Mets want ‘a monster package for Dickey’
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Friday Q&A, pt. 1: Baseball stuff
Via email (on Thursday), Regina writes:
Hey Ted! I work at a middle school, surrounded by billygobs of Yankee fans. I am wearing my T7L “The Dickey Strikes Back” t-shirt, and received one complaint (actually, not to my face) that it was inappropriate. Thoughts? I am also wearing a blue sock and an orange sock with my blue/orange Reebok sneakers that I spied on Shannon Shark’s blog. They are a year old and have never been worn outside. Too much? I value your opinion. Should I turn my shirt inside out, or bask in the warm glow?
What? No! Wear it with pride! Are we not in the peak of the anti-bullying movement? Assuming you’re not breaking any sort of workplace dress code (and more on that will follow), be a role model to the middle schoolers and show them you’re not afraid to swim upstream when celebrating something as important and monumental as R.A. Dickey’s Cy Young Award victory. In other words:
Yes, and I don’t think it was all that close. By WAR, Wright beats out the next guys in the division by more than a full win. His total in that stat was bolstered by his massive uptick in the notoriously capricious defensive metric UZR, but so was the NL East’s second-best — Jason Heyward — and Wright plays the more premium defensive position and far outpaced Heyward offensively.
By offense alone, the only guy who hit appreciably better than Wright in the division was Giancarlo Stanton, and Stanton played in 33 fewer games due to injury. Phillies catcher Carlos Ruiz, whose park-adjusted 149 OPS+ narrowly topped Wright’s 143, would have had a strong case had he not missed nearly all of August with a foot injury.
Don’t forget it: David Wright is really, really good. For whatever reason, fans of every team get frustrated with their club’s best players on occasion. But Wright didn’t stumble into becoming the best player in franchise history. It’s a pretty safe bet that no prospect any team would ever consider trading for anybody will ever become as good as Wright, and a reasonable wager the Mets won’t see another homegrown position player as good for at least another 25 years or so.
https://twitter.com/RobPatterson83/status/269446398301323264
Well, pitcher wins are fluky, so it’s hard to expect another 18+ win season from anyone pitching for the Mets next year unless the Mets come into a lot more offense. But the complete list of starting pitchers who have been as good or better than Dickey since he joined the Mets in 2010 is pretty short, and every guy on there is someone you’d probably call an ace. Here are the fellows who’ve thrown at least 500 innings with an ERA+ of 125 or better since 2010: Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Jered Weaver, Johnny Cueto, Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, CC Sabathia, Cole Hamels, Felix Hernandez, Gio Gonzalez, David Price, R.A. Dickey and C.J. Wilson.
Dickey’s the oldest of the bunch, but his marked improvement in strikeout rate in 2012 suggests he’s not really slowing down. At this point, it’s fair to say he does have a true history of success. And he has improved pretty steadily since he became a full-time knuckleballer. With every passing year, Dickey’s more likely to fall victim to injury, but provided he stays healthy he’ll likely be good for at least a few more years. It’s not as if the league still lacks exposure to his pitch at this point.
Dickey is an outlier even among knuckleballers, so it’s very hard to predict his future. But Phil Niekro had his best three-season stretch starting in his age-38 season. Tim Wakefield stayed pretty consistent into his 40s. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect Dickey to repeat his 2012 performance, but I don’t think the concern in re-signing him should be whether he’ll remain effective for the next few seasons. It’s whether he’ll be effective enough to justify the cost over the cost of his replacements on a team with a very finite payroll and massive holes to fill elsewhere.
Wait, the rook who needs to know his place or the guy to put said rook in his place?
The former almost has to be Jordany Valdespin, based on reputation. I’ve been accused of unfairly ripping Valdespin on the podcast, so I won’t say more. My concerns have far more to do with his approach than his attitude anyway.
The latter? I’m hardly a club insider and I don’t want to make myself out to be something I’m not. But I heard a couple stories I can’t share here toward the end of the 2012 season that speak pretty well of Wright’s clubhouse leadership. It was far more productive and decent than “know-your-place” type stuff and, again, I don’t think anything provided behind the scenes is as valuable as what can be measured on the field. But my understanding is that Wright demonstrates a much more assertive personality when the cameras are off than he ever does in post-game interviews and such.
Sorry to be vague.
