Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Memo to Miami


You should probably take a lesson from the industrial produce cooler industry:

Sanders also points out that besides enjoying steady growth, American Cooling is trying to diversify its base. What he means is that strawberries are becoming a bigger part of the commodity mix the coolers handle. "Our strawberry business has increased dramatically," Sanders said, which explains why he has been so busy.

Strawberries must be separated from other commodities since they need a drier, less humid environment than regular produce. The cooler operator must either rearrange the existing facility to isolate the berries or create a new one.

"When we have a customer commitment, we will build or remodel a cooler," he explained. "This isn't baseball. We don't reverse the process and assume that if we build a facility the customers will magically appear!"

So they build their strawberry coolers themselves and only when there's a demand for them. How novel!

Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 3:00pm (6) Comments

Deep Thoughts


Nate Silver runs a projection on A-Rod's chances at passing Barry Bonds. That's well and good and you can click through for Nate's handicapping of the chances, but I'm struck by one of the positive indicators he throws out:

Perverse Incentives, Part I. Rodriguez stands to make a $30 million bonus if he breaks the all-time home run record. If he gets close, those are 30 million reasons for him to extend his career until he does, rather than consider early retirement.

At the risk of sounding like one of those awful wannabe populist columnists -- and with the full realization that this would never, ever happen -- how much fun would it be if A-Rod announced next week that he was donating his $30 million bonus to anti-drug charities? It would be delicious chaos, no? How does anyone root against him? Sure, you could call him a crazy, image-obsessed drug user, but think of the kids! He could even let Hank Aaron pick the charities! The columnists' heads would 'asplode.

These are the things I think about when I'm hopped up on cold medicine like I am today.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:38pm (9) Comments

Deion vs. Buster


Here's a fun story about the time Deion Sanders maybe wanted to kick Buster Olney's ass. Alas, it didn't end in violence:

So I returned to the press box before game time, not knowing about the Clippers' team meeting and wondering whether Sanders' anger had subsided and he thought it a waste of time to complain about a column written in a small afternoon paper (one that would fold a decade later).

In fact, Sanders was still quite perturbed. In the fourth inning of the game, the same batboy who had summoned me earlier walked into the press box, holding a baseball. "Deion told me to give this to you."

The baseball was dirty, probably a leftover from batting practice. In the sweet spot, Sanders had scrawled a message. He didn't include his signature. "Keep writing like that your whole life, and you'll always be a loser," he wrote.

I sort of like that Olney is leading off his link-o-ramas with stories like this. Sure, it started off poorly with the frozen dog poop thing, but he could write about different ballplayers wanting to beat him up every day if he wants to and I'd read it.
Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 1:05pm (5) Comments

It’s time to go long on steroids


Many people have thrown up their hands in disgust with all of the steroids news lately, and I understand that. It's not baseball, for one thing. It's also so unseemly and tabloidy that it's easy to get fed up with it all in short order. But it is news and it is relevant, so simply hiding our heads in the sand about it all makes little sense either. What to do? Will Carroll has a suggestion:

If journalists are going to admit that they were asleep at the wheel throughout much of the steroid era, it’s time to start asking the hard questions. I’ve seen, so far, only one instance of this, with Ivan Rodriguez. Credit to whoever it was that asked, though I can’t find it online.

Finally, we need to take a look at players who have played their entire minor and major league career under a testing program and decide whether or not we believe in professional sports’ strongest testing program. I’m pretty sure that it’s done baseball no good, because no one seems to believe that it’s stopping things, despite positive results going from 96 to 2 in five years. I was at the NFL Combine today, watching 350 pound men running sub-5.0 dashes, lifting cars … and being called undersized.

We can continue to cover this story as if we’re the sports section of TMZ or we can do the hard work it takes to try educate and enlighten the story. If I were Dinn Mann, the editor of MLB.com, or any sports editor across the country, I’d have my beat writer asking the question.

Will plays with the idea of asking individual players if they used or not. I don't think that's the way to go. Way too Salem for my tastes, and it really only gives us one piece of information. But I do agree that we need to veer away from the sensationalism in which the current state of the coverage seems to wallow and focus less on the names for the name's sake, because that leads us into the cycle of shallow journalism and opinion that gets us all sick of this subject to begin with.

As things are, your standard steroid story goes as follows: (a) user identified; (b) hysteria over the identification; (c) coverage of the apology/statement; and (d) some backfill on the player, usually of the salacious variety (e.g. Mindy McCreedy; phantom cousins in the D.R.). Then things are forgotten for a while, only to have the cycle begin anew when someone else is identified. How much nicer would it be if, instead of this endless cycle of tabloidism, we had some bedrock perspective on the issue as a whole? Some context into which we can throw the A-Rods of the world in at least an attempt to gauge the seriousness of their offenses against baseball and nature. Some depth of information that will allow us to properly analyze the history, culture, and impact of the steroid era and allow us to compare it with that which came before and since. To do that, we have to eschew the paparazzi mentality that currently reigns, roll up our sleeves, and ask some difficult questions. Questions like:

  • How often did ballplayers actually use and what specifically did they use?


