Monthly Archives: April 2006

After scoring 15 runs on opening night, the Yankees have scored a total of eight in losing their last three games. But as tempting as it might be to point to a team-wide offensive slump, the fact of the matter is that they’ve simply run into some outstanding pitching. Rich Harden, Dan Haren, Justin Duchscherer, Huston Street, Kelvim Escobar, Scot Sheilds and Francisco Rodriguez are some of the best pitchers in the American League. Randy Johnson and Mariano Rivera are the only Yankee hurlers who could crack that line-up and Rivera, shamefully, has yet to throw a pitch this season. It’s no wonder the Yanks are 1-3. The good news is that Randy Johnson will take the ball tonight looking to stop the Yankees’ losing streak. The bad news is that the pitcher he’s facing is the promising Ervin Santana, who was the winning pitcher in relief in Game 5 of last year’s ALDS. Truth be told, I’d take the 23-year-old Santana over any member of the Yankee rotation other than Johnson himself.

In other news, Wil Nieves was designated for assignment yesterday to make room for new third-string catcher Koyie Hill, who joined the Yankees in Anahiem last night. Nieves will now have to pass through waivers in order to remain in the organization and report to Columbus. All of this proves that Nieves only made the opening day roster because he was out of options and the Yankees didn’t think they could afford to lose him to waivers, which should tell you something about how dire the organizational catching situation is. With Hill in the fold, however, the Yankees can afford to expose Nieves, and if Nieves clears, they can then risk exposing Hill, thus opening up that final roster spot for a more deserving player such as Ramiro Mendoza or one of the Kevins. Indeed, DFAing Nieves removes him from the 40-man roster, which means there’s now an open spot on the 40-man for Mendoza, who could replace Jaret Wright in the bullpen once Wright is needed in the rotation.

Odds are Nieves won’t be claimed, but it will be interesting to see what the Yankees do if he is. One fears the loss of Nieves could freeze Hill on the 25-man for the forseable future, which would be a dreadful waste of a roster spot unles Joe Torre uses the situation to DH Posada on days he doesn’t catch. Still, the fact that Hill fell all the way to the Yankees (the Angels and White Sox are the only teams that don’t have waiver priority over the Yankees when it comes to wavied National Leaguers, though that will change on the 30th day of the season, at which point this year’s standings will be used to determine the waiver order) strongly suggests that there are no other teams out there desperate for a triple-A catcher with out a past or a future. The Yankees should should just suck it up and DFA Hill either way, besides which, they can always withdraw him from waivers and return him to the 25-man roster if he is claimed.

Finally, Joe Torre made the first of what I expect will be several small tweaks to his batting order last night. I’ve not said much about Torre’s bizzare choice to pair up the four lefties in his line-up, placing Giambi and Matsui and Cano and Damon back-to-back, in part because I didn’t expect it to last. Indeed, starting last night, Torre has swapped Cano and Bernie Williams in the order, thus using the switch-hitting Williams to break-up the left-handed Cano and Damon. Torre said he made the move because Cano was swinging the bat better than Bernie. That’s encouraging because it indicates that Torre is capable of recognizing that Williams, who is now batting ninth, is the worst hitter in his lineup.

In my preview of last year’s ALDS I wrote about how, for all the praise he receives as a manager, Mike Scioscia does a terrible job of filling out his lineup card. That didn’t change during the offseason. Adam Kennedy has a .349 on-base percentage over the past four seasons but remains buried in the ninth spot while Orlando Cabrera, who has never had an on-base percentage that high in any of his major league seasons and carries a .315 career mark, bats second yet again. Darin Erstad, who hasn’t had an OPS over .746 since 2000 continues to not only play every day, but bat in the middle of the line-up.

At least Scioscia has shifted Erstad back to centerfield, opening first base for Casey Kotchman, a huge upgrade that should have been made last year. Scioscia could similarly improve his lineup by starting Robb Quinlan at third and using the multi-talented Chone Figgins to force Erstad or Cabrera out of the lineup. Unfortunately misplaced loyalty in the case of Erstad and misplaced cash in the case of Cabrera have kept Figgins boxed in at third and Quinlan riding pine. Most startlingly, Scioscia has abandoned the complex platoon he employed last year that pulled the lefty Finley in favor of Quinlan against southpaws. The Angels have faced lefty starters in two of their three games thus far this season and Quinlan has yet to start, while the left-handed Erstad has started all three games.

The good news for Angels fans is that there offense is on the verge of a major rebirth. To the 30-year-old Vladimir Guerrero, the 28-year-old Figgins and the 23-year-old Kotchman, the Angels will soon add a full infield of prospects in 22-year-old first baseman/DH Kendry Moralis, 22-year-old second baseman Howie Kendrick, 21-year-old shortstop Brandon Wood, 25-year-old third baseman Dallas McPherson, and 23-year-old catcher Jeff Mathis, the last of whom is already on the 25-man roster and should be starting ahead of Jose Molina (yet another misallocation of resources by Scioscia).

The question is, should those eight men indeed coalesce into a dominating offense, will the Angels be able to maintain the pitching required to complete another Championship ballclub. If not, it will be a bitter irony as, for now, it’s the Angels’ pitching that makes them contenders. John Lackey experienced a breakout last year and could be even better this year. Twenty-three-year-old Ervin Santana will spend his first full season as a member of the rotation and could establish himself as a front-of-the-rotation future star. Kelvim Escobar salvaged an injury-shortened 2005 by returning from the DL as a dominating middle reliever. This year he returns to the rotation, where he was the Angels ace in 2004. Then there’s that guy who erroneously won the AL Cy Young last year.

