Category Archives: Baseball

Food for thought

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We all know at this point that long-term contracts for pitchers are very risky; after all (to paraphrase one of your recent posts), pitchers get hurt a lot.  Given that fact, let’s entertain a hypothetical scenario: Let’s say an ace hits the free agent market in his prime, and teams are lining up to woo him.  Conventional wisdom says that, most of the time, the team that ponies up in dollars and years will get the prize, right?  Well, what if a rogue team took a different approach, and instead of offering, say, a six-year, $140m deal, offered a three-year, $90m deal instead?  What do you think would happen?  Would the pitcher scoff at the lower total contract, or would he be interested in the higher annual payout and the lure of another round of free agency in three years?  I’d bet the pitcher would at least think twice about it.  As for the team offering those terms, it would be mitigating the risk of injury to the player; it would save itself money in total dollars committed; and it would have greater flexibility in player personnel decision making in the medium-to-long term.  Food for thought.

– Nate, via e-mail.

Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmmm. That is some tasty food for thought.

It seems like a reasonable enough idea that I’m trying to figure out why it hasn’t happened. I suppose it mostly depends on the pitcher: If he has been so thoroughly injury-free that he and his agent are confident he will be healthy in three years, a deal like that would make  a lot of sense for him. Of course, if that were the case, the team would also probably be reasonably confident that the pitcher would be healthy in three years and might prefer to lock him up for less money per year over a longer term.

I guess the only even vaguely comparable situation is when Roger Clemens signed a couple of massive part-year deals with the Astros and Yankees in 2006 and 2007 (Ed. Note: And he is BAAAACK!), but in those cases I’m pretty sure it was Clemens limiting the length, doing his own version of the Favre festering-boil thing, only in Clemens’ case with an actual festering boil.

Otherwise, maybe it has something to do with the way teams want to structure payouts? As Mets fans have all now seen, teams can invest and earn interest on the money they owe players in the latter years of contracts, so perhaps it behooves the team to avoid giving a player so much money so quickly?

But really, I don’t know. If I had to guess, I would figure it is the agents — smart enough to vote down a confident player who believes he’s invincible — that get in the way of that type of deal. They probably convince the pitchers — rightfully — that they’re in a dangerous trade, and that the security of a $140 million deal (in this example) is better for them and their families. But I’m probably missing something. Some union thing? Any ideas?

Until recently, CC Sabathia ate Cap’n Crunch every day

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Turns out the secret to CC Sabathia’s 25-pound weight loss this winter was another guy with the same initials.

“Not eating Cap’n Crunch every day,” Sabathia revealed when asked what changes he made to his diet to help him trim down from 315 lbs. to 290 since the end of last season. “I’m actually what it says on the back of my card.”

– Mark Feinsand, N.Y. Daily News.

Wow.

I’m in no position to judge anyone for his dietary choices, it’s just a bit surprising to me that anyone would waste so much space and calories on Cap’n Crunch. It’s not even close to the Top 3 sugary cereals. Those are, in order: Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams. And I avoid even those, because if I’m going to destroy my body it’s going to be with bacon dammit, not breakfast cereal. I generally start my days with a bowl of Kashi Honey Sunshine, which is actually shaped just like Cap’n Crunch, and is clearly not as good for me as it purports to be because it’s decent-tasting.

Cap’n Crunch reminds me of dog food, and for a very specific reason: My late dog, Muffin, ate Cap’n Crunch for breakfast every morning even though no one else in my family did. I don’t really know how it started — I was 7 or so — or why we had the cereal in the house to begin with, but she wouldn’t even eat Purina or whatever she was supposed to eat. She just wanted Cap’n Crunch. Also: Burgers. Dog ate a lot of burgers. Shockingly, she weighed twice as much as she should have and eventually died of dog diabetes. Good dog, though. Very chill. Slept a lot.

Anyway, good for the big fella for dropping down to his listed weight. No idea if it will actually impact his pitching at all, but you figure it’s got to help with his already impressive stamina.

What he said

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Here’s the thing I don’t get: why say this at all? Mejia’s own performance will dictate where he will land eventually. That and the organization’s evaluation of his performance. There’s just no question that a top-line starter is more valuable than a short-reliever….

Warthen was being honest, and I suppose he deserves our approval for that. However, sometimes, tact is as important as honesty. I don’t know what question from what reporter prompted this discussion. Nor do I really care. The issue here is that there are other people with the Mets who think Mejia has the potential to be a starting pitcher and he is being developed with that goal in mind this season. Warthen, while expressing a personal opinion, is essentially publicly expressing disagreement with others in the organization.

