The first part of Seth’s excellent piece I referred to a couple of times here. I really enjoyed how easy I found it to comprehend even though I have no math background, and I can say from having read it that it only gets more interesting from here.
Excuse me for not caring much one way or the other that Terry Collins named Mike Pelfrey his Opening Day starter, something that sparked at least a little bit of bluster in the blog- and Twitter-sphere yesterday.
I suppose, yes, it’s early to do so, but then pitchers are creatures of schedule and they’ll need to start mapping out the Spring Training rotation to line up with the regular season soon enough.
And Pelfrey is at the very least the most proven of the starters likely to be in the Mets’ rotation, since R.A. Dickey and Jon Niese have only a year apiece of Major League success and Chris Capuano and Chris Young are coming off injury. I don’t think anyone’s expecting to pitch like Johan Santana just because he’s technically the No. 1 guy in the Mets’ rotation.
Again, like so many annoying arguments in baseball analysis, it comes down to silly and meaningless labels. Pelfrey shouldn’t be handed the Opening Day starter’s job because that’s for True No. 1s and Pelfrey is not a True No. 1. What is that? As long as he’s healthy coming out of Spring Training, he’s going to be in the rotation, right? So what difference does it make if he starts Friday, April 1 or Sunday, April 3?
Jerry Manuel would say — and did a bunch of times last year — that because of schedules the No. 1 pitcher will often match up with the opponent’s best. Problem is, that’s not really true.
The Mets’ Opening Day starter last year, Johan Santana, matched up with opponents’ Opening Day starters eight times in 29 starts in 2010. Take out Opening Day — when it is inevitable — and it happened once in every four of his starts. And one of them was Vicente Padilla and another was Zach Duke.
You’re hardly condemning Pelfrey to run a gauntlet of Hall of Famers by starting him on Opening Day. And it’s not like they have any pitcher that’s obviously better suited than Pelfrey to run a gauntlet of Hall of Famers anyway.
If the Mets are going to compete in 2011, it’s very likely they’ll have to do so with depth in the rotation but without a brand-name capital-letter True Ace Starter, at least not before Johan Santana returns from surgery. And since Pelfrey has proven himself durable and capable of pitching deep into games, he’s as good a choice as any to pitch the opener.
It’s a loophole for the athlete – turning drug tests into intelligence tests. You have to be stupid to fail one. The benefits of deer antler – or more specifically the substance IGF-1 that comes from it – are clear. IGF-1 is banned by everyone.
“It’s one of the proteins that is increased in human growth hormone … it’s considered performance-enhancing,” Danaceau said.
“It’s similar to HGH in that it aids in recovery. It helps build tissue, and strengthen tissue – more than you can ever do by training alone. Any preparation that is not naturally occurring is banned. Taking IGF-1 through deer antler is banned as well.”
This story comes via Craig Calcaterra: Apparently pro athletes are spraying freeze-dried ground-up liquefied deer antlers into their mouths as a performance enhancer. And some lab director who works with the World Anti-Doping Agency is certain that this is bad.
I have many questions.
First of all, who the f@#$ thought to grind up deer antlers and turn the powder into mouth spray to be sold to professional athletes for $68 a bottle? Damn. That’s a living if I’ve ever heard of one.
Second, before we go about banning it and getting all sanctimonious, do we even know it works? I mean, are any international anti-doping agencies investigating the use of those silly Phiten necklaces?
(Hey, everyone: I’ve got an amazing new diet potion for you. It’s crystal clear and it tastes just like water, but if you combine it with an exercise regimen and a strict, low-calorie diet I guarantee you will lose weight! And now it can be yours for only $10 a bottle. Call me!)
And even if spraying ground-up liquefied deer antler into your mouth really does help you recover faster from injuries, why exactly should that be illegal? By Danaceau’s definition, it’s because it’s “not naturally occurring.” But are 3,000-calorie protein shakes “naturally occurring”? Vitamin pills? Tommy John surgery?
I guess the point is, if there’s no evidence that something is dangerous or even at all effective, I don’t understand why we assume it’s bad. Plus, athletes are perpetually going to be one step ahead of the testing.
Yes, it’s important for sports’ governing bodies to enforce restrictions on drugs — or anything, really — that endanger their athletes. But those efforts would probably be a lot more effective if they educated their athletes about exactly how the products jeopardize their health, and if there’s no evidence that they do, then I don’t understand what’s exactly wrong with them.