Meanwhile, the Big Three in the Angels’ bullpen may just be the best in baseball, but Brendan Donnelly’s pixie dust appears to be wearing off and there’s considerable concern that Francisco Rodriguez could be headed for a big fall unless he agrees to correct his ugly mechanics. His increased wildness last year (4.28 BB/9 up from 3.54 the year before) is a warning sign that the 24-year-old closer would be wise to heed his coaches. As his comment in this year’s Baseball Prospectus annual says, “Rodriguez’s mechanics have eroded to the point that it’s now a matter of when he will suffer a catastrophic arm injury, not if.” Yikes.

Roster below the fold along with a note on Koyie Hill.

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One of the keys to the Yankees’ success this year will be the performance of Shawn Chacon, who makes his first start of the year tonight against the Angels. Much has been made out of the fact that Chacon’s fantastic performance after being acquired by the Yankees last July was largely the result of an abnormally low opponents’ batting average on balls in play (BABIP). BABIP is generally considered something beyond a pitchers control. League average generally falls around .300 and pitchers whose BABIPs vary greatly from that norm in a given year can generally be expected to regress toward the mean in the following year. As a Yankee last year, Chacon posted a .240 BABIP, thus the pessimism many have about his chances for success in 2006.

However, Marc Normandin of Beyond the Boxscore writes in Baseball Prospectus’s latest Yankee Notebook that Chacon actually has a history of significantly low BABIPs relative to his home park. Thus, the improvement Chacon showed as a Yankee last year just might be a sustainable result of escaping Coors Field, a park that generally inflates BABIP, because Chacon just might be the rare non-knuckleballer who can consistantly supress his opponents success on balls in play.

The Normandin’s credit, this is something he noticed before Chacon threw his first pitch for the Yankees. That is significant not only as a testament to Normandin’s skills as an analyst, but because it proves his BABIP analysis isn’t simply a case of retrofiting the stats to explain past performance, but the detection of a trend significant enough that he was able to anticipate and extremely surprising improvement in performance.

Here’s what Normandin wrote around the time of the trade:

Shawn Chacon of all people looks like he might have the ability to control hits on balls in play a little bit. Ignoring the .314 BABIP, where he was closing, Chacon’s BABIP’s for his major league career read .275, .261, .276, and .272. Consider again that Coors raises BABIP by simply existing [the average BABIP at Coors during Chacon’s stay there was north of .330 –CJC], and we have ourselves someone lowering the batting average of balls in play against him at an extreme rate consistently.

In his new piece at Baseball Prospectus, Normandin provides this chart:

Year	Chacon BABIP	Park BABIP	Diff.
2001 (COL)	.294	.338	-.044
2002 (COL)	.261	.325	-.064
2003 (COL)	.276	.318	-.042
2004 (COL)	.314	.340	-.026
2005 (COL)	.272	.336	-.064
2005 (NYY)	.240	.311	-.071

What’s apparent here is that Chacon’s BABIP relative to his home park with the Yankees last year was low even for him, but not so low that one can’t expect him to be a valuable starter for the Yanks this year. With that in mind Normandin takes on Chacon’s PECOTA projection:

PECOTA assumes that BABIP regresses . . . His weighted mean projection BABIP is .287, and he is expected to finish with an ERA of 5.04; PECOTA is normally conservative, but that seems well out of line with what Chacon could be capable of, free from Coors for an entire season. This is not to say that Chacon is going to replicate his 2.85 ERA, as even the best in the business have a difficult time with that sort of thing in consecutive seasons. Rather, it seems entirely possible that Chacon can best his 90th percentile projection for ERA without actually having the peripheral statistics that PECOTA expects him to. PECOTA projects a 3.94 ERA at his highest point, and that seems to stem from a much improved K/BB of 1.69 (saying “much improved” before such a low K/BB makes one stop and think for a moment [Chacon’s K/BB tends to hang out around 1.40 as it did this spring, though curiously it was actually lower during his time as a Yankee last year –CJC]). Chacon may be able to surpass his projection simply by invoking the powers of BABIP in 2006.

So what exactly happens to the balls put in play against Chacon? Normandin presents the following breakdown of Chacon’s 2005 season:

Team	BFP	K	BB	GB	OF	IF	LD	IF/F
COL	322	12%	14%	25%	26%	2%	17%	9%
NYY	330	12%	11%	34%	21%	8%	13%	28%

LD is Line Drive Percentage, and IF/F is Infield Fly to Flyball ratio. Looking at these figures by themselves, it is apparent that balls hit into play ended their journey in the infield more often than not. 34% of the batted-balls were groundballs. The 19% jump in IF/F is incredible; some of that has to do with a small sample size, but increasing it to a midpoint between the two figures is still excellent progress. The Hardball Times glossary (which is also the source of these statistics) suggests that inducing infield flies may be a repeatable skill; if Chacon is adept at inducing infield flies, and can keep his G/F ratio from his days as a Yankee intact (1.14 as opposed to 0.89 in Colorado), New York might have themselves something here, and we might have the beginnings of an explanation as to why Chacon was successful BABIP-wise in comparison to other pitchers at Coors. Chacon’s previous work (excluding his year as a closer that just insists on messing with all of the data) matches up well with the figures above, so it does not seem like he was in any more of a groove in 2005 than in previous years, besides the normal success that comes with growth as a pitcher.

