Win or suck tonight for the Jets. What’ll it be?

[Picture by Bags]

I freely admit I am so starved for baseball happenings that I actually did a news search just now for “baseball” –as if I wouldn’t have read about it already, on a blog or Twitter, if anything big went down. Aside from the Matt Garza trade (good news for the Yanks this season, probably, but nothing I can get too excited about) there ain’t nothing going on today. Except Brian Cashman is talking more and more like some kinda internet zealot. Adam LaRoche is finalizing his deal with the Nationals. Okay.

Unfortunately what I did turn up, like some gross bug under a rock, is the story over at Radar Online that a new reality show about baseball groupies is being developed. Baseball Annies are now being cast, with the idea of filming in Arizona during spring training. I’m not much of a reality TV fan — I’m too easily embarrassed on behalf of other people — and doubt I will watch this, unless I have to write about it. Anyone with half a brain realized many, many years ago that the vast majority of baseball players sleep around, and I really couldn’t care less since I am not married to, nor dating, a baseball player; that’s between them and their significant others and as long as everyone’s a consenting adult, hey, not my concern. The entire subculture has always seemed deeply depressing, though, and this newest cringe-inducing exploitation-fest is doing nothing to change that impression:

“The girls will go to any lengths to go to games and practices with the goal of sleeping with and getting material things from athletes as a notch under their belt,” the source told RadarOnline.com exclusively.

Ooh, an EXCLUSIVE about soul-suckingly shallow groupies! Great job, RadarOnline.com. Also:

The show will focus on the women and their ‘cleat-chasing’ lifestyle more than the players and their participation, added the source.

Well, of course. Why deal with the legal and societal repercussions of showcasing popular men behaving badly when you can just vilify the less wealthy and famous women who, inexplicably, are volunteering for this? Not that they won’t deserve vilifying, most likely, and no one can go on a show like “Cleat Chasers” and not expect to come out looking horrible.

I’m not someone who bemoans the decline of humanity, because I think humanity has always been pretty messed up, and even a show as tasteless as this is still better than say burning a bunch of people at the stake every time you get freaked out by an eclipse, but still.

AP Photo

In this confusing, turbulent world of unceasing change, it is always reassuring to know that a few precious things will always stay the same. Among these rocks in the surf  is Gary Sheffield, who as you may recall is 42 years old now and did not play last year, but met with Joe Madden at the Winter Meetings to explore the idea of making a comeback with the Rays. Apparently the Rays never followed up on this, with the result that Sheff is “99.9%” sure he’ll retire, and also, of course, is feeling “a little disrespected.”

As you’ll probably recall, Gary Sheffield feels disrespected when the wind blows, or when a bunny looks at him the wrong way. Not to get all Psych 101 on you but I always figured that was how he kept himself motivated. And I imagine he could be a real headache to manage, but I always loved watching the man hit. He had the perfect at-bat music the last year or two of his Yankee career (Ludacris’s “Move, Bitch,” a song I often wish I could blast while trying to push through the thick swarms of slow tourists outside my office building), and it would pump up the crowd while hapless third-base coaches and players cowered as far from the likely path of his scalded liners as they respectably could.

If this is the end for Sheff I wish him all the best, and I hope he finds a good post-playing outlet for all that competitiveness and bad-ass energy.

In a story that received a good bit of attention in the blogosphere, ESPNEWS anchor Will Selva was suspended indefinitely on Dec. 30 for plagiarism. He had introduced a story on the air about the Los Angeles Lakers, using the words of Orange County Register columnist Kevin Ding as his own, without attributing the source.

Ding called Selva out, an investigation followed, and the Worldwide Leader took swift and decisive action.

Selva apologized in a statement:

“I made a horrible mistake and I’m deeply sorry. I did not live up to my high standards or ESPN’s. I sincerely apologize for my sloppiness, especially to Kevin Ding, viewers and colleagues. In my 15 years in broadcast journalism, nothing like this has ever happened and I will make every effort to ensure it won’t happen again.”

Sounds sincere and contrite. But do you believe Selva? Suspended after it was proved he was a fraud, how can we believe “nothing like this has ever happened” before? Why should we? Because Selva’s statement is written, are we simply jumping to conclusions? Are we interpreting his tone correctly? If he was an anchor with more name recognition, would we be more inclined to believe him? Whatever the case, Selva is going to have a hard time recovering from this incident. An incident that could have been avoided if he simply said, “Kevin Ding of the Orange County Register said it best in his Sunday column…”.

