Bleacher Report - Articles by Jake Rake

Wealthy Redneck Briefly Pitches in World Series Game

Jake Rake — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:58:15 -0500

For anyone overwhelmed and surprised by A.J. Burnett’s early exit in Monday night’s World Series Game Five against the Phillies, here is some Earth-shattering news:

A.J. Burnett totally sucks.

I’m not sure how this fact has been ignored to such extremes that not only is it not common knowledge, but two major league baseball teams have seen fit to invest tens of millions of dollars in the notion that it is not true. Over the course of his 11 seasons in the big leagues, Burnett has occasionally succeeded in not totally sucking, but for the most part it is the rule at this point.

In 2009, his first season as a Yankee, Burnett led the American League in two categories: walks and wild pitches. It was his second career wild pitch title and fourth top-ten finish in both. Burnett’s reverse-Bondsian walk total helped propel his WHIP (number of baserunners allowed per nine innings pitched) into 26th place among the 30 AL pitchers who qualified for rate stats. All of this while pocketing nearly $17 million this season. What a dick.

Jayson Stark Terrible, By Way of Chone Figgins

Jake Rake — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:47:21 -0400

"I see Chone Figgins as the most attractive position player out there this winter.”

-Jayson “WITH A ‘Y’ MOTHERF***ERS” Stark

As anyone who pays any attention to baseball knows, obtaining players via free agency is generally a fairly inefficient method of building a roster. Players who have been in the league long enough to be granted free agency are exponentially more expensive than players with less service time.

They also have lower upside, as players’ performances rarely improve from the form they show during their first six years in the big leagues. That said, free agency works because teams are willing to overpay for older players and this winter will not be any different in that sense.

Which brings us to Figgins—the Angels' stalwart, member of the MLB All-Dickens team along with Norris Hopper and Lastings Milledge (Ted Berg) and free agent to be—who in the quote referenced above serves as the catalyst du jour for Jayson Stark to continue to amaze disgust by maintaining employment as a supposedly knowledgeable commentator on the professional baseball.

Let’s get this mother rolling:

Despite his difficulty making the correct sound that the letters “CHONE” make when placed in that order, Chone Figgins is a very good baseball player. Perhaps it is this nomenclatural idiosyncrasy that Mr. Stark, he of the famously superfluous ‘Y,’ finds so attractive.

Silly names aside, though, Figgins has played every position on the diamond save for first base, pitcher and catcher while getting on base at an above-average clip over the course of more than 4,000 plate appearances.

This is no small feat, as few players in the history of baseball have played as many positions at such a high level and Figgins’ career .363 OBP (Entering Sunday) during a career in which the league average was .337 bests those of Ernie Banks, Carlos Beltran, Justin Morneau, Robin Yount, Kirby Puckett, Eddie Murray, Roberto Clemente and Reggie Jackson, among others. He has also stolen 280 bases at a 74 percent success rate and averaged nine triples per 162 games.

However, doing a couple of things very well makes it very easy to overlook major shortcomings in a player’s game.

With Figgins, the main issue is hitting for power—specifically that he is incapable of it. Of the 157 players who qualified for a batting title in 2009, Figgins’ isolated power of 0.97 is ranked 146th, while among third basemen (Figgins has played 1296 of his 1,300 innings this season at third base) he is ranked dead last (of the 11 players behind him on that list, nine are middle infielders or catchers).

While Figgins’ hilarious lack of power is certainly remarkable in its own right, it is exacerbated by the fact that he does not do anything sustainable going forward well enough to compensate for it.

Unlike other power-starved big league hitters like, say, Ichiro, Figgins does not make enough contact or walk enough to make up for his power deficiency, with a singles-heavy .292 career batting average and walks in roughly 10 percent of his plate appearances—both good figures, but neither so exceptional that they compensate for Figgins’ laughably punchless swing and resulting in a career adjusted OPS+ of 99. Ouch.

Additionally, Figgins will be 32 years old when he arrives at Spring Training next season, and guys who rely on their youthful athleticism for turn groundball outs into singles are generally not good bets to be able to continue doing so into their thirties.

But the point of this column is to hate on Jayson Stark, not Chone Figgins, so let’s get back to that statement on the top of the page about Figgins being the most desirable position player on the market this winter.

We have established the commodity that is Figgins at this point in his career—a 32-year-old third baseman with less-than no power and a skill set that doesn’t suggest sustainability – but is there anything more attractive available this offseason?

A cursory look at a list of available free agents indicates that while this doesn’t look to be the most dynamic winter of player movement, there are a couple of options that are likely stronger plays than Figgins that are immediately identifiable, including Jason Bay and Matt Holiday.

Jayson Stark is probably wrong in his opinion that Chone Figgins is the most attractive free agent on the market this winter, but due to the dearth of interesting players available, not nearly as wrong as I initially assumed.

However, there is a whole lot going in baseball right now as Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer wrap up historic offensive performances, the Rangers, Orioles and Athletics are making franchise-altering turnarounds in terms of talent development and the American League continues to increase the talent differential between itself and the cute little National League, that there is no reason to be writing about Chone Figgins.

He is a useful but unspectacular player who happens to be entering the open market at a time when his only competition is a whole bunch of other similarly uninteresting players.

Bottom Line: Jayson Stark is a hack.

Orlando Cabrera Randomly Hitting His Way into the Record Books

Jake Rake — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:24:19 -0400

With 10 sacrifice flies on the season heading into Thursday’s games, Twins shortstop Orlando Cabrera is tied with some guy named Marlon Byrd for the American League lead in that category.

If you are on the verge of giving up on this column, I don’t blame you, as sacrifice flies are about the 258,000th most interesting metric in baseball.

However, what makes Cabrera’s prowess in hitting fly balls when a runner happens to be on third base notable is how remarkably consistent it has been over the course of the 34-year-old’s career; if he finishes with the league lead in sacrifice flies this season, it will mark the third time in four seasons he has done so.

Sacrifice flies belong to that controversial cadre of baseball statistics that also includes RBI or saves—metrics that are often misread because they are situational and generally not indicative of an individual player’s performance.

For example, one player could hit 10 fly balls with no one on base while another does it 10 times with a runner on third base—performances that are identical in reality but appear different on a spreadsheet that records sac flies and RBI.

To illustrate how odd it is that Cabrera routinely leads the league in sac flies, as well as finishing third in 2008 and second in 2003, take a look at the year-by-year leaderboards.

From 2006-2009, Justin Morneau and Kevin Youkilis are the only non-Cabrera players to finish in the top five in the American League more than once (Morneau in '07 and '08; Youk in '06 and '08). So effing weird.

Guys To Remove from Baseball's Hall of Fame

Jake Rake — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:01:20 -0400

In preparation of the establishment of my own Baseball Hall of Fame to replace the Hall of Subjective Moralizing and Politics in Cooperstown, here are a few players currently enshrined that I can say right of the bat (no pun intended; but appreciated nonetheless) would not make it into my new Hall of Fame:

Paul Molitor: I would say that it’s pretty weird that Molitor got voted in while Harold Baines did not, considering their near-identical careers as designated hitters (Molitor: 21 seasons, 122 adjusted OPS+; Baines: 22 seasons, 120), except for the fact that there is little rhyme or reason to who the BBWAA elects to what is supposedly baseball’s highest honor.

Neither Baines nor Molitor will find themselves in Jake’s Hall of Fame, but both have unquestioned claims to residency in the Hall of Very Good. Fun fact: Baines and Molitor were even selected two picks apart in the 1977 Draft, with Baines going first overall to the White Sox and Brewers taking Molitor third.

Dave Winfield: Maintaining an adjusted OPS+ of 130 over the course of a 22-year career is impressive, however, a corner outfielder who only finishes in the top five in that category once during those 22 years is not a Hall of Famer. He’ll be right up there with Molitor and Baines in the Very Good ranks though.

Ernie Banks: The first half of his career was epic, with a line of .290/.353/.552 as a shortstop in a low-offense era; however, after becoming a full-time first baseman in 1961, he managed to hit just .260/.310/.454, making him a league-average bat at what is supposed to be a high-offense position for more than half of his career.

Nellie Fox, Bill Mazeroski, & Red Schoendienst: Finishing one’s career with an adjusted OPS+ below 100 is grounds for immediate disqualification unless your name is Ozzie Smith.

Bruce Sutter: Being an elite closer isn’t enough if you only play for 12 seasons. Off the top of my head, the only relievers I’m taking are Mariano Rivera, Goose Gossage, Trevor Hoffman, and Dennis Eckersley.

