the devil in sammy sosa

the sosa trade calls to mind the cardinals’ divestment of joaquin andujar in december 1985. like slammin sammy, wacky jack was a star player sent packing to purify the soul of a disgraced team — the ’85 cardinals, who choked away the world series that year against kansas city. and, like sammy, andujar precipitated his own departure by committing an unforgivable breach of protocol — in his case, flying into a rage at don denkinger with the cards trailing 8-0 in game 7. during his tantrum he bumped denkinger twice; two days later, mlb suspended andujar for the first 10 games of the ’86 season, and gussie busch immediately pronounced one of those fatwas he used to issue periodically against players fallen from his favor. and so, on the first day of the winter meetings, dal maxvill obediently sent andujar packing to oakland for mike heath and tim conroy.

both the sosa and andujar transactions are best regarded as exorcisms. the players had similar dispositions — self-centered and attention-starved, given to iconoclastic gestures and/or utterances — and while such qualities might be winked at in a winning clubhouse, they become intolerable after a team’s character and guts have been exposed as deficient. worse than intolerable, in fact — they become dangerous, threatening to his teammates’ now-fragile emotional equilibrium. the alien traits come to be seen as the sole source of the team’s failure, and their removal is considered essential to the healing process --- also a satisfying outlet for pent-up anger, frustration and self-doubt. and there's probably some truth to the notion, however based in sensibility (rather than sense) it may be, that purging can hasten a ballclub's recovery. does anybody think the cardinals would have returned to the world series in 1987 with wacky jack andujar still on the roster?

when a team falls apart, the ritual sacrifice of a star player can indeed be a cleansing thing. it can mean more, in the end, than the departed player’s 20 wins or 100 rbis. for wins and rbis can be replaced on the roster fairly easily — a lot more so than emotional balance and competitive drive.

for the record, andujar had a much better year in 1986 than heath — 12-7 in 26 starts, an acceptable 3.82 era. heath meanwhile assumed not only andujar’s roster spot but also his role as the embodiment of the cardinals’ disgrace; after a slow start he found himself in herzog’s doghouse, never to emerge. on august 10 he got dealt to detroit for a pitching prospect in the low minor leagues. guy named ken hill.

centi grades

the cards are coming off their first 100-win season in 20 years, and only their third since world war 2. let me repeat that: in the last 60 years, the cards have topped 100 wins only three times.

just for the sake of comparison, the atlanta braves only have to go back to 1999 to count their last three 100-win seasons, and they’ve done it six times since 1993. but then, before 1993 the franchise had gone ninety-five years—back to 1898—without a single 100-win campaign. the oakland a’s have won 100 twice in the 21st century and four times in the last 16 seasons — but prior to that they’d accomplished the feat just once in more than half a century. the baltimore orioles did it five times in a span of 12 seasons (1969-80), but never before or since. the proud and successful los angeles dodgers haven’t had a 100-win campaign since 1974; the boston red sox since 1946. the pittsburgh pirates have won three world titles and made 10 postseason appearances since 1960 without once winning in triple digits; they last did so in 1909, on a team captained by honus wagner.

suffice it to say that 100-win teams are special. i’ve been looking at them as a group to see what they tell us about the cardinals’ prospects for 2005 and beyond.

first, a look at the cards’ last two 100-game winners, the 1985 and 1967 editions. both teams remained relatively intact for the following season; the ’67 cards returned all 8 position starters and all five starting pitchers, and they won 97 games in ’68 and another pennant. the ’85 team made offseason changes at catcher (mike heath replacing darrell porter) and in the rotation (booting wacky jack andujar and kurt kepshire), not a major facelift — but a rash of injuries and a demoralizing april sweep at the hands of the rival new york mets ruined the season, and the ’86 cards slid to 79 wins, finishing 29 games out of first place.

that 79-win performance is the worst follow-up season for any 100-win team since the divisional era began in 1969. over that span of 36 seasons there have been 41 100-win teams in the major leagues, and only two — the ’85 cards and ’70 cincinnati reds — won as few as 79 games the next year. the ’93 giants would likely have joined that group had the ’94 season been played all the way through; at the time of the strike they were 55-60.

at the other end of the range, the 1969 baltimore orioles followed their 109-win season with 108 wins in 1970 — one of 12 teams to follow one 100-win season with a second. here’s the complete "bell curve" of post-100-win performance, with win totals from strike-shortened seasons (e.g., the ’94 giants) extrapolated to 162 games:

total teams: 41
12 won 100+ games the next year
9 won 95-99 games
8 won 90-94 games
9 won 81-90 games
3 won fewer than 81 games
24 made the playoffs

so roughly 70 percent of all 100-win teams (29 of 41) win at least 90 the next year, and roughly 60 percent go to the playoffs. if we only look at the three-division era, with its watered-down playoff threshold, the numbers are more encouraging: 15 of 16 100-win teams won at least 90 games the following year, and 13 appeared in the playoffs. two franchises — the atlanta braves and new york yankees — account for 9 of the 16 100-win seasons since ’95, but if we eliminate them the ratios don’t change appreciably; of the remaining seven teams, six won 90+ games. however, three of the seven teams (43 percent) missed the playoffs.