Look no further than Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair, and Judith Miller to see how the combination of plagiarism and fabricating stories has affected writers’ careers. Barnicle continued to work, and four years ago signed on as a columnist at the Boston Herald. Blair got a book deal soon after his flap at the New York Times. Miller, whose reporting on weapons of mass destruction was found to be inaccurate and worse, false, and later served jail time for her refusing to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case, has recently landed at the Conservative magazine and website Newsmax as a columnist.

Those scribes got second chances. Does Selva’s situation merit one?

The journalist in me says no. There isn’t any circumstance that should result in his reinstatement. Selva violated the most basic principle of the craft and he should be fired, not suspended. The empathic side of me, however, says yes, but that second chance isn’t deserved. It has to be earned, like a series of trials it takes to regain trust in a friend, lover or spouse who breached trust in some way.

Plagiarism is dangerous territory. I know from personal experience. I wrote a column in this space during the 2009 season where I analyzed how different beat writers were covering the same game. My goal was to show how different writers from different papers see the game through different prisms to ultimately craft similar stories. Now, I know from being in press boxes that while the writers sit in close quarters, no one is looking over anyone’s shoulder with that look that says, “Hey, what did you put down for Number 3?” Every writer is in his or her own zone, headphones in to check accuracy of quotes on the recorder, scrambling like hell to make deadline. The chorus of clickety-clacking on laptop keyboards tells you as much. Invariably, by pure coincidence, angles will be similar, certain quotes or sections of quotes will be similar, and in some cases, even certain phrases and word choices describing the action will be either similar or exact. Again, this is pure coincidence. And it’s rare that it happens.

It just so happened that in my analysis, I noticed an exact phrase appearing in different game stories from two writers representing two different papers. In jest, I wrote that one of the writers “copied off (the other writer’s) paper.” It was a regrettable choice of words on my part, and I wish like hell I could take it back. But if there’s one thing I learned in my Intro to Communication Theory class during my freshman year of college, it’s that communication of any kind is irreversible. I went for the laugh with the “copied off his paper” line; maybe I got it, maybe I didn’t. What I got was an e-mail in my personal inbox the next morning from one of the writers. I did not anticipate the content of the note, and I was stunned.

Point blank, the writer asked me if I was accusing him of plagiarism, and if I was, I’d better be ready to prove it.

(more…)

Over at Pinstriped Bible, our man Cliff takes a look at the Yankees starting rotation:

Of the pitchers who have yet to reach the majors, there are two basic groups, a quartet of middling arms that have reached Triple-A and the three Killer Bs, the team’s top pitching prospects, none of whom has spent a full season at Double-A. The former group consists of David Phelps, D.J. Mitchell, Hector Noesi, and Steve Garrison, all of whom will be 24 this season. Noesi and Garrison are on the 40-man roster. Phelps and Mitchell are not. Garrison is the lone lefty. Noesi is the only fly-ball pitcher among the bunch. Phelps is the most ready having posted a 3.17 ERA in 11 Triple-A starts last year with an outstanding 4.73 K/BB. Per a recent conversation with Baseball Prospectus’s Kevin Goldstein, Garrison is the weakest of the bunch, and none of them have stuff as good as Nova’s.

The other three arms, of course, are Dellin Betances, Manny Banuelos, and Andrew Brackman. I don’t expect the Yankees to jump any of the three of them to the majors given that they have combined to make just 20 Double-A starts, but if the Yankees get desperate enough during the season, and one of the above is simply dominating in Trenton, they may have no other choice, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, which we very well might given the fact that the Yankees would have difficulty fleshing out a four-man playoff rotation right now, never mind a five-man unit that will allow them to keep up with the Red Sox over a 162-game season.

[Photo Credit: Zimbo]

I went to pick up chicken soup in my neighborhood last night and when I went to pay I wished the cashier a happy new year.

“Got any resolutions?” she said?

“Yeah, to be kinder to myself.”

“Oh,” she said, and looked at me. “That’s really cool.”

I surprised myself with that answer. Sometimes, you are honest when you don’t mean to be.

