Huh?

Billy Wagner has been a very good closer over his career, but he’s also coming off Tommy John surgery, and while his two innings of work this season have been impressive, I can’t imagine why he thinks he’ll make more than $8 million next season.  He’s insane not to demand that the Sox pick it up, and the Sox should consider themselves lucky that he’s not doing so.  Similarly, the Sox are crazy for not agreeing to decline it immediately, given the Eric Gagne debacle of a few years ago, and the fact that they already have Jonathan Papelbon under their control (though he’s arbitration eligible).

Wagner knows he’d be a setup man in Boston and wants to be a closer somewhere next season.  He has stated that he wants to reach 400 saves, and hopefully become the leader in saves by a left-hander.  Is it possible that he cares about his legacy in baseball more than money?  Man, that would be refreshing, but it’s just so hard to believe.  The cynic in me thinks he’s talked it over with his agent, and his agent thinks there’s someone out there who’ll pay more than $8 million for his services next year.

I just can’t figure out who.

I understand that managers have to be both the public face of the corporate end of their franchise as well as the leaders of the sports end of their franchise, and it’s not an easy job, but Russell’s in a completely untenable position.  What he ought to due is lash out in a tirade against the economic system that keeps the margins for small market teams razor thin.  Instead he just throws this out there:

“The players lost a friend, a teammate and a good player.  They might be thinking that we’ve thrown in the towel, but it’s time to turn the page and play baseball. It’s time to move on.”

But that’s exactly what the Pirates did!  They threw in the towel!  Not that I blame them, because by this point in the year, you know whether or not you have enough to compete, and if you don’t and you’re a small market team, the next option is to start selling off pieces to stockpile talent for next year.  Last year it was Jason Bay.  This year it’s Nate McLouth.  It’s the state of baseball.

For once, though, I wish someone would just come out and say it.

I just don’t care.

I’m not surprised in any way (other than the usual surprise I get when people are actually caught by the testing, since a $20 million salary should get you access to drugs that aren’t testable).  If I have any emotion at all, it’s anger towards all of the fans who are now expressing righteous indignation about Ramirez.

In an era where fans are disappointed when a player puts up a .299/.398/.529 statline, and where every player who needs a day off or has a lingering injury has his manhood and value to the team questioned by round-the-clock sports coverage, why is anyone surprised when a player does something to come back from injury quicker or boost that statline.  How can anyone feign anger?

Two years ago, at my auction draft, I picked up Greinke near the end of the draft for $6.  He had pitched only six innings the season before, not because of any physical injury but because of psychological issues.  No one doubted that he had talent; it was a question of whether he would harness it.

Greinke pitched mostly in relief that season but was put in the rotation in September and looked good.  I protected him for 2007, where he finished 13-10 with a 3.47 ERA and 183 strikeouts in 202.1 innings.  I assumed this was the Greinke peak – good strikeout totals, decent ERA, win total suffering because of the team he played for.  Still, I extended his contract out to 2011.

Damn if it doesn’t look like a good signing right now, because Greinke is far and away the best pitcher in baseball right now.  After six starts, Zack is 6-0 with three complete games, two shutouts, and fifty-four strikeouts.

He has given up two earned runs, though.  Bum.

The only pitcher I can remember starting this hot is Pedro Martinez in1998, but he wasn’t getting wins because the team wasn’t scoring runs.  Pedro ‘98 was 2-0 with a 2.28 and 57 Ks, which is outstanding but still nowhere as good as this.  Then again, Pedro stayed like that all season.  Will Zack keep it up?

A few months later, Gibbons took the step of sending a letter to all 30 clubs asking for another chance.  He admitted his mistake (though explained it was to help rehab from a wrist injury).  He was willing the play in the minor leagues and earn his way back to the majors.  He was willing to donate most of this salary to charity.  He just asked for “a second chance to play the game that I love.”

The Milwaukee Brewers took him up on his offer, signing him to a contract and sending him to their AA affiliate in Huntsville.  Gibbons played his way to AAA, but the Brewers were competing for a playoff spot and he never reached the big club.

He became a free agent at the end of the season, and was signed by the Florida Marlins, with an offer to compete for a job in spring training.  He was cut today after going 5-for-16 with a homer and seven RBIs in the spring, with the cited reason being that they had no room for him on the roster.  I think that’s a load of crap.

Gibbons is a corner outfielder/first baseman/DH type, sort of like Kevin Millar was when he could still roam the outfield.  Obviously the National League doesn’t use the DH, so that limits Gibbons to left field, right field and first base.  So one would imagine that the Marlins already have seasoned players at those positions, right?

The Marlins right fielder is Jeremy Hermida, who is decent enough that there were rumors last season that he’d be traded to a contender near the deadline.  It didn’t happen, and Hermida isn’t an All-Star by any stretch of the imagination, but no one could expect Gibbons to beat out Hermida for a job.

Gaby Sanchez, projected by ESPN to be the Marlins starting first baseman, has played a total of five games above the AA level.

Cameron Maybin, projected by ESPN to be the starting centerfielder, has 32 games and 81 at-bats worth of major league experience.

