Joe Maddon calls ump’s position ‘baseball anarchy’

Is this the MLUA
Or is this the MLBPA

Rays manager Joe Maddon insisted Monday he was right — and the umpires were wrong — in the interpretation of replay rules on Sunday, saying it was “baseball anarchy” and “sandlot” for crew chief Gerry Davis to “make stuff up on the field.”

But an MLB review found that that Davis did follow guidelines properly in awarding the Rays’ Matt Joyce a home run.

...“Regardless of what they say, that rule is not in the book where you can change a double to a foul ball, as far as I know,” Maddon said.

“That is baseball anarchy when you’re making stuff up on the field just like that. ... That would just be making it up. That’s sandlot — “Listen, if it goes to the right of the orange Roadrunner, whatever, then it’s reviewable.” I totally disagree with their assessment on the field. It had to either be a double or a home run period, in my mind.”

TheZobrists.com

I just linked this in the Cano-Pedroia Time Warp Thread, but I felt like maybe it needed wider exposure. Remember when Gregg Zaun had the greatest website ever? Well, Ben Zobrist (& wife) appears to have gone to the same school.

TB Times: Crash victim works to forgive former Ray Bush

Been through the Bushmills…

Tony Tufano tries not to be bitter, but there are days, like Wednesday, when he struggles to get out of bed and he can’t help it.

Tufano, 73, is grateful to be alive after he was nearly killed last year on March 22 in North Port, when his motorcycle was struck by a Dodge Durango driven by former Rays right-handed pitcher Matt Bush. Bush, 27, baseball’s top overall pick in 2004, is in jail serving a 51-month sentence after pleading no contest in December to driving under the influence with serious bodily injury.

Tufano, speaking publicly for the first time, said Wednesday that while he doesn’t remember the crash, the pain he feels is a daily reminder. Tufano hopes Bush can turn his life around, but he believes both Bush and the Rays should share some responsibility in what happened.

“He (messed) me up, plain and simple,” Tufano told the Tampa Bay Times. “To put it in a nutshell, and it sounds crazy, but I still feel deformed. I don’t feel like I have the body I had before. … They say, that’s what happened to me. But if that … jerk wasn’t out there drunk, we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

...Scott Sugden, a witness to the accident, said Bush hit the motorcycle, knocking Tufano off, and Bush “kept on driving.” A rear tire ran over Tufano’s head. Bush, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.180, more than twice the limit the state presumes a driver is impaired, fled the scene.

“That’s the part that bothers me, is he kept going,” Tufano said. “I get bitter once in a while, but for me to dwell on it, I’m not going to do it. For me to wish him to go to hell or anything, I’m not going to do it. I hope he does straighten his life out. When he gets out, he’ll still be a young person.”

Alex Cobb fans 13 in 4 2/3 innings

Harold Reynolds: “This is what happens when the umps start calling the high strikes!”

Alex Cobb struck out 13 in fewer than five innings and Ryan Roberts and Ben Zobrist drove in two runs apiece to help the Tampa Bay Rays rally for a 6-3 victory over the San Diego Padres on Friday night.

Cobb became the first pitcher in major league history to fan that many batters and fail to make it through the fifth. The right-hander left after throwing 117 pitches. He recorded 12 of 14 outs on strikeouts — four of them in the third, when a wild pitch on strike three allowed Will Venable to reach base.

The other outs were recorded on grounders to shortstop in the first and third base in the fourth.

The Padres struck out 18 times overall.

Jake Odorizzi, three Bulls relievers no-hit Pawtucket

Jake just made it look easy. Odorizzi.

Jake Odorizzi and three Durham Bulls relief pitchers combined on an historic Sunday performance.

The four Durham pitchers combined to throw just the second no-hitter in the team’s International League history as the Bulls defeated the Pawtucket Red Sox 2-1 at McCoy Stadium.

Odorizzi (3-0) pitched the first seven innings, before Frank De Los Santos, Taylor Yates and Jeff Beliveau kept Pawtucket hitless over the final two innings despite allowing one run.

In the ninth, Beliveau fired a third strike past Jeremy Hazelbaker to catcher Craig Albernaz to preserve Odorizzi’s stellar start.

