SNY: Salfino: Yanks prove money does equal winning

Yes, certainly a tom gray area.

The Yankees were really set back when the current draft rules were implemented in 1965. But free agency saved them and now many premium players (like current top Yankees prospect Jesus Montero) are not U.S. residents and therefore not subjected to the draft. These players can be signed by the Yankees in the manner that existed before 1947, de facto free agency. Inevitably, this team with even only competent management was going to rise to power—playoff appearances in 14 of the last 15 years. During this time, they’ve won “only” five championships.

So, is this the best of both worlds for baseball—having a great New York team that usually is not the champion? The ever-growing legion of Yankees haters would take satisfaction from the team either losing (sub-.500 record) or at least failing to make the playoffs (like in 2008). From 2001 to 2007, Yankees fans got to strut their stuff for six full months before being ultimately thwarted. That gave their haters a brief rush of pleasure, but then it’s on to football.

The best thing for baseball right now is that the Yankees are in the same division as the Red Sox. This means that they either have to beat Boston or the field of non-division winning teams. It’s easy for them to do this. It should be expected. But it’s not a slam dunk in the way their recent playoff streak implies.

Bodley: Zduriencik builds winner in Seattle

And all without sabermetrics! Way to go, Bods!

Jack Zduriencik reminds me of a movie star discovered in a Hollywood drug store who goes on to win an Academy Award.

Those who celebrate these kinds of successes are unaware of all the years of hard work, waiting on tables, daily struggles, toiling in the Minor Leagues, etc., for that defining moment at the drug store.

Baseball people are gawking at Zduriencik’s success since becoming Seattle’s general manager and even calling him an overnight success.

Don’t mention that to the 59-year-old Zduriencik (zur-EN-sik). The Z-man, as he’s called in Seattle, has more than paid his dues. For years he’s been anything but baseball’s best-kept secret.

“I got my chance, but I’m not doing anything differently than I’ve ever done,” he says. “I just try to be who I am. I want to be good; there are 30 clubs out there who want to be good.”

Report: Yankees sign OF Marcus Thames

Jon Heyman of SI.com reports that the Yankees have signed outfielder Marcus Thames.

Terms of the contract are not yet known. Thames could enter a left field platoon with Randy Winn. Generally considered a poor defensive outfielder, Thames has value in his .845 career OPS against left-handed pitching. The Yankees will also benefit from having an extra right-handed bat in the outfield. Thames, originally drafted by the Yankees in 1996, batted .252/.323/.453 with 13 home runs in 258 at-bats last season.

SNY: Megdal: Have Mets eschewed cheaper options?

Eschew readers...and other Voola from Howard!

But the two-part frustration Mets fans are justified in their anger comes from a sharp decline in salary spending relative to 2009—that team made $149 million—despite a clear understanding across baseball that this Mets roster, even should everyone return to good health, had a number of glaring holes.

The bigger irritant has to be the contracts signed recently by Erik Bedard, Yorvit Torrealba and Adam Kennedy, however. Bedard is guaranteed $1.5 million, Torrealba $1.25 million and Kennedy $1.25 million. In other words, for $4 million, the Mets could have upgraded their rotation options and at second base and catcher.

Now, it is important to point out, the Mets may not have gotten these players for the same money they signed for. But let’s unpack that a bit. Why should that be? Is it because the Mets have a poor reputation right now due to alack of success? Well, the only plausible way to combat that reputation is with, well, success.

In other words, spending a bit more to get these players would not only have helped with 2010 on the field, it likely would have aided the bottom line in 2011 and beyond, since the Mets wouldn’t be saddled with the failure handicap in free agency.

AP: Brewers erecting a statue of Selig outside Miller Park

“The Brewers and Miller Park are in this city because of the commissioner’s vision and dedicated efforts,” Attanasio said Monday.

Selig’s foundation donated statues of Hank Aaron and Robin Yount that were unveiled when Miller Park opened in 2001. Selig’s statue, which will be more than 7 feet tall, will be built by the same designer, Brian Maughan.

How will they choose which inspiring pose to immortalize?

van Dyck: White Sox unretire Aparicio’s No.11 for Vizquel

This time it’s the No. 11 of Luis Aparicio, the only Venezuelan Hall of Famer. It will be worn by countryman Omar Vizquel, with the blessing of the former great shortstop.