Let's Face It: Pete Rose is Not Hall Of Fame Material

Jake Rake — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:49:44 -0400

It’s apparently that time of year again, when ESPN trots out one of their “Senior” writers. In this case Jayson (the "Y" is for "Yes, it's necessary") Stark, to enlighten the world with yet another discussion about the relationship between Pete Rose and Major League Baseball, and whether Rose will ever find himself enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The topic has already been discussed up the yin yang, having outlasted the Berlin Wall, two Wayne’s Worlds, three Austin Powers', three Shreks, two Bush Presidencies, SARS, Bird Flu, the entire career of Jeffrey Hammonds, Elian Gonzalez’s brief celebrity, the rise and fall of Orbitz beverages, and Michael Jackson’s transformation from talented black guy to dead white woman.

However, what I find most boring about the Pete Rose saga is not its hackneyed longevity—my problem with the whole ordeal is that it seems to be going overlooked that Pete Rose probably doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, even without the accusations of gambling.

Pete Rose was a very good player for a very long time. He played every position on the diamond except for pitcher, catcher, and shortstop while maintaining a career batting line of .303/.375/.409, which in the low-offense era in which he played was good for an adjusted OPS+ of 118 over his 24 seasons.

While these accomplishments are nothing to take a dump on, they should also be viewed in context: Rose’s 118 career adjusted OPS+ ranks below Richie Sexson, Lenny Dykstra, Mike Greenwell, Cliff Floyd and a whole host of other guys who can’t make much of a case for Hall inclusion.

A good comparison for Rose’s offensive skill level is Ken Griffey Sr., another very good player, and one who generally doesn’t get much love in Hall of Fame discussions.

	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS+	HR	Seasons
Rose	.303	.375	.409	118	160	24
Griffey	.296	R.359	.431	118	152	19

Rose’s greatest claim to fame is his all-time base hits record of 4,256. It should be noted, however, that it was accomplished in a major league-record 15,861 plate appearances—nearly 2,000 more than second-place Carl Yastrzemski. So despite his imposing hits total, his career batting average of .303 nestles Rose safely between Michael Young and Mark Grace for 170th all time.

For all these numbers and comparisons, Pete Rose isn't among the inner circle of the best players to ever have played Major League baseball—what I consider the benchmark for consideration for the Hall of Fame.

Of course, as always, I’m referring to the theoretical Hall of Fame that rewards players for their achievements on the field, not the real-life one in Cooperstown, NY, that believes Jim Rice was somehow better at baseball than Mark McGwire.

When I gather the energy to put together this alternative Hall of Fame, I very much doubt it will include Pete Rose.

Baseball Press Ignores Zack Greinke's Greatness

Jake Rake — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:08:51 -0400

Over his past six starts, Kansas City Royals ace and American League All-Star Zack Greinke has gone 0-6.

CBSSports.com, the former Sportsline.com and one of the Internet’s top sports websites according to Wikipedia, has marked Greinke’s player profile with a blue flag, meaning: “We consider this player to be cold.”

MLB.com, the official site of the Bud Selig media machine, has also joined in on the party, noting that Greinke “slogged through five starts in July without a single victory.”

It’s crazy that, in the current information age—when sophisticated and effective baseball statistics are free and easily accessible—people still use win-loss decisions in order to evaluate a pitcher’s performance.

Over the course of his 0-6 run, dating back to his last winning decision on June 16 in Pittsburgh, Greinke has thrown 37 innings, allowing 14 earned runs and striking out 48 while yielding 13 walks for a K/9 rate of 11.7, a K/BB of 3.69, and an ERA of 3.40.

Let’s compare those numbers to a recent Cy Young season such as Bartolo Colon’s 2005 campaign:

                                        K:9    K:BB    ERA
Grienke’s Past 6 Starts      11.7   3.69    3.40
Colon in ‘05                       6.3    3.65    3.48

Those same writers who have deemed Zack Greinke as “cold” and “slogging” over his past six starts deemed "Bartolo the Clown" the best pitcher in the American League in 2005. However, Colon's 2005 performance is, at best, slightly worse than Grienke’s performance during his losing streak.

What is the difference?

Colon won 21 of his 28 decisions that season. Does it make any sense that, because he plays on a piece of shit team, a negative connotation should be applied to Greinke’s stellar performance?

It is embarrassing that baseball writers refuse to use the data that's at their disposal. This piece took me all of 20 minutes to write and research, and I wasn’t even paid for it.

Baseball is important to many people in this country and abroad; it would be nice if baseball writers took a little responsibility and reported on what is actually happening on the field.

Seattle Mariners: "We Choose To Lose!"

Jake Rake — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:50:41 -0400

The Seattle Mariners are a bizarrely-run sports franchise.

Playing in the easiest division in baseball to reach the postseason, the team has now failed to do so for seven consecutive seasons. With only four teams in the AL West, and routinely crappy ones at that, the Mariners open every season with a 25% chance of claiming a playoff spot.

However, with Wednesday’s trade with the Pirates, the Mariners made a bold statement about their goal to avoid postseason baseball until the Sun expands into a Red Giant and envelops the Earth, thereby ending any chance of accidentally slipping into contention, as sometimes happens in that stupid division out there on the left side of the country.

Being routinely middling over the past seven seasons has brought the Mariners a bevy of high first-round draft picks. Prior to the 2007 season, Baseball Prospectus’ list of the team’s top prospects closely resembled lists compiled by Baseball America and other baseball publications and contained an impressive collection of young talent:

1. Adam Jones
2. Jeff Clement
3. Brandon Morrow
4. Tony Butler
5. Chris Tillman

By the end of the season, Jones was in the major leagues as a 21-year-old, Clement moved up to No. 1 on BP’s list of Mariners prospects, and Tillman was slated right behind him at No. 2—but totally not in a gay way.

Now, just past the midpoint in the 2009 season, where are the Mariners’ top prospects? Helping reinforce the big-league squad en route to the postseason, a la the Rays in 2008?

No, Jones just made his first All-Star appearance as the Orioles’ 23-year-old starting center fielder, Tillman made his first major league start for the O's on Wednesday as a 21-year-old after dominating the high minors, and now Clement has been moved to Pittsburgh after coming to the plate just 243 times as a Mariner.

In return, the Mariners have gotten 160 innings over two seasons from Erik Bedard, who will be a free agent after the 2009 season. And now they have the pleasure of welcoming onto their roster Ian Snell, a pitcher who was unable to crack the starting rotation of the Pittsburgh Pirates and once adopted his wife’s name upon marriage, and Jack Wilson, a 31-year-old with a career adjusted OPS+ of 79.

Big-time stuff.

There is no upside to Ian Snell or Jack Wilson. Erik Bedard is an excellent pitcher who unfortunately has yet to throw 200 innings in a season as a 30-year-old.

Hey, at least Ichiro is under contract for three more years at $17 million per. There's nothing like an overpriced corner outfielder in his late 30s to ease the crushing pain of trading away the most valuable commodities your organization has produced since Alex Rodriguez.

The Mariners are very, very bad.

Make No Mistake, Jeff Francoeur Still Sucks

Jake Rake — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:08:06 -0400

12 games and 52 plate appearances into his tenure as a New York Met, Jeff Francoeur has yet to draw a walk. This is hardly surprising, as the formerly well-regarded Atlanta Brave had walked in just 4.8 percent of his plate appearances leading up to his trade to New York. However, baseball fans and writers have famously short attention spans, and Francoeur's .327 batting average and two home runs since the trade have already led to a backlash against the Jeff Francoeur backlash.

The New York Times has already published the run-of-the-mill, "Coaching Advice Helps Mets’ Jeff Francoeur Get Comfortable," puff piece about how Mets hitting coach Howard "Not The Hotel, But I Will Take You To One To Rail Some Coke And Bang You There" Johnson has corrected some heretofore undiscovered glitch in Francoeur's swing that is responsible for the outfielder's supposed resurgence.

MLB.com, which can always be counted on for thoughtful baseball coverage, has joined the party as well, announcing that Francoeur has "gotten back into the swing of things," following his first home run since the trade on July 21st against the Nationals. The official website of Bud Selig's baseball P.R. machine also proclaims that Francoer began his career with "A stellar first two-and-a-half years for the Braves," a period in which Francoeur's adjusted OPS+ was exactly 100, leaving his offensive performance just below that of the average right fielder.

Bottom line: Jeff Francoeur sucks. He sucked with the Braves and now a hit-by-pitch is the only thing saving him from the dreaded higher-batting average-than-OBP as a Met. Adam Krohn wrote an interesting piece for the Dalton, GA The Daily Citizen last night (The Internet is amazing) in which he suggested that Francoeur may be well-served to quit baseball altogether and pursue a career in football. Honestly, I don't care what he does after he leaves baseball, but it has been clear for a while now that he can't cut it at the highest level of the game.

Ichiro San: I Hate You Vol. II

Jake Rake — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:40:16 -0400

I wrote a column about a year ago outlining my disgust with the way Ichiro Suzuki plays baseball, and moreover, the constant fellatio he receives from baseball writers and fans. With said column continually attracting the ire of Ichiro fans who leave comments on the Internet, I present a list of selected players with higher career adjusted OPS+ (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, adjusted for ballpark and league averages) than Mr. Suzuki.