I walked outside and the street was clogged with cars. One guy, four cars behind the putz who stopped in the middle of the street, started leaning on the horn. “That’s not going to help,” I said to nobody.

I walked across the street and saw a man in a wheelchair yell, “That’s not going to help!”

I smiled as I walked past him and shrugged, “Sometimes, people can’t help themselves I guess.”

The man glared at the traffic. “Moron.”

“Yeah, you know it’s just so tempting, though. You are irritated, stuck in traffic, it’s the end of the day, and you’ve got that horn right there. How can you not press it?”

“Well, I’m tempted to throw a brick through a window but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.”

“Point taken.”

New York is a funny town.

[Picture by Bags]

Exciting news, sports fans: the Yankees have claimed RH reliever Brian Schlitter from the Cubs. I can’t remember who Chicago was playing at the time – maybe the Mets, possibly the Dodgers – but I remember taking note of Schlitter during a game last season and thinking that the announcer, whoever he was, ought to be going very, very carefully.

I would like to start brainstorming now in preparation for the coming season. On Twitter, SNY’s own @OGTedBerg has already offered up “It’s a Schlitt Storm!” and “This game has gone down the Schlitter.” @d_limonene suggested the phrase “Schlitt the bed.” To which I would also like to add:

HorseSchlitt.

Anyway, one day — maybe in April, maybe July, possibly September — John Sterling is going to slip up on this, and it is going to be beautiful. Yes, apparently I’m 12 tonight.

Your new Hall of Famers:

Roberto Alomar — and (at long last, love) Bert Blyleven.

Barry Larkin’s totals were third-highest, with 62.1% of the vote (short of the 75% needed, but in good shape to get in a few years down the road); Jack Morris managed 53.5%, Lee Smith 45.3% (…seriously?), and Jeff Bagwell 41.7%, so get ready to have that fun discussion all over again next year. You can see the full results over at the BBWAA’s high-tech website of the future.

According to Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system and series of articles over at Baseball Prospectus, there were eight deserving candidates on the ballot this year: Roberto Alomar, Jeff Bagwell, Bert Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez, Mark McGwire, Tim Raines, and Alan Trammell. I wasn’t so sure about Raines and Trammell initially, but I’ve completely come around on Rock over the last year and I’m edging towards being convinced on Trammell. It’d help if the guy had a better nickname, which I believe is not a factor JAWS takes into consideration, but it really ought to be. That’s something I’ll have to bring up with Jay, and I won’t have to wait long because he’s chatting live over at BP this very moment.

For those of you who are sick of reading and debating about the Hall of Fame, exhale. For those who aren’t, have at it in the comments. What would your ballot look like?

(Photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

I have to admit that when I first saw the headlines that Orioles reliever Alfredo Simon had a warrant out on him in connection with a fatal shooting on New Year’s Eve, my first reaction was to make a crack along the lines of, well now nobody could say he wasn’t an intimidating presence on the mound. But I’m glad I refrained because now Simon has turned himself in and the more I read about the case, which is still fairly muddled at this point, the sadder it all seems. The shooting was first reported as taking place after a dispute but is now apparently being viewed as an accident, according to authorities, and exactly how it happened is fairly unclear – Simon himself says that it occurred while he was trying to break up a fight between two other people, but his lawyer told The Baltimore Sun that because Simon was firing into the air, he couldn’t have shot the victim in the chest, and that the bullet must have come from another gun. I, of course, have no idea what happened, except that  it wasn’t good.

The touching aspect of the article – at least, touching if we’re assuming that if Simon is guilty of anything,  the shooting was indeed an accident, however stupid – is that Simon’s teammates are stepping up to help. Miguel Tejada found Simon’s lawyer and is footing the bill, with some possible assistance from former teammate Julio Lugo.

Olivares’ representation of Simon is being bankrolled by former Orioles star Miguel Tejada, a compatriot who befriended Simon before being traded to the San Diego Padres in July. Tejada said by telephone Monday morning that he spoke with friends in the Dominican Republic to help him choose a firm that could best help Simon. Tejada said he expects to pick up the bill, although former Orioles infielder Julio Lugo also has taken an active role, he said, and may help with the expenses. Lugo accompanied Simon to the police station Monday.