A native of nearby Providence, Beliveau was summoned with two out in the bottom of the 9th as Durham’s fourth pitcher. Pitching to Albernaz, a Fall River, Mass. native, he inherited Pawtucket’s Mark Hamilton, who represented the tying run. Beliveau’s final pitch, resulting in his fourth strikeout against as many batters in the series, sealed the Bulls’ first no-hitter since Jason Hamel and Juan Salas combined to beat Columbus, 2-1, on July 16, 2006.

It also marked the first time the PawSox were no-hit in a nine-inning game since Toledo’s Jose Lima blanked them, 3-0, on Aug. 17, 1994. The game nearly ended in a far different outcome immediately before Beliveau entered and picked up his first save of the season.

MLB: David Price, Rays upset over exchange with umpire

Hide your whiskey and lock up your women! Here comes the Hallion!

On Price’s next-to-last pitch, he thought he had struck out Dewayne Wise with a fastball, but Hallion called it a ball. Price, who appeared to take a step toward the first-base dugout, retired Wise on a comebacker on the next pitch.

“The 2-2 fastball to Dewayne Wise was a perfect pitch,” Price said. “I really don’t know why he swung at the next one since it was in the same spot. Then I walked off the mound. I was mad at myself and I didn’t say a single word to the umpire, I didn’t look at him and he yells at me to ‘Throw the ball over the [expletive] plate,’ and that’s why our dugout went nuts. They heard him say it.

“That’s terrible. You don’t speak to people that way. I didn’t disrespect him. I went to talk with him after the first inning. I was calm. That’s terrible.”

A pool reporter relayed Price’s comments to Hallion, who denied saying it.

“I’ll come right out bluntly and say he’s a liar,” Hallion said to the pool reporter about Price. “I’m denying what he said I said pretty strongly. I said, ‘Just throw the ball.’ That’s all I said to him.”

When asked if Price said anything to him, Hallion said: “He might not have said anything, but he certainly gave enough body language to insinuate that he was [ticked] off.”

Before the pool reporter went to the umpire’s room, Price said that Hallion would be a liar if he denied it. When Hallion’s postgame comments made it back to the Rays’ clubhouse, the room erupted and several players shouted that the umpire was lying.

Rays still can’t get key hits

Joe Maddon: “I think the bunt is an overrated play.” (somebody wake up Kristina Akra…we have another half-baked show to do!)

Following another dreadful performance with runners in scoring position during a 2-1, 10-inning loss to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday, Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon wasn’t making excuses.

He wasn’t second-guessing himself, either.

“For that group of people out there that want guys to bunt all the time, you don’t know the outcome when you choose to do that,” Maddon said, of choosing not to bunt with two runners on base and no outs in the ninth inning, and again following a leadoff double in the 10th. “I think the bunt is an overrated play.”

The Rays, losers of four of five games, are now 0 for their last 17 with runners in scoring position. They went 0 for 11 Saturday.

“That’s the true issue right there,” Maddon said. “We had some good at-bats, but we had opportunities that we just came up empty. And thats really the tale of the game, is the inability to drive in the run because they were out there to be driven in.”

Jose Molina led off the 10th with a double off Junichi Tazawa (2-0) and was replaced by pinch runner Kelly Johnson. Tazawa, though, got Matt Joyce to fly out before recording the final two outs.

“I would bunt in the circumstance when you feel like the people on deck and in the hole are the guys you’re looking for against that particular pitcher,” Maddon explained. “For instance, I thought Loney had the best chance to hit against Uehara. And Matt Joyce is hitting right there. I don’t want Matt to bunt the runner to third base. I’d rather have him try to pull the ball right there and score the run and move him, or both.

“The guys hitting afterwards are not really tearing the ball up right now. So again, it’s the outcome by situation, where if James gets a base hit, it was the right move, but he did not.”

Rosenthal: Zobrist MLB’s best

Hey, BDC...got any Ben Zobrist stories?

The metric, according to Fangraphs, is an “attempt by the sabermetric community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic.” Sean Forman, the founder of baseball-reference.com, has called it “a framework ... an estimate of a player’s overall value.”

WAR estimates the number of wins that a player provides over a minor league or waiver-wire “replacement,” taking into account offense, defense and baserunning. The defensive measure is adjusted according to the difficulty of the position. Zobrist’s durability — he has played in an average of 154 games the past four seasons — also helps his value.

