By Blaidd Drwg

I seriously thought this was a joke when I first saw it, but it appears that Andy Pettitte has signed a minor league deal with the Yankees. I don’t think that this is going to end well, but I have a feeling this might be a result of the concerns with the declining velocity on Michael Pineda’s fastball.

By Blaidd Drwg

You know you are in trouble defensively when a statement like this is made:

Sources said that there is a good deal of sentiment within the Yankees organization to go after Raul Ibanez — who wants to play for the team — to be their designated hitter against right-handers, partly because they believe he can give them some days of outfield play.

Although Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are also available, they are generally regarded as unplayable defensively, sources said.

That is from an espn.com article on the Yankees trading AJ Burnett to the Pirates. Raul Ibanez was a terrible outfielder when he was with the Mariners and 5 years younger. I wonder if anyone in the Yankees organization has actually watched Ibanez play in the field. Damon, Matsui and Ibanez are all guys you don’t want out in left field for you team if you can absolutely avoid it. Besides the Yankees already have a more than serviceable outfield rotation with Curtis Granderson, Brent Gardner, Nick Swisher and Andruw Jones. Where and when do they think they will need Ibanez in that mix?

In other “old guy” baseball news, Tim Wakefield has finally decided to retire after pitching so long for the Red Sox that I believe he was Ted Williams’ last active teammate.

By Blaidd Drwg

It appears that Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter’s doctors have found more cancer. Carter has been battling brain cancer off and on for the last few seasons. It is probably not good – the cancer was aggressive and inoperable, when he was first diagnosed. Normally I would not go out of my way to mention this, but Gary Carter is one of the good guys out there. He has spent a good part of his life raising money for charity, even during his playing days, and is very sincere and humble if you ever get a chance to talk to him. I had the opportunity to meet him in Montreal in 2002 during an Expos game and I asked him about his charity work, especially as a player when he would go to visit children’s hospitals to bring some cheer to the kids there. He said he felt it was his responsibility as a celebrity to give back to the community.

In 2011, MLB made a “Stand Up to Cancer” commercial. At the 19 second mark, the Baseball Tonight Crew is pictured. On the left, you have John Kruk, who is a cancer survivor. On the far right, you have Ron Darling, who was Carter’s teammate with the Mets in the late ‘80’s. Darling is holding up a sign for “My Catcher” referring to Gary Carter. I am not sure how many people even realized what that referred to, but it still gets me choked up when I see it.

The commercial is here:

Update – ESPN is reporting that Gary Carter has passed away at age 57.

 

By Blaidd Drwg

There is always the “next big thing” pitcher coming out of Japan. First it was “Nomo Mania”, then it was Hideki “Fat Toad” Irabu, then “Dice-K” Matsuzaka and his mysterious “gyro-ball” and “No-Kei” Igawa and now you have Yu Darvish. Darvish just signed a $60 million dollar contract with the Rangers. The Rangers also had to pay $52 million to Darvish’s Japanese League team as a posting fee, so they essentially signed him to a 6 year, 112 million dollar contract, roughly what Matsuzaka cost in 2007 and roughly the average of what Jered Weaver is making a season.

Japanese starters have largely been unsuccessful making the leap to MLB (there are a number of relief pitchers that have done well though). Nomo is far and away the best and Matsuzaka had a couple of decent seasons (there were a few other decent back of the rotation guys, but no one worth mentioning) , but neither had been dominant to the point of being called a franchise pitcher. Both Nomo and Matsuzaka entered the league at age 26, so let’s take a look at how they did, year by year compared to Jered Weaver. Yes, Weaver had already been in the league 3 years by the time he turned 26, but it is a fair comp since Nomo and Matsuzaka were both expected to be top of the rotation starters the second they entered the league.