“Alfredo is a kid I really love a lot,” Tejada said. “He is in trouble right now, and that’s what we do, we stick together. We wanted some big company attorneys, there are some good ones here in the Dominican and this is a special case.”

Tejada said he spoke with Simon on Sunday and that the pitcher is doing well, given the circumstances. “He is fine,” Tejada said. “He told me he doesn’t have anything to do with it, he is not the one to do it, and I believe him. I tell him I am with him and if there’s anything he needs, I am here.”

Lugo said he advised Simon to surrender after he had fled from the scene. “He is scared because he recognizes that he fired shots, although they went into the air,” Lugo said…

I was thinking that this was an impressive display of team loyalty, players putting their money where their mouths are and having each other’s backs when the chips are down. And then I remembered that Miguel Tejada is a grump who’s been tied to steroids and convicted of lying to congress, and Julio Lugo has been on my scumbag list since he was arrested for domestic violence back in 2003 (he was acquitted after his wife changed her story and testified on his behalf, but I’ll let you decide for yourself whether to believe that she hit her own head on a truck).

The moral of the story is, people are complicated.

Over at Baseball Prospectus, John Perrotto discusses his Hall of Fame Ballot.  Here is his comment on Barry Larkin:

Barry Larkin—Put it this way: If Derek Jeter had range, he’d be Barry Larkin. That’s not a knock on Jeter, just how little Larkin was appreciated because he played away from the spotlight with the Reds during his entire 19-year career. He won nine Silver Sluggers, three Gold Gloves, and had a .371 OBP.

We are all keenly aware of the myopic view of Jeter . . . the “winner” . . . the “heart and soul” of the Yanks recent run of excellence . . . the “nice guy”.  We are also aware of Jeter’s warts . . . the DP machine at the plate . . . the lack of range.

So, let’s play a little “what if” game . . . you are the GM of an expansion club, and you can have either Larkin or Jeter‘s entire career exactly as it has played out.  Which one do you take?

(image: Baseball Almanac)

One of my coworkers was cleaning out her old — apparently very old, as you’ll see – papers over the weekend, and she found this and brought it in for me:

As you can see, in 1987  a full, 81-game plan would set you back $750 per seat for the season, and all the plans come out to $10 per game or less for lower box seats. For that you would’ve gotten to see Lou Piniella manage the bombers to an 89-73 record, nine games behind Detroit; that was the year Mattingly set a record by hitting home runs in eight consecutive games, and also six grand slams in the season. I was too young to be paying attention back then, but I’ve heard about it enough that I feel like I was.

Put it on my Diner’s Club…

I like hot chocolate as much as the next person but don’t ever go out of my way for it. Yesterday, a friend brought me to a snooty chocolatier called Jacques Torres and got me a hot coco.

I had no idea hot chocolate could be so good. It was like drinking from Willy Wonka’s chocolate river, off-the-chain sinful, and a treat that is worth the trip.

[Photo Credit: The Gothamist]

2011 starts off with a bang, name-wise, as the Texas Rangers, bless them, just signed a Venezuelan shortstop named:

Rougned Odor.

Photo of terrifyingly young-looking Rougned Odor from Pro Rumors.

Hat tip to BP’s Kevin Goldstein for alerting me to the good news. SB Nation’s Dallas blog notes that Odor is a key addition to the Rangers’ burgeoning “All-Name Team” that also includes Wilmer Font and Jurickson Profar. Looking over the Rangers’ MiLB Baseball-Reference page for the shirt-season A-ball Spokane Indians, I’m also quite fond of  Odubel Herrera, Guillermo Pimentel, Geurris Grullon, and Ovispo De Los Santos — the Rangers are indeed stacked. At AA they had Emerson Frostad, Elio Sarmiento, Blake Beavan, and the fake-sounding Mark Hamburger and Ryan Falcon. They have a chance to be a baseball-name force for years to come.

Baseball America has video of the new Odor.

Hope everyone has a chill evening.

Stay safe, be merry and Happy New Year!

[Picture by Bags]

After yesterday’s post I realized it was time to stop evading the steroids/P.E.D “witch-hunt” issue and address it head-on in a helpful way. What follows is a case-by-case look at the evidence and facts in the cases of prominent players who have been suspected or accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, and a careful evaluation of their guilt or innocence.

