And if I could fly, I would be a superhero
ESPN.com’s baseball page lead story blurb for “Best In The Biz” story.
Gary Matthews Jr. had a career year last season for the Rangers. And if he can have another huge campaign in 2007, Matthews could help make the Angels’ outfield tops in the majors.
Yeaaaaaaaaaah.
Chan Ho Park signed somewhere.
Corey Patterson got a one-year, $4.3m deal from the Orioles
Jeff Fassero retired. I remember when he was pretty bas-ass. Good times.
Arroyo signed an extension with the team the Red Sox traded him to after they said they wouldn’t trade him.
Jon Heyman, over at SI, put Mike Hargove at #1 on his list of managers on the hot seat.
Seattle ownership has made clear that the small improvement the team made last season, from 69 wins in 2005 to 78 in ’06, wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. Hargrove, an all-time survivor and one of baseball’s nice guys, got a reprieve when few figured he would. But he won’t get two.
all-time survivor? What does that even mean? And one of baseball’s nice guys?
A) no
b) What does that even mean?
It’s times like this that I think there’s some coded message in there that I lack the necessary background to hear, like dog-whistle politics. It’s like when Peter Gammons writes about some prospect and says “Jerimiah Jake Johnson, of the Massachusetts Johnsons..” I always stare at the sentence and think “huh? What should that convey to me? Who’s he writing to there?”
Let me take a stab at this.
all-time survivor: he’s repeatedly walked away from horrible plane crashes caused in no small part to his failures as pilot
one of baseball’s nice guys: he’s deigned to be interviewed by me.
Feel free to submit your own interpretations.
Mariners GM Bill Bavasi didn’t get Barry Zito, despite offering close to $100 million and finishing second, but he did rebuild the rotation with the additions of Miguel Batista, Horacio Ramirez and Jeff Weaver. While none of the three is Zito, improvement will be expected. The Weaver signing could prove especially worthwhile, with a superb left side of the infield of third baseman Adrian Beltre and shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt.
Improvement will be expected. By you? By the team? By fans?
DMZ: Updated to delete this paragraph on account of I totally screwed it up in the most basic, obvious way possible
Especially worthwhile. Okay.
Hargrove’s strategy has come under fire in all three of his managerial stops, but he did right by moving Ichiro Suzuki to center field. What he needs most, though, is improved production from Beltre and Richie Sexson.
More of the passive-voice thing. Plus, Hargrove doesn’t have a strategy. He doesn’t. His strategy is “I’d like to win”. If you want to argue about his in-game tactics, or his player managing, or his horrible talent evaluation skills, sure, but to say that Hargrove’s strategy is under fire… I don’t understand.
And what he needs most is improved production from Beltre and Sexson? Where do you even get this stuff?
Hargrove has:
– a second baseman with a once-promising bat he’s turned into some shadow version of his own glory days
– a starting pitcher the Angels put out on the curb with a “free” sign taped to his forehead and no one picked him up
– another starting pitcher who has never struck batters out but the team thinks might be a #1 starter
– a broken-down, beat-up DH who hasn’t hit well in years that the team is praying will somehow rehabilitate his legs and return to glory
– a notorious clubhouse cancer also coming off injury and a wretched year at the plate
What he needs most is Beltre to play better? Beltre? Or Sexson? The team has two everyday lineup spots occupied by longshot gambles, with another two in the rotation, and he really needs Beltre and Sexson to step up.
Argh.
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Yeah, but the Rangers finally got rid of Showalter. We all know what that means: Texas wins the World Series this year.
About ten years ago, Karen was predicting that Fassero would win the Cy Young and I argued otherwise. Of course, if she’d said he wouldn’t retire until after the 2006 season, I would have argued otherwise. I can’t believe he lasted this long.
You must be thinking of Jered Weaver Derek, because Jeff Weaver has routinely gotten more groundballs than flyballs for almost his entire career.
