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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, August 31, 2009
And where we learn that maybe, just maybe…The Adverts had it wrong all along.
In baseball, he thinks the pursuit of professionalism has made teams like the Kansas City Royals second-class. The Royals don’t have enough money to compete the same way as the Red Sox, Angels or Tigers. A short boxer cannot win using the outside jab. A quarterback with a weak arm will not win by throwing deep. A 5-foot-10 basketball player cannot make it to the NBA with a back-to-the-basket game. The one sure way that the Royals will lose is by using the same blueprint as the New York Yankees.
And yet ... that’s what the Royals (and other small market teams) do. They play the game conventionally. They fall back on old ideas. They hire old school managers and preach old school baseball values and scout players on the same 20-80 scale that players have been scouted for 50 years. Bill pulls out his spiral notebook—he always brings a spiral notebook to games—and on a page he draws two ladders, one on top of the other. The higher ladder is the “professional” ladder. The lower ladder he calls the “amateur” ladder. He then draws a picture of someone dangling from the bottom rung of the professional ladder. That, he says, is the Kansas City Royals.
“It’s so important for them to be considered professional,” he says, “that they are unwilling to try anything that might make people think they’re amateurish.”
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1. TerpNats Posted: August 31, 2009 at 07:08 PM (#3309949)Personally, I think the chasm between rich and poor can only be solved through reorganizing MLB into several divisions a la English soccer, perhaps doing it within east and west divisions for geography's sake. Let the Royals play against the Pirates, Reds and their ilk; it would give all concerned a legit chance to win.
Exactly my thoughts as I read the blurb.
Last I heard, the employer has the final say on who gets hired.
Even if he did, would Dayton Moore listen to him? I think James' job with the Sox has as much to do with working for a regime that is open to his ideas and influence more than it is a monetary consideration.
That's silly. If you're going to attempt to restructure baseball's revenue inequities there are far easier, less intrusive ways than this. Stuffing a third team into NY/NJ would be a good start, either via move or expansion. Let the two NY teams split the entire expansion (or "relocation") fee, hand over a huge slice of the tv revenue for the first ten years on top of it, stick them in the AL, slide TOR or TAM to the Central and KC to the West and let 'er rip. I think TAM to Brooklyn would be a riot.
They're interesting and worthwhile, but - ummm - a tad overflattering of James.
Yeah, it would be hilarious how they would draw as badly as they do now.
There is no demand for a third team in NYC. The fans there are already taken, you can put whoever you want there and people aren't going to stop being Yankees and Mets fans.
It would cost a billion dollars to build a new stadium in NYC, at least. Not to mention that the team would have to buy the land -- NYC is NOT going to spend a penny to bring in a third team. You can't even have the Yankees and Mets pay that, they wouldn't be able to.
I was under the impression that the Royals signed Paul Byrd off the junkheap once, with great success, and then found themselves outbid for him. Takes lettuce to make the rabbit jump.
I'd be against this. The NBA does this, and the NBA regular season is a joke.
To say that James should shut up or work for the Royals is a swerve. It is only a valid argument if you know he was offered the equivilent position with the Royals.
Toronto! Slide Toronto!! TORONTO DAMMIT!!!
We had this debate recently on another thread. I think it would have a much better chance of working in northern New Jersey, playing a lot of day games, and doing all sorts of other things to attract a lot of children to the games, to try to develop them into fans of team number 3. There are certainly enough baseball fans to support three teams, but it would take a lot of creativity to develop support for the third team.
I agree with this - the Mets filled the void (not completely, but enough) for those in NYC who didn't want to support the Yankees. Now, with almost 50 years of the Mets, there's really only a tiny number of fans left (mostly transplants from other markets) who aren't tied to either the Yankees or Mets, and those probably aren't enough to seriously support a third team.
Here's the link to which tmj1 is referring.
It will never ever never happen, though.
But Larry is absolutely right to say that there will not be a new baseball stadium built in New York, or anywhere close enough to New York that it would impact the market there in any realistic way. I realize that "TAM to Brooklyn" is just an off-the-cuff remark, not a studied proposal, but to see something of the problems with such a suggestion, you might read up on "NJN to Brooklyn" and see how that project is going, then multiply the difficulties by a power of ten.