ROGER CLEMENS

Evidence: Named in the Mitchell Report and accused by former trainer Brian McNamee, currently under  federal indictment for lying to Congress about his P.E.D. use. Head the size of a zeppelin. None of that is definitive, however: we need to look deeper.

Roger Clemens’ win-loss record is 354–184. 3+5+4+1+8+4 = 25. As we should all know from our studies of numerology, 25 symbolizes the Law according to Saint Augustin and the Universal Word of God according to Abellio*. In addition, “According to visions of Ann-Catherine Emmerich, the duration of the trip of the Three Magi was 25 days,” and “Mahomet was 25 years old when he married a widow, named Khadidja.”

Furthermore, one of Roger Clemens’ attorneys is Rusty Hardin. Hardin earned his law degree at Southern Methodist University in 1975. 1+9+7+5 is 22 – that’s right, Roger Clemens’ old uniform number. There are 22 letters of the alphabet in the Pentateuch, and Jeroboam reigned for 22 years. Taking it one step farther, 2+2 is 4, and “number 4 people” tend to be “hard workers” and “dependable” with “a higher purpose in life.”

Verdict: Innocent.

(*Yeah, I don’t know either. Cursory research indicates that Abellio is either an ancient god worshipped in the Garonne Valley in Gallia Aquitania (now southwest France), or a British bus company. Either way I think that’s pretty conclusive.)

RAFAEL PALMIERO

Evidence: Palmiero was born on September 24th, 1964, making him a Libra. Libras are “desperate for the approval of others,” “crave new knowledge” and “set out to accomplish their chosen goals and will find ways to succeed one way or the other.” Ruh-roh. On top of that, Libra is the only inanimate sign of the zodiac.

Verdict: Guilty, and possibly inanimate.

PUDGE RODRIGUEZ

Evidence: He turned me into a newt!*

Verdict: Burn him!

(*I got better.)

MIKE PIAZZA

Evidence: Back acne, per veteran blogger Murray Chass. In Salem back in the day, midwives used to check suspected witches for “black marks” on the body which might indicate their guilt. So, what we really need to know here is, did this “bacne” consist of whiteheads or blackheads? I have emailed Mr. Chass and eagerly await his response. Until then, we can reach no certain conclusions. (Disclaimer: Chass is not currently a licensed midwife. As far as I know).

Verdict: TBA.

JEFF BAGWELL

Evidence: With Bagwell, we are lucky in that we can apply the immutable laws of tasseography, or tea-leaf reading, to his facial hair over the years. I can clearly see an icicle in many photos of Bagwell’s beard, signifying his being frozen out of the Hall of Fame. In addition I can make out an upside-down Christmas tree, symbolizing Bagwell’s pact with Satan, and wavy lines, which symbolize an uncertain path. According to tasseography experts, owls symbolize gossip, scandal, and aliens, while an ostrich represents travel and “not seeking a truth.” I don’t actually see an owl or an ostrich in Bagwell’s beard but I’m just saying.

Also, while I hate to use guilt by association as an incriminating factor, the following picture is too revealing to ignore:

Clearly, we have a pattern here.

Verdict: Sorry Jeff.

Free agents have been treating Brian Cashman as if he were carrying around a suitcase filled with Confederate money. Cliff Lee turned away millions to go back to Philadelphia. Brandon Webb snubbed the Bronx to pitch for the defending American League champs. Superutilityman Bill Hall opted for more playing time with the Astros. Premier platoon man Matt Diaz did the same, signing with the lowly Pirates.

All of these players, to varying degrees, could have helped the Yankees. Yet, they all said no, either because they wanted greater roles with their new teams, or more comfortable environs, or they simply didn’t like New York. As a result, some critics have already dubbed this a winter of failure for the Yankees, but it’s too early to make such a stark characterization. While starting pitching is in short supply on both the free agent and trade markets, there is simply no reason why the Yankees cannot address other areas of concern, namely the bullpen and the bench.

In reference to the latter need, the most interesting name I’ve heard is Andruw Jones. It seems like a lifetime ago that Jones was taking Yankee pitching deep in the World Series. That was 14 years ago, when Jones was beginning the peak phase of his career. Jones is no longer the same player–the monster who hit 51 home runs with a .922 OPS in 2005–but that’s not to say that he is ready for retirement. Soon to be 34, Jones is still a useful player, one who would suit the Yankees quite nicely.