those three teams — the 1999 arizona dbacks, 2001 seattle mariners, and 2003 sf giants — share a couple of int'sting traits that the 04 cardinals also possessed. first of all, two of the three posted enormous gains over their previous-year win totals — the 99 dbacks improved by 35 games, the 93 mariners by 27. the 04 cardinals, likewise, were 20 games better than the year before. this is significant — since 1969 only five 100-win teams were higher than +20 over the previous year, and four of them missed the playoffs the following year. their average win total in the post-100-win season was 87. . . . . on the other hand, five teams were either +17 or +18, and four of the five made the playoffs (the lone exception being the ’85 cards). all four of those who did return won 97 games or better. the cards, at +20, sit right on the cusp of these two clusters.

second, two of the three teams significantly outpaced their pythagorean w-l projections (for the uninitiated, the pythagorean w-l is based on the ratio of runs scored to runs allowed). both the the 03 giants and 01 mariners were 7 games ahead of their pythagorean projections; the cardinals beat pythagorus by 5 games. this too is meaningful: since ’69, 100-game winners who beat the pythagorean w-l by 5 games or more decline by an average of 12.2 games the following season; teams that are within four games of pythagorus decline by only 7.6 games the next year. year-after win totals for these categories average 92 and 95, respectively.

side note: the 2004 yankees outpaced their pythagorean projection by a whopping 12 games, suggesting they are primed for a serious fall. but the add’n of randy johnson may counteract that . . . . one more example of why one can’t use a $250 million team as a basis for comparison.

coming next: what the 2004 cardinals can learn from the 1988 oakland athletics.

if you're just joining us . . . .

. . . .here’s a quick review of what we’ve learned so far this offseason:

the cardinals made a historic addition to their rotation in mark mulder: he’s the franchise’s winningest offseason mound acquisition in over half a century.

bruce sutter is no hall-of-fame pitcher, although we admit he threw one hell of a single-fingered screwball.

the new st louis 2b apparently has never been seen in the same room with fernando vina, and the new shortstop’s lack of range isn’t necessarily a crippling liability. we also learned that the cardinals’ succession of long-tenured shortstops makes it one of the most stable positions in all of baseball.

yadier molina is the youngest everyday catcher for a defending league champ since before 1960; the cardinals, however, have an excellent track record with very young catchers.

of late we discovered that the cardinals are likely the first team in mlb history to open a season with five reigning 15+-game-winners in the rotation; also the first pennant winner in at least 30 years to open their title defense with new starters at both ss and 2b.

finally, we learned to our chagrin that runaway division champs tend to miss the playoffs the following year unless they are the new york yankees or the atlanta braves.

as the keystone krumbles

another unusual thing about the ’05 cardinals: they are the first team in memory that will attempt to defend a pennant with an all-new keystone combination.

every pennant winner since 1960 has returned either its 2b or its ss. that surprises me, particularly given the annual free-agent scramble of the last 15 yrs or so. it’s no longer uncommon for a pennant winner to turn over half its starting lineup between the world series and next year’s opening day. but ev’yone, it seems, wants an anchor in the middle of the diamond.

that the cardinals won’t have one is not intrinsically significant; a lot of teams hung onto both keystone players but stunk the following year anyway. that includes the last three cardinal pennant winners (82, 85, 87), who returned smith and herr to their posts all three times yet never broke .500 in defending a pennant. but the fact remains that in replacing both 2b and ss, they are doing something no pennant winner of the last 45 years has seen fit to attempt.

the ones who came closest were the 2000 braves and the 1991 athletics. both clubs let their 2b go in the offseason (bret boone and willie randolph, respectively) and, though retaining their ss — walt weiss in both cases, interestingly enough — replaced him early in the next season. weiss opened 1991 in his accustomed place for the a’s, but an injury limited him to only 40 games and 133 at-bats; mike bordick took over in the interim. with the braves, weiss was only nominally a "starting" shortstop in 1999 — he appeared in 102 games but yielded extensive playing time to ozzie guillen and jose hernandez. he returned in ’00 strictly as a bench player, rafael furcal having claimed the job in spring training.

the '90-'91 a’s and '99-'00 braves are both interesting models for '04-'05 cards. first, both teams won pennants with 103 wins (about the same number as the cards last year), then got swept in the world series. both (again, like the cards) got career years out of key players — the braves from chipper jones, kevin millwood, and john rocker, the a’s from scott sanderson, bob welch, rickey henderson (new highs in avg, hr, obp, slg, and tb), and dave stewart (career bests in wins, era, and whip). both had significant offseason turnover — the a’s lost starters at 3b (carney lansford), 2b (willie randolph), and rf (felix jose/willie mcgee), the braves at lf (gerald williams), 2b (bret boone), and 1b (ryan klesko). both had established themselves as perennial playoff contenders; and the a’s, of course, were a la russa-managed club.