The White Sox also “unretired” Harold Baines’ No. 3 in 1996 and 2000 when he returned to the team. Baines coaches first base and still wears his jersey number.

How will this affect his Hall of Fame chances?

Sabermetrics to Remain in Public Domain

For Immediate Release

February 8, 2010

Contacts:  Susan Petrone Christian Borges

Publicity & Member Services Manager VP Digital Communications

Society for American Baseball Research Deep Focus, Inc.

812 Huron Rd E, #719 345 Hudson Street, Fifth floor

Cleveland, OH 44115 New York, NY 10014

216-575-0500 212-792-6801

spetrone@sabr.org christian@deep-focus.net

Sabermetrics to Remain in Public Domain

On February 3, 2010, Deep Focus, Inc. withdrew its application to trademark the term “sabermetrics” for social media consulting services.

Sabermetrics was coined by statistician Bill James, who first introduced the word to readers of his Abstract in March 1980, writing: “Sabermetrics is the mathematical and statistical analysis of baseball records.” Since that time, sabermetrics has become a ubiquitous part of the baseball landscape at all levels and by players, front office staff, the media, and fans alike. Most major league teams use sabermetrically derived statistics as part of their player evaluations. Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America and others who report on baseball refer to sabermetrics and its metrics on a regular basis. Recently James has said that sabermetrics is a “declaration of no ownership of knowledge.”

Send Mark Zuckerman to Viera

There’s a cool movement afoot among Nationals fans to respond to the fact that the team is on the verge of having basically zero full time, independent (ie not affiliated with the team) beat writers, as the Washington Times has ended sports coverage, and the Post’s beat writer, Chico Harlan announced months ago that he was leaving the beat and didn’t want to cover the Nationals anymore.

Check it out.

MLB Network: Understanding plate discipline (Video)

Fangraphs goes mainstream…

The Hot Stove crew takes a look at the 2009 swing percentage leaders in the Major Leagues.

Dodger Thoughts: Time to stop believin’ in ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ at Dodger Stadium

The betting here is that the playing of “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the middle of the eighth inning at Dodger Stadium will disappear, now that former Dodger exec Dr. Charles Steinberg is no longer around to champion it. Maybe it would have disappeared even if Steinberg had stayed. It wasn’t getting any fresher over time. (Sorry, Eric.)

If the Dodgers decide to replace the Journey anthem with another song, what would you like it to be?

My default answer on questions like these is Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to (Score a Game-Winning) Run” or Sam Cooke’s “Shake,” but I don’t think too hard about such things. I’m really quite satisfied with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh. But I am interested in your ideas ...

The Atlantic: Cohen: Where Have You Gone, Jim Merritt?

While you’re searching...can you check on the Wesley Willis Fiasco? Thanks.

Merritt is now 66 (says Wikipedia so it must be true) and I am sure he is either laughing or crying at the notion that a whole new generation of baseball fans like me (who were toddlers in 1970) now know that his battery mate, a future Hall of Famer, and his coach, a future Hall of Famer, thought his pitches had “nothing” with his team’s season on the line. Who says baseball history is static? What I had thought all along was the power and poise and precision of Brooks Robinson and Frank Robinson and Paul Blair and Boog Powell turns out, in Game 5 anyway, to be poor ol’ Merritt.

So I try to find Merritt, you know, to give him the final word on Sparky. I call the alumni group of the player’s union and guess whose voice greets me on the answering machine as I call to find out about Jim Merritt? Why, it’s none other than Brooks Robinson--Brooksie!--one of the merely five Orioles’ batters Merritt retired before he was replaced in Game 5. I leave a message. I get an email back from a nice lady saying that Merritt has been given my request. And I wait. And wait and wait.

I don’t blame Jim Merritt for not calling me back. Forty years from now I won’t want some punk calling me to ask me about my legal analysis of the Florida Recount (I predicted Gore would win) or the Martha Stewart trial (I predicted she would be acquitted). He deserves his privacy even as the glorious MLB Network arrives on the scene to help remind us all of one of his worst moments at work.