Playing as a No. 4 outfielder for the White Sox last season, Jones clubbed 19 home runs in only 328 at-bats. More pertinently, he reached base 37 per cent of the time against left-handers, while slugging .558 against those same southpaws. Those are awfully good numbers. His .931 OPS against lefties in 2010 actually exceeded Marcus Thames’ mark of .806. Furthermore, Jones’ defensive ability makes him a better fit for pinstripes. Thames is a liability anywhere you play him, but Jones still has enough speed to play center field on an occasional basis, and enough arm to play right field. He can easily handle left field, making him a candidate to platoon regularly with Brett “The Jet” Gardner.

Playing left field and batting eighth against left-handers, Andruw Jones would be a plus for the Yankees. He would raise the level of the Yankee bench, which is currently too young and too punchless. Hopefully, Cashman’s money won’t look so “Confederate” in the New Year.

***

This has been a particularly brutal year for baseball mortality. In fact, I can’t remember another year, at least not a recent one, in which so many notable baseball people passed away. We lost three Hall of Famers in Robin Roberts, Sparky Anderson and Bob Feller, and two legendary broadcasters in Ernie Harwell and Dave Niehaus. There have been many other departures, too, from Ron Santo and Bobby Thomson to Willie Davis and Mike Cuellar.

Perhaps no franchise has been touched more than the Yankees. The most famous owner in team history, George M. Steinbrenner, was felled by a heart attack. Two managers–Ralph Houk and Clyde King–left us. So did a longtime minor league manager, Frank Verdi, who also played one game for the Yankees. The list of departed players included the underrated Gil McDougald and the stylish Tom Underwood. The great Bob Sheppard, the voice of Yankee Stadium, also died. Even the New York media was hit hard. Writers Maury Allen, Vic Ziegel, and Bill Shannon, who covered the Yankee in one way, shape or form, all put down their pens for the last time.

For someone like me, who has been watching baseball avidly since the early 1970s, almost all of these deaths had a direct impact. The one exception was McDougald, who played before I was born, but nonetheless became a fixture through the wonders of Old-Timers Day. I remember many times when Yankee broadcasters mentioned that Shannon, who knew the rules inside-out, was the official scorer for that night’s game. I read the creative words of Allen and Ziegel in papers like the New York Post and the Daily News. I heard Sheppard’s dignified voice often, either in person or filtering through the television set. I watched Underwood pitch with smoothness and efficiency. I remember reading about Verdi’s work as a minor league skipper in the pages of The Sporting News. I watched the Yankees play for both Houk and King, two good baseball men. And I was there for every year that The Boss owned the team, starting all the way back in 1973.

As I get older, I feel that more and more of these passings affect me. Maybe that’s the price of aging. Sadly, we lose a little bit of Yankee lore with each death. At the same time, it’s important to keep remembering what each man did, and what he meant for baseball. Each one left a mark, and in good ways. And while we’re all remembering what they did, let’s hope that we don’t lose as many Yankees in 2011.

Bruce Markusen lives in Cooperstown, NY with his wife Sue and their daughter Madeline.

"Mom, mom, take my picture next to the Rusty Kuntz statue!"

There are many reasons why I should never, ever be allowed to have a Hall of Fame vote.

For one thing, you know I would absolutely vote for players based on whether they had cool or funny names, based entirely on my own personal criteria. Welcome to the Hall, Wayne Terwilliger! I would work to establish a sort of Veteran’s Committee variant to ensure that historic greats like Cletus Elwood “Boots” Poffenburger and Bris “The Human Eyeball” Lord were not forgotten but instead enshrined in their deserved splendor.

I would also probably not be able to resist voting for Don Mattingly and indeed  pretty much any player who spent time on the Yankees roster between 1996 and 2001, not merely undeserving fan favorites like Paul O’Neill, Scott Brosius and Tino Martinez, but also, there’s a good chance, Graeme Lloyd, Chili Davis, Robin Ventura, maybe Brian Boehringer and quite possibly a bunch of players whose names I don’t even remember at this point. Do I really think Scott Brosius let alone Shane Spenser is a Hall of Famer? Of course not, but it’d be nice to do a little something for those guys, you know?