the a’s suffered a 19-game decline in 1991 and missed the playoffs. dave stewart won half as many games and saw his era nearly double; bob welch’s win total dropped from 27 to 12, and his era went up by more than a run. the braves though didn’t miss a beat; they slipped back to 95 wins (mainly because of injuries to john smoltz and quilvio veras) but still won their division for the 9th consecutive time.

where will the cards fall? somewhere between the two, methinks, at +/- 92 wins.

four play

st louis will open the season with five reigning 15-game winners in its rotation. . . . well technically not, with morris likely on the shelf until may or later, but just go with it. how rare is such a quniella, and how have such rotations fared?

here’s the answer: it’s unprecedented. i traced it back — as always, through the generous offices of baseball-reference.com — to 1969, the dim pre-dawn (give or take) of the five-man rotation, and i could find nary a comparable instance. i didn’t look at every team every year, just the likely candidates, so it’s possible i missed an instance or two. but it’s pretty clear that if stl’s 2005 staff is not the first five-man rotation of reigning 15-game winners in mlb history, it’s one of the very few.

so nothing to be learned there --- okay, diff’t tack. the 2004 cards became just the 10th team since 1970 to have four 15-game winners in its rotation. how did the previous nine teams fare the year after this rare achievement? here are the nine teams, with their respective mound quartets and win totals:

2003 nyy: pettite (21), clemens (17), mussina (17), wells (15)
2001 sea: moyer (20), garcia (18), abbott (17), sele (15)
1998 atl: glavine (20), maddux (18), millwood (17), smoltz (17), neagle (16)
1993 atl: glavine (22), maddux (20), avery (18), smoltz (15)
1989 oak: stewart (21), storm davis (19), mike moore (19), welch (17)
1986 nym: ojeda (18), gooden (17), fernandez (16), darling (15)
1980 bal: stone (25), mcgregor (20), palmer (16), flanagan (16)
1978 la: hooten (18), john (17), rau (15), sutton (15)
1971 bal: mcnally (21), cuellar (20), palmer (20), dobson (20)

these nine teams won an average of 103 games, with only two (the ’78 dodgers and ’89 a’s) winning fewer than 100. in the year after, they won an average of 94, with only three topping 100 wins. (interestingly, three of the year-after teams played strike-shortened seasons, so i had to extrapolate their win totals out to 162 games.) just four of the nine teams made it back to the playoffs; two won pennants.

94 wins strikes me as a realistic target for the ’05 cardinals — would likely get them back to the playoffs in a weakened division.

like icarus ascending . . . .

the cardinals won the nl central by 13 games last year. historically, how have teams who won by such healthy margins performed the following year?

since the six-division era began in 1995, 14 teams have won their division by 13 games or more. nine of them repeated as division champs the following year. the other five — including the 2002 cardinals — missed the next season’s playoffs entirely.

all nine of those who did repeat lost ground in the standings, an average of 11 games; if we include the non-repeaters, the average loss in the gb column is 15 games. the fourteen teams won an average of 8.5 fewer games the following year — one team actually increased its win total, another held serve, and the remaining 12 won fewer games.

no earth-shattering revelations here. the survey merely confirms what we already knew: the cards are not going to win 105 games in 2005, they’ll have to battle to repeat as division champs, and there’s a very real chance they might lose the battle.

but suppose we remove the new york yankees from this survey, and look only at teams that must operate within roughly the same budget constraints as their division rivals? that leaves us with twelve runaway division winners, of whom seven repeated. . . . and if we eliminate the cleveland indians, who for half a decade had absolutely no competition in the al central, and look only at budget-constrained division champs who play in competitive divisions — ie, teams like the cardinals — we are left with nine runaway winners and five repeaters. three of those instances are accounted for by the atlanta braves, a rich team in a weak division. remove THAT advantaged franchise from the equation and the outlook is downright gloomy: six runaway winners and only two repeat champs, the 1998-99 houston astros and the 2002-03 minnesota twins.

essentially there are two types of runaway champs, one — cleveland, ny, and atl — whose domination reflects real advantages (bigger budget, better players) over the division, and another — everybody else — whose robust margin results from one-year advantages that don't carry over into the next season. what "one-year advantages" do i mean? oh, like a lucky convergence of career years, an absence of injuries, a glut of injuries on division rivals' rosters . . . . the kind of advantages the cardinals enjoyed last year.

that should give serious pause to st louisans hoping for another season of glory. recent history has not been kind to teams like the 2005 cardinals.