RotoWorld projects Scott Cousins to beat out Hermida for the right field job.  Cousins has never played a game in the major leagues.

Alfredo Amezega, one of the few Marlins with legitimate major league experience, has a bum knee and will be on the DL until May.

Michael Ryan, who like Gibbons was signed as a non-roster invitee to spring training, remains on the roster.  Ryan hasn’t played in the majors since 2005.

Are any of these guys instilling great confidence in you?

Here’s the quote from Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez:

“You don’t want to keep a guy like that too long where he doesn’t get an opportunity to get a job someplace else. He’s got some years left. He showed the bat skill a little bit. He swung the bat well. I think if somebody gives him an opportunity in the right situation, he could help.”

I realize that Gonzalez is the Marlins manager and can’t really speak the truth on this one, but allow me to translate Marlinspeak into English:

“This guy is good enough to play at the major league level, but we’re a really cheap ballclub, and we don’t really care about winning, unless it’s a fluke occurrence like in 2003 when we had dirt-cheap young pitchers under our control.  We’d much rather let young players toil for a losing ballclub and then trade them to the Yankees or Red Sox for more young players than give a player with a proven track record a chance to play here.”

What’s even more puzzling is that Gibbons has already said he’d play in the minor leagues.  So… the Marlins don’t have any open roster spots at any level in their organization?  I mean, I’m sure Gibbons would rather play for another major league team than play in the Marlins minor league system, but that’s it?  There’s no room on the team?

Here’s hoping he gets a shot to play for a real team.

Consider me skeptical.

Two names come to mind when I think about this situation: Curt Schilling and Ken Griffey Jr.  To be sure, being named in the same sentence as Schilling and Griffey is normally a compliment, but in this case, you don’t want to be named in that sentence.

Schilling had a serious shoulder injury that required surgery, but tried to rehab the shoulder without it (for reasons which won’t be discussed here) so that he could return later in the year.  The end result was that Schilling’s career was effectively ended, as rehab failed and he had to have surgery anyway.  He missed the entire 2008 season, and while he hasn’t decided whether or not to attempt a comeback, it’s unlikely he can pitch at the same level he did before the injury.  A-Rod is going down that same path.  While he’s elected to have surgery, it’s not the complete surgery required.  Should everything not go according to plan, he may eventually need the complete surgery before returning to the Yankees lineup, and his rehab will be longer than it would have been had he just gone out and had it fixed the right way.

I think about Ken Griffey for where he was in his career when it started going downhill.  Aside from an injury in 1995 that limited him to 72 games, Griffey was for the most part an everyday player, and there was nothing to suggest a slowdown in production.  At age 30 he had 438 home runs and was averaging nearly fifty a year over his previous five years.  Then the injuries started to mount, and while he still averaged about twenty-five round-trippers a season (a respectable figure), he became Above Average When Healthy Ken Griffey instead of Perennial All Star and Future Hall-Of-Famer Ken Griffey.  The man who was once a shoe-in to break Hank Aaron’s home run mark now has no shot of clearing 700.

Will it be that way with A-Rod?  I don’t know.  It would have been that way with Barry Bonds, had designer steroids not propped him up at the end of his career.  A steroid-free Bonds probably breaks down before reaching 600.  How will a steroid-free A-Rod fare?

Rodriguez says a cousin, whom he would not identify, first introduced him to a substance he referred to as “Boli” that could be purchased in the Dominican Republic and brought to the United States.

“It was his understanding it would give me a dramatic energy boost and was otherwise harmless,” Rodriguez said in a prepared statement before the question and answer portion of his press conference. “My cousin and I, one more ignorant than the other, decided it was a good idea to start taking it. We consulted no one and it was pretty evident that we didn’t know what we were doing. We did everything we could to keep it between us. I stopped taking it in 2003 and haven’t taken it since.”

If you read into the comment, this is A-Rod using the Bonds Defense – I used steroids, but I didn’t knowingly use them.  If A-Rod’s guilty of anything, he contends, it’s being naive and ignorant.

Sorry.  Not buying it.

When Bonds used the “I didn’t know what it was” defense, everyone jumped on him, supposedly because finely-tuned, high-paid athletes know exactly what they’re putting into their bodies.  I tend to think exactly the opposite is true.  The average person doesn’t know half of the chemicals they ingest on a daily basis, and finely-tuned, high-paid athletes don’t either — because they pay someone else to know.  They have nutritionists and personal trainers who define their fitness regimen and their diet.  So to me, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility (aside from all of the overwhelming supporting evidence) that Bonds could have been ignorant to what he was taking, because the stuff he was being given came from someone in a position of authority.

A-Rod’s source was his cousin.  Think about that.  If a personal trainer, not just a guy you hired at a gym, but a guy you know well enough that he’d do jail time for you, gives you a substance and tells you that it’s safe, legal, and effective, you’d accept that at face value and take the substance.  If your cousin gave you the same thing… don’t you think you’d do some research?  I mean, unless he’s a personal trainer and the kind of guy who would do jail time for you.  Maybe he is.  I don’t know A-Rod’s cousin.  But I doubt he’s an expert on fitness and nutrition, and this it invalidates the excuse of not knowing.