The Baseball Analysts: Jaffe: Evaluating Baseball’s Managers

Let Chris explain..."The commentary below is the introductory essay to EBM’s Chapter 5, which is titled “Rise of the Fundamentalists, 1893-1919.”

People look at John McGraw and his devotion to those precious fundamentals. He ordered his players come to the park to practice and work out for several hours every day, making the athletes perform precisely in accordance with his formidable will. Other managers, like Frank Chance, made a similar fervent push for sound ball. Chance’s Cubs had a well-earned reputation as the sharpest players in the league.

However, not only was the deadball era far from being the golden era of fundamentals, but the evidence used to make it seem like a Mecca of proper execution are the very facts that indicate otherwise. John McGraw did not want his players practicing constantly because they were so committed, but because those who earned a spot in major league baseball commonly displayed poor fundamentals. The book Crazy ‘08 by Cait Murphy provides an interesting window into baseball during the 1908 NL pennant race. Despite focusing on teams that diligently practiced their basics – McGraw’s Giants and Chance’s Cubs – examples of shoddy play litter the book. It was not a matter of errors; the gloves and conditions of the day made muffed grounders understandable. The problems went deeper. Virtually every game contained at least one boneheaded play that could not be blamed on the conditions. Flies landed between fielders. A base runner would be doubled off on a pop up. An outfielder would misplay a grounder for an inside-the-park home run. These plays still happen, but not nearly as often. If the Cubs and Giants played like that, imagine how the doormats played. There were also some extremely smart plays, but the floor for proper conduct was much lower in 1908.

It seems strange that teams that practiced so religiously played so poorly, but think for a second. Much of what is now received wisdom was still being worked out. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, players slowly began figuring out how to work together, or back each other up. For example, what should a catcher do when a base runner is caught in a run-down between first and second? Where should the shortstop go when the runner on first heads for third on a single to right? People are not born knowing the answers.

BPro: Dodgers Top 11 Prospects

Five-Star Prospects
1. Dee Gordon, SS
2. Chris Withrow, RHP
Four-Star Prospects
3. Ethan Martin, RHP
Three-Star Prospects
4. Aaron Miller, LHP
5. Scott Elbert, LHP
6. Trayvon Robinson, OF
7. Garrett Gould, RHP
8. Ivan DeJesus Jr., SS
9. Josh Lindblom, RHP
Two-Star Prospects
10. Kenley Jansen, RHP
11. Kyle Russell, OF

Four More:
12. Andrew Lambo, OF: He isn’t an athletic corner outfielder, and is instead a bat-only prospect who might not have enough bat.
13. Allen Webster, RHP: A highly projectable righty, Webster has the potential to rocket up this list after his 2010 full-season debut.
14. Pedro Baez, 3B: He needs to overcome an injury bug and plate discipline issues, but his tools remain outstanding.
15. Nathan Eovaldi, RHP: This Tommy John surgery survivor was kept on a short leash in 2009, but he was brilliant at times while showcasing one of the more live arms in the system.

Get on the Chris Withrow bandwagon because we’re going places!

Yahoo: Ask Alex: What will Tommy Hanson’s sophomore season bring?

The Question: How much can the Braves really expect to get out of a 23-year-old who pitched only 127 big league innings in 2009? How do they handle him with baby gloves while also capitalizing on his great first season?

The Analysis: With any young pitcher, the need to protect their health is paramount. In fact, Hanson and the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw(notes) did something that only seven other under-23 pitchers have done in the past 25 years, posting a 2.89 ERA in at least 127 innings.

The others to achieve the same feat? Kevin Appier, Mark Prior(notes), Bruce Ruffin, Lance McCullers, Sid Fernandez, Bret Saberhagen and Doc Gooden (twice). Each saw their careers hampered by injury and were more or less out of baseball by their mid-30s. All were fabulously talented — Appier, Gooden, Saberhagen and Prior finished third or better in the Cy Young voting by their 25th birthday — which undoubtedly encouraged their managers to put a lot of miles on their arms.

But sooner or later, they all paid the piper. A great year for Hanson in 2010 could have adverse affects down the line, if the Braves aren’t careful with his innings.

ATH: Should Albert Belle be in the MLB Hall of Fame?