Normandin finishes his piece by cautioning that the jury is still out as to just how sustainable Chacon’s success might be, but it seems that the unshakeable optimism I have for his 2006 season just might be justified.

Five unearned runs, that was margin of victory for the A’s last night as they took the opening series from the Yankees with a 9-4 victory. The Yanks did well to get out to a 4-0 lead after three against Dan Haren, but from there the A’s hurlers tightened up and the Yankees’ pitching and defense fell apart.

Chien-Ming Wang got his ground balls (9 of 12 outs in the field came on the ground) and came through with strikeouts, K-ing three in his 4 2/3 innings for a 5.79 K/9, but he also walked three and allowed seven hits in that short span. From what I could tell watching the game on MLB Gameday (due to a misbehaving cable box), he left too many pitches up in the zone.

It all came apart in the fourth after a ground out and a single when Derek Jeter bobbled a would-be inning-ending double play ball for the Yankees’ first error of the night. Dan Johnson followed by working a full-count walk and Milton Bradley singled home the two runners that should have been retired by the double play. Wang then got the final two outs, but not before a third run scored on the second out of the inning.

In the fifth, Wang had a stirring confrontation with Frank Thomas with one out and men on the corners, eventually getting Thomas swinging for the second out, but then a pair of walks loaded the bases and forced in the A’s fourth run and Tanyon Sturtze was brought in to get the final out.

With his starter out of the game after five and the score tied, Joe Torre turned to Jaret Wright in the sixth. One could have argued for two innings each from Farnsworth and Rivera had Farnsworth not pitched the night before. Another option would have been to stay with Sturtze, who only needed three pitches to finish the fifth, but all of that would be second guessing. As it stood, Wright looked sharp in his final two spring starts and seemed like as good a choice as any. Indeed, Wright made Torre look good by pitching around a walk for a scoreless sixth then recording a 1-2-3 seventh against the heart of the A’s order.

With the game still tied and the bottom of the order coming up, it seemed safe to let Wright have one more frame, but Milton Bradley started the eighth with a triple just beyond the reach of Johnny Damon in center and scored when Robinson Cano booted a would-be Jay Payton groundout. A pair of singles plated another run and drove Wright from the game with men on first and second and none out. Mike Myers then did his job by striking out Kotsay and Torre turned to Farnsworth to keep the A’s lead at 6-4. Farnsworth’s first pitch was wild, sending Jason Kendall to third, and his next three were out of the zone, loading the bases, which Frank Thomas then cleared with a two-out double to run the score to 9-4, chasing Farnsworth from the game.

And that was that. Unlike Tuesday night, the Yankees left just four men on base and Joe Torre’s pitching changes were logical and timely. Last night’s loss was no fun, but the loss in and of itself doesn’t bother me all that much. It does, however, make Tuesday’s ninth-inning defeat all the more bitter. Last night was a winable game, but the pitching and defense kicked it away. If the players lose, so be it. Tuesday night, however, was a game the manager lost, and that’s inexcusable, especially when his team has an opportunity to take a series from a team as good as the A’s. As it stands, the A’s took two of three from the Yankees without Mariano Rivera throwing a single pitch.

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Their manager having thrown away a chance to take the season’s opening series last night, the Yankees are forced to play a rubber game against the A’s tonight in Oakland. Taking the hill for the A’s will be Dan Haren, whose similarities to last night’s Oakland starter, ace Rich Harden, extend further than the five common letters in their last names. Here’s an updated version of the tale-of-the-tape that I ran last year:

While Harden is universally recognized as a potential Cy Young candidate, Haren is poised for a breakout season of his own. Haren’s 2005 was already better than either of Mark Mulder’s last two seasons. Mulder, you’ll recall, was the Big Three ace whom the A’s sent to St. Louis for Haren, reliever Kiko Calero, and now-20-year-old catching-cum-first base prospect Daric Barton. It’s Harden and Haren whom I expect to lead the A’s to an easy AL West crown this year. Certainly you have to like the chances of any team that lists Barry Zito as its third-best starter.

Opposing Haren tonight will be the Yankees’ 2005 rookie sensation Chien-Ming Wang. Wang, now 26, remains an extreme, and extremely effective, ground ball pitcher. Last year Wang ranked third in the majors in groundball-to-flyball ratio among pitchers with more than 100 innings, trailing only Brandon Webb and ex-Yankee Jake Westbrook, but ranking ahead of the aptly named Derek Lowe. The problem with all of that is that Wang has to work in front of the Yankees’ extremely porous infield defense. Thus far, in just two games, we’ve seen Alex Rodriguez make some outstanding plays at third base and the three men to his left compensate by booting, whiffing and otherwise failing to catch up with balls hit or thrown in their direction. My confidence in Joe Torre has already been spoiled, but if the Yankee skipper knows what’s good for his team, he’ll compensate by DHing Giambi in Wang’s starts and giving the more agile Andy Phillips those starts at first base. Though I’m a proponent of playing Giambi in the field because of the boost it gives his bat, the offensive upgrade achieved by benching Bernie in favor of Phillips should compensate for any lost production from Giambi, who should be able to produce from the DH spot if he’s only required to do so once every five days.