This list is comprised of very good baseball players, but hardly the caliber batsman that draw suggestions that they be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, like Ichiro does all the time for some reason.*

Richie Sexson
Lenny Dykstra (who’s apparently broke now)
Rusty Greer
Chris Hoiles**
Andy Van Slyke
Cliff Floyd
Chili Davis
Mickey Tettleton
Hideki Matsui
Glenn Davis

*As usual, assuming that the Hall of Fame even matters at this point.
**As an O’s fan growing up, I always liked Hoiles, but until I grew up and learned to appreciate the beauty of boiling an athlete’s career into a spreadsheet of data I never realized exactly how good he was.

Posted in Baseball, Lists

List Of Guys Who Will Become Guys

Jake Rake — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:11:12 -0400

The “Guy” is an important character in the world of major league baseball. The term may have been coined by esteemed thinker and current roadie Eric Ripps and refers to those dudes who round out the ranks of highest level of professional baseball.

They generally play for 10 or more seasons, hit 25-30 home runs in a season once or twice, play in an All-Star Game or two, spend a stint or two with the Orioles, Royals or Rangers, land one sweet free agent payout around the age of 33 and then peter out into oblivion, finishing their careers with adjusted OPS+ around 100.

Recent examples of "Guys" include Mark DeRosa, David Dellucci, Preston Wilson, Xavier Nady, Eric Byrnes and Jeffrey Hammonds. For reference’s sake, Jermaine Dye is one notch above a Guy while Reed Johnson falls just short.

Below is a list of young or youngish players who are in excellent position to replace the current DeRosas and Marcus Thameses and become MLB’s next class of "Guys":

Edwin Encarnacion
Delmon Young
Johnny Gomes
Conor Jackson*
Andy LaRoche
Brandon Moss
Mark Teahen
Wily Mo Pena
Justin Maxwell

A running theme amongst these players is they were once highly regarded prospects who refuse, for one reason or another, to become the star players their teams initially hoped they would develop into during their first several seasons in the majors leagues.

Of course, hoping that any player will be a Cal Ripken or Justin Upton and dominate the league right out of the gate is a great way to cultivate disappointment, as there are 125 Marty Cordovas for every Albert Pujols. Most of the younger players on this list have been traded at least once, while the older dudes have generally spent much of their early-to-mid 20’s performing at a high level in the minor leagues.

Delmon Young is an interesting case, as the 2003 No. 1 pick broke into the majors with a solid 2006 season at age 20, prompting Baseball-Reference to list Tris Speaker’s age-21 performance as a top comparable for Young’s 2007 campaign—before his disappointing 2007 resulted in a top comp of Rocco Baldelli for the following year.

Young was then traded to the Twins, where his adjusted OPS+ of 102 indicated that he was roughly a league-average hitter as a 22-year old in 2008. While his lackluster walk rate and power numbers lead me to believe that he will never be the star Peter Gammons and others predicted he would ultimately become, Young is still very, uh, young , and I’m fairly confident that he will at least eclipse “Guys” like Dellucci, Wilson and his diabetic piece of shit of a brother.

Young also has yet to achieve enough to merit writing about without mentioning that time he throw his bat at a minor league umpire, so here it is.

*This is a disappointing one. Jackson’s .423 career minor league OBP resulted in one of the most heartfelt mancrushes I’ve ever harbored. However, as a 27-year old with an adjusted OPS+ of 101 through nearly 2,000 plate appearences, CoJack’s ceiling at this point has become Glenallen Hill.

ESPN Needs To Take Responsibility For Its Writers

Jake Rake — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:27:23 -0400

Well, looks like we can add Chris Sprow to the list of people who, regardless of what their business cards say, have no business writing about baseball. In a column in the June 29th edition of ESPN: The Magazine, Sprow discusses the players currently enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame that he believes to be least deserving.

While I have no problem with Mr. Sprow expressing his opinions, I do take issue with his reasoning, which in turn leads me to feel some degree of disappointment with ESPN for presenting this drivel as if it were an informed point of view.

Sprow correctly identifies Bill Mazeroski as one of the first casualties of any purge of the HOF; no player with a career adjusted OPS+ of 84 should even be allowed to visit the Hall of Fame (with the exception of Ozzie Smith at 87, but at least he played shortstop).

Once the list comes to Boston Beaneaters star Hugh Duffy, though, Sprow’s reasoning takes a nosedive. Again, everyone is entitled to their opinion, and a left fielder with a career adjusted OPS+ of 122 is certainly a worthwhile candidate to have their HOF credentials questioned. However, rather than discussing points such as Duffy’s place in the left-field positional delta and the brevity of his peak as a hitter. Quoth the Sprow:

“Hugh was pretty good—he has a career average of .324—but consider us slightly concerned that in 1894 he ballooned to an average of .440, then never hit higher than .352 in a season thereafter.”

Never hit higher than .352 thereafter? Let’s ignore the fact that Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Schmidt, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Eddie Mathews, Frank Robinson and Cal Ripken Jr. have exactly two seasons between them in which they hit .352 or higher (Aaron in 1959 and A-Rod in 1996). Who gets chastised for failing to hit .400?

A few slots down from Duffy on Sprow’s list of undeserving Hall of Famers is former Pirates shortstop Arky Vaughan. Vaughan’s inclusion on the list should immediately raise eyebrows, as even Sprow notes that by many metrics Vaughan is the second-best shortstop of all-time (after Honus Wagner). However, it is again the reasoning rather than the point that is problematic. Sprow:

Vaughan has just 2,103 career hits and 96 home runs.

Vaughan’s 2,103 career hits place him 204th all time, a ranking that may sound pedestrian, but when it is taken into consideration that there are over 16,000 player entries on Baseball-Reference, it can be appreciated that Vaughan’s hit total actually places him in the 98th percentile in the category all-time. But who gives a damn about hit totals? Ichiro routinely leads the league in hits, and clearly, he isn't that good.

What we, not to mention those of us who are paid by the largest sports media company in the world to think and write about sports, should be noting is that Vaughan’s career adjusted OPS+ of 136 bests Hall of Famers Ripken, Ernie Banks, George Brett, Al Kaline, Orlando Cepeda, Joe Morgan, Jackie Robinson, Tony Gwynn, Rod Carew, Wade Boggs, Roberto Clemente and a whole slew of others. Not to mention it also bests active luminaries such as David Ortiz, Jason Bay, Adam Dunn and Chase Utley.

It should also be noted that while his 96 career home runs are nothing to write home about, Vaughan finished in the top 10 in the league in doubles in five of his 14 seasons, OPS in seven and slugging in four (Side note: Vaughan also died at the age of 40 when he was lost at sea, which is something that used to happen to people).

It’s fine to argue that Arky Vaughan or Hugh Duffy or any baseball player is better or worse than any other player. However, at least attempt to make a rational argument, especially if the argument is going to be consumed by an audience of millions. I didn’t even get paid to write this piece and I somehow managed to squeeze in a little research prior to expressing my opinions.

Heretofore Woeful Cleveland Indians Could Still Win AL Central

Jake Rake — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:32:38 -0400

The A.L. Central, like its Western-division brethren and the entire National League, is full of bad teams. The division’s first-place Detroit Tigers enter Tuesday’s games with a run differential that would rank fifth in the A.L. East.

The Minnesota Twins, meanwhile, have ridden Joe Mauer’s Ted Williams impression and a pitching staff that has decided against issuing walks this season into second place, a mere three games out, and are the only other team in the division to have outscored its opponents thus far.

The other three teams in the division, the Chicago White Sox, Kansas City Royals, and Cleveland Indians all sit mired within two games of one another, 4.5-6.5 games back of the Tigers.

Despite their similar records, however, the Indians are easily the best of the three and regardless of the team’s poor play and bad luck to this point, should not be counted out of the race for the 2009 postseason.

The Indians have already separated themselves from the Sox and Royals in everything but record, entering Tuesday with a -10 run differential, compared with Chicago’s -27 and KC’s -26.

The Tribe has also played the most difficult schedule of any team in the division, having played 21 of their 66 games against the Beasts of the A.L. East, the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays.

Conversely, the White Sox have played just four games against the Rays and have yet to face the Yankees or Red Sox; the Tigers have not seen the Rays yet and have a record of 1-5 against New York and Boston.

The Indians have also suffered from that combination of early-season injuries and ineffectiveness that so often leads to premature dismissal in the non-stop prattling of sports media.

The team’s unequivocal best player, Grady Sizemore, has been on the DL since May 30 and played like an injured dude in the weeks leading up to that point.

DH Travis Hafner has also spent time on the DL after opening the season with a pre-2007-Hafneresque .910 OPS through the end of April.