There is no demand for a third team in NYC. The fans there are already taken, you can put whoever you want there and people aren't going to stop being Yankees and Mets fans.
You don't need a ton of money to run an MLB franchise, so some gate and a moderate cable deal and some fine, fine revenue sharing income could easily let you recreate a small money team. The thing that would set it apart from other little dollar clubs, that might draw a better class of owner and management, would be the growth potential not available in smaller cities. And a third team might give leverage to the cable vendors when it's time to re-up. Some competition among teams for broadcast money won't hurt at all.
It would cost a billion dollars to build a new stadium in NYC, at least. Not to mention that the team would have to buy the land -- NYC is NOT going to spend a penny to bring in a third team. You can't even have the Yankees and Mets pay that, they wouldn't be able to.
That's a real concern, less so in NJ but still very real.
But here's how bad an idea I think #1 is: MLB financing a third park in the region makes more sense than basing divisional alignment on financial tiers. At least a league loan to the Brooklyn/NJ Bridgers might earn interest for everyone else. There's so much room for manipulation and evasion in financial reporting that you'd essentially be moving teams around every year or three, and it would be more political than anything else. It'd make the NFL look positively stately in terms of continuity and steadfast commitment to tradition.
I was assuming that #1 meant a promotion/relegation system a la English soccer, not actually stratifying teams based on finances. This would be a great way to incentivize winning, but it won't happen for (among other reasons) the same reason why winning would be so important: second division teams will draw awfully (check road attendance numbers out sometime; then add the fact that second division teams will be classified overtly), and the owners of these teams would cry bloody murder.
The NBA only lets the teams with the 4 best records into the postseason?
1) Have a pitching staff composed exclusively of extreme groundball pitchers and play 5 infielders. I think there's evidence that a pitcher with a high GB/FB ratio in the minors is strongly predicted to have a high GB rate in the show. I don't think the opposite could work - an extreme FB staff would give up too many homers. I think GB pitchers have a higher BABIP against but surely a 5th infielder could do a lot to improve that.
2) Four-man rotation - I know this has been discussed ad nauseum before
3) How about a nine-man, three day rotation? If you can't find enough pitchers with 3 MLB pitches, how about a 2-pitch guy who will never be asked to throw more than 3 inning? Did LaRussa actually try this once? I've heard it mentioned but don't recall the details.
I think the first one is the most interesting thought experiment. I think it would be really fun even in a "weak" version where an OF comes in and stands on top of second base half the time depending on the pitcher/batter matchup. Wouldn't you kill to see a guy like Chone Figgins used that way, based on batter hit charts and pitcher GB rate?
For those of us who live in Hawaii, this is not exactly a major breakthrough.
Don't draft catchers. Convert them from other positions. (Craig Wright covered this in a THT book.)
Interesting, but I think you'd love far more in terms of extra bases on what should be just singles (or the occasional flyout) than you'd gain in terms of saved bases.
Wouldn't this team play .650 ball at home and get absolutely crushed on the road? I think there are lots of ways that teams try to take advantage of their home stadiums; I was just trying to think of a park-neutral approach.
I see two problems with this: 1) Dayton Moore thinks Betancourt is a great defensive player and 2) any money saved by looking for position players to save rather than score runs would just be spent on bad pitchers.
When I was a kid, this seemed to be how the Royals played the Red Sox at home and the Sox seemed to have trouble winning there.
This was going to be my suggestion. With the huge park you get your pitchers to throw a lot of fastballs as high as the ump will call a strike. This cuts down on the number of pitches they have to throw, so you can go with a 10-man pitching staff (at least during long home stands), allowing you to platoon at 3-4 positions.
And then it dropped to the lowest level in years. It soared for a variety of reasons, and dropped for a variety of reasons, and part of the drop is in fact due to the increased professionalism of the police.
As Bill James would say, if he was not being an arse, What the heck does that even mean?
It has given us medical miracles for everyone. And if you don't want to pay $35 for hospital aspirin, go somewhere else.
When did Bill James begin to think he knew anything about anything outside of baseball?
Develop a couple of knuckleballers to save your pen in mop-up games and spot start to allow for a four man rotation.
Develop more players that can play the field and pitch, saving roster space.
Go back to three inning firemen instead of one inning closers.