REPEATERS
2002 min: won by 13.5 games, repeated by 4
2002 atl: won by 19 games, repeated by 9
2001 yanks: won by 13.5 games, repeated by 10
1998 atl: won by 18 games, repeated by 11.5
1998 hou: won by 12.5 games, repeated by 1
1998 yanks: won by 22 games, repeated by 4
1996 cle: won by 14.5 games, repeated by 6
1995 cle: won by 30 games, repeated by 14.5
1995 atl: won by 21 games, repeated by 8

NONREPEATERS
2003 sf: won by 15, finished 2d by 2.5
2002 stl: won by 13, finished 3d by 3
2001 sea: won by 14, finished 3d by 9
1999 cle: won by 21.5, finished 2d by 5
1999 ari: won by 14, finished 3d by 12

yadier's burden

before we leave the subject of yadier molina and cardinal catcherdom (see jan 16 and jan 17 posts):

molina inherits a 25-year tradition of excellent glovework behind the plate in st louis. at least, so say a couple of sabr studies that examine catchers' glovework. according to this one, authored by jim weigland and online at retrosheet, mike matheney is the 6th-best backstop to don the mask since 1969 --- bested only by bench, pudge rod, munson, benito, and steve yeager. the same list puts three other cardinal catchers in the era’s top 25: tony pena (the era’s 15th best catcher), tom pagnozzi (22d), and darrell porter (24th). if we take weigland at his word, it means the cards have fielded one of the era’s premier catchers virtually every year since 1981.

the other study, by chuck rosciam and also online at retrosheet, uses the same data but only looks at catchers since 1991. this one credits the cards with having two of the era's 10 best defensive catchers — pagnozzi and marrero. the list only rates matheney 17th, which is preposterously low in my opinion — also and hard to reconcile with weigand’s study, which lists matheney 6th over a longer time period, among a much larger pool of catchers. . . .

. . . . well, you know, it’s just stats-turbation.

Feets Don't Fail Me

the latest on pujols’ hurtin’ heel from mlb.com and the post-dispatch. google turns up a homemade website about the injury, which docs call plantar fasciitis and the rest of us know as heel spurs.

now albert has something in common with joe dimaggio besides incredible stat lines. dimaggio also suffered from heel spurs, was crippled by them toward the end of his career. read about it in hemingway’s "the old man and the sea" or halberstam’s "summer of ’49."

per halberstam’s book, by the spring of 1949 dimaggio could barely walk, so painful was his condition. he sat out the entire first half of that year before his feet got fit, returned in time to swat 14 hr and knock in 67 runs as the yankees squeaked past the red sox by a game. it was casey stengel’s first season as yankee skipper — and the first of five consecutive world championships for the yanks.

This Just In: Bob and Rays

bob alomar lost to the mighty tampa bay devil rays, despite hard sell by la russa . . . . . if that's where the boy'd rather play, i must've been wrong about him all along.

but i still think the cards need a table setter. barry larkin's still out there --- .352 obp last year, .371 lifetime. . . .

youth catches on

yadier molina is the cardinals’ youngest starting catcher (see yesterday's post) since ted simmons, who was only 21 when he became the fulltime regular in 1971. simba had split the job with joe torre in 1970 and struggled — 15 passed balls in just 79 games, batting average only.243. but bing devine and red schoendienst deemed him fit for the part anyway, and he rewarded their faith with an excellent 1971: a .304 average with 77 rbis. he also called bob gibson’s no-hitter and handled a pitching staff that featured two hall-of-famers (hoot and steve carlton). but the cards’ staff era ranked just 11th out of 12 nl teams, nullifying the work of an excellent offense that ranked 2d in runs scored. such would be the pattern throughout simmons’ long sojourn at the position — he caught only one staff that placed higher than 6th in era (1973: 3.25, 2d place).

the catcher simmons inherited the job from, tim mccarver, also became a starter at age 21. he made his debut in 1959 at just 17 years of age and logged 100 major-league at-bats before he turned 20. in 1963 he replaced the productive platoon of gene oliver and carl sawatski and did himself credit, batting .289 with 4 hr and 51 rbi. but as a handler of pitchers, mccarver did not perform as well as the lore would suggest. in the three seasons before he began calling the signals (1960-62), st louis ranked 4th, 1st, and 2d in league era. in mccarver’s first three years — with roughly the same arms — st louis ranked only 7th, 6th, and 6th. they won a world title anyway in mccarver's 2nd year, but it was in spite (not because) of their pitching staff, which regressed after mccarver took over. even bob gibson went temporarily stagnant: his era, hits per inning, and strikeouts per inning were all worse with mccarver in 1963-64 than they had been with oliver/sawatski in 1962. not until the cardinals moved into spacious busch stadium in 1966 would the st louis pitching staff reclaim its spot in the top half of the league in era.

of more recent vintage, 24-year-old tom nieto caught 95 games for the 1985 cardinals and handled the staff just fine, thank you: st louis finished second in the league with a 3.10 era. the following year, 25-year-old pudge lavalliere caught 108 games and the card staff finished fourth at 3.37. but the 1998 staff threw half its games to 24-year-old eli marrero and labored to a 4.32 era, 8th in the 16-team league.

in the 42 seasons since mccarver took the job in 1963, only 11 featured a starting cardinal catcher aged 24 or younger. they won pennants in two of those years, with one world title.