Sizemore is due back within the next week and a half, while Hafner continued to not suck upon his return, rocking a line of .308/.379/.615 over seven games.

The combined performance of these two playing around their career norms, along with that of Victor Martinez and our favorite Korean on Korner, Shin-Soo Choo, will give the Indians more than enough offense to compensate for their decidedly unheroic pitching staff.

If it turns out that Asdrubal Cabrera’s rise to offensive competency is real and he’s more than just your run of the mill Asdrubal, Matt LaPorta can adjust to big league pitching and one of Ben Francisco, Mark DeRosa, or Jhonny Peralta gets their shit together, the Indians could have the best offense in the division, if not the non-Eastern two-thirds of the league.

With a schedule through the All-Star Break that includes series against the woeful Pirates, Reds, Athletics, and White Sox and a three-game set against the Tigers to end the first-half there is really no reason to count out Lou Brown’s boys just yet.

PS: Last night’s Rick Vaughn bobblehead giveaway clearly ranks among the best promotions in the history of organized sport. E-Bay will be scoured.

Rays' Ben Zobrist Channeling Youkilis

Jake Rake — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 20:40:12 -0400

On July 12, 2006, the Tampa Bay then-Devil Rays traded their perennial cleanup hitter, Aubrey Huff, to the Houston Astros, who were looking to supplement their lineup with a bat capable of posting an .800 OPS whose name was not Lance Berkman. In return, the Devil Rays received a pair of minor leaguers who remain with the organization to this day: right-handed starter Mitch Talbot and a 25-year-old shortstop named Ben Zobrist.

Neither player came to Tampa Bay with huge expectations, and the fact that Talbot has even pitched in the major leagues should be considered a coup for the Rays, considering the rate at which young pitchers get injured. Zobrist, on the other hand, is on the verge of appearing to be more than the real deal. Over the past two seasons, the father of 4-month old Zion Benjamin Zobrist (probably the only “ZBZ” in history) has hit .270/.369/.562 over 388 plate appearances, homering once every 17.6 at-bats and playing every position except for first base, pitcher ,and catcher during that span.

Needless to say, the rise of “Zorilla” as not only a valuable major leaguer but a power-hitting, all-star-caliber slugger is a not-entirely expected development. He showed reasonable power in the minors, posting an isolated power of 141 over the course of his minor league career—a nice figure for a shortstop but hardly anything to write home about, especially when its owner is already in his mid-20’s.

The most interesting aspect of Zobrist’s game in the minors, however, is his career on-base percentage of .428. Say what you will about being old for his levels, but any player who gets on base nearly 43 percent of the time is actively doing something right.

The question now is how Zobrist’s patience-centric minor league profile translated into big-time major league power. A good comparison here is Kevin Youkilis, the Red Sox ethnically misidentified “Greek God of Walks,” whose major league line through age 28 was a Zobristian .280/.383/.434.

Given, Youk was performing at the major league level, but both he and Zobrist started hitting for major power (ISO over .200) around the same age (27-28) after sporting near-identical isolated power figures up to that point. As Steven Goldman noted in a column on ESPN last month, “Youkilis hasn't sacrificed his selectivity; he's increased his versatility. The Greek God of Walks is dead; long live the Boston God of Channeled Aggression: Swing when it's smart, sit when it's not and never mind the labels.”

The same idea could be applied to Zobrist: all of those years, he spent watching and not swinging at pitches out of the strike zone appears to have resulted in a peak in which he has become adept at identifying his pitch and driving the shit out of it. With his success despite relatively low batting averages on balls in play over the past two seasons (.252 in ’08 and .306 in ’09), Zobrist doesn’t appear to be the beneficiary of any great deal of luck.

Between injuries to B.J. Upton, Evan Longoria and Akinori Iwamura, Zobrist has seen a good deal of playing time over the past two seasons and with his versatility, low cost and ridiculous power (not to mention his tendency to hit grand slams, with a franchise-record four in his young career), he looks to be a valuable contributor to what will eventually be remembered as the great Rays teams of the early 21st century.

Jayson Stark Is Stupid: MLB Draft Needs To Include Foreign Players

Jake Rake — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:20:29 -0400

Jayson Stark sucks.

While this is hardly breaking news, it seemed like an appropriate introduction to today’s diatribe about Stark’s lengthy column on ESPN.com this afternoon in which he dedicated nearly 2,000 words to discussing the problems with Major League Baseball’s player-drafting system but failed to include even one mention of the system’s largest flaw: the exclusion of foreign players.

Commentary on baseball’s flawed drafting system without regard this facet of the problem is akin to writing about Mike Tyson’s personal life with no mention of his tendency to sometimes rape women, beat up strangers and allow his children to play with things that kill them.

Stark’s essay ran on ESPN.com for one reason: He is an ESPN “senior baseball writer.” If any amateur or even professional writer who was not already employed by ESPN submitted this column for publication, they would be immediately sent a letter that said something along the lines of “thanks but no thanks.”

But because at some point the company decided to invest money in Stark’s ability to think about baseball and report on his ponderings, ESPN’s audience is treated to quotes from Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn about how miffed they are about Stephen Strasburg potentially making more money than they do.

The entire column really boils down to that most-revered mantra of thoughtless sports conversations: Why do these guys get paid so much money to play a game?

In this case, the guys in question are not the A-Rods, CCs and aforementioned Howards and Dunns; but the Strasburgs, Priors, Mauers and Prices, who each year baseball teams make large wagers on that they can make good on their projectability and become superstars like those mentioned above. Is it a good bet that any given amateur will become A-Rod one day? No. But that doesn’t stop teams from betting millions of dollars on the prospect.

It’s happening and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. Why the public, or Jayson Stark or Ryan Howard, would rather see the teams and their owners have the money rather than players is the real issue there, but that’s a story for another day.

The real issue with Major League Baseball’s First-Year Player Draft is not how much money draft picks are being paid, but who those draft picks are in the first place. As it currently stands, the MLB draft could be renamed the Black & White Draft, as American and Canadian players are the only ones subjected to it.

Brown players from Asia and Latin America are almost exclusively signed as non-drafted free agents, an arrangement that results in multimillion dollar signing bonuses for 16-year-olds, posting fees of tens of millions of dollars to Japanese and Korean teams, and scenarios in which player's true names and ages are fudged and American teams suffer ordeals such as that of the Washington Nationals this past winter.

Will Stephen Strasburg be worth $50 million over the course of his career? Probably not, but the Nationals (or some other team) is presumably willing to pay him that much to find out. As baseball fans, we should be happy that someone is willing to invest so much money to see if he really is that good.

Conversely, baseball fans should resent hack writers like Jayson Stark, who do nothing with their near-unlimited access to players and teams except perpetuate trite, thoughtless platitudes like complaining about how much money players make.

Instead, read what I have to say about things. I can’t get quotes from Ryan Howard or anonymous team officials, but I will often work tasteless allusions such as Mike Tyson raping Desiree Washington in an article about the baseball draft, and that’s a promise you can take to the bank.

P.S.: Also, Stark quotes Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth in the article. Work in Jayson Nix and his brother, Laynce, and the four could have themselves a nice little superfluous "Y" foursome.

Almost Time For Stephen Strasburg To Be Ruined By the Washington Nationals

Jake Rake — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:48:03 -0400

Stephen Strasburg is too good for college baseball.

Entering the 2009 season as the top collegiate pitcher in the country, the San Diego State right hander has somehow managed to elevate his game this season, striking out 174 batters in 94 and one-third innings through last Thursday’s win over Utah, while allowing just 14 earned runs on 72 base runners. To translate these words into cold, rational numerals:

K/9: 16.6
ERA: 1.34
W/L: 12-0
Avg. IP per start: 7 1/3
WHIP: .763
BA Against: .167

As if his overall performance wasn't enough to get anyone with any vested interest in baseball paying attention, Strasburg complemented his 2009 campaign with a 17-K no-hitter against the Air Force Academy two weeks ago. Additionally, his name is the ninth overall suggestion Google has when “Stephe” is typed into the search bar, just ahead of the “Father of Texas,” Stephen F. Austin.

However, just as everything seemed to be rolling along for Stephen Strasburg, a terrible thing happened. The Washington Nationals were (predictably) the worst team in baseball in 2008 and landed the first pick of the 2009 First-Year Player Draft.

This is a devastating development for the young pitcher, as there is little doubt that even the Washington Nationals aren’t stupid enough to not take him with the No. 1 pick.

With the Nats’ track record over the past year including a federal investigation of their since-deposed (and as yet unreplaced) general manager, a corruption scandal surrounding the team’s Dominican academy, and an apparent inability to spell anything correctly, there is little evidence that they won’t find a way to screw this up.

Scenario No. 1: Nationals draft Strasburg but refuse to play ball with his agent, Scott Boras, and he doesn’t sign, marking the second consecutive season in which they fail to sign their first-round draft pick. Strasburg goes on to play in an independent league for a year and either:

A. Hurts himself and becomes, “Hey, remember that pitcher from San Diego State, Stan Schwartzberg?”

or...