  • What, if anything, is the profile of a PED user? Were they mostly people who got hurt and were trying to come back more quickly? Stars who wanted to blast their way into the Hall of Fame? Minor leaguers who wanted to become major leaguers? I suspect all, but is one dynamic more prevalent than the others?


  • When did users actually start using? High school? College? In the minors? After making The Show? This is important if we are interested in prevention and education. If elite ballplayers have already made decisions about PEDs before being drafted or signed, that will affect how resources are marshaled.


  • Was drug use a personal thing? Specifically, did guys decide on their own, based on their own personal experiences to use steroids, or was it a peer pressure thing in which certain clubhouses promoted a “steroid culture?” We suspect that the Rangers, Orioles, and Yankees clubhouses were worse off than many others, and maybe they were. But maybe that perception is simply a function of who got caught.


  • How did players connect with their dealers? Word of mouth, or did the dealers seek out their customers? This is another key to prevention.


  • Were the people who didn't use choir boys who had moral objections, or did fear of the dangers of steroids and/or a belief that they simply didn’t need them inform their decision making?


    • Obsessive followers of this blog will recognize those questions because I've raised them before in the wake of the Mitchell Report as a means of pointing out the flaws in that exercise. They're still good questions, and remain largely unanswered. No, no one or two ballplayers are going to sit down and explain all of this stuff to someone, but they are questions that ambitious reporters and researchers can use to guide them over time as they explore this story with the depth that is so desperately needs.

    And until they are answered, we will never be able to get past the gawker mentality of the steroids story. A mentality that sickens so many of us and accomplishes so little.

    (thanks to Pete Toms for the link)
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:49am (16) Comments

    Garret Anderson


    Though I'd love to jump onto the "oh my God, why are we signing Garret Anderson?!" bandwagon with all of the other Braves fans, I think ire at that particular move is somewhat misplaced. Anderson, for as horrendous as he is, actually stands to improve the Braves' outfield in 2009, and this deal does not obligate Atlanta to Anderson for 2010. So in a vacuum, it's a defensible move. Of course, the precondition to the existence of that vacuum was Frank Wren's inability to put together anything approaching a serviceable outfield, thereby rendering Anderson a comparatively attractive option.

    In other words, don't slam this transaction. Slam the half dozen made and missed transactions that allowed this one to make some kind of sense.

    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 11:00am (9) Comments

    A-Rod Lawyers-Up


    I don't mean that in the judgmental way cops say it. You'd be nuts not to have a lawyer in Rodriguez's situation. Lucky for him, he has a good one:

    Alex Rodriguez has bolstered his legal team, adding Jay Reisinger, who has represented a number of high-profile baseball players who have been confronted with questions about the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

    According to several people familiar with the matter, Reisinger will work alongside the lawyer James E. Sharp, who has represented Rodriguez since it was revealed two weeks ago that he had tested positive for steroids in 2003.

    The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing matters related to the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

    Rodriguez is not the only high-profile baseball player that Reisinger and Sharp have represented together. They represent Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, who is a government witness in the perjury investigation of Roger Clemens. In 2005, Reisinger and Sharp represented Sammy Sosa when he testified at a hearing before Congress. In each instance, Reisinger was the lead lawyer.

    If you're not immediately familiar with Reisinger's name, it's because unlike the Rusty Hardins of the world, Reisinger looks to defend his clients' interests first rather than be the first one to a television camera. There's a reason why Andy Pettitte didn't get ensnared in a Clemens-like drama. And though I generally like Pettitte, I suspect it has nothing to do with his own savvy, skill, and guile. Rather, it is because he has been well-advised to tell the truth when the truth is required, and to otherwise go about his business and let his lawyers handle his representation.

    A-Rod is often criticized for being too careful and caring too much about how he is perceived. Well, when you're in trouble like he is, those are wonderful traits to have, and they have led him to make a smart decision in the lawyer he hired.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 10:00am (3) Comments

    Lance Niekro


    I first heard tell of this back in December, but Saturday's New York Times updated Lance Niekro's attempt to come back as a knukleballer just like his old man and his uncle Phil:

    The Elias Sports Bureau studied 190 father-son combinations in major league history and found that in 143 cases — three out of four — sons do just what their fathers did. That is, if the father was a position player, so was the son. And if the father was a pitcher, so was the son.

    After parts of four seasons with the Giants, and a brief retirement after his release from a Houston Astros farm team last May, Niekro is doing what comes naturally. He has embraced his inner knuckler at age 30, making a comeback as a pitcher at the Atlanta Braves’ minor league camp.

    “I’m not going to say that I have an excellent knuckleball right now,” Niekro said last week in an interview at a restaurant here, his hometown. “But I think I have the makings of it, and I’m working hard at it.”

    As most of you know, I have a pretty strong knuckleballer fetish, so I'd really like this to work. I also have a pretty strong comic book fetish, so I can totally feature this as one of those stories in which a seemingly ordinary man discovers his true superhero destiny. Like Kal-el speaking to Clark Kent from the great beyond in the Fortress of Solitude or the bat crashing through the window of Bruce Wayne's study. I mean really, how cool would it be for Lance Niekro, after years of walking his own path, to don his late father's armor and bring justice to the baseball world via inherited guile, filed nails, and the flutter of his knuckler?