So, while Zobrist might not hit like Cabrera or Albert Pujols, WAR reflects the strength of his all-around game.

“It’s a common thing across all sports: Players who do one thing very well are valued a lot more highly than players who do a lot of things pretty well,” Forman says. “Really for Zobrist, it’s that he does everything pretty well.

“A lot of his offensive value is based off walks, which are generally undervalued. He runs the bases very well. He rarely grounds into double plays. And pretty much all the defensive metrics agree that he’s a fantastic fielder. He can play shortstop in a pinch, but plays all over the field otherwise and generally does a very good job of it.”

“Add that all together, and it makes for a pretty valuable player.”

But is Zobrist the best player in the game since 2009? More valuable than Cabrera and Pujols during that time, not to mention Ryan Braun, Joey Votto and Robinson Cano?

“I think you’re undervaluing consistency and a broad ability, a broad list of talents that the player has,” Forman says. “It’s a lot easier to see a guy who had a couple of tremendous, superstar seasons and maybe dropped off further than Zobrist did in an off year, and figure, ‘Well, that player is better. If I’m picking a team, I want that guy playing for me because he had a superstar season.’ People undervalue Zobrist’s consistency year after year and just don’t give that the value that it deserves.”

Tampa Bay Rays apologize for mascot holding offensive sign

I am sorry for holding up the funny, offensive sign.

Calcaterra: Evan Longoria says B.J. Upton, James Shields couldn’t get the Devil Rays mentality out of their heads

But does Shields Trust the Process™?

Evan Longoria… in this article from the Tampa Tribune... talks about how the team is all about clubhouse camaraderie and positive thinking and how everyone is on the same page with “The Rays Way.”  Part of why that is now? Because a couple of old holdovers from the pre-2008 Rays — the old Devil Rays –are gone:

“There was a lot of history with B.J. and Shields in this organization, and I think there were some things that were tough for them to get beyond,” Longoria said. “They were really the only ones that were left in here that were here before the Rays were in 2008 when we started to be the team that we are now. I think some of those things kind of stuck around, and as much as you try to instill the new way, some of those things, it was tough to get some of those thoughts out of their head.

... Know what keeps one from making such criticisms, however inadvertently? Not treating a baseball season as a grand tale in which there are necessarily good guys, bad guys, new beginnings and all the rest. It seems here that rather than have any actual criticism of his former teammates, Longoria was simply trying to fit the Tampa Bay Rays into some narrative, however contrived. Sportswriters are bad for this. But it seems that players do it too.

Tropicana Field: The next big urban mixed use development?

Tropicana Field’s proximity to a vibrant waterfront makes it a natural fit for urban density, he said.

“It’s not very common to be able to put together that large a site for a master planned project anywhere in a desirable area like Florida,’’ Richey said. “It’s a special place.’‘

The Tampa Bay Rays, wanting a new stadium elsewhere, have begun to tout the Trop’s redevelopment potential as more valuable to the city than baseball.

The city “is sitting on an enormous piece of land in a rapidly growing downtown that is, frankly, lying fallow,’’ Rays vice president Michael Kalt recently told the Pinellas County Commission.

The remaining debt on the stadium “pales in comparison to what can come from property and sales tax generation if you put that land to use,” he said….

A buyout settlement from the Rays could help underwrite streets and utilities, he said. The city could offer free land for the right corporations.

“With the weather, the waterfront and free land, we could compete with anybody.’‘

Sher also would invite St. Petersburg’s academic, scientific and medical community to consider the Trop for expansion and for recruiting like-minded employers from outside the city. A small convention center, for gatherings of 1,000 to 2,000 people, could thrive, he said.

Build out might take 10 or 15 years, but “we could create 10,000 jobs, with tall buildings, internal transportation tied to public transport, linked to the south side, so it’s not a fortress walling off black St. Petersburg,’’ he said. “It’s exciting. I can’t sleep at night for thinking about it.’‘

A crowd of 2,000 might be the largest ever at the Trop!

RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: March 19, 2013 at 01:29 PM | 3 comment(s)
  Beats: new stadium, new urbanism, rays, real estate, richard florida, tampa, urban redevelopment

Rays: Feeling Springsteen; intro tunes

Racing in the Street and Babe Shadow.