B. Re-enters the draft the following year, is selected by the Diamondbacks or Indians and becomes awesome, while the Nationals redirect all of that money they saved by not signing him and give Dmitri Young a multi-year extension.

Scenario No. 2: Nationals draft Strasburg, sign him to whatever Boras wants, let him dominate in the minors for a couple of weeks and then promote him to the majors, where he and Jordan Zimmermann give the team a rare glimmer of hope as one of the premier one-two young starting pitcher combos in the major leagues.

Elijah Dukes then stabs him in the heart as half of a murder-suicide.

Scenario No. 3: (Most pessimistic and therefore, unfortunately, most likely) Nationals draft and sign Strasburg. However, he then gets injured at some point during the next 12 months and requires major surgery. He then returns to action at about two-thirds capacity and never quite gets it together again.

He works out of the Nationals’ bullpen for a couple of innings a year and is ultimately released at some point between the 2012 World Series and the start of 2013 spring training. He then catches on with the Marlins, Rockies, or Royals, and has a couple of acceptable seasons as a starting pitcher before quietly retiring from baseball in 2017.

This sounds depressing, however, if things were to play out in this manner, Stephen Strasburg would at that point be a 29-year-old multi-millionaire with three-fourths of a college education and some stories to tell.

I can think of worse things.

Baseball Hall of Fame Losing Relevance

Jake Rake — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:58:26 -0400

I was at the gym the other day (these pecs aren’t going to wail on themselves) and I happen to catch a segment of one of ESPN’s talking head panel shows on one of the standard-issue muted flat-screen TVs placed every five feet around the wall of any self-respecting personal fitness facility. The following discussion topic was written across the screen:

“Who hurt their Hall of Fame chances more, A-Rod or Manny?”

The topic was obviously in reference to Manny Ramirez’s recent 50-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance and Alex Rodriguez’s admission to abusing performance-enhancing substances the previous winter.

As the allegedly tainted sluggers of the Steroid Era begin to trickle into Hall of Fame eligibility, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), the self-regulating collective of beat writers who vote on Hall of Fame candidates as well as player awards including the Cy Young, MVP, and Rookie of the Year trophies, is seeing to it that the question will not be, “How should the Hall of Fame react to players whose performance was enhanced by illegal chemical stimulation?” But instead, “Does the Hall of Fame even matter?”

The BBWAA has already given the cold shoulder to Mark McGwire, he of the best at-bat to home run ratio in baseball history, and with questions about whether Manny and A-Rod will be inducted, it is becoming clear how it collectively feels about the players of this shady era of sports history.

McGwire, Ramirez, Rodriguez, and Barry Bonds are unquestionably among the greatest baseball players of all time. If the Baseball Hall of Fame actively chooses to omit several of the most-accomplished players in the history of the sport, then what, if any, is the significance of the Hall of Fame?

For much of the past century, the National Baseball Hall of Fame has stood as an unchallenged pantheon of baseball’s most-talented performers. Each summer, discussions rage over whether or not an eligible player is “Hall-worthy” and how well he will perform on the BBWAA ballots.

However, such thinking diverts attention away from a player’s actual performance and redirects it towards thinking about a player in terms of this authoritarian body that is the Hall of Fame.

It is parallel to telling someone that their regional dialect is “incorrect” because the words they are using are not acknowledged in the “Official” English Dictionary. Who granted authority to Webster to decide what is and isn’t a word?

In the same vein, who decided that the National Baseball Hall of Fame is the be-all, end-all judge of the greatest baseball players of all time?

Baseball fans need to break their mental bond with the Hall and consider that perhaps it has something other than the best interests of the sport at heart.

One Middling Month Does Nothing To Quell CC Sabathia's Awesomeness

Jake Rake — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:12:44 -0400

With the boo-birds out in full force over CC Sabathia’s slow start to his first season as a Yankee, baseball fans prove that they can always be counted on to completely miss the point.

Rather than go into a tirade about how stupid everybody is, let’s just take a look at CC’s splits from last season, first his performance though April and then for the rest of the season:

As you can clearly see, there was nothing wrong with CC Sabathia in 2008, despite his slow start to open the season.

Using a couple of games, in this case his first six starts of 2009, as an indicator of performance is almost completely worthless. Baseball players need hundreds, if not thousands of games to reveal the true level of their ability, and sometimes even an entire career isn’t enough.

There is little doubt that CC Sabathia will be really good in 2009, and as much as I can’t stand the Yankees, I’m excited to see him shove it in his naysayer’s faces.

As always, this posting was made possible thanks to the ridiculously awesome Baseball-Reference.com.

Can the Seattle Mariners Compete Despite Never Getting on Base?

Jake Rake — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:57:55 -0400

The race is on, as the number of regular players who have yet to draw a walk in 2009 is down to three:

Yuniesky Betancourt (53 PA)
Bengie Molina (54 PA)
Ichiro Suzuki (33 PA)

Not surprisingly, considering that more than 20 percent of their starting lineup has yet to draw a walk, the Seattle Mariners are last in the major leagues with a .293 on-base percentage, barely falling below Arizona (.294) and Molina’s swing-happy San Francisco Giants (.299).

(Point of interest: the Moneyball-inspiration Oakland A’s are next from the bottom at .307, which is certainly crappy, but the A’s look like the ’27 Yankees next to those other three dud-studded lineups).

Despite the Mariners’ unwillingness to take their bases on balls, unlike their impatient ilk they have been winning ballgames, entering Friday with a three-and-a-half game lead on top of the A.L. West and having outscored their opponents by seven runs on the year. This scenario begets those two questions that drive all baseball research: how are they able to do this and can they continue?

The Mariners’ position atop the Western division standings can be attributed to a variety of factors, not the least of which is that the A.L. West includes only four teams. This has been a major factor in the Angels’ run of dominance as well, as in a four-team division each team starts the year with a 25 percent chance of making the playoffs, where as teams in five-squad divisions have 20 percent chances and in the mediocrity-packed, six-team N.L. Central, each team has a 16.67 percent chance.

Taking for granted the fact that someone needs to finish first in the unfairly scarce A.L. West, the Mariners have also prevented runs at an unexpected rate, although their company at the top of the runs-prevented list doesn’t bode well for the prospect of the list remaining consistent over the course of the season.

Fewest Runs Allowed In 2009 (Entering Friday 4/24):
Pittsburgh (50)
Kansas City (51)
LA Dodgers (54)
Seattle (56)

Those four teams have a combined run differential of +77 on the year, with the Dodgers leading the way at Major League-leading +40, followed by the Pirates at +20, the Royals at +10 and Seattle at +7.

With the exception of the Pirates in that silly, six-team N.L. Central, all of the teams in the above list are in first place in their divisions. Save for the Dodgers, does that look like a list of teams that will be in the running for playoff spots in October? All signs point to “fluke” on this one.

Seattle’s saving grace here will be health. The M’s top two starters, Erik Bedard and Felix Hernandez, have combined to pitch 45 and a third innings so far this year, striking out 50 batters against just 12 walks and yielding just a single home run over that span.

However, these dudes have also spent a combined 430 days on the disabled list since 2003. Needless to say, that is a whole shitload of missed time, and pitching in the major leagues hasn’t been known to be the most helpful way to avoid reaggravating previously sustained injuries.

I think it is safe to say that despite their lackluster divisional competition, the Seattle Mariners will likely not spend much more time atop the A.L. West standings. While Ichiro and the one and only “Yuniesky” in the history of baseball will in all likelihood each draw a walk at some point this year, there is no guarantee that it will happen many more times for either of them.

Throw fellow OBP-drains Jose Lopez (career .301), Kenji Johjima (.312), and Endy Chavez (.314) into the mix and you’re looking at an offense that is collectively getting on base at roughly the same rate as Ty Cobb, circa the present day in which Cobb has been dead for nearly 60 years.

Couple the team’s complete inability to score runs with an aging pitching staff that will likely lose time to injuries and a Jarrod Washburn that simply will not continue allowing less than one baseruner per inning while striking out four times as many guys as he walks, and you’ve got a team that is, plain and simple, not a contender. In the stupid A.L. West, though, who knows?

Yankees' Chien-Ming Wang Is HIlariously Bad at Pitching

Jake Rake — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 11:27:14 -0400

It's the second inning of a Yankees game, so you know what's going on:

Chien-Ming Wang is out of the game and has allowed a zillion runs. The Yanks' opening day starter, who is owned in 91 percent of Sportsline fantasy leagues, was pummeled for eight runs in the second inning of today's (Saturday) gameagainst the Indians, including a three-run home run courtesy of fellow Asian hyphenated tri-name and Rake Blogmancrush, Shin-Soo Choo.