None Younger than Yadier

technically he’s no longer a rookie — hell, he’s even started a world series game — but yadier molina is still only 22 years old. that’s young for a catcher — extreeemely so on a team that’s trying to defend a pennant. the last reigning league champ that opened the season with a 22-year-old everyday catcher was . . . . well, i searched back to 1960 on baseball-reference.com and couldn’t find a single example.

i did find one pennant-defender that put a 22-year-old behind the plate at midseason — the 1999 san diego padres, who stuck ben davis back there for 74 games. the highly touted davis, picked second overall in the 1995 amateur draft, arrived after just half a season at triple a. he hit .244 with 5 hr and 30 rbi for the padres in 1999 — not terrible stats for half a rookie season — but in the years since he has never developed. now 28, davis owns a career batting avg of just .237. he is currently the property of the chicago white sox, for whom he hit .231 last season with 6 homers.

but since davis did not open the season as his team’s ev’yday catcher, he's a lousy example. lousier still in light of the fact that by the time davis got the job, the padres were no longer really "defending" their pennant. they had been decimated by free-agency in the offseason, losing ken caminiti, steve finley, greg vaughan, kevin brown, and joey hamilton off their championship squad. then, in spring training, incumbent catcher carlos hernandez went down with a season-ending injury, forcing the pads to break camp with a backstop platoon of greg myers and jim leyritz, with phil nevin and wiki gonzalez (the only "wiki" in mlb history) available for light duty. ben davis opened the season at las vegas, stayed there until mid-june, and didn’t crack the starting lineup until june 24, by which time san diego had already nosedived into last place, 8 games under .500 and 9 behind the division-pacing dbacks. so davis was never expected (as yadier will be) to start for a contending club; he was part of a rebuilding effort, and thus not a candidate for comparison.

so, discarding that instance, we track back all the way to 1962, when the cincinnati reds opened their defense of the ’61 pennant with 23-year-old johnny edwards behind the plate. like molina, edwards came into the job after a lengthy audition for a championship team; in 145 at bats (10 more than yadier got last year) for the '61 reds he batted .186, with 2 hr and 14 rbi. and, like molina, edwards had quite a reputation as a gloveman — indeed, went on to win gold gloves in his second and third seasons (’63 and ’64).

he was not gold-glove caliber in ’62, tho not terrible either — 12 errors and 16 passed balls in 130 games. but he seemed to handle the pitching staff well enough; the reds’ era hardly changed, from 3.78 in ’61 (3rd in the league) to 3.75 in 1962 (5th), and their outstanding rotation trio (jim o’toole, joey jay, and bob purkey) sustained its success. and edwards batted .254 with 8 hr and 50 rbi, a major improvement over the five-man corporation that mucked up the position in ’61 (the group hit .209 w 4 hr and 36 rbi).

edwards helped the reds mount an admirable title defense — they finished with 98 wins, good for third place (four games behind the giants).

From Raschi With Love

hardball times has a short but worthwhile article on long-ago yankee great Vic Raschi, who per my dec 21 post is the standard against whom we shall judge mark mulder.

Range no Factor?

houston reaction to the beltran defection, part one and part two. astros' bleak outlook at mlb.com.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

worried about david eckstein’s lack of range at ss? maybe you shouldn’t be. of the last 20 pennant winners (10 in each league going back to 1995), only six had shortstops with a better-than-average range factor.

that list does not include the 2004 st louis cardinals, by the way: edgar slid just below par last season, at 4.41 plays per 9 innings (pp9) versus a league average of 4.45. his al counterpart, orlando cabrera, was even more laggardly, with 4.16 pp9 vs a league average of 4.56.

you have to go all the way back to 1998 to find a pennant-winner whose ss beat the league average in range factor: the san diego padres. the shortstop? chris gomez. you have to go a year further back to find same in the american league: the 1997 cleveland indians and omar vizquel. in the interim, such nondescript glovemen as rich aurilia, alex gonzalez, mike bordick, and (yes) david eckstein have anchored world-series-worthy infields.

eckstein has never bested the league average in range factor; he made his best showing in 2003, coming within 0.10 pp9 of par. but he was truly awful last season, falling shy of the a.l. average by 0.73 pp9 — nearly a play a game. over his career, though, eck’s deficit in range factor — 0.33 pp9 below league average — is consistent with the performance of most pennant-winning shortstops of the last decade.