It’s not my team. I don’t own it. They do. I’m a big boy. . . . In any job you better be prepared for every decision to not go your way. That’s part of being an employee. There were internal debates and discussions on it and disagreements in terms of how you should proceed, and ultimately Hal’s in charge of making the final call in what he feels is the best direction at that time frame. He made that call. This is Hal Steinbrenner’s and his family’s franchise. It’s not mine and it’s never been, obviously.
I’m in charge of making recommendations, and there’s a chain of command that certainly was followed. But this is not something that was done without me being aware of it. I had my say.
– Brian Cashman, on the Rafael Soriano signing.
Beyond the obvious comparison to be made with the Mets — with all the hand-wringing over meddling ownership — this is just straight-up weird.
I’ve certainly heard it suggested before that a team’s owner has overruled the GM in contract negotiations (Vernon Wells in Toronto and Eric Byrnes in Arizona come to mind), but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a GM explicitly say he didn’t advocate a deal.
Maybe Cashman’s just being completely forthright here, since he does have a habit of letting certain would-be private details spill out into the press. But I wonder why he’d be so eager to distance himself from the contract, even if it is one that would be irresponsible if signed by any of the 29 teams with finite resources.
If I resist speculating about the Mets’ internal politics without concrete evidence, I should extend the Yankees the same courtesy. But certainly this suggests that Cashman is not operating with the autonomy I previously assumed he had been since George Steinbrenner’s health started failing.
The biggest, and most underreported story out of yesterday’s fan meet-and-greet at Citi Field? Check out the beard on Dillon Gee. Not bad, young man.
Look: If I knew before I left for work that we were going to get Peter Gammons on the line today, I probably would’ve shaved. But then I was out pretty late last night at the Prince concert, so no guarantees.
Brian Cashman more or less admitted that the Rafael Soriano contract was Hal Steinbrenner’s idea, not his own. As Emma Span writes: “Huh.” In more hilarious news, the Yankees were apparently unironically pursuing Carl Pavano. He was the best starting pitcher left on the market, they need a starter and they have the funds so it actually isn’t horrendously unreasonable, it’s just, well, you know.
On Friday afternoon in the batting cages at the Mets’ Minor League facility in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Tim Teufel pitches to a righty-hitting college-aged kid in blue mesh shorts and a t-shirt.
A clutch of guys in Mets jerseys looks on, but none among them can peg down the identity of the kid. They know his name is Mike and that he’s not among their ranks at Fantasy Camp. They think the kid knows Teufel. One says he’s Teufel’s son. Another suggests he’s Teufel’s son-in-law. A third says he’s Teufel’s son’s friend. No one is certain.
But they see that he is awesome. He lashes line drive after line drive, every ball darting off his bat toward left-center field, slicing into the cage’s net and pulling it taut against its supports, then ricocheting back near where Teufel is throwing.
His contact produces a Major League sound. It is something different than the clichéd “crack of the bat.” That familiar sound, at stadiums, is filtered by distance and crowd rumble, limiting the spectrum of noise that hits the eardrum.
Here, up close, you can hear the sizzle and whoosh as the kid’s hands and bat and the ball all speed into the zone at the same time, then an oaky baritone report when they all come together. Thwock, thwock, thwock. It is magnificent.
“You know what’s wrong with this kid’s swing?” one camper asks another.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
Only Lenny Harris sees something amiss. The familiar pinch-hitter extraordinaire, fresh off his own BP session in the next cage over, stops Teufel and jumps in the cage. The kid, he says, is cheating forward with his lower half before he swings, costing him balance — presumably passable in batting practice but the type of thing good pitchers will eventually exploit.
“You see it, Teuf?” Harris asks. Teufel nods and steps over to the batter’s box. He explains the importance of keeping flexible through the hips, swiveling his own as he does so. A few of the Fantasy Camp group chuckle; they have enjoyed a brief, exaggerated version of the Teufel Shuffle.
Harris pulls over a tee to teach the kid — and Teufel — a drill to help hitters stay back in the box. The kid hits more line drives toward left-center, shots that look and sound a lot like the earlier ones. Harris, a Minor League hitting coach these days, can see the adjustment, and he seems satisfied.
In the next cage over, one of the camp-goers takes his cuts off Pete Schourek. Long and lean and probably in his early 30s — one of the youngest in attendance — his swing appears steady, if lacking power. But he is missing the ball, swinging over it. The few he connects with veer straight down into the artificial turf.