– Toby Hyde, MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com.

People seem to be making a lot about Warthen’s comment that Mejia profiles as a Major League reliever, but I’m with Toby: It doesn’t really matter much. If we’re assuming that decisions about the way the team’s top prospect is handled are now the dominion of the front office — sigh! — the Major League pitching coach’s opinion probably doesn’t much impact the way the team develops Mejia.

(Oh man, remember all that last year? Holy hell, did that happen?)

Anyway, it might be better if Warthen kept opinions like this one to himself, just for the sake of public relations. But though I’ve ripped Warthen for things he has said in the past, Mets pitchers publicly and privately rave about him, so he must be doing something right. It’s probably not fair to judge him just based on what he says to the press.

(Very little) about the nanshiki ball

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With red wristbands and a thick mane flowing out the back of his helmet, Nishioka was standing on second base in the eighth inning of a quarterfinal game against the United States in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006.

Japan’s batter had just been hit by a pitch when time was called so the trainer could come out. Nishioka seized upon the lull to fulfill a dream. He stepped off the bag, walked over toward Derek Jeter and introduced himself.

– Brad Lefton, N.Y. Times.

Good read from Lefton and the Times about the Twins’ newest infielder, Japanese import Tsuyoshi Nishioka. Nishioka briefly used only one name — Pele-style — and had only “Tsuyoshi” on the team roster, which I imagine could not have gone over well with our hero.

Anyway, this article seems like as good a segue as I’m going to find to bring up something I’ve been thinking about in terms of Japanese baseball, and which I can’t find a whole lot about online.

Toward the end of the fall, as numbers started dwindling at our weekly pickup baseball game in Brooklyn, we found ourselves with only enough guys to field one team. We sought out competitors, and found a few rogue teams from other leagues that themselves weren’t yet ready to shelve their bats for the winter. We played against a team of Mexican dudes called the Aztecs from a Red Hook league, and then a couple of games against the Cubs from the New York City Metro Baseball League, a wood-bat league that plays in Central Park.

For our last game of the season, we played a group of Japanese guys that play in a Japanese league spanning the Tri-State area. Unlike the Cubs and the Aztecs, though, these guys used some different equipment than we did. Most notably: The nanshiki ball.

I can’t find much about the nanshiki ball online in English, but one of the guys told me it’s essentially the standard for every amateur-level league in Japan, Taiwan and Korea. It is slightly lighter than a regular baseball, and made of rubber. It has raised “seams,” but they’re the same color as the ball. The guy said it is used for safety, but also to save space — because the ball doesn’t travel as far, fields where it is used do not need to be as large as they would with a harder baseball.

Our pitchers were unwilling to use the nanshiki ball and theirs were unwilling to use our ball, so we agreed that they would use the nanshiki ball when they were in the field and we would use ours.

Because the ball compressed when it made contact with the bat, it was very difficult to drive. And since it was impossible to read the seams on pitches, it seemed to reward the slap hitters over the more powerful guys.

The opposing fielders, for their part, seemed way more eager than we were to use their bodies to knock the ball down, perhaps because the cost in pain is less (or perhaps because they were generally better fielders than us).

Anyway, I wonder if this in any affects the development of Asian players. I have no idea how long the nanshiki ball has been in use and at what levels exactly, so it could be that no current Major Leaguer has ever used the thing. But as younger Japanese players like Nishioka start switching leagues, it’s at least an interesting thing to consider, I think.

Oliver Perez shows up early

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Well there’s this: According to David Lennon of Newsday in a subscriber-only piece, Oliver Perez showed up to Mets camp a couple days early yesterday, only to find the complex locked. Perfect. Lennon reported that Perez then picked up some workout clothes and left to exercise on his own.

In the grand scheme of things, the report means very little, of course. But for some reason fans seem to use the date a player reports for Spring Training as a barometer for his commitment. If he is there a week early, he is focused and prepared, a dedicated team player. If he only arrives the day he is contractually obligated to show up, hellfire and sanctimony, fire and brimstone.

Of course, there’s some confirmation bias at play. Fans note when Perez is not listed among the players that arrived early to camp because they have already decided that he is lazy and unfocused. No one even notices that Mike Pelfrey’s not there — hey, he’s got a young kid and another on the way; maybe he wants to spend time with this family!

