My first child is due at the end of January. My wife and I don't know the kid's gender yet but if it's a boy I'll get a chance to implement a child rearing strategy I've long wanted to try. I'd tie his right arm behind his back for as long as it took to make him a lefty and then spend the next 18 years teaching him to pitch. Baseball changes over time but I can't imagine it will ever change so much that there won't be a desperate need for lefthanded pitching.
Carlos Silva has me thinking that might not be necessary, though. Silva's going to become a very rich man at some point in the next month and that's got me thinking maybe the boy wouldn't absolutely have to be a lefthander. I mean, I'd still do everything in my power to assure my son grew up with the ability to drop a nasty bender and own the inside of the plate but if he's righty we can work with that. I thank Silva for opening my eyes.
"You want Tom Cruise and all you can get is Jude Law? Wait. You want Russell Crowe and all you can get is Colin Farrell? Wait."
Sean Penn got upset with the implication about Law but most people pretty much agreed. If you want a star, its better to wait for one than to make a movie with a lead that no one cares about. Baseball is different, though. Even if you can't get the prize pig you still have to come up with an entry at the fair.
It's becoming clear that Jorge Posada, baseball's porcine equivalent, isn't going to be anywhere but the Bronx next season which means that all the other teams who need catchers are going to have to come up with Plan B. That brings us to Yorvit Torrealba. The 29-year old catcher of the Rockies is going to have a lot of suitors because of all the teams that want a Posada-type but are unable to land one.
I come not to praise Corey Patterson but to bury Juan Pierre. Last year at this time the Dodgers were preparing to sign Pierre to a five-year, $45 million contract to play centerfield for them. The main reason for the contract seems to be that Pierre steals a lot of bases. It can't be his skills at the plate. After all, Pierre struggles to get on base with any regularity, has no power to speak of and isn't anything to write home about in the field. Patterson gets on base with even less frequency than Pierre but he does have a bit of pop in his bat and steals a fair number of bases. So why no megamillion contract offer for Patterson?
Ignoring the obvious reason -- he's not that good a player but, again, neither is Pierre -- I think it has something to do with Pierre's name. He sounds like the product of a torrid affair between a Haitian man and Dominican woman who crossed borders and family feuds to find love on the island of Hispaniola. I'm writing a screenplay about just such a coupling called "Hispaniola Nights" and hope to get Salma Hayek to play Pierre's mother.
There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the humidor that's used at Coors Field to take some spark out of baseballs used in that stadium. After years of offensive numbers that would make the Babe himself blush, games in Denver have started to resemble those played in the other 29 Major League ballparks. Heck, it was the Rockies pitching, not their bats, that led them from the back of the pack to the pennant this October.
That doesn't mean there aren't still some advantages to hitters playing a mile high. Kaz Matsui hit .330 with an 864 OPS in home games this year, pretty remarkable production from a second base man not named Chase Utley. In road games, however, he was more like the Matsui who made Met fans sick to their stomachs. A .249 average and a 638 OPS aren't notable unless you're a pitcher.
So it would seem like Matsui should be doing everything in his power to return to the Rockies. The team could use him as well. They are moving third base prospect Ian Stewart to second but could use the veteran as insurance in case that doesn't go well and, again, he did well at Coors.
Someone got me a shirt from Los Angeles a few years back ... it had a caricature of Eric Gagne where the beard was made of real hair-like fiber. And the big letters on the shirt said "Game Over".
It used to be that Eric Gagne would come into a game with Guns 'N Roses blasting from the P.A. system, and "Game Over" would mean there was no way the opposing lineup was going to touch Gagne. Nowadays, "Game Over" means that if Gagne was coming into a ballgame, the game had to be already over for Gagne to get some work in, because in Boston he was a disaster.
Now gather 'round, dear children, and let me tell you a tale. 'Tis a tale fraught with temptation, poor statistics, and small sample sizes. Keep your ears open and listen carefully, for I'm only going to tell this story but once. The tale is that of playoff dragonslayer Jeff Suppan....
Jeff Suppan is and always has been a league average pitcher. He eats innings and generally will keep whoever he's playing for from getting beaten (he even had a winning record with the Pirates!). Still, he's not much more than average. Then a funny thing happened last year. Soup had a great post-season (his second great post-season in three years) and won himself an NLCS MVP right as he was filing for free agency. The Brewers rewarded that with an insane 4-year/$42 million contract. Now they're stuck with an aging league average pitcher that's getting paid so astronomically that they can't take him out of their rotation.