Jim McAndrew walks into the area from one of the back fields. He watches the hitter struggling, then speaks up.
“Put your bat on your shoulder,” he says.
The guy looks confused, and a bit tentative. Little League coaches everywhere earn their pay reminding hitters to take the bat off their shoulder. Now, a member of the 1969 Mets — a pitcher, no less — is telling him otherwise. He pulls his hands in uncomfortably close to his body, elbows bent so tight his forearms almost graze his biceps, then swings and misses again.
“No, no. Just place the bat on your shoulder. Relax,” McAndrew says. The guy heeds his advice. Line drive.
The people at Mets Fantasy Camp are dentists and lawyers and doctors and teachers in real life. They range in age from about 30 to 70. Most of them are men, but there are a few women peppered throughout. Most come alone, but there are some kids and wives and parents milling about. They have in common only a love of baseball and a learned understanding that Major League Baseball players are really, really, really good at it.
The former players, too, seem to delight in the sport as much as the campers do, and the place becomes like a weeklong mid-Winter celebration of its grandeur. It’s January, and you’ve missed baseball. Here, you watch baseball, you play baseball, you talk baseball, you revere it.
“After October, you just kind of sit around,” says Al Jackson, a veteran of some 50 years in various positions in professional baseball. “This gets you ready for Spring Training. It breaks up the monotony.”
I broke news today, sort of. I heard that the Mets were signing Scott Hairston, so I tweeted it. I trusted that the people from whom I heard the news believed it wholeheartedly, but since I know the way these things often play out and am familiar with the game “Telephone,” I hedged the hell out of the Tweet with a full disclaimer before the news.
Adam Rubin, who is actually in the business of breaking Mets news and does a better job of it than pretty much anyone, confirmed the report later.
And so I contributed my piece to the nonsense that is offseason baseball coverage. I’m happy to say I’m now 1-for-1 in transaction-related scoops.
For what it’s worth, I also broke the news that Billy Wagner needed elbow surgery, way back when (only to have Mike Francesa read my report word for word on air without crediting me or SNY), and I was the first person to publish the news — on MetsBlog, at about 3 a.m. ET — that Willie Randolph had been canned.
That’s about it. I don’t intend to ever be in the business of breaking news with any real frequency, but when someone here hands me some or wakes me up with a phone call because I’m the most accessible person with a public forum, I’m happy to publish it. I recognize that’s probably a good way to increase my online profile or whatever, but at the same time I’m content to sit here writing about sandwiches.
I will say, though, that there’s one minor scoop for which I am directly responsible and have never been credited. I was the anonymous source that fed Matt Cerrone the details of the Johan Santana contract.
It went like this: I got word that Santana, his agents and the Mets’ front office were negotiating his contract in the SNY offices because of their accessible Midtown location. I work in said offices, and figured out which conference room they were in (it wasn’t hard — it’s the fancy one).
The workday was winding down as the negotiations were starting, and I had nothing particularly important to do that evening, so I went upstairs and parked myself at the receptionist’s desk outside the conference room. I considered doing the old sitcom cup-on-the-door thing. I IMmed Cerrone when they got dinner delivered.
I sat there for a while, browsing the Internet and waiting for something to happen. I was just about to give up when a dude — a young guy, must have been someone who worked for the agent or something — emerged from the conference room on his cell phone.
“It’s done, dude,” he said. Then he paused.
He continued: “Six. Yeah, six and 137-point-five.”
Layup. That was my one endeavor into investigative journalism. I figure it’s not always that easy.
Of course, I had been working here for all of three weeks at the time, so I spent the next week crapping my pants worried that someone would find out and I’d somehow get in trouble. But then I realized I was actually kind of doing my job, and then no one ever asked me about it anyway.
As for Hairston, he seems like a nice pickup to compete for a fourth or fifth outfield spot. Eno Sarris has way, way more.
Two things you should read about closers: 1) Eno Sarris’ plan for how the Mets could use K-Rod effectively without having his $17.5 million option for 2012 vest.
2) Cliff Corcoran’s analysis of just how good Mariano Rivera has been compared to every other relief pitcher ever.
I’ve long held that the one-inning closer role should be retired with Rivera. The telling stat is this one: In the 20 years before Tony La Russa popularized the one-inning closer, teams entering the ninth inning with a lead won the same percentage of games as they did in the 20 years after. There has got to be a better way to construct a bullpen than wildly overpaying one guy to throw 60-some innings.
Tedquarters 