Failing that, there’s always the hope that Wang will improve his strikeout rate this year. In his rookie season, Wang struck out just 3.64 men per nine innings, a severe drop from his career minor league rate of 7.06 K/9. In 74 1/3 career triple-A innings between 2004 and 2005, Wang struck out 6.78 men per nine and in 15 1/3 innings this spring he struck out 5.87 men per nine innings. Given that history, it seems fair to expect Wang to increase his strikeout rate to something in the mid-fives this year. As dominating as Chien-Ming can be in terms of keeping his opponents from getting the ball in the air, he’ll need to help himself more often this year if he expects to improve on his freshman campaign.

Finally, while we’re on the topic of pitchers who made their pinstriped debuts in 2005, Will Carroll’s latest Under The Knife column contains some unsurprising speculation about Carl Pavano’s that is nonetheless startling to see in print. Quothe Carroll:

Carl Pavano is headed to [back expert] Dr. [Robert] Watkins for a check of his problematic back. There have been whispers from some in Yankee camp that Pavano will likely need surgery, almost certainly season-ending and perhaps career-ending. . . . Pavano’s contract is insured for backs.

Pavano is owed $30.9 million for the remaining three years of his contract (2006-2008) and the buyout on his 2009 option, though I’m not sure exactly how much of that is recoupable via the insurance should Pavano never throw another major league pitch.

In the top of the first inning last night, Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter reached base and then Gary Sheffield took a characteristically healthy cut at the first pitch he saw and fouled it back. He was right on the pitch and just missed it–Rich Harden eventually struck him out on a 3-2 splitter. Alex Rodriguez was next and he put a great swing on a 2-1 fastball that he just missed, fouling it straight back. Rodriguez whiffed as well and so did Jason Giambi to end the inning. That was just the start of a frustrating evening for the Bombers out in Oakland, but I missed the rest of the game.

I’m gearing up for a two-day visit to St. Louis tomorrow and Friday to promote my book on Curt Flood. I’ll be at Left Bank books on Thursday night and on various local radio and TV shows during my stay. Cliff will hold things down–as he’s been doing for weeks now–and continue to provide crack analysis on the Bombers. Alexbelth.com will hopefully launch tomorrow–with many kinks to be ironed out over the coming weeks. In the meantime, if you are interested in Curt Flood, here is an excerpt from the book, plus an interview with me that appears today on Viva El Birdos.

Take it ease, and go Yankees.

The Yankees left ten men on base last night, six of them in scoring position, but what cost them an otherwise thrilling game was the same old bullpen mismanagement that has long plagued Joe Torre’s stay in the Bronx.

Give the A’s credit. They can pitch. Rich Harden wasn’t dominating, but as he showed in the first by striking out Sheffield, Rodriguez and Giambi to strand Damon and Jeter at second and third, even on an off night he has the stuff to get the job done when he needs to. Of course, he got a big assist in the third when Rodriguez cracked a two-out hit to right with Sheffield on second, then proceeded to run into an out between first and second to end the inning. That stopped the Yankees at one run in that inning. Harden continued to struggle in the fourth, but got three straight outs with men on second and third, though another run came home in the process. When the Yankees finally got another RBI hit in the sixth (Posada’s first safety of the season, but second RBI of the game) followed by yet another single, A’s manager Ken Macha took it as a sign that Harden was cooked. Justin Duchscherer came on and struck out Cano to end the inning.

Duchscherer can pitch too, as he proved again the next inning by retiring Sheffield and Rodriguez to again strand Damon at second. In the eighth, the Yankees had Hideki Matsui at second with two outs and lesser pitcher Joe Kennedy on the mound, but their worst batter was up and Bernie flied out to end the inning. In the ninth it was ace closer Huston Street who would strand Damon at second, this time walking Sheffield, but retiring Jeter and Rodriguez around him.

As for the Yankees, Mike Mussina exceeded expectations by holding the A’s to three runs through seven full while striking out six, a very solid outing for Moose despite homers by Swisher and Chavez. The key is that, since he only allowed two walks and three other hits, the two dingers were solo shots. With Mussina out of the game after 102 pitches (63 percent strikes), Torre expertly managed his pen in the eighth, bringing in Myers to face the lefties Kotsay (strikeout) and Chavez (walk) and then calling on ace set-up man Farnsworth to get the right-handed Frank Thomas despite the temptation of lefty Dan Johnson hitting behind him.

Unfortunately, that’s where Torre’s wisdom ran out. It took Farnsworth all of ten pitches to retire Thomas and Johnson, yet for some reason Torre decided not to use him in the ninth inning of a game that remained tied. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was who Torre brought in instead.

We’ve seen this before, most famously in Game 4 of the 2003 World Series. On the road in a tie game, when the time comes to use Rivera, Torre thinks to himself, “I have no idea how long this is going to go. I’m not going to burn Mo here. I’m going to save him to get those last three outs once we get a lead. In the meantime, I’ll use my long man because he can pitch all night while we wait for the offense to score.” Usually that long man only gets an inning or two of work in because, with no room for error in a game that will end the second the home team scores, that’s exactly what happens. The home team scores off the sixth best man in the pen and the game ends without Rivera throwing a pitch. We saw it with Jeff Weaver in the 2003 Series and we saw it again last night.