Why am I talking about Jeff Suppan? Because Josh Fogg is a lot like Suppan only he's a worse pitcher, he doesn't have an NLCS MVP award, and his "beard" is much, much more obnoxious. Still, his fluky .500 record and "Dragonslayer" reputation during the Rockies amazing run are probably going to get him paid by some GM with a short-term memory. Don't say I didn't warn you, though.
Andy Pettitte gave the Yankees their only good start during their brief stay in the baseball playoffs. It was the culmination of a strong return season in the Bronx for the lefthander who had decamped to Houston after the 2003 season. He could have returned for 2008 by simply exercising a $16 million option in his contract but chose not to so he could take more time to figure out what he wants to do next season.
According to Pettitte the two choices are playing for the Yankees or playing for no one. The extra time he's taking is to figure out if he wants to spend a 14th season on the mound and not to solicit offers from other clubs. The Yankees will be breaking in several young pitchers and could use a steady, reliable hand to help shepherd them through their first full season as big league starters. Pettitte could do that while still producing strong results on his own.
It wouldn't be shocking, however, if other clubs might want to see how steadfast he is about Yankees or nothing. Take the Dodgers, for example.
Oh, it's true. Kerry Wood is a free agent. Usually we use these posts to speculate what team might want specific free agents, but honestly, I have no idea who wants Kerry Wood, besides maybe the Cubs. Instead, I'm going to tell you why teams should want Kerry Wood. Crazy, right? Well, I'm going for it.
Think of the best closers of recent years. Who's been most dominant? Mariano Rivera, Eric Gagne, and Jonathan Papelbon all come to mind on my list. They all have something in common, too. They were all starters early in their careers. And I know I cherry-picked my list, but hey, I'm making a point. As a 21-year old rookie, Kerry Wood had a 12.58 K/9 innings ratio. That's stupidly high for a relief pitcher. Wood was a starter. In his last full year as a starter, 2003, his K/9 ratio was at 11.34, another ridiculous number for a starting pitcher. My point is this, Wood had some of the best stuff of any starter out there before his arm exploded.
It's clear he's done as a starter. The type of abuse and surgery that his right arm has seen makes that clear. But in his short stint as a reliever this year, he was pretty impressive with a 1.27 WHIP and a strikeout an inning in only 24 innings after rehabbing the arm all year. There are a lot of playoff caliber teams that could use an arm out of the pen and there are some that need a closer. Wood will always be an injury risk, but because of that he'll probably be cheaper than guys like Todd Jones and Joe Borowski that are big risks for other reasons (namely, lack of talent at this point in their careers). I would cast my lot with Wood over those guys any day.
I've had this fascination of imagining what it would be like for Mike Piazza to play a full season at Coors Field.
Piazza's lifetime .374/.421/.695 in 203 at bats at Coors always had me wondering what kind of season Piazza could put together if he played a full season in Denver's thin air. Unfortunately, between Piazza's advancing age, declining ability, and the addition of a humidor at Coors Field, dreams of a monster season from Piazza have pretty much all but faded away. But if Piazza wanted to return in 2008, and reports have Piazza considering retirement, he could still provide a useful bat on some teams' bench.
Kyle Lohse is a candidate to get that "what were they thinking" contract like the one Gil Meche received in Kansas City last season. Meche was the recipient of good fortune and a less than overwhelming free agent class at starting pitcher when he got himself a $55 million contract from the Royals. But at least that class had a couple of big names like Barry Zito and Jason Schmidt. Lohse isn't going to have that kind of competition.
After going 6-12 with the Reds in '07, he was traded to the Phillies and went 3-0 down the stretch in their improbable run to the N.L. East title. But that was 3-0 in eleven starts and two relief appearances (ten if you don't count his first start which was cut short by a line drive off the ankle.) But his ERA in Philly was actually slightly higher than it was in Cincinnati. And also consider that the last image that any baseball fan and executive remembers of Lohse is the one you see here: whiplash after watching Kaz Matsui's grand slam leave the yard and basically end any chance the Philadelphia Phillies had of advancing to the NLCS.
"Boom, Bust, or Bobby Bonilla" takes a look at MLB's Free Agents and the teams who need them in 2008.
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