Baseball. Blogging. Whenever.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Quote of the Day

One of baseball's dirty little secrets is that umpiring is not that hard. Oh, it would be exceptionally difficult for you or me or your mailman. But thousands of men and women do good work in high school, college and minor league games, and I suspect that hundreds of them -- with a bit of training and experience -- could step right into the majors and perform as well, or nearly as well, as most of the current major league arbiters.

“Just Wanking”

I’m privileged to have a job that I really enjoy. But at the same time, I would prefer to write somewhat less—this pace is stressful and doesn’t leave me as much time to pursue other projects and interests. But though I would prefer to write somewhat less, I have a stronger second-order preference to produce a blog that’s competitive with other major offerings on the internet. And over the years competition between bloggers has led to escalating word-counts. The resulting situation isn’t terrible, there are lots of people you should cry for before you get to me, but basically we bloggers are engaged in a red queen’s race where we all need to keep trying harder and harder just to maintain our positions.

The blogosphere would be a better place if everyone took a deep breath and decided that quality was more important than boosting traffic by simply having a post — any post — on every news event of the day. Slow down and think instead!

Picking up from the Kevin Drum-Matt Yglesias exchange on the Red-Queen race of contemporary pro-blogging, I will name names of people who blog too much among the folks I read. Some of the people are folks whose writing I’ve long enjoyed but whom I’ve practically given up on reading because, when faced with a count of 30 items in Google Reader – since breakfast – the heart sinks and the mind quails . . . It’s much easier to just click the “Mark All Read” button and resolve to catch the next batch. . . . Kevin Drum himself is kind of on the edge. He’s been known to top ten posts a day, and my rule of thumb is, once you hit double digits you’re just wanking . . . In the spirit of this age of economic restructuring, I will simply declare how often people may blog. Most of you should average four to six posts a day. If you’re a group blog, you may post once an hour.

One Less Dying Quail

After toiling 11 years in the minors before finally getting his chance to pitch in the big leagues, Mark DiFelice isn't about to start taking things for granted. "I'll believe I've made the team when I'm on the flight to San Francisco," said DiFelice, referring to the Milwaukee Brewers' opening series of the season. DiFelice's reluctance is understandable. When you have 263 minor-league games on your résumé and only 15 appearances in the majors, this breaking-camp-with-the-team stuff is a bit difficult to grasp.

Calming his nerves before the biggest start of his life wasn't all that tough for Chris Jakubauskas. After all, he'd toiled 4 ½ years in the independent leagues before somebody gave him a shot at pitching professionally. So, another few days of putting off thoughts of a possible major-league career with the Mariners didn't seem that long to a 30-year-old living out one of those storybook dreams.

The Royals are the New Rays, minus the pitching and several other things

It doesn’t matter, it seems, that veteran right-hander Sidney Ponson gave up seven runs in five innings Tuesday in a 7-2 loss to the Oakland A’s. The Royals seem ready, regardless, to anoint him as the fourth member of their rotation — albeit not officially. Manager Trey Hillman would go no further Tuesday than to say Ponson is “still in the mix” with Horacio Ramirez and Brian Bannister for the two rotation spots behind Gil Meche, Zack Greinke and Kyle Davies.

Porcello in, Robertson out?

The Tigers told rookie right-handed pitcher Rick Porcello on Wednesday that he has earned a spot in the starting rotation. The news follows an impressive outing Tuesday by Porcello, 20, who allowed two hits over five innings in a 7-2 loss to Washington.

Great Moments in Energy Conservation

Huff did very little over the winter to get ready for the 2009 season, but that wasn't necessarily because he was tending to [his newborn] Jayce. Actually, Huff was following an offseason regimen he stumbled upon a year ago after undergoing surgery to repair a sports hernia.

"Last year I had the surgery, didn't do anything before coming into spring training, missed the first week and had a good year," he said. "So I'd be stupid to work out hard this offseason, would I not?"

Not after a season in which he batted .304 with 32 homers and 106 RBIs and led the AL with 82 extra-base hits.

Those numbers persuaded him to keep his bat and glove in storage for a second straight winter.

"It wasn't rocket science for me. In '03 and '04 I had some good years in Tampa, and I tried to think what I did that offseason. I remembered not doing that much," Huff said. "So I thought to myself, 'What if I worked hard? I could probably be an MVP type of guy.' I worked really hard, and the next three years were just, what in the world happened?"

Goodbye QuesTec . . .

Major League Baseball had been using QuesTec since 2001 to try to standardize the functional size of the strike zone, which often varies from umpire to umpire, despite the rulebook definition. But QuesTec cameras were installed in only about a third of major league stadiums, raising the suspicion among players and fans that umpires called games differently depending on whether QuesTec was watching. Umpires also questioned if the system was sufficiently accurate to gauge their performance.

The new system, called Zone Evaluation, relies on pitch-tracking data already collected by cameras in all 30 parks and distributed through applications on MLB.com and iTunes. Zone Evaluation software will rate umpire performance more quickly and accurately than QuesTec, according to Mike Port, baseball’s vice president for umpiring.

Umpires may not necessarily welcome this much assistance. Port said the umpires union, the World Umpires Association, had approved the change, but a union spokesman, Lamell McMorris, declined to comment on that or any aspects of the Zone Evaluation system.

Asked if umpires had such concern about the new arrangement that they might consider going on strike — as early as opening day, which is Sunday — McMorris again declined comment. Jerry Layne, a veteran umpire, also declined to discuss the subject when reached by telephone.

Although a strike is unlikely, their silence suggested that the situation could hurt the relationship between Major League Baseball and its umpires, which had been improving.

The Italian Dusty Baker

Jose Canseco is not reliable

The Golden Baseball League (GBL) announced today that the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles has officially rendered a judgment in favor of the Golden Baseball League and the Long Beach Armada in their lawsuit versus defendant Jose Canseco for an amount of $258,750 . . .

. . . Canseco was signed to a Uniform Players Contract and a Marketing Agreement by the Long Beach Armada and Golden Baseball League during the summer of 2006 in his attempt to launch a comeback to return to the major leagues as a knuckleball pitcher and designated hitter. After less than half of his contracted time, he was performing poorly as a hitter and pitcher and was having erratic behaviour on and off the field. He chose to abandon his team and his contract leaving unfulfilled obligations.

What happened?