does that mean card fans can stop fretting about the loss of range in the middle infield? . . . . . . . not so fast. the caveat is that many of the range-challenged shortstops we’ve been discussing played behind strikeout-oriented power pitchers who could succeed in the absence of tight infield defense. the ’04 boxos had schilling and pedro; the ’01 dbacks, schilling and big unit. the giants? jason schmidt. the marlins? josh beckett in ’03, livan hernandez in ’97. the yanks have had clemens, mussina, el duque, dave cone, et al over the years.

the cardinals’ staff does not fit this profile; our guys put the ball over the plate and rely on their defense. eckstein is not going to have their backs like edgar did — and the diff’nce is going to show up on the scoreboard and in the staff’s eras. a reasonable guess is that over the course of a season eckstein might cost the cardinals between 35 and 100 base hits — ie, fail to reach 35-100 balls that edgar would have gloved.

in a season comprising about 5,000 plate appearances by the opposing team, can the fate of 50 ground balls really make a difference? we may learn the answer in 2005.


SS FOR PENNANT WINNERS, 1995-2004

NL: renteria (04 cards), alex gonzalez (03 marlins), rich aurilia (02 giants), womack (01 dbacks), mike bordick / rey ordonez (00 mets), walt weiss the elder (99 braves), gomez (98 padres), renteria the younger (97 marlins), jeff blauser (95-96 braves).

AL: cabrera (04 boxos), jeter (03 nyy), eckstein (02 angels), jeter (98-01 nyy), vizquel (97 indians), jeter (96 nyy), vizquel (95 indians).

Grudzing Acceptance

mark grudzielanek: the second, slightly younger and slightly cheaper coming of fernando vina. per 600 at-bats, they are the same player. look:

vina: 88 r, 169 h, 40 xbh, 48 bi, 41 bb, .282 ba, .348 obp, .379 slg
grud: 81 r, 173 h, 43 xbh, 52 bi, 32 bb, .287 ba, .330 obp, .389 slg

not a whole lot to choose from. vina gets on base about 15 more times a year; grudz has a shade more pop, but the diff'nces are so small they're not worth discussing.

what is worth discussing is that grudz is a year younger and about two million bucks cheaper than fernando; also that he's coming off two straight good years, in each of which he bested his career marks in batting avg, obp, and slugging. of course, hitting in the friendly confines had something to do with that. . . . also, players in their mid-30s don't usually escape their career orbit and zoom off on some new trajectory. grudz'anek could well come crashing back to earth, as vina did in 2003 after a string of above-avg seasons.

grudzielanek won't win any gold gloves (vina won two for the cards), but his errors and range factors have gen'lly been above the league avg.

i'd have preferred roberto alomar, who in his three worst seasons (2002-04) has been nearly as productive as grudz'anek at his best. again, per 600 ab:

alomar 78 r, 147 h, 40 xbh, 54 bi, 61 bb, .263 ba, .331 obp, .368 slg
grudzk 81 r, 173 h, 43 xbh, 52 bi, 32 bb, .287 ba, .330 obp, .389 slg

even at his diminished capacity, alomar's roughly even with grudz'k --- and with just a minor return to form he becomes a significantly better offensive player.

one last comparison: placido polanco, who at 29 is still in his prime and has been consistently good for the last five years. per 600:

polanc 88 r, 177 h, 42 xbh, 59 bi, 34 bb, .295 ba, .339 obp, .410 slg
grudzk 81 r, 173 h, 43 xbh, 52 bi, 32 bb, .287 ba, .330 obp, .389 slg

polanco's slightly better, but not that much ---- certainly not $4 million worth, which is how much he'll out-earn grudz'k by this season.

the data leave me no choice but to revoke my knee-jerk objections to this signing. the cardinals got another good deal ---- decent player, low price. but i have to keep asking: what good are all these "value" signings if the cards don't put the savings back into the roster? they're now spending less than they did last year at catcher, shortstop, and (now that tino's contract has expired) 1st base; and they're at least $10 million cheaper in the rotation. what's walter waiting for? and with his lineup pretty much set, what would he spend the money on anyway?

i'm thinking (hoping) he stuffs the cash in his pocket until july 1 and goes after another ace for the rotation . . . .

The Grudz, the Bad, the Ugly

i disapprove. here's the best way i can sum up the diff'nce between mark grudzielanek and bob alomar:

alomar's career obp is .371; grudzielanek has only had one season with an obp better than .371 , five years ago (.376).

grudzielanek's career obp is .330; alomar has only had one season with an obp worse than .330. granted, it was last year (.321). . . . but i'd rather take my chances w/ the future famer than a journeyman.

here's what the post dispatch had to say

ChiC: Beltran or Bust

should the cubs fail (please god) in their last-ditch effort to sign carlos beltran, what options do they have left to plug their gaping hole in lf?