Torre should have left Farnsworth in for the ninth and used Rivera for the tenth and eleventh before resorting to his lesser relievers. Rivera last pitched on Saturday and threw just 12 pitches in that game against the Diamondbacks. Farnsworth last threw on Friday, using just 20 pitches against the D-Backs. What’s more, the Yankees have an off day on Thursday. To make matters worse, the A’s had already blown their best set-up man (Duchscherer) and were an inning deep on their closer. The Yanks end-gamers had every opportunity to outlast their Oakland counterparts. There’s simply no excuse, especially in a game that could have clinched a series win from the league’s top team.

Instead, Torre turned to Scott Proctor, literally the last man in the pen both by virtue of his making the 25-man roster at the tail end of spring training and his recent absence from the team to attend to his newborn daughter in the wake of her cardiac surgery for a congenital heart defect. Proctor’s daughter, Emmy, is expected to make a full recovery, but it doesn’t take the most sympathetic soul around to imagine that Proctor’s focus may not yet be as sharp as it might be after he’s had a few more days to lose himself in his daily routine with the team (he rejoined the Yankees after the pre-game introductions on Monday night).

Not that Proctor’s mental state should have come into play. Nor should have Proctor himself. But he did. Twelve pitches later, only eight of them thrown with purpose, the Yankees, or more accurately, Joe Torre had blown a winnable game.

My headlines have been boring as beans recently. Sorry about that. Then again, there’s something to be said for truth in advertising.

After last night’s 15-2 massacre (I particularly liked the Daily News’s WBC-inspired headline “No Mercy”), the A’s look for a little get back with their ace Rich Harden on the mound against the mysterious Mike Mussina. Mussina has suffered a glaring decline the last two years, in part due to elbow problems that one can’t expect will go away as he begins his age-37 season, no matter how good he may have felt at the end of spring training.

Harden, meanwhile, is a 24-year-old stud with a devastating repertoire, a textbook delivery, and a very bright future. Funny, then that the last time either pitcher faced tonight’s opponent they did it against one another in Oakland in a game that saw Harden leave due to injury and Mussina pitch a gem.

Harden left that game, a 9-4 Yankee victory marred only by an ugly outing from Mike Stanton in relief, after an inning and a third with a strained oblique muscle, an injury which appears to be all the rage these days. He didn’t pitch again for more than a month.

Mike Mussina made two starts against the A’s last year. Those two starts came on consecutive turns in early May and turned out to not only be Mussina’s best back-to-back starts of the year, but part of the salvation of the Yankees’ season.

With his team 11-19 entering a Saturday afternoon game against the A’s at the Stadium, Mussina took the mound and hurled a beautiful four-hit shutout that kicked off a ten-game winning streak. Game five of that streak was Mussina’s second start against the A’s described above in which Moose went seven allowing two runs on six hits and a walk and striking out nine. His season line against the A’s was thus: 16 IP, 10 H, 2 R, 1 HR, 3 BB, 12 K.

That catch is that the A’s lineups that Mussina faced in those two games contained just four of the hitters he will face tonight (Kotsay, Kendall, Chavez and, in the first of the two only, Ellis) while the rest of the order was filled out by men such as Scott Hatteberg, Keith Ginter, Marco Scutaro, Eric Byrnes, Bobby Kielty and an ineffective Erubiel Durazo (0 for 7 in those games and .237/.305/.368 on the year on his way to Tommy John surgery). Tonight those players will be replaced by Dan Johnson, Bobby Crosby, Milton Bradley, Nick Swisher and Frank Thomas. Add in a healthy Harden and Moose and the Yanks have their work cut out for them tonight.

The below are my largely unedited notes taken during last night’s season opener . . .

I’m oddly grumpy about tonight’s game. I guess the late start and fear of rain has soured my mood some. Perhaps watching last night’s disappointment has also contributed to my grouchiness. Still, it looks sunny in Oakland and we’ve got Randy Johnson facing Barry Zito. I can’t not get geared up for this, no matter how much I’ve come to despise the sound of Michael Kay’s voice.

Joe Torre announced what he expects to be his everyday lineup on Sunday and he’s written it onto today’s line-up card:

L – Johnny Damon (CF)
R – Derek Jeter (SS)
R – Gary Sheffield (RF)
R – Alex Rodriguez (3B)
L – Jason Giambi (1B)
L – Hideki Matsui (LF)
S – Jorge Posada (C)
S – Bernie Williams (DH)
L – Robinson Cano (2B)

The A’s, meanwhile, line it up a bit differently than I had expected. Here’s their opening day nine:

R – Mark Ellis (R)
L – Mark Kotsay (CF)
R – Bobby Crosby (SS)
L – Eric Chavez (3B)
R – Frank Thomas (DH)
S – Milton Bradley (RF)
R – Jay Payton (LF)
R – Jason Kendall (R)
S – Nick Swisher (1B)

With the lefty Randy Johnson on the mound, lefty Dan Johnson hits the bench, righty Jay Payton takes over in left, and Nick Swisher moves to first.

This is the Yankees’ only trip to Oakland this season. Weird. They’ve only opened a season in Oakland once before and have opened on the west coast just five times prior to this, the other four being split evenly between Anaheim and Seattle, four of the previous five west coast openers coming in consecutive seasons from 1997 to 2000.

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Damon steps up to hearty boos from the fans of his former team.