Bill from The Daily Something figures no…

I don’t think anybody really puts much stock in these anymore, but just for the sake of completeness, Bill James created two Hall-related statistics many years ago; one, the Hall of Fame Monitor, was intended to measure a player’s likelihood of getting into the Hall, while the other, Hall of Fame Standards, attempted to measure a player’s worthiness for the Hall.

Belle’s Hall of Fame Monitor score is 134; a “likely” Hall of Famer hits about 100. So, finally, we have something in Belle’s favor; remember, though, that that just tracks whether we should expect the writers to vote him in, not whether he actually deserves to be in. The Monitor doesn’t know that Belle was a jerk who never talked to the media; for that matter, it doesn’t know that Belle played in the most hitting-friendly era in history.

Belle’s Hall of Fame Standards score is 36; an average Hall of Famer scores 50. That’s a lot more in line with what we’ve been seeing so far.

James also created “Similarity Scores,” which are just what they sound like—a very rough way to gauge how similar two players are. Belle’s five most similar batters are Juan Gonzalez, Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee, Dick Allen, and Jim Edmonds. His four most similar will never make the Hall, while the fifth might, but was also a Gold Glove centerfielder. After that comes Albert Pujols, but that just shows you the weakness inherent in the system; Pujols scores as very similar because he’s got about the same HR, R, and RBI numbers as Belle had, but he’s gotten there in 600 fewer plate appearances, has about 40 points of batting average and 60 points each of OBP and SLG on him, and plays a stellar first base. The Hall of Famers on Belle’s similarity list are easily distinguishable; the Juan Gonzalezes and Lance Berkmans, not so much.

ESPN: Steve Phillips admits ‘mistakes’

Hey...where’s that Stalking Steve Phillips dude on this?

Steve Phillips, the former ESPN baseball analyst and New York Mets general manager, said Monday that he knew he had a sex addiction problem in August—two months before he was fired from his role with the network.

“What I want to do is take ownership,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show. “I made some mistakes ... I’m fully responsible for what I did.”

...Phillips didn’t talk extensively about his time at Pine Grove, but did say that it is a place for people who are “broken” and “struggling to find answers.”

Phillips said he realized he had a sexual addiction problem in August, while he was having an affair with ESPN production assistant Brooke Hundley. That affair eventually included Hundley contacting Phillips’ wife at their home. It made its way to the New York tabloids, where Phillips was front-page fodder, in October.

“I recognized in August, I needed help,” Phillips said. “I started calling facilities.”

..."I couldn’t stop myself from doing the things I was doing, even knowing the consequences,” Phillips told Lauer on Monday.

THT: Jaffe: Ranking MLB stadiums (that I’ve been to)

12. Miller Park (Milwaukee)

God ate concrete and crapped out Miller Park.

I haven’t been to every retractable dome out there, but I have to believe this is the worst. It’s the anti-Seattle. The place feels so confined when the roof is open that it makes you wonder why they didn’t just go ahead and make it a year-round dome. I’ve been to it a handful of times, and each time my opinion of it lowers further.

They still have the tailgating facilities (it’s on the same property as County Stadium was), but the park itself is dismal.

13. Olympic Stadium (Montreal)

A lot of bad things have been said about this place over the years, and all of them are deserving. Though I think many of the modern retro stadiums are overrated, they are sure as hell a step above the previous generation. Olympic was a sterile, lousy place to watch a game.

14. Metrodome (Minnesota)

It’s a fight to the death between this and Olympic for the worst stadium. This ranks lower because at least Montreal had the metric system on the outfield walls and sounds of French being spoken to make it a little interesting. The place was ugly - especially the roof. And there weren’t any redeeming features to it. The only good thing was that it was indoors, keeping the cold early and hot late season weather out. Unlikely as it sounds, it’s possible their new open-air stadium will be a step in the wrong direction.

While some people are starting to miss Shea.

Baseball Picture of the Day: New Orleans Zephyrs

Congratulations, New Orleans Saints.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled Baseball Pictures.

10 days until Pitchers and Catchers!

Zephyr Field, a bit before game time, 2008.

Creative Commons:

Tomorrow: Youppi!

STLouis Today: Figler: A call for neater autographs

I remember endlessly practicing my autograph during catechism...until Sister O’Beastly caught me, made me kneel on a pointer and stepped on my fingers.