1. magglio ordonez: missed 1/2 of '04 with injury but only 31 and can hit; career .307 batting avg, .525 slg
2. jeromy burnitz: turns 36 in april; whacked 37 altitude-aided dingers in colorado last yr, with 110 rbis, and has hit 30+ hr six of the last seven yrs.

after whom, there follows a steep dropoff in the outfield free-agent pool:

3. ruben sierra: 39 yrs old ---- hit 17 hr in 300 ab last year for the yanks to nudge his career total past 300
4. danny bautista: .286 with 11 hr and 65 rbi for arizona last yr
5. gabe kapler: not to be confused with gabe kaplan of "welcome back kotter" fame
6. brian jordan: 38 yrs old and washed up --- .222 last yr in part-time duty.
7. juan gonzalez: snicker
8. doug glanville: guffaw
8. raul mondesi: howl
9. ray lankford: stop . . . please, stop . . . you're killing me
10. ellis burks
11. gary "sarge" matthews
12. billy williams

Mysteries of the Single-Finger Screwball

bruce sutter running out of time to reach the hall of fame; unsuccessful again yesterday in what by now must be his 10th or 11th attempt, which would leave him only four or five more shots.

he does not merit inclusion, imho, even though he made a revolutionary contribution to the game. sutter was the first guy to perfect the now-ubiquitous split-finger fastball. there was no such thing before he came along; there was the forkball, a similar pitch, but hardly anybody threw it (diego segui for one, i recall). the split-finger was a great mystery at the time — nobody could figure out the physics of the thing, or explain why it dropped so sharply just as it reached the plate. it was as if sutter were practicing a form of sorcery, employing a power no one else understood, much less possessed. i remember watching a segment on nbc’s "game of the week" pregame show in which ex-dodger relief pitcher mike marshall stood next to sutter during a bullpen session and tried to figure out how he cast such a spell on the baseball. marshall (whose career stats are comparable to sutter’s, by the way) scrutinized his subject the way old-time anthropologists used to study contortionists or tribal medicine men; nbc shot some super-slow-motion video of the session, and marshall pored over that too. he concluded that sutter was throwing not a split-finger fastball but rather (as he called it) a single-finger screwball. the super-slo-mo revealed all: as the ball left sutter’s hand his index finger fell completely away, and the ball rolled off his middle finger in a tight clockwise twirl, so that it broke toward right-handed hitters and away from lefties — the opposite of the typical break from a right-handed pitcher.

hence the mystery — batters had never seen anything like it from an rhp before. (a similar sense of awe and disbelief apparently attended carl hubbell’s invention of the classic screwball in the 1930s.) sutter had stumbled upon a gimmick pitch — and once hitters figured it out, the jig was up. in his first three seasons as closer (1977-79), he struck out 1.12 men per inning — hitters could barely lay bat on ball. but in his next six seasons (1980-85), until injury basically ended his career, sutter whiffed guys at about half the rate — 0.66 per inning. his eras, hits-per-innings, and save-conversion rates weakened accordingly. though sutter remained a very effective pitcher, he was no longer a dominant one after those 1st three years — ergo no hall-of-famer.

sutter and marshall's career lines, side by side:
sutt: 68-71, 2.84 era, 300 sv, 661 g, 1040 ip, 861 so
marsh: 97-112, 3.14 era, 188 sv, 723 g, 1386 ip, 880 so

sutter led the lg in saves 5 times, marshall 3.
both pitched in one world series.
both won 1 cy young award (marsh 74, sutt 79).
marshall finished 5th in mvp race 1973, 3d in 1974.
sutter finished 5tth in 1982 mvp race.

Long Stop Shortstops: Update

re cards long-running stabilty at ss (see jan'y 2d post): a very cursory survey of www.baseball-reference.com turned up sev’l equivalent or longer runs of rock-solidness, viz.:

1. dodgers, 1946-73 — 28 years, four cfs: carl furillo (46-48), duke snider (1949-58), don demeter (1959-60), and willie davis (61-73). at which point an upheaval ensued at the position, with six dodger cfs in 7 yrs, until kenny landreaux restored order from 1981-85.

2. yankees, 1959-88 — 30 yrs, four 2bs: bobby richardson (59-66), horace clarke (67-73), sandy alomar (74-75), and willie randolph (76-88). the position went aroil in the mid-1990s, with successive one-yr stints by pat kelly, luis sojo, mariano duncan; chuck knoblauch seemed to have it back under control until his throwing arm went daffy. position now wobbly again — stopgap service last year by miguel cairo, tony womack now in residence.

3. yankees, 1949-79 — 31 yrs, four cs: yogi (1949-59), elston howard (60-66), jake gibbs (67-69), and thurman munson (70-79). rock steady.