A-listed B-streeters

Rays manager Joe Maddon is excited for the Sunday and Monday pregame performances of the B-Street Band, the long-running Bruce Springsteen, right, tribute group led by his childhood buddy Willie Forte. Maddon’s favorites of their covers? “I like their Jungleland, and their Spirit in the Night is pretty good,” he said. Though it has been suggested, Maddon will not be singing. “I can’t,” he said. “Plus, it’s pregame, so that’s another reason why I can’t.”

Tuned up

Spring training is for experimenting in lots of ways. On Friday the Rays took the field to Bang a Gong (Get It On), which manager Joe Maddon heard on his iPad last week and wanted to try as an intro song.

David Price wouldn’t play for the Yankees due to facial hair rule

House That Ruth Built ain’t to place for House Of David to pitch!

We’ve seen players like Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and now Kevin Youkilis join the Yankees and adhere to the club policy of no facial hair. With Rays ace David Price to hit the free agency market after the 2015 season—and, thus, very likely depart Tampa Bay—might he be inked to a megadeal in the Bronx?

Not likely.

Check out this portion of an article on FoxSports.com from Jon Paul Morosi, where Price is discussing how much he loves playing for manager Joe Maddon:

  “Joe wants us to be comfortable in our own skin. He doesn’t care what we do in the locker room. He doesn’t care what type of music we play, how loud we play it. He doesn’t care what we wear to the field, because that’s not going to help us be better baseball players. That (would give) us more reasons to mess up, more reasons to get a fine, more reasons to be mad about coming to the ballpark because you have to wear slacks and a collared shirt in 100-degree weather.

  “It’s a joke to me, that I had less rules in college than I would on some major league teams. That’s not my style, man. I couldn’t do it on some of these teams I hear about. I couldn’t do it. I’m a grown man.”

  Price spoke for several minutes about “how good we have it here,” even making special mention of the team’s athletic training staff. He added: “If I ever did hit that free-agent market, there would be teams I wouldn’t sign with simply because of the stuff that I’ve heard—every rule they have. Being here since 2007, being treated like a grownup, given that respect and freedom and space—it grows on you.”

  Taking note of his beard, I told Price he’d have to shave if the Yankees traded for him.

  “I wouldn’t stay there very long then,” he responded. “I wouldn’t sign a long-term deal there. Those rules, that’s old-school baseball. I was born in ‘85. That’s not for me. That’s not something I want to be a part of.”

Baseball America: International Reviews: Tampa Bay Rays

As a result, the Rays won’t be able to sign anyone next year for more than $250,000 and probably won’t make any major international splashes until July 2 either because of the tax. Going well beyond the bonus pool is a curious move, but the Rays did pull in a considerable amount of talent, including arguably the two best 16-year-old pitchers on the market. Given that their 90-win season last year will give them one of the lower bonus pools for the 2013-14 signing period, which many scouts believe is shaping up to be a down year for international talent, perhaps it will be a worthwhile gambit.

This is interesting, I had no idea the Rays had been blowing past the international spending cap like this. I believe a primate recently asked why a team wouldn’t spend excessively one year on international free agents to load up on top-end talent and then accept that the next year they would be very limited in what they could do. The Rays haven’t gone massively over budget but it appears they are making use of that suggested strategy.

BtBS: Joe Maddon: The AL’s Most Active Manager

Introducing “Touch Score”! (No, it’s not the number of girls Mike Connors uhh, dated)

Touch Score

I tried to find a way to sum the hitter side and batter side to give us an idea of how often a manager touches his line-up and bullpen. I took pinch hits plus pinch runs and divided it by innings per appearance to create TOUCH SCORE. This doesn’t TELL us anything at all, it’s just a means of gauging manager action.We all know that Joe Maddon is the master of all things baseball. He is a profit, a psychic and a mastermind.

...Hyperbole aside, he is well known for being unconventional and using platoons and substitutions more than most. I was curious to see just how extreme he is in this regard relative to other managers, and I identified three areas I could look at to determine how “unique” Maddon’s management style really is in terms of being hands-on and strategic.

1) The number of pinch-hit and pinch-run appearances he uses.

2) The number of players that got regular playing time for him.

3) Reliever usage.

