chances of avoiding such a blunder. Heck, Dusty Baker even named his son—the same that owes his life to J.T. Snow—after him.

Brandon Morrow, Geoff Blum, Mike Epstein, Brian Horwitz, Jackie Jensen, Kevin Maas, Tyler Walker and Baseball America Top-100 player Brett Jackson are all professional ballplayers in their own right and of varying success. Given that, I suppose Jensen’s 1958 AL MVP is worthy of note and perhaps more so than Horwitz’s two career home runs over 42 plate appearances, one of which came versus Ollie Perez (who I mentioned earlier). But there it is.

What they all have in common, though, is that these fine people, ballplayers and otherwise, went to University of California, Berkeley, aka Cal. Let’s be honest for a second. The city is known for its hippies and runaway liberalism. In addition to that, it’s a great American city for no less than its many stark contrasts to America's heartland. Though not to the degree of the protests, one is such thing it's known for is its athletics programs, baseball among them.

Cal stands to have many more musicians, architects, actors, cartoonists, football players, brilliant minds and future millionaires spawn from their halls. It’ll also likely they’ll thrust upon us scientists, advocates & activists, writers, mayors, judges, astronauts, astronomers, mathematicians and Olympic athletes. As for the baseball players…

The University of California announced today it will not reinstate its baseball program despite vigorous fundraising efforts to save it from the chopping block…

Cal chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau issued a statement Friday saying that enough funds were raised to reinstate men's rugby, women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse, but not baseball and men's gymnastics...

Cal baseball has a long history that dates back to 1892. The Golden Bears won the first College World Series in 1947, then won another national title in 1957... The Bears have been to regionals in two of the last three seasons and head into 2011 ranked No. 17 in Baseball America's Top 25…

The Golden Bears figure to be a force in the Pacific-10 Conference one final time in 2011, and then their players will have to find new homes.

Sadly, it’s currently unknown whether or not they’ll ever again send our way (read: MLBs way) another Jeff Kent or even a Brian Horwitz or two. Who knows, maybe one or several of the alums will save the day with a nice donation. It just really smarts someone like Barry Zito was a Trojan instead of Golden Bear. He’d fit right in, I suspect, and it seems his current salary might allow such a handout.
Posted by: Paapfly

September 05, 2010

The good face, the halo, and projectability

Not long ago, Ken Funck got it on, and then went on to earn a spot contributing at Baseball Prospectus due in part to his entry in the "BP Idol Contest" about one of the subjective measures that baseball scouts use. While I'm not going down the same avenue Ken chose, I do find myself interested in the same topic.

Like many a young (or not so young, as in my case) baseball blogger, Michael Lewis' Moneyball nudged me toward a more cold and calculating approach to baseball analysis and strategy. With conventional strategy questioned, I started to look at the game of baseball a little differently and felt I could learn a lot more about it than I already knew. Due to that belief, and with sabremetric writings as my bible, my contempt for most sacrifice bunts and intentional walks sprang forth like the Temperance Movement's hatred of alcohol. It's likely that it grew in some part from the statistical approach to baseball glorified in Moneyball. But, one thing that I also took from the book was something the author portrayed in a negative light and that served as the antithesis to statistical analysis. And, even if there wasn't a backdrop of statistical analysis, the absurdity this topic would have still stuck with me.

That was 'The Good Face'.


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Posted by: David Wade

May 02, 2009

Strasburg live!

I had the splendid opportunity to watch San Diego State pitching pheenom Stephen Strasburg pitch last night. He was in my hometown of Santa Clara, starting against the Broncos. The weather was threatening; it had rained for much of the day, and the early innings were played under a slight drizzle, but the game was played in its entirety.
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Posted by: Steve Treder


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