Field teams of extremes - all defense, no offense; all offense, no defense; all speedsters, no power; all lefty-mashers; all righty-mashers
Spend record amounts of money on the draft and Latin american free agents - and next to nothing on MLB payroll
Have guys learn many positions, creating more roster flexibility
Sign two reality show contestants from India who have never played baseball before.
Nah, if it wasn't Moore it'd just be some other buffoon. The fundamental problem is ownership.
I fully agree w/ you (@19) - I'm just struck by the overly chummy/praise-y tone JoePo takes when he discusses James (of course, they appear to be chums and James was earned a lot of the accolades he gets) - it detracts a bit from how these pieces read (there have been a bunch of JP and BJ articles on SI - mainly e-mail exchanges ... check 'em - good stuff therein).
***
my favorite is to have an NL pitching staff full of nothing but relievers (or Jason Marquis/Micah Owings types), and then pinch-hit every time. Nullifies opponents' platoon strategies, keeps the bench more involved, and guarantees fresh arms.
I prefer three starters + two days of mix-n-match myself.
The big park + speed & flyball pitchers thing gets mentioned a lot - I think it's totally tenable (and, of course, has been done before ... Herzog's Cards come to mind).
I like two-way guys on the bench - to absorb blowouts and *maybe* act as OOGYs / utility infielders/third catchers/power hitting corner OFs (those are or's - not and's).
"Don't draft catchers. Convert them from other positions."
I like this too ... though I don't think I'd implement it (says the guy picked Max Stassi and Carlos Ramirez in his mock ammy draft this year), as I'm not sure about the impact this would have on the development of my pitchers in the low minors.
I think the first one is the most interesting thought experiment. I think it would be really fun even in a "weak" version where an OF comes in and stands on top of second base half the time depending on the pitcher/batter matchup. Wouldn't you kill to see a guy like Chone Figgins used that way, based on batter hit charts and pitcher GB rate?
I'd only try this against extreme GB hitters as well - the cost is too great when FBs do arise, which is still fairly often.
In general, teams should experiment more in AAA - convert marginal guys to freaky 2-way guys, multi-positional whatevs, left handed throwing 3Bs, and so on - it might hurt those team's winning percentages but I think the curiosity factor (plus the distinction of being the team that's different and, thus, known outside the region)might make up for that (this being relevant in that you want a good relationship so you're not saddled with Las Vegas or New Orleans).
So, no, I've nothing too novel.
Play Pete Incaviglia in center field.
Play Kevin Reimer in any field.
Build a retro stadium on a drought-stricken prairie where it's 100 degrees all summer long.
Sign AROD for 4/5 of the money in the Universe.
Sign Chan Ho Park for the other 1/5.
Trade several outstanding prospects for Adam Eaton.
Use Jose Canseco as a pitcher.
I'm not sure you could do this and still work within the 25-man roster limit - your pitchers would have to pitch 2-3 innings each. You'd probably still need 12 pitchers, I think, and you'd run out of pinch-hitters if the game went into extras.
Plus, some guys can go longer and be very effective - you don't want to lose out on that.
My reading of Wikipedia is that the Yankees and the Mets are the owners of the new stadiums, but previously when the city owned the stadiums there probably would not have been a strong need to build another stadium. Just build a third clubhouse in each park and let the New York Knights play 41 games in each park until the team has a long term plan figured out. The other advantage a third NYC team has is that 1/9th of their home schedule is against the other NYC team, so that is nine guaranteed sellouts which is more than a lot of teams have already.
When the Astros played in the Astrodome, which could swallow up flyballs, they often used variants of this approach. For many of the early years of the Astros, the management unwisely sought to acquire the HR hitters who they hoped would succeed in the dome, with the very bad decision to trade Joe Morgan for a power hitting 1st baseman standing as an example. However, the better Astros teams of the 80's found that speed, pitching, defense worked best in the Astrodome.
The Astros started to become good in 1979 with a 89-73 record and a 2d place finish in the NL West. That team hit only 49 HRs, almost a modern record; but the pitching staff gave up the fewest HRs in the NL (90). That team led the NL in steals (190) and was 4th in triples (52). The GB/Air ratio for the hitters was about 10% above average. The pitching staff was flyball oriented, but the staff also struck out a lot of batters (with J.R. Richard one of the starters). The outfield/1st base position player rotation of Cesar Cedeno, Terry Puhl, Jose Cruz, and Jeff Leonard, was very fast.