Wang, who is the only "Wang" to have appeared in a Major League baseball game, failed to improve upon his 28.93 entering Saturday's game, instead ballooning that figure to 34.50. He has yet to see the fifth inning of a game this season, and has now been unable to make it out of the second in consecutive starts. The line, through Saturday:

The best part of this mess, outside of his name being "Wang" (grow up; psych, it's hilarious and clearly the best part of any discussion about Chien-Ming Wang) is almost definitely Wang's WHIP, which if you're unfamiliar, is a pitcher's walks and hits allowed totals divided by the number of innings pitched, or the number of baserunners allowed per inning.

Allowing, on average, nearly five baserunners per inning is almost paradoxically bad. There are only three bases that can be occupied at anyone time, so allowing more than three runners to reach base in every single inning one pitches is a nice step to take if the goal is to reach an ERA of infinity.

Thoughts from MLB's Day One

Jake Rake — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:24:55 -0400

Way to go, Adam Jones, reaching base five times including a triple, as the O’s knocked around CC Sabathia and the Yankees.

In the same game, Brian Roberts was caught stealing and picked off of first base. No good, man.

I’m not sure what the rationale is behind Nick Swisher not starting in the field for a Yankees lineup that includes Brett Gardner, Cody Ransom, and Xavier Nady. Swish suffered from a low batting average last season, but he still hit 24 home runs and his isolated power was right around his career average.

King Felix was dominant against the Twins, using just 97 pitches to cruise through eight innings, allowing one run and striking out six. Also, Ken Griffey Jr. contributed roughly five percent of his remaining career home runs in his first game back with Seattle.

My favorite punching bag, the Washington Nationals, are really blowing it by starting Austin Kearns over Elijah Dukes in right field. The numbers from last year:

Dukes is also four years younger than Kearns, and with and outfield of Dukes, Lastings Milledge, and Adam Dunn, the Nationals could well have the best starting outfield in the division. However, of course they would f**k this up, they are the Washington Nationals.

The Tigers-Blue Jays game was delayed during the eighth inning, as Blue Jays fans, hopped up on Molson and Poutine, pelted Tigers outfielder Josh Anderson with trash.

It’s never too early for hacky baseball writing:

Posted in Baseball

Hayden Penn: R.I.P. Great Orioles Hope

Jake Rake — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:34:29 -0400

The Hayden Penn Era in Baltimore will now officially never happen, as the once-prized right-hander, deemed “untouchable” by the Orioles during negotiations with the Marlins for a possible trade for A.J. Burnett in 2005, was traded to those very same Florida Marlins on Wednesday for Robert Andino, a shortstop with a career OPS of .549.

Penn’s jettison from the Baltimore organization is bittersweet, as while it is disappointing that he never panned out after dominating the minor leagues in the early-to-mid 2000’s and providing a glimmer of hope in the otherwise uninteresting Orioles farm system of the time, it is also symbolic of the McPhail Administration’s willingness to trim the fat left over from the previous regime and move on.

Penn looked like the real deal a couple of years ago, striking out more than a batter per inning over 130 2/3 Double-A innings as a 19- and 20-year-old in 2004-2005. After struggling for 38 innings over two stints in the big leagues in ’05, it was back to business as usual for the 21-year-old Penn, who posted a 2.26 ERA with 85 strikeouts against 27 walks in 87 2/3 innings in AAA in 2006. However, a September call-up would prove nothing short of tragic as Penn yielded 33 earned runs in 19 2/3 innings over six starts, lasting past the fourth inning just once and allowing a whopping 2.59 baserunners per inning. Jesus Christ.

2007 was somehow even more of a disaster for the right hander, as he managed to pitched just 40 innings over three minor league levels after undergoing an emergency appendectomy during spring training and then getting impaled by a shard of wood from a shattered bat while playing catch during rehab. There is nothing interesting to note about Penn’s 2008 campaign at Triple-A Norfolk, as he sucked so badly that he was unable to earn a single start for an Orioles big league squad that failed to trot out a single league-average starting pitcher not named Jeremy Guthrie.

So there you have it. Now 24 years old and rocking a career ERA of 9.31 with a career strikeout to walk ratio of 26:34 in the majors, I’m all but willing to write off Hayden Penn, the dude who is 4 months older than me and who upon meeting in 2005 forced me into realization that I would never be a major league ballplayer.

Sure, it would be cool to see the guy get it together in Florida, as he clearly possesses some degree of talent, but I wouldn’t count on it. Of course, the Marlins had little to lose in dealing Andino and his .299 career slugging percentage for a 24-year-old starting pitcher. He’ll fit right in with the Marlins’ legion of white dudes.

Posted in Baseball

Detroit Tigers Should Be Ashamed To Hold Home Opener on Good Friday

Jake Rake — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:11:08 -0400

The Detroit Tigers baseball franchise should be ashamed of itself.

By scheduling the team’s 2009 home opener on Good Friday the organization is sending a clear message to the greater Detroit area and the entire civilized world: The Detroit Tigers hate Jesus Christ and all of his followers.

The last thing the Catholic Church needs is more distractions for its parishioners. It’s bad enough that banks, restaurants, and movie theatres remain open on this, one of the three or four holiest days of the Christian calendar.

If there are baseball games to go to on a beautiful spring afternoon, who is going to attend church?

The archaic practices of a 2000-year-old religious institution based around repression and personal sacrifice can’t compete with watching Curtis Granderson smack triples into the cavernous Comerica Park outfield.

Magglio Ordonez’s long, flowing locks billowing out from beneath his navy blue batting helmet are far more transfixing than any stained-glass depiction of the emaciated corpse of our savior hanging from the cross.

For crying out loud, even I’d prefer going to a ball game over spending the day at a musky old church. And it is for these reasons that the Tigers and everyone else should bend to the church’s whim.

I’m not asking for much here. All I’m saying is that the world is simply not large enough for both the church and all of the fun things that people like to do to make their lives more interesting and fun.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is the sad truth. And because it is so, we must not only refrain from doing said fun things, but we must stop everyone from enjoying them as well.

Hopefully, if we can eliminate all of the activities that humans have developed that have diminished the need for focus on the afterlife, the miserable population will then return to the church.

Godliness is next to cleanliness, people, and I’ve already showered today.

I have faith the Tigers will cancel their home opener and make this the Best Friday ever!

Why Team USA's World Baseball Classic Loss Is No Big Deal

Jake Rake — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:29:07 -0400

In an editorial in The New York Times on Tuesday, William C. Rhoden explores the reasons why the United States’ contingent lost to that of Japan in Sunday night’s semifinal game of the World Baseball Classic, pondering:

“Did the United States lose a semifinal game on Sunday? Or have we lost the game itself?”

William C. Rhoden should probably not be allowed to write about baseball in The New York Times. In addition to violating my biggest journalistic pet peeve by referring to the United States as “we,” Rhoden’s column presents no empirical evidence to support the writer’s point of view, instead relying on folksiness and boring clichés. Worse, by placing emphasis on a single game, Rhoden shows a complete misunderstanding of the game of baseball.

Let’s throw this out there right there: Team USA lost Sunday night’s game because they scored less runs than they allowed to Team Japan, who proved to be a formidable opponent. That’s all.

One game, or even a series of games such as the World Baseball Classic or the Major League playoffs is nothing like an indicator of one team’s superiority or inferiority over another.

The Yankees won 95 games in 2005, but were somehow swept in a three-game series by the lowly Kansas City Royals, who won 56. Were the Royals better than the Yankees in 2005? No, they just played at a comparable level over the course of enough games to have allowed the Yankees to establish themselves as the better team.

Anything can happen in a reasonably evenly matched baseball game; on any given day, Albert Pujols can go 0-for-4 or Mark Whiten could hit four home runs.

Echoing shortstop Jimmy Rollins’ praise for the Japanese team’s ability to put the ball in play rather than hitting home runs, Rhoden observes:

“It was as if the United States was being reintroduced to a game it invented. It has moved to lavish new stadiums and supports lucrative player contracts. It is built on power and entertainment: a deadly combination, we’ve discovered, in an era of performance-enhancing drugs.”

What do lavish stadiums and lucrative player contracts have to do with anything? Is Rhoden implying that American players have somehow become worse at baseball because more people can watch them than ever before and hence, also make more money?

If anything, capitalism and the influx of cash into baseball has made players better, as there is more riding on their performance than at any point in the history of sport: with some exceptions, the best players are on the field for every single Major League game. If a player slips below his expected level of performance, it is just a matter of time before he finds himself out of baseball: Andruw Jones, who now finds himself competing for a spot on the Texas Rangers’ bench, hit 51 home runs just four years ago.

Beyond the nuggets of idiocy noted above, Rhoden’s argument that being eliminated from the World Baseball Classic is somehow symbolic of the United States having “lost” the game of baseball is ridiculous at best, and nationalistic and racist at worst.