None of these are indicators of better strategic thinking, though I’m sure there would be logic behind each decision. Personally, I find the first two to be great and interesting and perfectly in line with The Extra 2% idea. The third I find to be incredibly annoying, because it means 18 times a year I have to watch Jays’ games with dragged-out late innings full of short reliever stints.

A year later, no markers for slain former MLB player Clyburn in Lancaster

Remembering the death of Danny Clyburn...one year later.

A year after his death, there’s just a faded tiny metal marker to indicate that is where Danny Clyburn Jr., who hit home runs in the major leagues, lies six feet under the red earth.

Danny Clyburn Sr., the father who mourns still in Lancaster – a widower who in his sixth decade of living tries to make ends meet as a custodian at a school so long after his son played in Major League Baseball – doesn’t have the money for a head stone.

“I wasn’t working last year when my son got murdered, so I’m still paying for burying him,” Clyburn said Wednesday. “Funerals and all cost.”

...The night Clyburn was killed, his father urged him to stay home. The son opted to see his old friends. One of those old chums then shot him, police say. Previous court testimony showed Clyburn had both alcohol and marijuana in his system when he died.

What remains now in Lancaster concerning Danny Clyburn Jr., major league home run hitter, is a father, a good and decent man by all accounts, who can’t pay for a gravestone. The big league organizations Clyburn played for never even sent a card of condolence after he was killed, Danny Clyburn Sr. said.

“I worked all my life, I didn’t ask anybody for anything,” Clyburn said Tuesday. “I will pay what I owe. I always have.”

Then the father of a major league home run hitter who died from a bullet to the chest a year ago left to go clean a school on the night shift.

NY Post: Former Mets prospect Kazmir tries to find way back to majors

This has not been a fall for Scott Kazmir. It has been a plummet. A life-changing plunge from Mets superphenom to Rays ace to Angels reject.

To out of baseball.

At age 27.

In 2004, Kazmir was shipped away by the Mets in one of their most catastrophic deals ever. The flamethrowing lefty emerged into not just a Rays All-Star, but a pitcher who was historically good. But over the last few years, Kazmir’s fall has been inexplicable.

On Tuesday, though, he heads to Goodyear, Ariz., on a minor league contract with the Indians, the 29-year-old Kazmir trying to fight his way back to the majors for the first time in two years.

Field of Schemes: Sternberg on new Rays stadium: You gotta belieeeeeeeve!

A regular Gut McGraw…

Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg completed his tour of the region’s county commissions yesterday, following up Thursday’s “Don’t make Bud mad” performance with an appearance at the Pinellas County Commission in which he said he needs to draw 30,000 fans a year, and that can only happen if he gets a new stadium not in downtown St. Petersburg.

  Rays owner Stuart Sternberg told commissioners that fewer than 300 St. Pete residents have season-ticket accounts, accounting for just shy of 1,000 season tickets. Sternberg pointed out a lack of business support in St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay’s fourth-biggest business center.

  Sternberg mentioned North St. Pete’s Carillon/Gateway region, Tampa’s Westshore, and Tampa’s downtown as more viable locations, indicating a new stadium in the right place could draw 30,000 fans a game.

And how does Sternberg know this?

  10 News also questioned Sternberg about the likelihood of drawing 30,000 fans regularly when several playoff teams with new stadiums failed to draw 30,000 fans per game this year.

  “I believe in baseball,” Sternberg responded, before looking for the next question.

Okay, but seriously, Sternberg has done marketing studies or something that show that his team would bring in more money in another location, right?

Important Disclosure on [Andrew] Zimbalist’s Rays-to-Tampa Argument: He’s Paid by MLB

Circling the Issues

Last week, the Tampa Bay Times posted a Q and A on the Rays Stadium Saga with leading sports economist Andrew Zimbalist… after the Rays essentially echoed many of Zimbalist’s sentiments on Thursday, I made a discovery:

Andrew Zimbalist is currently paid as an MLB consultant.

Zimbalist confirmed in an email he has worked off-and-on for the league over the years (including now).  He said he has also worked for the player’s association, various teams, and numerous municipalities, but never directly for the Rays.