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It appears to be raining throughout the country. In addition to the rain outside my window, last night the 2006 season kicked off with a game between the second and third best teams in baseball that was ruined by a nearly three-hour rain delay. Tonight, with bad weather already looming over the Bay Area, we may see a repeat of last night’s mess except with the first and fourth best teams in the game as the participants.

For those who might misinterpret that last statement as the homerism of an admitted die-hard Yankee fan, it is the host Oakland A’s whom I believe are the best team in baseball, with the hometown Yankees coming up fourth (for what it’s worth, I expect the Red Sox to do battle for fifth place with whomever emerges from the National League scrum).

The A’s won just 88 games last year, but, as I predicted at the outset, 2005 was merely a trial run for the team that will take the field tonight. Among the Athletics who enjoyed their first full major league season last year were closer and AL Rookie of the Year Huston Street, starting pitchers Dan Haren and Joe Blanton, outfielder Nick Swisher, and first baseman Dan Johnson. Meanwhile, young stars Bobby Crosby and Rich Harden battled injuries in what would have otherwise been just their second full seasons in the bigs. All of these players can be expected to improve this year, be it due to increased health, experience, or a combination of the two.

To this emerging core, the A’s have added the explosive bat of Frank Thomas and the explosive personality of Milton Bradley. There’s no guarantee that either will stay healthy long enough to make 300 plate appearances, let alone twice that many, but for as long as they are in the line-up, they will represent a tremendous improvement over the departed Scott Hatteberg and Erubiel Durazo and demoted Bobby Keilty (temporarily in triple-A to give the A’s an extra pitcher to cope with the impending rain) and Jay Payton.

Payton’s removal from the lineup gives the A’s a righty power bat on the bench that similarly upgrades the team’s support staff, which last year involved way too much Eric Byrnes (which is to say, any). The Bradley trade, meanwhile, also netted Antonio Perez, a high-on-base utility man who pushes futility man Marco Scutaro—who spent a large chunk of the past two seasons starting in place of injured middle infielders Crosby (in 2005) and Ellis (in 2004)—yet another notch down the depth chart.

Elsewhere the A’s have added a pair of former Yankee hurlers. Erstwhile swing man Esteban Loaiza, who put up handsome numbers in the pitchers paradise of RFK last year with the Nationals, joins Oakland as a fifth starter, taking over for Kirk Saarloos and his 2.99 K/9. Meanwhile, my one-time pet cause, Admiral Brad Halsey, will slide into the bullpen as a long-relief lefty behind the similarly repurposed and regally named Joe Kennedy. The Paperboy, who just turned 25 years old in February, can also deliver more effective spot starts than Saarloos and could very well work his way into the A’s rotation to stay should Loaiza regain his Yankee form. Either way, these two ex-Yanks again push a player who got way too much exposure last year, in this case Saarloos, further down the depth chart.

Some of these improvements will likely be offset by the regression that can be expected from set-up man Justin Duchscherer, who appeared to make the leap in his second full season at age 27, and second baseman Mark Ellis, who returned from a year lost to labrum surgery to be more productive than in either of his previous two major league seasons. But then those two are young enough (the older Ellis will be 29 on 6/6/6) that their improvements could very well be real. Meanwhile, Barry Zito and Eric Chavez are not only still in green and gold, but both are younger than both Duchscherer and Ellis.

On top of all of that, this is a ballclub that fell five games shy of their Pythagorean record in 2005, the fulfillment of which would have tied them with the Indians just two games behind the Angels, Yanks and Red Sox in the overall American League standings.

As for the Yankees, they actually exceeded their Pythagorean record by five games last year, but that’s become an annual event for the Bombers. In fact, nine of Joe Torre’s ten Yankee clubs have exceeded their Pythagorean record, the one exception coming in 1997. Call it the Mariano Rivera effect. With Rivera slamming the door, the Yankees are able to win more close games that would be expected given their overall run differential, which in recent years has been further skewed by some extremely problematic starting pitching. It’s the latter that explains why the A’s didn’t experience a similar effect given their excellent end game in 2005. Unlike the Yankees, the A’s also managed to lose small due to strong starting pitching that was often victimized by an offense that scored fewer than four runs per game for the first two months of the season. (see pages 132 to 137 of Mind Game for my analysis of these effects on the Yankees’ Pythagorean records).

Unlike the A’s, the Yankees can expect regression (Sheffield and Mussina due to age and nagging injuries, Rodriguez and Chacon because of abnormal 2005 production, Sturtze and Small because the clock has struck midnight, and possibly even Jeter, who’s thirtieth birthday is receding in the rearview) that will, at minimum, offset whatever improvements they might enjoy elsewhere (a full season of the rejuvenated Giambi, full-seasons of more experienced Cano and Wang, possible rebounds to previous levels of production by Johnson and Matsui, and perhaps even a bit of bounce from Wright, courtesy of that Mussina curve, Proctor, given a new more suitable role, and Bernie, who couldn’t be much worse than last year).

Will all else evening out, the Yankees’ offseason moves aren’t sexy enough to inspire much enthusiasm, but despite their drab appearance, they all represent improvements, even if those improvements are largely because of the atrociousness of the players being replaced. I’ve prattled on enough about my expectations for the Yankees this year elsewhere, but allow me to jump the gun on my usual roster breakdown just a tad and give you some specifics:

Who’s Replacing Whom?