Year 1 – Age 26

	Year	W-L	ERA	IP	K/9	BB/9	ERA+	WAR
Nomo	1995	13-6	2.54	191.1	11.1	3.7	150	4.9
Matsuzaka	2007	15-12	4.40	204.2	8.8	3.5	108	3.2
Weaver	2009	16-8	3.75	211.0	7.4	2.8	117	4.5

 

Year 2 – Age 27

	Year	W-L	ERA	IP	K/9	BB/9	ERA+	WAR
Nomo	1996	16-11	3.19	228.1	9.2	3.4	122	4.4
Matsuzaka	2008	18-3	2.90	167.2	8.3	5.0	160	5.1
Weaver	2010	13-12	3.01	224.1	9.3	2.2	132	5.6

 

Year 3 – Age 28

	Year	W-L	ERA	IP	K/9	BB/9	ERA+	WAR
Nomo	1997	14-12	4.25	207.1	10.1	4.0	91	1.7
Matsuzaka	2009	4-6	5.76	59.1	8.2	4.6	82	0.3
Weaver	2011	18-8	2.41	235.2	7.6	2.1	158	6.6

 

Rest of Career

	Year	W-L	ERA	IP	K/9	BB/9	ERA+	WAR
Nomo	1998-2008	80-80	4.66	1349.1	8.1	4.4	92	9.6
Matsuzaka	2010- Current	12-9	4.81	191.0	7.5	4.6	90	1.0

Nomo basically became league average in his 3rd season and then broke down after that, posting just 1 season with an ERA+ over 105 the rest of his career. Matsuzaka basically broke down in his 2nd season and, despite some nice looking numbers in 2008 (thanks to a ton of run support), really wasn’t all that good – he threw a lot of pitches and averaged less than 6 innings a start when healthy. He also probably won’t pitch in 2012 due to arm injuries. It really seems to be a trend where Japanese pitchers come into the league, take it by storm for a year or two and then fade away. These guys should be following a career curve like Jered Weaver, putting up their best seasons between the ages of 26 and 29, but they are not.

I have a few theories on as to why this is:

• They are abused and throw a ton of innings in Japan prior to coming over to the majors. I can’t find pitch counts for Japan, but I would be willing to bet these pitcher routinely through in the 120-130 pitch range early in their career.
• Their conditioning is not sufficient enough for the longer MLB season (the season is longer by about 20 games or 4 starts). Four starts may not seem like a lot, but it is roughly 15% more pitching than what they are used to. To put it in perspective, imagine running a 26 mile marathon and then being told you have to run another 4 miles before you are actually finished.
• They don’t adjust to the talent level in MLB. Basically, they are getting by on raw stuff their first couple of years until hitters figure them out and make adjustments. Once the hitters make adjustments, the pitchers don’t and become hittable.
• They don’t adjust to the strike zone. If you look at the stats of Matsuzaka in his last few seasons in Japan, he walked 84 hitters in 401 innings; he walked 80 in 205 innings in his first big league season. The same hold true for Nomo.
• Their deliveries put too much torque on their arms. Hence the breakdowns at around age 28.

I am not saying that Darvish is going to flop. He shares a lot in common with Nomo and Matsuzaka – they are all power pitchers, they all threw a ton of innings in Japan at an early age, they are all 26 in their first MLB season. Maybe Darvish will be different and have a long career as a top of the rotation starter. Then again, maybe he will fall apart after a couple of seasons.

My prediction: Darvish will have a 135 ERA+ type season, winning the ROY in 2012 and then basically be a league average starter by 2015. I figure he will have ERA+ of something like 118 in 2013, 108 in 2014 and 100 in 2015, getting hurt sometime in 2014-2015 for an extended period of time. I would love to come back to this post in a few years just to see how accurate I am.

By Blaidd Drwg

After years of screaming poverty in Montreal, Jeff Loria was part of the ridiculous scheme that gave the Expos to MLB, gave him the Marlins and gave John Henry, another fantastically rich man who was crying poverty in South Florida, the Boston Red Sox.

As you know, MLB did everything they could to make the Expos fail in Montreal and eventually moved them to DC, Henry all of a sudden “found” the ability to pay for a team with a 140 million dollar payroll and Loria just kept screaming poverty in his new home in South Florida, saying he needed a shiny new stadium paid for by public money to be successful. and effectively selling off any player that became a free agent.

This season, thanks to a new taxpayer financed stadium and a horrific new logo, Loria all of a sudden has found extra millions to do this:

December 9, 2011 Agreed to terms with LHP Mark Buehrle on a four-year contract. Designed RHP Clay Hensley for assignment.
December 8, 2011 Agreed to terms with SS Jose Reyes on a six-year contract.
December 5, 2011 Agreed to terms with RHP Heath Bell on a three-year contract.