As Rhoden himself notes, “Major League Baseball continues to represent the best baseball has to offer, largely because great players from Asia, Central America, South America and North America compete on major league rosters.” Drawing players from a larger pool raises the level competition. Expressing grief over great foreign players showing up Americans is akin to lamenting Tiger Woods’ triumphs in a white man’s game.

Rhoden and anyone else looking to the WBC for answers about where to find the world’s top baseball talent should consider why they are asking that question in the first place. The Major Leagues are comprised of the top players in the world; why does it matter what countries these guys come from, so long as they continue to knock the shit out of the ball and allow the audiences that are willing to support those lavish stadiums and exorbitant player contracts to watch the highest quality baseball in the game’s history?

Mike Rizzo The Man For The Job WIth Washington Nationals

Jake Rake — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:16:01 -0500

I hate to let down my fans, but I write today in praise of the Washington Nationals, who, in a rare act of competence, have made a very good decision in temporarily handing their baseball operations responsibilities to assistant GM Mike Rizzo in the wake of former GM and future convicted felon Jim Bowden’s resignation.

Following the shadiness of the Bowden administration, including the conflict of interest uncovered in the team’s Dominican baseball academy being owned and operated by team employee Jose Rijo, Rizzo’s appointment marks the first occurrence in which an Italian has been brought in to curb unsavory business tactics and corruption (Wackity Schmackity Doo!).

In all seriousness, though, Rizzo is an experienced baseball operations executive with an excellent track record in player development—an area in which the Nationals desperately need a skilled hand.

As the Arizona Diamondbacks’ director of scouting from 2000-2005 and vice president of scouting operations in 2006, Rizzo oversaw the drafting and development of one of the most impressive collections of young talent in baseball.

This list includes current major leaguers Justin Upton, Conor Jackson, Brandon Webb, Stephen Drew, Max Scherzer, Chad Tracy, Micah Owings (currently with the Reds), Carlos Quentin (White Sox), Dustin Nippert (Rangers), Greg Smith (Rockies), Carlos Gonzalez (Rockies), Greg Aquino (Orioles), Garrett Mock (Nationals), and Matt Chico (Nationals).

Rizzo joined the Nationals in 2006 and oversaw the drafting of the team’s current crop of top prospects, including Jordan Zimmerman (who threw three scoreless innings against a Mets split squad in a spring training game Wednesday afternoon), Michael Burgess, and Ross Detwiler, all of whom have yet to reach the major leagues but were ranked 56th, 65th and 81st, respectively, on Baseball Prospectus’ 2009 Top 100 Prospects List.

It is unclear what role Rizzo played in the Nationals’ monumental failure to sign 2008 first-round draft pick Aaron Crowe, but it is fair to attribute the episode to the now-famous internal bumbling of the organization as a whole.

Hopefully, the Nats’ will chase this rare display of aptitude by giving Rizzo a real shot and anointing him as the new permanent GM, rather than doing something stupid like giving the job to Dmitri Young, as they are wont to do.

Brian Roberts: More Than Just A Leadoff Guy For Baltimore Orioles

Jake Rake — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:55:18 -0500

"The one thing I talked to my agent about is that everyone says I'm a speed guy, and speed will go down as I age. But I don't really play like a speed guy. For one, I've never been a guy that gets out of the batter's box very quickly. I don't get a lot of infield hits, and I'm not reliant on them to hit .300.

"I don't bunt very much. My numbers, for the most part, are strictly hitting. And as for base-stealing, I stole more bases at 30 than I did at 25. Most of my base running is based on understanding how to run the bases and how to steal bases."

-Brian Roberts (Spencer Fordin, MLB.com)

Roberts is correct. As a diminutive middle infielder with strong stolen base totals, he is often pigeonholed as that celebrated baseball player archetype, the Speed Guy.

Everyone loves the speed guy. Willie Mays Hayes was so adored that he was magically morphed into Omar Epps when Wesley Snipes had become too famous to reprise the role in Major League II. Every spring, the baseball writer at the local paper churns out his annual “PLAYER Ready To Take It From The Top” column about the guy scheduled to spend the season perched atop the local team’s lineup.

Like closers, cleanup hitters, setup men, staff aces, and superutility man, the leadoff hitter is one of those unnecessary titles that have about as much to do with baseball as the FOX robot graphics that have encapsulated audiences since the mid-90s with their wild, futuristic displays of what robots would look like if they were to become extremely muscular and run across TV screens during broadcasts of sporting events.

General-leadoff-hitter hype aside, Roberts is correct about his skill set. He is indeed an excellent base runner and his base-stealing prowess appears to be improving with age, having swiped an average of 42 bases per season at an 84 percent success rate over the past three seasons, compared to 26 per year at 74 percent during his first three full seasons in the majors.

However, base running is just one part of Roberts’ skill, as he also does those really important things that form the basis of offensive production, which are drawing walks and hitting for power. Over the past five seasons, Roberts has averaged 60 extra-base hits and 72.8 walks a season.

For the sake of comparison, celebrated Mets shortstop Jose Reyes has averaged 61.5 extra-base hits and 55.75 walks a year since becoming a big-league regular four years ago. Of course, Reyes is six years younger than Roberts and has room for growth, but to this point the players have maintained a similar level of performance over the course of their respective careers.

Roberts is not an MVP-caliber player, but he is valuable, probably more so than he has been given credit for at this point in his career. He is certainly not a “Speed Guy.” Like Reyes or the Indians’ Grady Sizemore, he is an excellent player who should be given lots of at-bats at the top of a batting order, but not for the reasons that are generally discussed.

Bud Selig Is Bad for Baseball, a Douchebag

Jake Rake — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:30:51 -0500

Fuck Bud Selig.

I probably shouldn’t have opened with that sentence because it pretty much sums up this entire essay in a single sentence, detracting from the notion that this essay needs to exist in the first place.

With today’s shocking revelation on ESPN.com, that “On subject of steroids, Selig doesn't want blame,” heir commissioner does little to counter my opinion that he is among the biggest scumbags in history of baseball, a class that includes a fair number of racists, wife-beaters, and Albert Belle.

On the issue of steroids, the commissioner should be standing by his players, rather than hiring government figures to launch a public witch hunt and smoke ‘em out of their holes.

Selig has spent the past week distancing himself from the current steroid flavor of the week, the great Alex Rodriguez, accusing the best player in either league of having “shamed the game.” Why does Bud feel the need to talk shit about Alex Rodriguez?

You would think that it is in the best interest of the game at this point to avoid dwelling on what, undeniably, was Major League Baseball’s “Steroid era.”

But Selig instead chooses to deny it, as he appears much more concerned with history’s view of Bud Selig as the no-nonsense dictator who swooped in and cleaned up the game, rather than the guy who happened to be in charge when most of the players were abusing drugs.

However, what makes the commissioner such a scumbag has less to do with Bud Selig: Moralizer than it does with Bud Selig: Businessman. During his tenure at the top, first as acting commissioner and then as the real deal, Selig has been on a mission to kill the last remaining shred of Baseball: The Game and convert it into MLB: Brand.

I’m all for making money, and as much of it as possible; however, Selig and his cohort of loyal bloodsuckers’ business model is wholly without integrity.

Beginning with his consolidation of the league offices in 2000, the Bud Collective has gone to town on baseball, transforming it into the most bland, inoffensive product on the market.

MLB.com, which controls the sites of all 30 big league teams, is among the most subversive sites on the web, including a disclaimer that reads, “This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs,” on the end of each article on the site. As a former employee of MLB.com, I can tell you firsthand that the stories are indeed subject to team approval, as the teams regularly call in and complain about content, which is promptly removed.

In a similar display of digital authoritarianism, the Selig Administration has also launched a campaign to monopolize all evidence of baseball, having video clips of major league games removed from YouTube and other user-driven sites in attempt to make MLB.com and it’s partners the lone online destination for baseball video highlights. Worse, the videos on MLB.com are slow to load and do not come with accessible embed tags, further narrowing baseball’s accessibility.

At one point during my employment at MLB.com, Selig himself came in to address the troops in person. The episode could not have been more symbolic of the commissioner’s general MO, as he held a George W. Bush-style “Mission Accomplished” speech about MLB’s record profits, followed by a Q & A session complete with preselected questions such as “What is your favorite baseball memory?” and “What kind of goals does MLB have in terms of future expansion?”

Bullshit.

Selling out A-Rod in an attempt to maintain the moral high ground is unprofessional at best and a dangerous precedent at worst, as employees should never be forced into a situation in which they are put in an adversarial role against their employer.

Bud Selig is apparently a great businessman, but as far as baseball goes, I rank him among those doing the most to shame the game.

Adam Dunn Decides to Waste Two Years in Washington

Jake Rake — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:49:15 -0500

Let’s throw it out there right off the bat—the Washington Nationals can do no right. We’ve been over this organization’s hilariously poor management over and over again, sometimes with even more hilarious results.