Anyway, even if it were plausible for the third team to share Citi/Yankee (I am quite skeptical of this), there's still the small matter of getting the Mets and Yankees to each waive their veto rights, which I can't imagine not requiring billions of dollars.
How about more revenue sharing? Not to go all NFL with baseball, but they could expand the luxury tax or put in something new.
Isn't the point you're missing that the Royals would never think about employing someone like James because it would be seen as too unconventional?
I think the essence of the article is that these teams believe it's better to fail conventionally.
Have the right fielder play a hybrid position, way in, trying to get 9-3's. Shift the CF out to right-center field with the intention of having him take some of the RF's normal balls.
Run pickoff plays at third base.
Throw an intentional ball to a batter on pitch one, then on pitch two throw a strike.
Pull pitchers mid at-bat. (Any stats on this? It seems like it'd be hard for the batter to make an adjustment, especially to a pitcher of the opposite handedness.)
Put in a reliever for the first batter, then bring in a starter once you see your opponent's lineup. (Didn't someone do this recently, maybe TLR a la his shenanigans with 2B Mark McGwire?)
Are you accusing the Long Beach Armada of being an "unprofessional" team?
Build a team of indestructible robot players and program them to sign long-term contracts before they become arbitration-eligible.
Build a time machine. After every loss, go back in time and murder the parents of the key players on the other team, before they have the opportunity to procreate.
Before each game, round up the players on the opposing team and advise them that if they attempt to win the game, their children will be tortured. Also advise them that if they tell anyone about these threats, their children will be killed.
That's interesting because I heard the Cardinals were thinking about bringing in Dick Cheney to be their GM.
I think a staff of 10 -- including at least one good-hitting starter who wouldn't be pinch-hit for -- could do this just fine, if everyone was trained to go 3-4 innings. Four or five pitchers per game, every other day, and you could certainly leave a guy in if you get a big lead. Maybe have the 10th pitcher be a knuckleballer, etc.
I think if you were really committed to his idea, you'd probably trade Greinke and Bannister for a mess of hitting prospects and go with mediocre pitchers and great hitters in an attempt to maximize the value of your roster.
I really like the big park, speedy outfielders idea. So retro, and yet, I don't know why these "old school" teams don't do it.
Reincarnate Billy Martin and have him manage the team. Have some talented young pitchers and have Billy burn them out.
The only way it could happen is if Congress passed a law stating that MLB's anti-trust exemption did not extend to where franchises can or cannot play - or revoked it altogther.
Then Baseball would need an "Al Davis" owner willing to buck the disapproval of his fellow owners (and almost certain retaliation from Selig), to pack up and move to the NYC area.
Blackburn, Perkins, Baker, Slowey are all control guys, before that Santana, Silva, Radke, Milton, Mays, Tewksbury, Reed and Lohse all had good-to-great walk rates. The Twins got by for awhile because they turned all those BIP into outs. Now, with _elm_n Young and Michael Cuddyer in the corners (neither with much range), Orlando Cabrera (poor range), Brendan Harris and Justin Morneau in the IF, a lot of balls are finding grass (or turf for another month).
Not quite Moneyball, but definitely something the Twins have gone out of their way to accomplish. However, I think the pendulum has swung too far and the Twins need to start sacrificing control a little bit to develop guys with more "stuff" and better strikeout rates. Either that, or tighten up the defense again.
That is the suggestion I was thinking of. I would add - have a major fire sale of your MLB team. The Pirates seem to be going with this strategy.
The Pirates did that too. An MLB team should open baseball academies in poor cricket countries - India and Pakistan - and pay 15 year old cricket prospects US-sized salaries to learn to play baseball. The key would be getting the kids signed before they start getting actual money from playing cricket. I imagine that very good prospects could be lured away to play a game they never heard of if they can provide first world money for their families.
Hasn't their worst pitcher this season been the guy with the best stuff? Or is Liriano's stuff completely gone?
I mean this seriously, not as a challenge of your assertion. I haven't seen the Twins in a while, and I'm wondering if Liriano has any chance of returning to his sensational form from a couple of years back.