Youngsters in particular treasure a signed baseball by their favorite player. Of course, sports cards are always valued, but not like a ball signed by an Albert Pujols or a Yadier Molina.

It always angers me that some athletes will go to great lengths to sign legibly, and others will scribble their name, and be done with it. Personally, I think it is a travesty for an athlete to sign his name in such a way that you cannot decipher what it says. Now I realize that players sign so much that it is ridiculous, and naturally some players sign more than others, but you can’t tell me that a player can’t at least write two or three letters that can be read by the average person. But sadly that is the case. Give me back those days when players took pride in their penmanship. Not today.

...It is a sad state of events when a father brings home a baseball to his daughter or son of their favorite player and they have to ask who the signature is of. A neighbor told me once that his son was a Rusty Greer fan. Greer had some good years with the Texas Rangers, but was far from a remarkable player. Well anyway, my neighbor brought home a ball signed by Greg Maddux. Keep in mind that Maddux, one of the best pitchers in baseball history, does not have a signature that can be read. My neighbor convinced his son that the signature was of Rusty Greer, and the youngster was ecstatic. A few years later he was told the truth.

Athletes of the world, make kids, and collectors, happy. Write a little neater. Please.

El Dugouterino

If you’re not into that whole brevity thing.

Walk Like a Sabermetrician: I Want Your Scoresheets

I know a guy that collects disguarded crap-clumpy road pylons...but this, THIS?!

Don’t worry about your scoresheet not being good enough or interesting enough or unique enough or whatever other excuse you might offer to be shy. There’s no such thing as a wrong way to keep score, and I’d like this site to help display the myriad of ways in which baseball fans record the game.

All I ask is that the file be around 500 KB or smaller, in GIF, BMP, or JPG format, and that you also write a little bit about it (if it’s larger, I might edit it a little to make it more manageable). It can be as little as a sentence or as long as a page or two. You can write about your method of keeping score, scorekeeping in general, your memory of the game in question--anything you like. Also, if you kept the game on a commercial scoresheet, please give the name of the company/designer so that they can get a little bit of a plug (and hopefully not send me cease and desist letters). If you have your own designed sheet that you’d like to offer for others to download, I’d be happy to post it on my Tripod scoresheets site.

I don’t expect anyone to actually take me up on this, but I had to try. There’s a dearth of scorekeeping information on the internet--the sites I link in the sidebar form a fairly comprehensive list. I’d like to make this site a place for the diversity of scoring systems and forms to be on display, and it can’t be that as long as it’s just my own sheets.

wezen-ball: The Red Sox and All-Glove, No-Bat Players

Plus...anytime you get a chance to say Hughie Critz. You use it.

The biggest observation here is just hard it was to find good examples of all-glove-no-hit players at the most offensive-minded positions, LF, RF and 1B. I guess it just goes to show how highly clubs value offense at those positions. Conversely, it was incredibly easy to find examples at SS, 2B, and CF. I should also note just how crazy those numbers for Mazeroski and Belanger look. There have never been two players in the history of baseball whose value was so heavily skewed towards their defense as Maz and Belanger. Ozzie Smith, for example, has more defensive value than Belanger (266 defensive runs vs. 256), but his offensive value was much closer to average (-47 offensive runs vs. -213). It really is amazing what those two did with the glove in their day.

I’ll leave it up to the theory and simulation experts to tell me just what a team like this would do in a 162-game season (to make things interesting, vary the pitching staffs for the squad, from 2009 Brewers to 2009 Giants, to see how they’d change). It should be pretty clear, though, that the 2010 Red Sox lineup is nothing like the one I’ve shown here. There are plenty of bats in the lineup, whether they’re balanced out by defense or not. The “defense first” mantra that Theo Epstein is supposedly following this winter might be a real thing, but it’s far from the drastic change that some are making it out to be. It might be fun to see a team so extraordinary, defensively, that it looks like they’re playing with a 10th player on the field, but even Theo knows that that won’t work today. Instead, I just hope that Red Sox writers and fans can take a deep breath and trust the moves of a GM who has given them two World Series victories this decade.