Jeff Weaver G/F:
1999:1.20
2000:1.51
2001:1.21
2002:1.27
2003:1.11
2004:1.06
2005:1.00
2006:0.99
Now yeah he’s turned more and more towards flyballs every years since 2002, but Weaver has never been a “huge flyball pitcher”. Unless I’m reading that stat wrong.
For the last three seasons (spread over four stops), Weaver’s GB% has been 40.0%, 40.9%, 39.2%, 38.8%. If you take a look at the league histogram for GB%, that clearly puts him on the flyball side of the ledger. I guess I wouldn’t call him a “huge” flyball pitcher, since he’s around 30th percentile or so in GB%, but recent vintage Weaver has definitely been a fly ball pitcher.
What I remember most about FASSERO is the pained expression on his face as he sat in the dugout during the 1997 ALDC, having throttled Baltimore, watching his bullpen try to undo his stellar performance.
BTW, I understand that if WEAVER and MATEO make the team, they’ll duke it out for the lowest GB/FB Ratio in the history of civilization.
As to the Weaver signing — what? I know it takes three, four seconds to look it up, but Jeff Weaver’s a huge fly ball pitcher. He’s only once, in LA last year, over 88 innings, squeaked into “ground ball pitcher†territory, at .99 G/F. Sooooo not so much, really.
Not even sure why he was talking about Beltre & Betancourt. Weaver is a righty, so you’d think that it would be advantageous to have a good right side of the IF, which we don’t, if he were a groundball pitcher, which he isn’t.
So, instead of being worthwhile due to the left side of the IF it will be harmful due to the short RF porch. Go figure.
Keep up with the rant posts.
BTW, I understand that if WEAVER and MATEO make the team, they’ll duke it out for the lowest GB/FB Ratio in the history of civilization.
See, that’s pretty much as preposterous as saying that Weaver is a groundball pitcher. There’s a big difference between Mateo throwing a 24-32% GB% and Weaver throwing a 38-40% GB%. Weaver is closer to league average than he is to Mateo.
Woaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, somebody ran a query backwards.
Good thing I did that in public, so everyone could see me screw up. Awesome. Let me just go fix that post then.
I can’t really disagree with the post, other than this:
I think this point is based on semantics, nothing else. According to Thesaurus.com, one synonym for stragegy is tactics, so a logical person might conclude the terms to be somewhat interchangeable. But again, your basic premises are sound.
To play devil’s advocate for Heyman, though, it’s probably difficult for any national scribe to delve into too much depth of research about any given team other than Boston or New York. They’ll describe their basic impression of each team, but no one should truly expect these sketches to be the be-all, end-all of critique. The devoted fans of a given team likely already know more than the writer about their club, so the intent is to provide fans of other teams a general overview of their upcoming opponents. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it.
On strategy: I don’t see the two as equivalent, though. Strategy is “I’m going to attack Italy” and tactics are “go seize hill 17”. Hargrove doesn’t have a strategy (nor do most managers – that’s for the front office) and his tactics are ass.
As to the other issue – yeah, that’s a point Dave’s made before, and I agree. But it’s a slow news week, and it was right there for me.
I can see where you’re coming from, but I still think it’s semantics. 😉
MVP type seasons from Beltre and/or Sexson wouldn’t hurt… These kinds of things can cover up other issues quite quickly.
All time survivor= has job as MLB manager for reasons no one can understand.
One of Baseball’s nice guys= I have not personally seen him stick a fork in anyone’s eyeball.
One time I heard Dave Niehaus describe Jack Perconte as being “right down on the knob of the bat,” and realized how handy it is for people who have to produce a lot of words to have some ready filler for all occasions.
My dad just said the same thing. Seriously, getting $50 million makes you a target, but getting $37.5 million gives you a pass.
Refresh my memory. Which one is the clubhouse cancer?
No. 16: Guillen, I’d guess.