This is probably not the right place for this, but: I've been toying with what a 21st-century third major league might look like. The main problem, of course, is stadia: nearly every appropriate park is already taken. You'd either have to poach stadiums like Qualcomm, Olympic and Tiger (oops) or try to expand minor-league parks. (How difficult would it be to bump KeySpan Park in Brooklyn from its current 7,500 to 35K or so? Would the footprint allow for that?)
But, as it turns out, there are MLB-sized parks that aren't being used by MLB...outside the USA.
Imagine a league with teams in two divisions: an international division with teams in Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and maybe Cuba once Fidel finally kicks. Then there's a North American Division that plays its games in what I call "rimshot markets".
Rimshot markets (a term I borrowed from radio) are places with independent-league parks just outside major cities: St. Paul, Grand Prairie (near Dallas), Newark, Long Island, Long Beach, etc. These stadiums hold roughly 6-8K; they could theoretically be expanded to 15-20K or more. If done with a modicum of fiscal restraint (sharing TV money, for starters) such a league could be successful...in theory.
Of course, you'd need gazillions of dollars just to start. And eventually the majors with probably sue for peace, like they did with the Continental League. (Or just plain sue. Deep pockets, they has them.) Is there a billionaire out there who's crazy enough to try?
Sigh. A man can dream...
The problem with a league such as this is the road trips. The distances here are just immensely vast. You have issues of jet lag for the players, and time zone problems for fans trying to follow their team via radio/TV while it's on the road.
Isn't there a limit on this (can only swap back and forth once per inning or something)?
Try to train your pitchers to hit semi-decently
I saw a blog post on this somewhere recently ... Dave Cameron?
You'd probably have to have the teams play almost exclusively in their own countries/regions, with limited "interleague" play. The New York team, for example, would play mostly in the eastern US, with maybe two trips to the rest of the country (and PR, Cuba and Mexico) and one long road trip in Asia per season.
What, you wouldn't get up at six in the morning to watch your favourite team play in Tokyo? Breakfast and baseball...what could be better?
Mark Cuban?
Well, once we have the Rocket Plane, the flying times will be cut significantly. And in the 24 hour a day world that is coming, time zones won't matter as much.
I see this happening. I see myself returned to the dust from whence I came long before then, but I see this happening.
There is one other possibility -- A truly independent, MLB quality Asia Baseball League, which, like the old NL and AL, may play an occasional exhibition game against the US leagues, but otherwise just plays its own games, followed by a true World Series after that against the AL-NL Winner. This could be done with lots of travel days to rest up, or with a series in a semi-neutral, warm weather spot -- like Hawaii, with its large Asian-American and Asian immigrant population, and a visitor industry already geared up to welcome Asian tourists.
I'd bet the players would never smile.
DB
Sorry; couldn't resist.
DB
Liriano still has good stuff. However, he cannot spot his fastball to save his life. Thus, he's behind in the count constantly which keeps hitters from chasing his changeup or slider since those are most effective out of the strikezone. If Liriano could just control his fastball, he would be pretty good again (not 2006-good, but a solid starter).
Probably around the same time everyone here thought they knew something ABOUT baseball?
Second, Brooklyn would go BONKERS for a baseball team. The boro is bursting with the need for a pro team. It has both the history, nostalgia and the need of the new people who live there to want to belong.
As a native NY'r it's long been a fantasy of mine that we have 3 teams again. I think there is room, people, and MONEY for it.
Sure, maybe the SI Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones would suffer. But MY GOD! 3 teams in NY again. It would be wonderous!
That's big. Even if you split in thirds, each piece would be larger than Boston (2.18%, fifth overall behind NY, LA, Chi and Philly). Cut it in fifths, and each piece would be bigger than Denver (1.28%). It's more than six times bigger than Portland (0.99%). Slice the New York market in eight equal pieces, and they'd each be bigger than Kansas City, Milwaukee or Cincinnati.
Try it this way: New York is bigger than St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Diego, KC, Milwaukee and Cincinnati...combined.
New York is freakin' ginormous. And there's no room for a third team, or a fourth, or a fifth? Nonsense.
I can tell you a little bit about it, more than the average guy, but less than the average Primate; unless we're talking about Dan Brouthers or something.
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