Bleacher Report - Articles by Jeff Fletcher

The Top 10 Reasons Manny Ramirez Remains Unsigned

Jeff Fletcher — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:45:00 -0500

10. Still looking for that $15,000 diamond he lost while sliding into third on a rehab assignment.
9. Scott Boras still wants to swing deal for "Manny Being Manny" reality show.
8. Accidentally started complaining about his contract even before he signed.
7. Still looking for the right stylist to handle that 'do.
6. Show of solidarity with Jason Varitek.
5. Just realized that ITT Tech has over 100 campuses nationwide where he can train for an exciting new career.
4. Stuck in the batting cage when his pine-tar covered helmet got tangled in the netting.
3. In jail after another jaywalking offense.
2. Going on QVC to sell more household appliances.
1. Can't find a team other than the Red Sox with a bathroom in the left field fence.

Thank you, I'm here all week. Two shows on Fridays and Saturdays.

About Russ Springer: Can A's Count on Success to Continue?

Jeff Fletcher — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:29:00 -0500

Now that everyone seems to be sure the A's are signing Russ Springer, let's take a look at whether it's a good move.

First, Springer's numbers last year in St. Louis were pretty good: 2.5 K/BB ratio, .216 opponents BA, 1.13 WHIP.

It was his third consecutive solid season, which you remember from this post. He's the only middle reliever in the majors to have posted an ERA of 3.50 or better in 50 or more innings over each of the past three seasons.

The question is whether he can continue that now that he's 40. Over the past 20 years, there haven't been too many relievers in their 40s who have had productive seasons. Only 29 of them have pitched 50 innings, and only 15 of those have had ERAs under 4.00. Doug Jones was responsible for two of those seasons with the A's, and two others with other teams.

If Springer can buck all of those trends, putting together a rare fourth consecutive good season and doing it at age 40, more power to him. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

The Great Matt Holliday Experiment

Jeff Fletcher — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:26:00 -0500

I had this theory about Coors Field. Everyone knows the players who play there don't do as well on the road as at home, but it's not just because of what happens in Colorado after you hit the ball. It's also because of what happens after the pitcher throws the ball. Curve balls and sliders don't break as much.

That means that Rockies hitters are not only going to be helped at home, but they'll be hurt on the road more than other players who are used to seeing the ball break normally.

The point to all this is that you can't just take Matt Holliday's career splits (.357 at Coors Field and .281 on the road) and say: "Well, he's really a .281 hitter." That .281 average is the sum of a lot of games in which Holliday was trying to get acclimated to sea-level pitching. In theory, if you took Holliday (or any Colorado hitter) and put him at sea level all the time, he'd be a much better hitter than he was wearing the Rockies' road grays.

So if my theory was accurate, I could look at Holliday's road games with the Rockies and see that his performance would improve the longer the team was on the road, thus giving him more time to adjust to the new conditions.

With the magic of baseballmusings.com and Excel, I bring you my entry for the Nobel Prize...

Matt Holliday's career road average...
First 2 games of a trip: .277
3rd game on: .281
4th game on: .281
5th game on: .291
6th game on: .305
7th game on: .321
8th game on: .356

There's not much point in going beyond that, because Holliday and the Rockies rarely had trips of more than nine games. Sadly for him and his Rockies teammates, just when he was getting used to the conditions on the road, the Rockies would return home to the junk food atmosphere of Coors Field (nice in the short term, but not good for you in the long-term).

Given that Holliday is going to be playing all of his games at sea level this year, I'm expecting he'll be acclimated from the start, and he should produce good numbers (not Coors Field good, but good nonetheless).

Memo to Scott Boras: Feel free to use this information when negotiating Holliday's next contract. I'll just take about 0.5 percent of the deal.

If anyone out there has the time or inclination to replicate this for the entire Rockies team, please post the results here or fire me a link. I'd be interested to see them.

More Jeff Kent

Jeff Fletcher — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:16:00 -0500

OK, perhaps I was a little hasty in suggesting that Jeff Kent's offensive numbers shouldn't be taken in context of his position because he was so bad at his position. I had a conversation with A's assistant GM David Forst about it on Thursday, and he suggested to me that while Kent was slightly below average at second base, he was by no means horrible. If he were really horrible, teams wouldn't have kept throwing him out there year after year after year.

So now I'm thinking that Kent probably is a Hall of Famer after all. He's no Robby Alomar—the best second baseman of the post-Sandberg era—but he's certainly No. 2 on that list. He's also probably not a first-ballot guy, but I'll vote for him. (Of course, I've already changed my mind once in the past two days, and I have five years to go, so all bets are off.)

While I'm on the topic, just wanted to share a little behind-the-scenes Kent stuff with you.

Most of you would probably be shocked to know that in 2000 the Bay Area chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America voted Kent as winner of the "Bill Rigney Good Guy Award." It's an award we give every year to one player from the Giants and one from the A's for his cooperation with the print media.

Kent may have been a little prickly at times, but he always got points with the beat writers because he was one of the few players who really understood the difference between a beat writer who is there all the time, and a columnist or a back-up writer or a feature writer who shows up once in a while. If something big was going down, Kent would almost always talk to the beat writers, because he knew he could trust them and he knew the job they had to do.

What pushed Kent over the top for the award in 2000 was that he was the guy who stood up after every game of the 2000 NLDS against the Mets and answered for his team, explaining why they couldn't hit.

Kent was great about challenging the cliches, rather than spouting out all the normal pabulum. Classic example: In 1999, after Barry Bonds hurt his elbow and everyone else was saying stuff like "We all just have to do a little more to pick up the slack." Kent was saying, and I'm paraphrasing: "We all should be giving 100 percent with Barry and 100 percent without Barry. There is no 'picking up the slack.'"

He'd be the guy to say that one game was not bigger than the other, that there were no must-wins, no momentum, no messages to be sent, etc. His idea was every day you do all you can do to win that game. Regardless of the outcome, you're going to do it again tomorrow.

He was also good if you could get him talking about something other than baseball. The best interview I ever had with the guy was when I was wanted to talk him one time in spring training about how a kid from Orange County became a cowboy raising cattle in Texas. He loved that so much that he actually called me back to his locker to finish it after the day's workout.

Unfortunately, all of the good things about Jeff Kent vanished in the spring of 2002. That's when the infamous "truck washing" incident took place. Kent was ticked off that Henry Schulman of the Chronicle bothered to do his job and look for the truth. He was ticked off that the Giants had him start the season on the DL, even though he felt he was ready. For most of that year, he was more difficult to handle.