The Marlins had a payroll of somewhere around 58 million in 2011. Care to guess what their expected payroll number in 2012 is? Well, according to baseball-reference’s wonderful salary tracker, somewhere around 105 million. Amazing what rebranding a franchise will do to loosen up the purse strings. The Marlins back loaded the above deals so that Buehrle and Bell are only making 6 million this season and Reyes is making 10 million. The problem with back loading a deal is at some point you get a big jump in what you are paying the players. Let’s take a look:

	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Reyes	10 million	10 million	16 million	22 million	22 million	22 million
Buehrle	6 million	11 million	18 million	19 million
Bell	6 million	9 million	9 million

It gets really ugly in 2014 for the Marlins. On top of the salaries above, their 2 best pitchers, Josh Johnson and Ricky Nolasco, are both free agents in 2014, Hanley Ramirez is scheduled to make 16 million and their stud first baseman, Mike Stanton, is eligible for arbitration. Just counting Reyes, Buehrle, Bell and Ramirez, the team is on the hook for 59 million in payroll. Heck, for 2013, the Marlins are projected to be somewhere between 125 and 145 million for payroll, which I don’t think is going to happen. I think we are going to see a repeat of a disturbing trend that has been there since the beginning in South Florida – owner bumps up the payroll to a long term unsustainable level to make a World Series run, sells off the players returning the team to mediocrity and then sell the team.

The Marlins could be in for an interesting ride – they have the ever volatile Ozzie Guillen at the helm, they have a new stadium which no one knows how it is going to play, they have a number of players coming off of injuries, Hanley Ramirez is unhappy about being moved to 3B and they added the ever entertaining Carlos Zambrano to the mix. My prediction is the circus in South Florida yields a .500 team this season and they are breaking the team up by June of next year.

By Blaidd Drwg

Methuselah, err…I mean Jamie Moyer is planning on making a comeback, at age 49, with the Colorado Rockies. I like Jamie Moyer, I think he is a swell guy, but Jamie, it is time to hang it up.

Some reasons why this is not going to go well:

• Despite being a lefty, he is 49 and not a knuckleballer and isn’t named Satchel. He was barely effective at 47, when he last pitched in the majors.
• He is coming off reconstructive elbow surgery. Pitchers half his age sometimes don’t come back from that and I don’t think all of the conditioning in the world will help. On the flip side, I doubt that he could actually lose any speed on his “fastball”.
• As mentioned, he wasn’t all that effective in his last stint in the majors in Philadelphia. He would be pitching in Coors Field. He has a tendency to give up the long ball. You do the math.

Somehow I don’t think that Jamie has any desire to be a LOOGY and will be expecting to make the team as a starter. I really hope that he doesn’t embarrass himself too badly.

My prediction – his elbow doesn’t hold up, he retires before playing a game in spring training and gets a job as a coach somewhere.

by A.J. Coltrane

I tuned into the last 20 minutes of Clubhouse Confidential today. (Not a show I was familiar with.) I was waiting for the Cotton Bowl to start, paged around the usual sports channels, and saw this episode description:  “Statistics-based discussions of Major League Baseball news and rumors, with expert guests.”

Now, that’s right up my alley. What did I get?

1st segment: Seven minutes of the 3 panelists arguing about whether players suspected and/or proven of having done steroids should be eligible for the Hall Of Fame.

2nd segment: A six-minute talk with the president of the baseball Hall Of Fame, Jeff Idelson, answering questions about the Hall’s stance on including players linked to steroids, and other related topics.

3rd segment:  A short look at the panelists’ HoF ballots, including Jon Heyman’s contrarian picks of Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy. Bernie Williams and Lee Smith get brief mentions. Still no real stats to speak of in this segment, just one infographic tacked under a Mattingly picture to reference Mattingly’s 5-year OPS+ peak.

Huh? That’s not exactly Fangraphs, USSM, or Lookout Landing. The steroid thing has already been rehashed about 10,000,000 times. The show description implied some sabermetric-oriented stuff, and the show was basically Pardon The Interruption.

That was dreck. Maybe I got them on a bad day(?)