Johnny Damon replaces Tony Womack and Tino Martinez
Kelly Stinnett replaces John Flaherty
Miguel Cairo replaces Matt Lawton and Rey Sanchez
Andy Phillips inherits Ruben Sierra’s at-bats
Shawn Chacon takes over Kevin Brown’s starts
Chein-Ming Wang takes over Al Leiter’s starts
Kyle Farnsworth replaces Tom Gordon
Mike Myers replaces Mike Stanton, Buddy Groom, Wayne Franklin and Alan Embree
Ron Villone replaces Paul Quantrill and Felix Rodriguez

Using VORP (Value (Runs) Over RePlacement), the eight departed players in the first six lines above combined to cost the Yankees 25.6 runs last year, this despite a positive 10.4 VORP from Martinez. The six players taking over their playing time combined to be 92.3 runs above replacement, and there’s a decent chance that Wang and, given enough playing time, Phillips could improve enough to compensate for Chacon’s regression. That’s nearly a twelve-run improvement right there.

While Damon et al. are all essentially guaranteed to be more productive for the Yankees in 2006 than the players they are replacing, Kyle Farnsworth is more likely to break even with the departed Flash Gordon. The advantage there being that Farnsworth is eight and a half years younger than Gordon, has nearly 1400 fewer major league innings on his right arm, and a cleaner (though not perfect) injury history to boot. For identical money, the Yankees made a significant upgrade, though that improvement may not necessarily show up on the balance sheet given that Gordon’s 2005 is already on the books.

The laundry list of miscast and past-due LOOGies that follows Mike Myers’ name should be reason enough to appreciate his signing. And while Ron Villone isn’t exactly good, he should at least be able to pass through airport metal detectors on road trips, something Quantrill and Felix Rodriguez were unable to do last year given the giant forks sticking out of their backs.

This of course doesn’t even begin to take into account the fact that the Yankees finally have a crop of replacement players worth using in Columbus this year, but I’ve beaten that horse to death already, so I’ll take this opportunity to shut the hell up and present the rosters for tonight’s game.

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Nothing to do but wait around all day until the Yanks open their season in Oakland tonight. Happy Opening Day to you all–this is the fourth Opening Day here at Bronx Banter, the second in a row with Cliff. Looking forward to another entertaining season with you guys.

On a personal note, my Curt Flood book recently hit the shelves and it will be officially released on April 12th. I’m in the process of putting the final touches on a new site (Alexbelth.com) which should be up and running later this week. In the meantime, “Stepping Up” was mentioned in the L.A. Times and the Boston Globe yesterday, The Black Athlete Sports Network, and The New York Sun this morning.

Allen Barra penned the piece for the Sun (Disclosure: Barra is a friend):

Flood, one of the most important players in the game’s history in terms of moral leadership, has remained until now a man without a biography. Alex Belth’s stirring and hugely readable “Stepping Up” (Persea Books, 240 pages, $22.95) plugs a significant gap in the history of baseball’s turbulent 1960s and early ’70s.

Flood, the man who told Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, “After 12 years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold,” was the true torchbearer of Jackie Robinson’s legacy, and Mr. Belth gives him his due. “His life,” Mr. Belth writes, “took a course that never in his wildest dreams he could have imagined as a scrawny kid making trick catches on the ballfields of Oakland. He took a simple stand against baseball,based on simple principles of truth and justice – principles he held on to when it would have been so much easier to let them go.”

It was Flood, Mr. Belth writes, who “made the world stand up and take notice of baseball’s exploitative structure.” But like Robinson before him, he paid the price in terms of stress. He fell into deep depressions during and after the lawsuit, and his heavy drinking and smoking left his body weakened and susceptible to throat cancer. He died in 1997 at age 60.

In “Juiced,” Jose Canseco talks about his willingness to lead players across the picket line in the 1994 strike – does anyone know how we can send him a copy of this book?

I’ve got a new piece up at SI.Com celebrating Flood, and yo, I’m going to be at Left Bank Books in St. Louis this coming Thursday. I know it’s a hike, but just thought I’d throw it out there in case you know anybody in the vicinity.

In the meantime, Cliff “the Night Owl” Corcoran will be holding the fort down here, as the Yanks kick off the 2006 season on the West Coast.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

I have to hand it to the MLB schedule makers, tonight’s season opener between the World Champion Chicago White Sox and the up-and-coming Cleveland Indians (on ESPN2 at 8:00 EST) is the perfect way to kick off the 2006 season. I was one of five Toasters to pick the A’s to go all the way this year, but after Oakland, I believe the Indians and White Sox are the next two best teams in baseball. As a result, I expect the AL Central to be this year’s most exciting race. So what better way to start the season than with the World Champs and the team that’s poised to make them sweat all season long.

Last year, the Indians rebounded from a 9-14 (.391) start to play .604 baseball over the season’s final 139 games. They also went 22-36 (.379) in one-run games, including five one-run loses in their final seven games which handed the White Sox the division and the Red Sox the wild card in the season’s final week. In games decided my more than one run, the 2005 Indians played .683 ball. These signs all point toward a better record in 2006 for a team that missed the playoffs by two games last year.