“Friends who spoke with Varitek over the winter say he never understood why the Red Sox wanted to cut his pay, why they were only willing to guarantee his deal for one year, why the economy and his 2008 struggles had cut into his market value or, remarkably, why his decision to decline arbitration was costing him so much money and limiting other teams’ interest.”

I’m really hoping those “friends” were somehow misquoted, because otherwise, Tek might be the dumbest person on Earth. I mean, he already admitted not knowing that when he declined arbitration, any team that signed him had to give up a draft pick. That in and of itself is inexcusable, but you could deflect the blame onto his agent for not explaining all of the details.

This cluelessness borders on criminal negligence. How can you not know why the Red Sox wanted to cut your pay, when you were statistically one of the worst offensive players in Major League Baseball last year, but were making $10 million dollars? How can you not know that the Red Sox, who have an aversion to long-term contracts, wouldn’t want to guarantee more than one year to a 36-year-old catcher who can’t catch up with a decent fastball anymore? How can you not know why other teams don’t want to give you that same guarantee, especially when they have to give up a draft pick to go along with it?

This is like O.J. not knowing why the Goldman family is upset with him, why he’s no longer the spokesman for Avis, why he doesn’t get phone calls from ex-teammates anymore, and why he hasn’t been contacted about appearing in the next “Naked Gun” sequel.

It’s the bottom of the ballot.

Because the following players got the following votes:

• Mark Grace (22 votes)
• David Cone (21 votes)
• Matt Williams (7 votes)
• Mo Vaughn (6 votes)
• Jay Bell (2 votes)
• Jesse Orosco (1 vote)

Personally, I find this trend of voting far more egregious than voting for or not voting for a borderline Hall of Fame candidate (as Rice is generally considered).

Mark Grace won four gold gloves at first base and a ring with Arizona, got on base a lot (.383 OBP), didn’t strike out, and had a little pop in his bat.  He also never had a 200 hit season, never drove in 100 runs in a season, scored 100 runs in a season once, and never finished above 13th in the MVP balloting.

David Cone won a Cy Young Award, several rings with the New York Yankees, made the All-Star team five times, and led the league in strikeouts twice.  He also never won the ERA title, struck out fewer batters than Frank Tanana, and came up short of 200 wins.

It gets much worse from here…

Matt Williams had four seasons with 100 RBIs, won four gold gloves, lead the league in home runs in 1994 (and was on pace to break Roger Maris’ record when the strike ended the season), and made the All-Star team five times.  He also never won an MVP, finished his career with a .317 OBP, and came up short of 400 home runs.

Mo Vaughn won an MVP trophy, made the All-Star team three times, and came a point short of winning the batting title in 1998 (losing it to Bernie Williams).  He also had only nine productive years, hit only 328 home runs, and struck out 1429 times, ranking him in between Jack Clark (who had 1300 more ABs) and Rice (who had 2700 more ABs).

Jay Bell won a ring with Arizona, a gold glove at shortstop in 1993, and had one season where he went 132/38/112 (R/HR/RBI).  He also only appears on the leaderboard for outs and sacrifice hits, batted .265/.343/.416 for his career, and despite that 38 homer season, hit only 195 for his career (without any notable speed or average).

Jesse Orosco was the first person to try Coca-Cola (that’s a joke, although he was the oldest player in baseball for six years).  He won a ring with the Mets in 1986, was a two-time All Star, and is the all time leader in pitching appearances.  He also saved only 144 games over his twenty-four year career, and didn’t compile any meaningful leaderboard statistics.

Aren’t I cherry-picking stats?  What’s the point here?

Yes, I am cherry-picking stats here, but the point I’m making is that while none of these players should ever be embarrassed by their career credentials – they’re certainly better than almost anyone who has ever played the game – none of them deserved even a single Hall Of Fame vote.

In order to put a player to be in the Hall Of Fame, I believe you can’t just make the argument that he belongs in the Hall, but also that he can’t be excluded.  Mark McGwire received 118 votes this year, and on his career alone, he should be in the Hall Of Fame.  But voters still have questions about whether he used illegal performance enhancing drugs or not.  Lee Smith received 240 votes, is third on the all-time saves list (having been passed by Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera, but none of his other numbers are particularly noteworthy, and voters still question the value of closers.

From Grace on down, the negatives vastly outweigh the positives.  For every “Well, hey, he did this…” there are several “Yeah, buts”.

I suppose there’s no reason to get too upset about this.  The balloting process requires players to get at least 5% of the votes cast in order to remain on the ballot, so Grace and the others won’t be on the ballot next year, and the guys in between will likely drift closer to the Hall or closer to being dropped from the ballot.  It’s just unfortunate that some voters clearly don’t take their responsibility seriously.

* From the late 80s commercial wherein an excited boy exclaimed “Wowee, Rickey Henderson!”, earning the enduring scorn of me and all of my friends.

“I was very impressed with Cash”

Taken out of context? Yeah. Unfairly? Nope.