What an unbelievably stupid article. “An all-time survivor” should have lived through the Holocaust, not the 2006 Mariners season.
Lance Armstrong, maybe. Mike Hargrove? Inexplicable, aside from the fact that he still has a job. So maybe the writer has a point. And no one should give a shit if Hargove is “nice”.
For Weaver’s career, his GO/AO is almost exactly neutral. The best way to describe him is he’s a pitcher with neutral BIP tendencies who tends to give up a lot of homeruns-especially the last few seasons.
Its easy to mistakenly describe Weaver as having fly ball tendencies because of the homerun tendencies. I wonder how much of his recent HR/FB have been just bad luck or the manifestation of a guy regressing. He’s lost velocity but his peripherals don’t really show a dramatic decline. Pecota doesn’t see a collapse either as it basically thinks there a good chance he’ll improve.
Groundouts/Air outs isn’t a very good metric for discerning groundball/flyball tendencies because it ignores hits, which are pretty important of course.
If you look at a straight percentage of Weaver’s groundballs per batted ball, he’s usually between 39%-41%, which is slightly below average.
Did you mean that Hargrove has not deigned to be interviewed by you?
#4– ah, Jeff. I see his name and it always makes me think of RK. That, and amazement that he hasn’t keeled over with a coronary yet– his favorite recipe in the first M’s cookbook, “wrapped chicken” which contained:
8 chicken breasts
8 pressed ham slices
8 pressed beef slices
8 bacon slices
16 oz sour cream
10 cans cream of mushroom soup
Jeff Weaver has had pretty above average pop-up rates for the past 3 years at least which if you don’t remove from the dataset, skews his gb/fb rates. He’s below average to be sure, but I’m pretty confident that he’s closer to average than he seems.
is bas-ass caused by eating too much ‘wrapped chicken’?
DMZ, I was linked here by Aaron Gleeman and his blog, and as a huge baseball fan who spent one year away from Minnesota–in Yakima, Washington–it’s interesting to see a viewpoint like this. It’s all true, of course, and as an outsider it was easy for me to see. But it’s just like it is in Minnesota: there’s an “everything’s fine” approach taken by most fans even when presented with the nonsensical trades/signings they make. Our organization is better than nearly any other at picking up awesome prospects for nothing (we got Johan Santana in a Rule V draft from Houston, as you may know), but for some reason we overspend on useless veteran starting pitchers when we have around five MLB-ready starters in the high minors.
I guess my point is this: from nearly every baseball fan I talked to in Yakima (and it was quite a few, since I was a beerman/mascot for the Yakima Bears, a Diamondbacks affiliate), there was a constant feeling of hope that they’d magically return to 2001 form, as 2001 was, of course, rapidly becoming a fading memory. I think the fans are a big part of the problem, and as long as the majority of fans swallow the company line, the Mariners probably don’t have the smarts in the front office to change for the better. Too bad, since the fanbase in Seattle was seemingly more rabid than that here in Minnesota on the surface.
Actually, I’d argue Hargrove’s “strategy” is discernable, in terms of what his tendencies are with the roster, as opposed to in game moves.
– play my regular position players as many games as possible.
– concentrate on having glove men capable of multiple positions backing up
– use the bullpen fairly traditionally, but give kids a chance if they get guys out
– established starters (Everett), relievers (Mateo, Guardado) and starting pitchers (Sele, Piñeiro) get a few months to fail if I think they’ve proved their veteran-ness.
– kids get less time. And he’ll tweak them if they don’t meet my image of what they should do at the plate (Lopez).
– There isn’t much of an empasis on patience at the plate- aggression is rewarded.
None of this is anything special, which is why Hargrove is an empty suit as a manager, especially when combined with his bad tactical moves (he almost always chooses the cliche in-game move, even if it’s just awful, like Lopez’s 4 bunt game).