Japan Times: Lions rookie hurler Kikuchi sounds like a young man in a hurry

The NPB has ramped up its efforts to speed up games over the past few seasons.

Saitama Seibu Lions rookie pitcher Yusei Kikuchi plans to do his part.

Kikuchi has told reporters he wants to finish games in under two hours if possible, to prevent fans from becoming bored.

“Like high school baseball, the game should finish between 90 minutes and two hours,” Kikuchi was quoted as saying after a bullpen session earlier this week.

The young hurler certainly didn’t spend too much time on the mound at Koshien last year, with a 2-hour, 24-minute contest against Hokkaido area high school Mukawa in the summer, the longest of his seven outings during the annual spring and summer editions of the National High School Baseball Championship.

His shortest outing was a 1:38 affair against Nagasaki Nichidai in the spring version of the tournament.

The NPB can only hope all of its players share Kikuchi’s mind-set on the issue.

The league introduced the NPB Green Baseball Project in 2008 in an effort to get the average time of games under three hours. The program was started with the intention of baseball doing its part to help the environment.

NYT: Piniella Says He Forgives McGwire

1 down...6,484 to go (flips over subbing “Kip” Fadiman’s cootie-filled score-keeping device).

Piniella said that McGwire worked very hard on honing his own batting style. That experience will help him relate to hitters.

“He worked on his swing endlessly,” Piniella said. “He swung and missed a lot early in his career. He learned how to make contact more and more. With his strength, the ball flew out of the ballpark.”

Of course, McGwire had more than his natural strength going for him. Last month, he admitted he used steroids on and off for nearly a decade, including when he broke the home run record in 1998.

Will McGwire have trouble gaining the respect of Cardinals players after acknowledging that he cheated?

“I don’t think so,” Piniella said. “I really don’t.

“He confessed. In this country, they forgive and forget. Who is out there that can’t confess to something? We in this baseball fraternity forgive him.”

AP: Dominican Republic wins Caribbean Series finale

MARGARITA ISLAND, Venezuela (AP)—Los Leones del Escogido from the Dominican Republic won the Caribbean Series, beating Venezuela’s Leones del Caracas 7-4 Sunday night in the final game of the six-day series.

The Dominican Republic finished 5-1, one game better than Puerto Rico’s Indios de Mayaguez (4-2). It’s the third Caribbean Series title for the Dominican club and the 18th for a team from the Dominican Republic.

Raul Valdes pitched five innings to earn his second win of the series and the Dominican Republic scored four runs in the top of the first. Valdes gave up three hits and four runs, striking out five.

L.A. Times: Dan Evans looks good in retrospect

There’s an unsung hero to the Dodgers’ success the last few years, a nearly forgotten figure.

A man who built the core of this current team, but who was discarded before his work bore fruit.

Time to give Dan Evans his due.

Evans was hired as the Dodgers’ general manager in 2001 at a time the team seemed mired in mediocrity and the farm system had lost its way.

Most publications ranked the team’s minor league system near the absolute bottom in baseball, but in three short years it was ranked in the top 10.

Evans rebuilt the front office and brought in good people like Kim Ng, vice president and assistant general manager, and Logan White, assistant general manager of scouting. And then they went to work.

They drafted Matt Kemp, James Loney, Russell Martin, Chad Billingsley and Jonathan Broxton, players the team is now built around, as well as Jason Repko and James McDonald.

“I’m really proud of the fact that these guys panned out,” Evans said. “I was really lucky. I had a terrific staff. I feel good about what we did there.”

TYU: Robinson Cano and false perceptions of speed

Bad running? Mike de la Hoziery looks on.

While Keith Law is discussing Orlando Hudson here – the “Slow-Dawg” – he might as well be referring to Robinson Cano. Though Cano is not viwed as a “low-power middle infielder,” he is often mistakenly perceived as having “good speed,” although, as Law says, such a characterization just does not “bear out in reality.” I remember Joe Buck referencing Cano in this way throughout the World Series and wondered how, exactly, Buck came to that conclusion given Cano’s poor stolen base numbers – 17 steals in 38 attempts – and decidedly low speed score (3.6). To be fair to Buck, even I admit that I was surprised at how sluggish Cano was on the bases when he first arrived on the scene in 2005.