4. orioles, 1963-2002 — 40 yrs, four ss: contrary to my statement two days ago, ripken’s orioles in fact were more stable at ss than the smith-renteria cardinals. the run goes like this: five yrs of luis aparicio (63-67), fourteen of mark belanger (68-81), fifteen of cal ripken (82-96), and six of mike bordick (97-02). imagine: certain o’s fans matured all the way from college to social security, from skinny bach’lorhood to wheezing geezerdom, and never once had to worry about the home team’s shortstop woes. . . . . well, almost. this clean line of succession is marred, alas, by the garcia/sakata interregnum: after 1978 belanger remained the "regular" in name only, a dying monarch increasingly at the mercy of his conniving heirs. during those years he ceded a share of his title first to kiko garcia and then to len sakata — with wayne krencheki and bobby bonner sopping up a few starts each for good measure. sakata finally wrested the throne in ’82 but held it for barely half a season; earl weaver shifted ripken from third base to short in july, and the sport’s longest rein thereby commenced.

so the cards' run of 4 ss in 28 years is impressive but not historic. it is, however, the longest-running CURRENT streak of this type that i have yet found. . . . and i ain't a-looking for any others.

sorry, all you wheezing geezers.

Transplant x 2

sidebar to prev post:

the cards this offseason are replacing both halves of their keystone combination for the first time since the winter of 98-99, when they shed royce clayton and delino deshields for renteria and a revolving door (polanco mcewing and adam kennedy). 2b remained essentially vacant until f vina’s arrival in 2000, giving stl their best, and longest-running, pairing since smith-herr.

Long Stops at Shortstop

david eckstein becomes just the 5th cardinal shortstop of the post-don kessinger era.

since kessinger's brief rein at the position in 1976, the cards have had only four everyday shortstops: garry templeton (1977-81), ozzie smith (1982-95), royce clayton (1996-98), and edgar renteria (1999-2004). four shortstops in 28 years --- pretty stable position.

for comparison’s sake, the cards have had 10 reg’lar 2bs in the same period — see below if you care who they are — along with 13 reg’lar 1bs and 9 3bs and catchers. they have used so many rightfielders (14) that the fragile jd drew holds the second-longest tenure out there over the period in question.

the only position remotely as stable as ss in stlouis has been centerfield, which for the last 20 years has essentially been the province of three guys — mcgee, lankford, and edmonds — with a one-yr cameo by jd drew in 1999. jerry mumphrey and tony scott preceded willie at the position, making it six cfs post-kessinger.

why use the "kessinger era" as a benchmark? because don kessinger was the last in a long string of failures at what was then a woefully unstable position. the search for dal maxvill’s replacment at shortstop began after maxie hit .175 in 1969 and dragged on for six awful seasons. the bodies strewn by the side of the road included eddie crosby, dwain anderson, mick kelleher, mario guerrero, ray busse, eddie brinkman, and the immortal mike tyson. kessinger, the cubs’ longtime ss, took over in 1976 and kept the position warm for 113 games — until templeton was ready for the callup from tulsa.

since then, the cards have been even more stable at ss than the orioles, despite the presence in baltimore of stable-to-the-point-of-rigor-mortis cal ripken. the orioles have used seven reg’lar ss since ’77: mark belanger (1977-78), kiko garcia (1979-81), lenny sakata (1982), ripken (1983-1996), mike bordick (1997-2002), devi cruz (2003), and miguel tejada (2004).

it’s a fair question: over the past generation has any position in baseball, on any team, been as stable as the cards’ ss position? will be sure to advise if i find an example . . . . .

cardinal reg’lars since 1977:

1b: hernandez77-82, hendrick83, dgreen84, clark85-87, horner88, guerrero89-91, galaragga92, jefferies 93-94, mabry95-96, dyoung97, mcgwire98-01, martinez02-03, pujols04 — 13 guys, longest hernandez 6 yr

2b: tyson 77-78, oberkfell 79-80, herr81-87, alicea88, oquendo 89-91, alicea 92-93, pena94, oquendo95, alicea96, deshields97-98, mcewing99, vina00-03, womack04 — 10 guys, longest herr 7 yr

3b: reitz77-80, oberkfell81-83, pendleton84-90, zeile91-94, cooper95, gaetti96-98, tatis99-00, polanco01-02, rolen03 — 9 guys, longest pend’ton 7 yr

lf: brock 77, jemorales78, ldurham 80, lezcano 81, losmith 82-84, coleman 85-90, mithompson 91, gilkey92-95, gant96-98, lankford99-01, pujols02-03 — 11 guys, longest coleman 6 yr

cf: mumphrey77-78, scott79-81, mcgee82-90, lankford91-98, drew99, edmonds00-04 — six guys, longest mcgee 9 yr

rf: hcruz77, hendrick78-82, dgreen83, hendrick84, vslyke85-86, cford87, brunansky88-89, mthompson90, fjose91-92, whiten93-94, jordan95-96, mabry97, jordan98, edavis99, drew00-03, sanders04 — 14 guys, longest hendrick 6 yr

c: simmons77, porter81, heath86, pena87, zeile90, pagnozzi91, defelice97, marrero98, matheney00 — 9 guys, longest pagnozzi 6 yr