Jeff Weaver has had pretty above average pop-up rates for the past 3 years at least which if you don’t remove from the dataset, skews his gb/fb rates. He’s below average to be sure, but I’m pretty confident that he’s closer to average than he seems.
Pop-ups seem more likely to become fly balls than they are to become ground balls.
His GB% has been very consistent over the past three seasons, and it is in general one of the more consistent stats for a pitcher. I don’t see any reason to try to explain away what he is: a slightly fly ball pitcher.
I would say has repeatedly had a job as an MLB manager for reasons no one can understand.
It is like in hockey when it took ten years for Ted Nolan to get a job, despite winning the coach of the year award the year he was fired, while retreads kept getting jobs. Or the Dallas Cowboys hiring Wade Phillips, despite his repeated failures (no doubt Wade Phillips is one of football’s ‘nice guys’)
I think ‘one of Baseball’s nice guys’ is code for – there is nothing positive we can say about him as a baseball manager and he isn’t a bad guy, therefore this is my comment.
I find it funny that in a column detailing why mangers are likely to get fired, Mr. Heyman doesn’t actually dwell on any managerial shortcomings. He says that the manager needs Player X to play better, or offseason acquisition Y to shine, but avoids that the manager also has some active role to play (except for a throwaway about one manager being no strategic whiz). Maybe this is the problem of the national columnist or maybe it is the problem of a bad columnist or maybe it is the problem of a columnist who needs access to managers and cannot afford to criticize them.
#26 he basically has neutral tendencies….
a columnist who needs access to managers and cannot afford to criticize them.
That’s a mighty obstacle for some writers, which completely stymies their ability to write a column fitting of their talent. There’s a pretty strong notion based on a few sources that here in Minnesota, the more sugary writers of the Minneapolis Star Tribune would write much different columns if they felt their jobs weren’t at stake.
I asked this on another thread, but it’s on topic here: of the managers who are available now, who would you like to see replace Hargrove? There’s a list in the Heyman article in case you need some ideas.
I’m tired of giving national writers a pass when their analysis of teams not the Red Sox or Yankees or Mets is superficial. I know virtually nothing about the Devil Rays, for example, but it wouldn’t take me long to pick up both traditional and nontraditional sources via either the internet or book.
As a matter of fact, as national writers, they should have current reference sources around as a matter of course. Thirty minutes to an hour max to familiarize yourself with a team enough to write an article that isn’t contemptible. I’m not talking in-depth here, just enough knowledge to avoid howlers.
If one is going to specialize in a particular field of writing, it would behoove one to actually have something to say. These superficial, half-ass analyses merit every bit of vituperation that they inexorably attract.
You know, that inspires me to do a post.
there does seem to be a theme this week in the columns:
St Louis Post Dispatch:
4. Who will be the first manager fired and who are the others on the hot seat?
Remarkably, Seattle’s Mike Hargrove survived a last-place finish by his team last year. If the Mariners don’t start quickly this season, even Jeff Weaver won’t be able to save Hargrove.
Newsday:
FIVE Managers Working For Their Jobs
2. Mike Hargrove, Seattle
It seems like just a matter of time before both he and Mariners GM Bill Bavasi get the boot.
#26 he basically has neutral tendencies….
He’s 30th percentile in GB%. If you think that’s neutral, you’ve got a bigger group of neutral than I do. I say that’s a fly ball pitcher, though obviously not an extreme fly ball pitcher.
Re: Matthews.
He is, at worst, an average MLB player. Such a free agent is worth a 5/23 deal. If he is a +1 win above average, he’d be a 5/46 player.
Considering that he’s an average, to a bit above average hitter, that’s he plays at an average, to a bit above average premium position, that he’s an average to above average fielder at that position, that certainly screams at least a +1 win above average player.
His 5/50 deal is fine, given the free agent market.
How about Joey Cora as Manager?
How about not.
Ralph Malph must have posters of Hargrove on his wall
Hargrove is nuts!