That’s a pretty wonderful hypothetical, and I don’t have a great answer. Are they expanding roster sizes? Mike Trout continues playing both ways forever. Probably guys like Robinson Cano and Adrian Beltre, too. And it would probably take a while for teams to fully exploit the system, so there’d be a period in which not all that much changed while teams started re-working their Minor League systems into separate instructional branches for defensive players and hitters. With zero focus on defense, could more than a handful of players develop into David Ortiz-style mashers?
And moreover, how would run scoring around the league change if every team could field a lineup full of David Ortizes and a defense full of Rey Ordonezes and Brett Gardners? Would they balance each other out due to the diminished batting average on balls in play, or would enough home runs be hit to bring back the late 1990s? Someone with math, get on this please.
Three thousand cheers for R.A. Dickey
R.A. Dickey won the National League Cy Young Award last night. Like I said yesterday, his season wouldn’t have been any less awesome or memorable or dominant if he didn’t win, but the honor makes for a nice cherry on top of an otherwise spectacular sundae. So, well, good.
Here’s a look back at Dickey’s award-winning year in TedQuarters posts, for whatever that’s worth:
March 3: R.A. Dickey on the slow knuckler
March 9: Sandwich Show with R.A. Dickey
April 30: R.A. Dickey makes remarkably convincing Old West sheriff
June 7: R.A. Dickey, last four starts
June 15: Select decontextualized quotes from “The Humpty Dance” that seem apt to describe R.A. Dickey’s knuckleball
June 19: The R.A. Dickey phenomenon
June 20: Knuckleballer in full ascendency
Aug. 31: Should the Mets trade R.A. Dickey?
Sept. 7: R.A. Dickey on ‘the kairotic moment’
Sept. 18: Knuckleball!
Sept. 27: R.A. Dickey rules
Oct. 3: R.A. Dickey has been pitching with a torn ab muscle since April
Oct. 16: R.A. Dickey has pet rabbits named for Star Wars characters
Does the Cy Young Award change anything about the way I now think the Mets should approach Dickey’s situation this offseason? Rationally no, emotionally yes. Thinking back on his remarkable year makes me a bit more wistful about the possibility of his departure, regardless of the potential return. We just witnessed something special.
Art heist!
Last night, pending league approval, the Marlins traded Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle, John Buck, Emilio Bonifacio and, reportedly, $4 million in salary relief to the Blue Jays for Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Adeiny Hechavarria, Jeff Mathis, minor league pitchers Justin Nicolino and Anthony Desclafani and minor league outfielder Jake Marisnick.
Twitter’s already past backlash to the deal and moving past backlash to backlash to the deal, but the move appears to make a hell of a lot of sense for the Blue Jays in the short term. Presumably, with the Yankees aging rapidly and facing an Opening Day without Derek Jeter, the Red Sox languishing and the Orioles no lock to repeat their 2012 success, Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos spied a window in which his team could make a postseason run and threw it open. Buehrle and Johnson will upgrade the Blue Jays’ rotation and Reyes will do all the things you know Reyes can do in front of still-awesome Jose Bautista and now apparently awesome Edwin Encarnacion.
The Marlins don’t seem to be motivated by winning baseball games so much as saving — and making — money, so the trade works for them too. They shed the bulk of their longterm payroll commitments. And though none of Nicolino, Desclafani and Marisnick appears close to contributing much at the Major League level, neither do the Marlins, and all show some potential.
But the trade did piss off the Marlins’ best thing, unspeakably awesome young outfielder Giancarlo Stanton. Explicitly:
That Tweet inevitably inspired tons of speculation that Stanton could also be traded, but dealing a young, cost-controlled masher that represents the team’s only real draw doesn’t appear to make any sense for Miami. Unless Stanton demands it — and maybe even if he does — he won’t be traded. Plus, if the Marlins do for some reason decide to dangle their original Home Run Thing, every single team in the league will want him. No Major League club would not massively benefit from the addition of Giancarlo Stanton, and no club could not afford his salary. The cost would be — and should be — as tremendous as any of Stanton’s moonshots.
Still, because Stanton is a young, cheap, right-handed-hitting outfielder with power and thus represents all of the exact things the Mets need and then some, it’s sort of impossible not to dream on a scenario wherein the Mets could somehow swing a deal for the slugger. The Mets add Giancarlo Stanton and nearly all of our concerns disappear. Replace Jason Bay with Giancarlo Stanton in an offense and it goes from Sufjan Stevens to AC/DC in one thunderous stroke.