Perhaps stereotypes regarding infielders as well as stereotypes pertaining to appearance are to blame. While Cano is a powerful middle infielder, he is, still, a middle infielder. Thus, we assume that he is faster, for whatever reason, because middle infielders just are that way inherently. Plus, Cano is slim and “looks” athletic, so perhaps that visual is what makes many people think he is faster than he really is (conversely, when we look at Prince Fielder, we do not consider him to be fast, so, assuming the opposite – thin equals fast – is often the case). In addition, though I am hesitant to say this in fear of a backlash, there are longstanding ethnic and racial stereotypes which distinguish minorities as “fast runners,” so I wonder if this is also implicitly at play with guys like Robinson Cano and Orlando Hudson. This is a difficult issue to discuss, but, as many academics have noted, it is a characterization that exists.

It is a mixture of these things – sometimes one or the other, sometimes all three – that likely influence our perceptions of speed in baseball. Orlando Hudson and Robinson Cano are just two examples of players that are “surprisingly slow” because of these preconceived thoughts. It is an interesting issue to consider the next time we watch a game.

mlbblogs.com: The Giants - Back Together Again

Jeremy Affeldt emerged, as he always does in these things, as a natural entertainer. He got everyone laughing with pointed barbs at manager Bruce Bochy for making him pitch to a guy “who hit about .900’’ off him. When, a few minutes later, Kuiper asked the relievers to name their all-time favorite player, Affeldt deadpanned, “Bruce Bochy.’’ (The next morning at the team meeting, Bochy said he was ready to name his Opening Day pitcher: Jeremy Affeldt.)
• Asked what position he would play if he got to choose, Pablo Sandoval didn’t hesitate. “Hitting!’’
• Sergio Romo showed off the T-shirt he had bought earlier in the day. It was pure Sergio who, besides Pablo, is the most playful guy on the team. The design on the front of the shirt lit up whenever he talked, which meant - as his teammates will tell you - it blazed all night.
• Dan Runzler, who played at every minor-league level last year before making it to San Francisco in September, was asked what it was like to pitch to players he had only seen on TV. “I was in more shock going into the locker room (of the Giants),’’ he said. “I had never been to a major-league spring training, so I was completely star-struck.’’
• When the pitchers were asked when they knew they wanted to be pitchers, Runzler said, “I knew I wanted to be a pitcher when they took the bat out of my hands and told me to pitch.’’

They weren’t kidding about Eli Whiteside. Wow, he’s 30 going on 50.

Padres, Torrealba agree on 1-year deal

Yorvit Torrealba, one of the few remaining free agent catchers, has agreed to a one-year, $1.25 million deal with the San Diego Padres…
Torrealba recently tried to engage the New York Mets in negotiations on a one-year deal for less than $2 million, but the Mets indicated that they had no interest, given financial restrictions.

Bob Tewksbury educating young players

Focus and flow...good stuff from “Tewks”.

When he is not at baseball’s rookie camp or working at the Red Sox’ session in January, Tewksbury is roaming through the Red Sox’ farm system, working with players who are struggling with either on-the-field or off-the-field problems.

“My job is to help the players by educating them on the importance of the mental part of the game, and to work through anything that is preventing them from playing their best,” Tewksbury said. “A lot of the perception of the players is ‘Why do I have to do this?’ It’s like dealing with a teenager. ‘What do you mean I have to wear my seat belt?’ Three years later they get in a fender-bender and they say, ‘I’m glad I was wearing my seat belt.’”

As long as baseball is played, Tewsbury knows there will be a need for people to do what he is doing. But if the day comes for another challenge, he also has that waiting at the other end of the baseball spectrum—working with former major league players as they transition from playing in the majors to life out of the game.

“Maybe that’s my next mission,” Tewksbury said. “It’s so difficult, and players go through various stages. A player thinks, ‘I’ve got a million dollars in the bank, what am I worried about? So why do I feel like crap?’ Who does an ex-player talk to about that? You can’t talk to a regular guy because he will say, ‘You’ve got a million dollars in the bank, I’d be happy as hell.’ The issue is about self-worth, and self-image, and having a purpose in your life.”

That’s not an issue Tewksbury has to worry about.