Neither Pelf nor Perez nor anyone else should be faulted, ever, for failing to show up before the mandatory reporting date. For one thing, no one has any idea what type of work a player does on his own time, in his home gym or with his personal trainer or whatever. Second, showing up early is voluntary. I rarely come into the office on weekends. I could, and I’m sure my bosses would appreciate the extra effort, but I’ve got lots of other stuff to take care of.

Maybe some players determine that showing up a couple days early will help them get a leg up on the competition or earn good standing with the team, but maybe others want time to get in the best shape possible before they show up to camp so they can make a good impression when they do. And maybe some really just don’t want to put in the extra work. Who knows? I don’t.

Point is, we can knock “not showing up early” to camp off our list of complaints about Oliver Perez. We’re going to have to instead focus on the big ones: “Owed $12 million” and “Not very good.” The former is certainly not his fault. The latter might be.

There have always been mixed reports on Perez’s work ethic, and it’s difficult to tell to what extent they’re true and to what extent he’s simply an easy punching bag for media because he’s a) already disliked by fans and b) not a great quote. The only concrete evidence we have of his selfishness is his refusal to go to the Minor Leagues last year, something well within his rights as a Major League veteran. Of course, as fans, it’s well within our rights to boo him for occupying a roster spot.

A conversation about Matt Cain

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Interesting read for baseball nerds. Dave Cameron and Rory Paap try to investigate why Matt Cain consistently outperforms his peripheral numbers. If you’ll recall, I struggle a bit with xFIP. I have no doubt that most pitchers’ HR/FB rates will normalize over time, but I’m unwilling to go all-in on the idea that no pitcher can consistently yield weak fly-ball contact. Also, I wonder if the organizational angle that Cameron and Paap seem to settle on would also pertain to the A’s. I think it’s eminently reasonable to consider that the nerds in Major League front offices and dugouts could be a step ahead of us nerds on the Internet on this one.

BREAKING: Rich guy could buy the Mets, probably won’t

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With his excellent seats at Citi Field, Michael Bloomberg says he won’t upgrade to the owner’s box.

The billionaire mayor was asked Thursday if he was interested in purchasing the 20%-25% stake the Mets’ current owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, are selling off to raise cash for potentially crippling litigation involving their ties to Bernie Madoff’s collapsed Ponzi scheme.

“I don’t think I should own a baseball team,” answered Bloomberg, smiling.

– Nathaniel Vinton, N.Y. Daily News.

So is this how it’s going to be now? We’re just going to start speculating that every single rich person with even vague ties to baseball or New York might purchase the Mets? Because that’s going to get tedious.

First of all, it seems likely that anyone with $250 million lying around to invest in a baseball team didn’t come into that money without being pretty careful about his or her investments, so outside of a few outlying eccentrics I imagine most billionaires aren’t going to come out and be all, “HELL YEAH I WANT THE METS! TRADE DAVID WRONG!”

Second, there are a ton of extremely rich people who aren’t celebrity rich people, meaning that there are prospective buyers beyond Bloomberg and Mark Cuban and James Dolan and Derek Jeter and whoever else. It might not make for an interesting story if some hedge-fund manager from Chappaqua that no one outside the financial world has ever heard of emerges as a candidate to buy all or part of the team, but I can’t imagine it makes much of a difference to the Wilpons or, for that matter, to the Mets in the long run.

Speaking of: The 20th richest man in America, per Forbes, is a New York hedge-fund manager named John Paulson (Ed. note: His name is John Paulson). Forbes says Paulson is worth $12.4 billion, and yet I had never heard of him until right now. What’s up with that, Mr. Paulson? What’s the point of making $12.4 billion if your name’s not going to ring out through the streets?

Anyway, I’ve got an easy solution for you, John Paulson: Give me a billion dollars. That’s less than 1/12 of your riches. I keep a sports and sandwich blog of moderate repute, and if you made me rich, I’d probably dedicate half my posts to writing about how awesome you are. Think of the publicity! Sandwich of the Week: Lobster and Caviar on saffron-infused brioche with diamond aioli. And bacon. All thanks to Mr. John Paulson, billionaire philanthropist and patron of the sandwich-oriented arts.

Long story short, guessing that the rich people you’ve heard of will buy the Mets is probably a fool’s errand, because there are likely way more rich people you haven’t heard of. And it’s certainly going to take a while before anything concrete gets done, so it’s probably fruitless to spend the interim picking billionaires out of hats and assuming they might be interested in investing in a baseball team supposedly carrying considerable debt.