But, again, even if Stanton were on the proverbial table — and what a table it must be, to support his might — it would be difficult for the Mets to put together a package of players to meet the Marlins’ needs that would better those offered by every other big-league club. I suppose you could start with Jon Niese and Zack Wheeler and work from there, but I doubt that’s nearly enough, the Marlins already have Logan Morrison so they’re all set on slow-footed lefty-hitting first-basemen types, and Niese’s team-friendly deal would become the Marlins’ largest longterm salary commitment. So I don’t know. It’s hard to even speculate, as there’s just not much precedent for dealing a player like Stanton at this point in his career — or, really, for a lot of what the Marlins do.
That’s where we come in.
Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, you may know, got his start in the business world as an art dealer. Per the Wikipedia, his personal collection includes works by Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore. And here in Midtown Manhattan, not three short blocks from where I currently sit, in a fourth-floor gallery at the Museum of Modern Art, sits a version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream that recently fetched nearly $120 million at an auction.
Let’s steal that motherf—-er.
Now, look: I don’t typically think art-thievery is a decent or reasonable endeavor, it’s just that this particular one is about the greater good. Plus, I saw this version of The Scream on Saturday and found it underwhelming. The same is actually true of nearly every iconic work of art I’ve seen save Guernica: They’re reproduced so often and elevated to such eminent stature that braving the crowds to check them out in person ultimately disappoints. I appreciate representations of existential terror as much as anybody, but The Scream looked exactly as I knew The Scream to look, and was, in my opinion, not even the most impressive of Munch’s drawings on display. Also, there are three other versions of The Scream on display elsewhere, so it’s not like we’d be robbing the viewing public of its only opportunity to see for itself.
I’ve never successfully executed an art heist before, but I’ve got value to the group as a face man, an organizer, and an explosives expert if need be. Based on what I understand, we’re probably going to need at least someone who rappels (Cashman?), someone who can hack into security systems, a strongman, and a driver. Also, it would probably help if we had at least one dude who’s in it for one last score, maybe a beautiful woman, and someone who knows how to plan heists.
Then, once we have The Scream in our possession, we pull off the greatest art heist of them all: Trading it to Jeffrey Loria for the greatest work of contemporary American awesomeism, Giancarlo Stanton, an achievement so grand it defies reproduction in any media beyond the one in which it exists, baseball-crushing.
Who’s with me?
Blue Jays get the Marlins
Holy crap. The Marlins’ bizarre debacle of a 2012 continues with a blockbuster trade sending basically everyone besides Giancarlo Stanton to the Blue Jays, at least per tons of people on Twitter, led by Ken Rosenthal and Jon Morosi. The details are still forthcoming, but right now it looks like Toronto will send Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Adeiny Hechavarria and pitching prospect Justin Nicolino to Miami for Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, John Buck, Emilio Bonifacio and… Jose Reyes.
Crazy time. Still kind of feel bad for Reyes. Yes, he chased the money and cut his hair. Yes, he signed a deal without a no-trade clause. But he was hardly the only guy duped by the Marlins’ one-year foray into spending. It should be easier to root for him now, at least.
Of course, the deal hasn’t been officially announced yet, and we’ve been this far down the road in the past only to learn we were misled by Twitter echo-chamber stuff. This one’s coming from about a billion sources though, and seems to fit with everything we’ve seen from the Marlins these past few months. Follow along with exhaustive and pleasantly profane coverage at Drunk Jays Fans if you want the local take.
“Paganning:” a thing?
The trend needs to stop already, but I support this one instance of making someone’s name into something that people photograph themselves doing. From Taco Bell’s Facebook page, of all places, via Randy Medina:
Link
Who needs Dickey?
Well, most teams. But still:
The drunkard’s GM meetings
“Hard work and talent is what brings you success,” Mlodinow said he told the group. “They are two big components of success, but also luck is a big component of success. Players have the talent but are subject to the random fluctuations that happen. You look at a player who’s on a hot streak and think that he’s seeing the ball better or concentrating better, but a large component of that is randomness.”
Mlodinow writes about how those theories apply to baseball and other sports in his book, entitled, “The Drunkard’s Walk,” which was published in 2008.
“When we look at extraordinary accomplishments in sports — or elsewhere — we should keep in mind that extraordinary events can happen without extraordinary causes,” he wrote. “Random events often look like non-random events, and in interpreting human affairs we must take care not to confuse the two.”
Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk is one of the more fascinating and enlightening books you’ll ever read. It’s downright awesome that he addressed the Major League GMs on Friday, even if a more thorough grasp of randomness league-wide could reduce some clubs’ competitive advantages.
Via BBTF.
Tedquarters 