    But, as I noted back in December, the likelihood of such a thing coming to pass is low. Knuckleballers are not gimmick pitchers or mere tricksters. They're real pitchers who have to master mechanics and technique and a pitcher's mental approach to the game just like a guy with a plus fastball and a sharp slider. Indeed, it's probably harder for a knuckler, partially because few organizations seem to have the patience it requires to bring one along, and partially because the margin of error for a knuckler is so thin to begin with. And that goes for guys who have been pitching for years, which Niekro certainly has not.

    Niekro is either going to click quick or he's going to get utterly shelled. And though I hope it's not the case, the odds favor the latter.

    (thanks to Blaze, followed quickly by tHeMARksMiTh, for the heads up)
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 8:55am (4) Comments

    Wallace Matthews to give up writing


    Good news! Newsday's Wallace Matthews -- a truly awful columnist if ever there was one -- has announced that he is no longer going to follow or write about baseball:

    In the week since I spoke with Bud Selig, I have thought long and hard about what the Omissioner can do to right the dreadful wrong he, his players and the players association have committed upon baseball.

    After much contemplation, I came up with the answer.

    Nothing.

    For all the tough talk from Selig and for all the hand-wringing and mea culpas coming lately from Rodriguez, the fact is, this game is rigged so that nothing of, um, substance, can be done about it.

    Well, he didn't actually say that he was giving up on the game, but he truly thinks it is now an illegitimate pursuit and he has no love left for it all, if indeed he ever had any. Surely that means that he can't lend his own integrity and that of his august newspaper to the corrupt spectacle that is Major League Baseball, can he? Surely he has written his last word on this hopelessly rigged pursuit, right? And even if he doesn't give it up entirely -- say, if he has mouths to feed at home and must absolutely have his paycheck -- surely his journalistic standards will demand that he point out, in every column he writes and every word he utters about the game, that baseball is a phony and disgraced institution and that about which he opines should be considered commentary on a malignant fiction, yes?

    If the answer to that is no, and you find Matthews right back into the swing of things covering baseball this summer as if nothing has happened, I suppose the only conclusion you can draw from that is that his stated disgust with the national pastime is mere theater. Faux outrage designed to rile people up and sell newspapers and to place himself in the middle of a big story.

    Imagine.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 8:00am (5) Comments

    Jim Bowden is going down


    Seems like everyone is speculating that Jim Bowden is about to be fired, but maybe they're just not aiming high enough. How does prison suit you?

    A federal investigation into the skimming of signing bonuses given to baseball prospects from Latin America is looking at Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowden as far back as 1994, when he was GM of the Cincinnati Reds, according to a baseball executive familiar with the investigation.

    Two sources inside baseball say that a long-time scout in Latin America, Jorge Oquendo, 47, is the man who links the FBI's investigations of Bowden and his special assistant Jose Rijo to that of former Chicago White Sox senior director of player personnel David Wilder. Last May the White Sox fired Wilder and two Dominican-based scouts after allegations surfaced that they had pocketed money earmarked for player signing bonuses. Oquendo worked for Wilder in 2006 and 2007, as well as for Bowden with the Reds in 1994 and again with the Reds from 2000 through 2003. Oquendo left Cincinnati in 2005, two years after Bowden was fired. (Bowden became Nationals GM in 2004.)

    One can only assume that the thrust of this investigation -- like any skimming investigation -- is tax evasion and some flavor of fraud and/or embezzlement.

    More background can be found here. My thoughts on it from last summer here.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 6:00am (1) Comments

    Today at THT


    Things to read while getting your mind around the fact that "The Natural" -- a pretty yet deeply flawed movie -- somehow got four Oscar nominations. Man, 1984 has a lot to answer for:

  • Chris Jaffe looks at the unique career of Rick Sutcliffe. He stops short of the broadcasting portion of that career, because THT has a strict policy against the dissemination of obscene material.


  • Evan Brunell runs down last week's transactions. All of the Neal Musser and Jailen Peguero news you can handle.


  • Finally, over at Fantasy Focus, Derek Carty takes a Context Adjusted Pitching Statistics (CAPS)-fueled look at Gil Meche. He's the kind of guy I usually end up with five of in my fantasy rotations. Which is why I always finish around .500.


    • Anyway, about "The Natural." Know what I think? I think a far, far better movie could be made about the woman in black played by Barbara Hershey. She is apparently a nut case, and was probably going to shoot The Whammer before old Roy Hobbs came along. I know she was based on the woman who shot Eddie Waitkus, but within the context of this move, what's her deal? Why is she fixated on killing the best ballplayer around? That, my friends is a movie. Certainly better than a bunch of sentimental pap capped off with a nighttime playoff game 32 years too early that should have been called on account of lightning and a faulty electrical system which allowed exploding lights to imperil the lives of everyone at the ballpark that night.
    Posted by Craig Calcaterra at 5:42am (5) Comments