The story of the White Sox 2005 season, meanwhile, is the exact opposite. After a scorching 24-7 (.774) start, the White Sox played .572 ball the rest of the way and posted a .648 winning percentage in one-run games, including two of their three wins against the Indians in the season’s final series. Due largely to their disparate one-run records, the Indians’ Pythagorean record was five games better than the White Sox’s last year, despite that fact that the Sox won the division by six games.

Despite winning their first Championship in 88 years, the White Sox hardly rested on their laurels this offseason, trading for Jim Thome and Javier Vazquez, both of whom stand to be major improvements over the departed Carl Everett and Orlando Hernandez, and giving rookie Brian Anderson the center field job. Elsewhere, however, there is considerable fear of regression. Will Jermaine Dye slug .512 this year? Will Scott Podsednik revert to his .244/.313/.364 line from 2004? Can Jose Contreras sustain the improvements he made last year? Will the rest of the rotation survive the loss of Aaron Rowand’s defense in center? Most of all, what will come of the White Sox’s bullpen, which in 2005 got career years out of Cliff Politte and Dustin Hermanson (the latter of whom will start the season on the DL with a bad back) and saw youngsters Neal Cotts and Bobby Jenks appear to make the leap? The fifth and sixth men in the pen for the Sox entering the season are Matt Thornton, a would-be LOOGY who gave Mike Hargrove fits in Seattle last year by walking 6.63 men per nine innings (does that make him a LOWGY?), and 21-year-old Boone Logan, who has spent all but four games of his three-year professional career in rookie ball with the White Sox’s Pioneer League team in Great Falls.

The Indians, meanwhile, are a team on the rise. Though their off-season changes are largely uninspiring (getting Ben Broussard a legitimate lefty-killer for a platoon partner in Eduardo Perez and replacing no-hit back-up catcher Josh Bard with the power and patience of Kelly Shoppach stand as their biggest upgrades), their triple-A team at Buffalo is stocked with prospects who could greatly improve an already excellent ball club by taking over at the major league level mid-season, among them Andy Marte (3B), Ryan Garko (1B), Brad Snyder (RF), Franklyn Gutierrez (CF/LF), starting pitchers Fausto Carmona and Jeremy Sowers, and reliever Andrew Brown. Given that tremendous potential for in-season improvement via on-hand talent and the correction that’s bound to occur in the one-run records of both teams, I believe the Indians are the team to beat in the central this year.

For more on these teams be sure to check out the outstanding Let’s Go Tribe and the two excellent Sox blogs South Side Sox and Exile in Wrigleyville (and of course my Indians chapter in Baseball Prospectus 2006).

As I type this, we’re about a half hour from the first pitch of the 2006 season. Lefties Mark Buehrle and C.C. Sabathia are likely taking their warm-up pitches in the U.S. Cellular Field bullpens. You can find the opening day rosters of both teams below the fold.

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Murray Kempton was a famous New York newspaperman for more than fifty years. I’ve tried to read his stuff on occasion and there is something about his language that I can’t get past–I’ve always had a difficult time appreciating and understanding his work. At the same time, I’ve also felt that I should get him, that I’m missing something.

Oh, well. I did love him as a New York character, however–he was legendary for riding his bicycle all around town. In 1994, I was working as a waiter at a modest neighbhorhood restaurant on the Upper West Side and had the pleasure to serve Mr. Kempton lunch one afternoon. He had clamps around his ankles so that his pants would not get caught on the chain of his bike. We chatted some and he was every bit the gentleman.

Anyhow, I bring Kempton up because I ran across an article he wrote for “Sport” magazine back in 1962 about the Mets called “Back at the Polo Grounds.” Since we were talking about New York fans a couple of days ago, I thought you guys might enjoy this:

The New York of the Giants, Dodgers, and Yankes was an annual re-evocation of the War between the States. The Yankees were the North, if you could concieve a North grinding along with wealth and weight and without the excuse of Lincoln. The Giants and Dodgers were the Confederacy, often undermanned and underequipped and running then because it could not hit. You went to Yankee Stadium if you were the kind of man who enjoyed yelling for Grant at Richmond; you went to the National League parks to see Pickett’s cahrge…

The old Dodger fans werer the kind of people who picket. The old Giant fans would be embarrassed to do anything so conspicuous, but they were the kind of people who refuse to cross picket lines. Yankee fans are the kind of people who think they own the company the picket line is thrown around. It is impossible for anyone who does not live in New York to know what it truly is to hate the Yankees. As writer Leonard Koppett has said: ‘The residents of other cities who hate the Yankees really only hate New York.’…But, if you live in New York and you’re not a Yankee fan, you hate them the way you hate Consolidated Edison or your friendly bank.

Kempton’s essay can be in found in the fine collection, “Baseball: A Literary Anthology.”

“Anybody who thinks you can go through the season normally and your body can just respond normally, after what we go through, is unreasonable,” said Eric Chavez, the third baseman for the Oakland Athletics. “I’m not saying taking away greenies isn’t a good thing, but guys are definitely going to look for something as a replacement.”

…”Guys will always find something,” [Al] Leiter said. “Even if they have to go to the local truck stop to get some No-Doz, they’ll find something to get them through.”

Over the past couple of months there have been a bunch of stories about how the new ban on greenies will impact baseball this year. I can’t recall any of them being more concise or thorough than Jack Curry’s piece this morning in the Times. I think this is one of the most interesting stories of the coming season and Curry does a fine job of spelling out the a-b-c’s of the matter. Check it out.