In today’s edition of “Trash On This Hapless Organization,” let’s review today’s reported signing of corner man Adam Dunn.

If there is one thing that the Nationals have no shortage of, it is middling corner fielders who can hit. Between Elijah Dukes, Ryan Zimmerman, Josh Willingham, Wily Mo Pena, Justin Maxwell, Kory Casto, and the ghost of Nick Johnson, the corners in Washington could have offered a reasonable offensive output for about half of what Dunn will make in 2009.

Additionally, the Nationals are no closer to making the playoffs than they are to say, winning a Nobel Prize. Adding a big bat right now means nothing more than maybe winning 70 games, instead of 68.

The truly inexcusable part of this signing on behalf of the Nationals is the resulting loss of a draft pick. This is an organization that needs to be stockpiling as many young, cheap players as it can. Hemorrhaging first-round draft picks in exchange for veteran players in their primes is a horrible business model.

On the other side of the equation, was there really no market for a first baseman/corner outfielder who is all but guaranteed to hit [often exactly] 40 home runs with a .900 OPS for the next several seasons?

The underrated nature of Adam Dunn is another oft-discussed issue, and it seems as though it may be the case that I’ve somehow underestimated just how severe it is.

I have to imagine that if another team—any other team—offered Dunn a contract similar to the perfectly reasonable one the Nats did (two years, $20 million), Dunn would have signed with them, rather than wasting his time with the moribund Nationals.

A-Rod Mans Up—Let's Move On Already, This Stuff is Boring

Jake Rake — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:07:22 -0500

I can’t believe I’m writing about steroid use in baseball. The media circus that has surrounded the whole issue has been nothing short of embarrassing. It is almost exclusively sensationalist bulls**t geared to satisfy the same American bloodlust and insipid moralizing that kept the Bush Administration in the White House for eight years.

Mark McGwire’s brother coming out and ratting on him last month may well be the least interesting news item I’ve ever come across. However, I feel that it’s worth throwing it out there that the witch hunt’s latest victim, the great Alex Rodriguez, should be commended for the way he is handling himself throughout the ordeal.

At this point, a revelation that any given baseball player used steroids at some in the past 20 years is only interesting to someone if they are an idiot. I distinctly remember rampant jokes about steroid use in baseball on The Simpsons and Weekend Update back in the early 1990s. Jose Canseco’s shitstorm of a memoir, Juiced…, is already four years old.

This is not a new or particularly compelling topic by any measure; we have known about this for a long time already. Yet every time another player gets busted for having used what is now a banned substance, the media reacts as if they were caught with a Klan hood in their travel bag.

At this point, I don’t even think that it is the public that is interested in steroid abuse; I think that this is another example of the drawbacks of the 24-hour news cycle and media outlets’ need to provide constant content.

Since reports of A-Rod’s failed test surfaced on Friday, ESPN.com alone has published dozens of articles about the matter, compiling stories with headlines such as “Game's History Destroyed,” “Baseball’s Last Hope Is Gone,” and “A Legacy Destroyed,” on an “A-Rod: ‘I Took A Banned Substance’ landing page.

The attention ESPN and other news outlets are paying to the latest chapter in the steroid saga isn’t informing people of anything, it’s just perpetuating the idea that this is a big deal. Does the public really need multiple columns from Jason Stark <cough>hack<cough> about what it means that this one particular player took a particular substance no less than five years ago?

For nearly the entirety of his career, A-Rod has been on a short list of players who could conceivably be considered the best player in baseball. The others, Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols, have also been accused of abusing performance-enhancing drugs at some point in their careers. 42 others who have played in the major leagues have been suspended for having tested positive for banned substances.

Additionally, scores of others are acknowledged to have used PEDs as well, including McGwire, Canseco, Wally Joyner, Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, and the late Ken Caminiti. The point it, what difference does it make at this point? Again, we already know that this was going down. There is no reason to be surprised that any given player is guilty of having done this.

A-Rod is one of the few players to man up and say in so many words, “Yeah, I did it. That’s what was going on; it was the culture of the time. I’m sorry I did it and I don’t do it anymore.”

Major League Baseball has acknowledged that this was an issue and has since put measures in place to curtail it. Anything that happened regarding PED use in the years before the current drug-testing system was put in place is moot; it already happened, your favorite player was probably guilty of it and now it’s done.

Let’s leave it alone and move on. Aren't you bored of this already?

Nationals' Outfielder Dukes Defies Expectations: Doesn't Go to Prison

Jake Rake — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:32:51 -0500

Washington Nationals outfielder and repeat violent offender Elijah Dukes proved that one is never too old to learn something new this week by achieving the previously unattainable feat of not going to jail. The power hitter avoided a stint in the California Penal League by paying $40,000 in back child support to his estranged wife on Friday at 4:57 p.m., exactly three minutes before the court-imposed deadline of 5:00. Congratulations to Mr. Dukes and his team-appointed “Special Assistant of Player Concerns” for keeping the Nationals’ best hitter and most prominent sociopath on the streets this offseason.

Aside from the various beatings, and unwanted pregnancies, he has allegedly bestowed upon people over the years, the most tragic side effect of Dukes’ remarkably poor behavior is that it overshadows his prowess on the baseball field. Dukes led the 2008 Nationals in adjusted OPS+ (save for Alberto Gonzalez’s 144 in 49 at-bats), tied for the team lead in walks and finished third on the team in VORP (a counting stat that heavily values playing time) despite coming to the plate just 334 times. In limited playing time in his age-24 season, Dukes did those things that result in runs scored—walking or hitting for extra bases—in roughly 24 percent of his plate appearances. Behold how Dukes stacks up in that regard against the top three MVP finishers in each league:

Player                BB+XBH   PA        %
Albert Pujols         185         641    28.8
Elijah Dukes        81          334    24.2
Ryan Howard        159         700    22.7
Kevin Youkilis       138         621    22.2
Justin Morneau     150         712    21.0
Ryan Braun          125         663    18.8
Dustin Pedroia      123         726    16.9

Dukes problems staying on the field last year were the result of injuries, rather than misdeeds, but 2008 was not without its charms for the mercurial felon. In addition to the child support shenanigans, Dukes exchanged words with Nats manager Manny Acta in a well-publicized on-field episode in June. The incident was quickly swept under the rug by team officials, with Acta reporting, “We talked it out after the game, and we're cool, we're fine.”

I'm not optimistic, but it would be very cool if Dukes could get his act together, between his health problems and emotional issues and stay on the field for an entire season. If he can, the Nats could find themselves with a pretty special player.

Pat Burrell Makes Tampa Bay Rays No. 1 in 2009

Jake Rake — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:37:29 -0500

With the signing of Pat Burrell on Monday, the Tampa Bay Rays have cemented themselves as the best team in baseball in 2009. As I have discussed in the past, the Rays’ arrival in 2008, marked with a trip to the World Series, was a bit premature, as much of the team’s top talent has yet to contribute at their highest level.

However, with the early arrival of Evan Longoria as a star-caliber hitter, as well as indication that David Price will open the ’09 season in the big-league rotation, the Rays are poised for an early start to what could become a dynasty of epic proportions.

With Burrell slated to take over the oft-overlooked DH spot, the Rays have filled the last remaining spot in their 2009 lineup that was previously still up in the air. The Rays used 11 different designated hitters last season, with four of the top five at-bat getters (Cliff Floyd, Johnny Gomes, Eric Hinske and Rocco Baldelli) no longer with the team.

In addition to providing stability in the DH role, Burrell also brings to the table those important things that make up offense: walks and home runs. Last season, Longoria was the only Rays regular to post a .500 slugging percentage, a figure that Burrell has reached in each of the past five seasons.

Aside from a miserable 2003 and a middling 2004, Burrell has been a model of consistency over the course of his career, averaging 31 home runs and a .367 OBP per 162 games. Additionally, Burrell also stays on the field, averaging 145 games per season, a figure not once reached by the Cubs’ new $30-million man, Milton Bradley.

As if Burrell’s skill set didn’t coincide with the Rays’ needs enough already, his right-handed bat could allow manager Joe Maddon to post a lineup, one through nine, in which no consecutive hitters will bat from the same side of the plate, a tactic that will come in handy against lame-o late-inning relief specialists.

With the three to five additional wins for which Burrell can be counted on, coupled with improvements from 23-year-old Longoria and a healthy B.J. Upton, the Rays will more than likely make up the difference their 2008 record showed from their run differential.

Affix that to the difference that Price will make over wildman Edwin Jackson and the right field upgrade that Matt Joyce will provide over the tag team of Hinske and Co., and the Yankees will have plenty of time in early October to sit at home and regret committing $82 million to A.J. Burnett, who will, at that point be coming off a 109-inning disappointment of a season.