This isn’t to question the validity of what Zimbalist was saying; merely to point out his realtionship with MLB.  It’s an important disclosure that was omitted from the Times article; especially significant given the “MLB has lost faith in Tampa” statements made just days later.

h/t Hardball Talk

Tampa Bay Rays officials say MLB has lost faith in bay area

Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said Thursday that he wants to keep his team in the region, but “Major League Baseball at this point no longer believes in the Tampa Bay area.’‘

Five years of success on the field, coupled with five years of poor attendance, have taken their toll on his fellow owners, Sternberg said. Under baseball’s revenue sharing system, the Rays collect tens of millions of dollars from other teams, “and that gap is growing,’’ he said.

Sternberg’s comments came during a one-hour discussion at a Hillsborough County Commission meeting, where the Rays were invited to share their goals and a timetable for the new stadium that the Rays contend is necessary to sustain baseball in the long run.

Sternberg dodged any specifics about where he would like a stadium to be located or how soon construction would have to begin. He simply reiterated his contention that Tropicana Field is too far from the demographic and business center of the region.

Thanks to YMA.

Rays sign Kyle Farnsworth, Luke Scott

The Tampa Bay Rays reinforced their bullpen Thursday, reaching an agreement to re-sign free-agent right-hander Kyle Farnsworth, according to a major-league source.

Farnsworth, 36, will receive a guarantee of between $1.25 million and $1.5 million plus incentives, the source said. The deal is pending a physical.

The Rays know Farnsworth well – he pitched for them the past two seasons. He had a terrific year in 2011, posting a 2.18 ERA in 57 2/3 innings, but was sidelined for two months last season by a right elbow strain.

It also appears they have re-signed OF/DH Luke Scott as well although proper documentation has not been provided.

Former Rays player Elijah Dukes arrested in Tampa

Least surprising news ever.

Former Rays outfielder Elijah Dukes was arrested Monday night, apparently for failing to appear in court on several drug and traffic charges, jail records show.

Dukes, 28, was arrested by Tampa police officers near 31st Avenue E and 20th Street N about 11:30 p.m.

Dukes faces a driving with a cancelled or revoked license charge. He was also arrested on several warrants for failure to appear in court for marijuana possession, tampering with physical evidence possession of drug paraphernalia and driving with a cancelled or revoked license charge

Dayton Moore defends trade

Moore acquired former All-Star James Shields and fellow right-hander Wade Davis from Tampa Bay in a six-player deal Sunday that sent top prospects Wil Myers and Jake Odorizzi, along with two other minor leaguers, to the Rays.

Multiple media outlets have blasted the move, saying the Royals gave up too much.

I hope he didn’t read the BTF thread about it!

Do the Rays Need Offensive Help? | FanGraphs Baseball

Run scoring, the Trop, and why did Evan Longoria have to get hurt and destroy the Rays offense last year.

If I am making it sound like the Rays play in one of the most pitcher-friendly, hitter-mean parks in the league, then good. They do. Since 2008, the Trop has consistently ranked among the top five ballparks in suppressing run scoring, so when they plate less than 700 runs in a season, it is not necessarily a red flag.

USA Today: Nightengale: Royals GM finds trade criticism ‘insulting’

7:40PM EST December 10. 2012 - Kansas City Royals general manager Dayton Moore is furious Monday afternoon, livid at the accusations, and trying to keep a calm demeanor on the telephone.

He pulls off the Royals’ biggest trade in two decades, giving them a shot at their first playoff berth since 1985, and he’s read that he made the blockbuster deal simply to save his job.

“To me, that’s insulting,’’ Moore tells USA TODAY Sports. “That’s very insulting. Very, very insulting.

“I don’t get too bent up about criticism, and I want to take the high road here, but that’s insulting my integrity.

“If something happened, I couldn’t get another job in baseball? Is that what people think?’‘

Moore was reacting specifically to a column by former Toronto Blue Jays executive Keith Law on ESPN.com. Law blasted the Royals’ decision to trade their top prospect, outfielder Wil Myers and three others to the Tampa Bay Rays for starters James Shields and Wade Davis, predicting it will be the end of Moore’s tenure in Kansas City.

“The deal reeks of a GM feeling pressure to improve short-term performance to keep his job,’’ Law wrote, “which is a terrible situation for any executive both personally and for the way it can inhibit his ability to make rational decisions.’‘