I guess there’s not really a way to throw anyone out of the Hall once they’re in, but I would try to change that and, in the meantime, regularly TP and egg the plaques of Tom Yawkey and Walter O’Malley, also occasionally drawing devil horns and lipstick and goatees on their bronzed faces. Actually, I guess there’s nothing stopping me from doing that now even without a Hall of Fame vote, except the fear of arrest. Little known fact: if you’re a Hall of Fame voter you legally cannot be arrested within Cooperstown city limits. It’s like diplomatic immunity. I’m pretty sure.

In addition, I would try to get the name officially changed to the Hall of Very Good just because it would piss people off so much.

Finally, please note that my complete failure to take the Hall seriously does not mean that I won’t sputter indignantly when the results are announced next week, because I absolutely will, especially if Jack Morris gets elected and Blylevyn does not, and also if I have to read about the Bagwell-steroid-suspicion mishegoss for another damn week. Indignant sputtering is one of life’s little pleasures and every baseball fan’s innate right, and I greatly look forward to it.

I was reminded by Joe Sheehan’s 2011 predictions at SI.com of this promising youngster:

Dexter Fowler.

Just fun to say. Dexter Fowler Dexter Fowler Dexter Fowler. Sounds like a fictional 19th century clerk but held his own in the majors in his age-22 and -23 seasons which is nothing to sneeze at. He also blew threw the minors, played for the U.S. in the 2008 Olympics, and led all of baseball in triples last year.

Thank the Baseball Gods for the Guillen family; in a cold quiet winter they bring us sparks and adventure. Yesterday White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen’s son Oney absolutely lit into former White Sox and current Red Sox reliever Bobby Jenks on Twitter. Highlights are many, but include:

hahah memo to bobby jenks get a clue u drink to much and u have had marital problems hugeee ones and the sox stood behind u

they did not air out ur dirty laundry, u came to srping not drinking and then u sucked and started srinking again be a man

be a man and tell the manager or the coaching staff how u feel or the organization when u were with the sox not when u leave

u cried in the managers office bc u have problems now u go and talk bad about the sox after they protected u for 7 years ungrateful

if it wasnt for u and mainly u freddy garcia would have like 17 wins and the sox would have beat the twins …

…oh and yes i remember clearly u blowing a hugee game in 09 and u laughing ur bearded ass off while everyone busting there tail…

…one little story remember when u couldnt handle ur drinking and u hit a poor arizona clubby in the face i do. and later u covered it wit

Im sorry thats ur answer to everything. How can u disrespect ur ex team like that

Uh, yikes. The comments from Jenks that brought this on were obnoxious, but fairly tame in comparison. He told reporters that he wanted “to play for a manager who trusts his relievers, regardless of what’s going on,” and said “Why would I come back to that negativity? I’m looking forward to playing for a manager who knows how to run a bullpen.” He also felt that the White Sox didn’t handle their decision not to re-sign him particularly well, which is debatable, but a common enough sentiment when teams and players part ways.

Jim Margalus of South Side Sox writes,

I wouldn’t be surprised if most, if not all, of what Oney Guillen tweeted about Jenks was true. There were a couple of weird tongue-holding episodes at the end of the season; Jenks creating an uneasy scene by spitting on the clubhouse floor, Kenny Williams saying “there are certain things I’m not going to talk about right now.” To this point, Williams has resisted kicking Jenks out the door, but Oney seems to have filled in at least some of the blanks. None of it was necessary.

OK, nothing Guillen’s middle son does is necessary when it comes to White Sox Business, but this was bringing a grenade to a pillow fight. Jenks only criticized Ozzie the Manager, and that brings only Bobby the Pitcher into play. There’s lots of room for insult there. His attitude, his inconsistent performance, which may have been attributable to his inconsistent conditioning … pick one and hammer away if you please. That’s an eye for an eye, and all in a day’s work for these highly compensated professionals.

That would accomplish far more than taking private information and making it public.

This isn’t the first time Jenks’ personal issues went public; in Jerry Crasnick’s “License to Deal: A Season on the Run With a Maverick Baseball Agent”, Crasnick and Jenks’ former representative Matt Sosnick describe the pitcher as “an agent’s nightmare – the type of player who constantly tests management’s patience and rarely takes responsibility for his actions,” whose “drinking and capacity for self-destruction… soiled just about everything he touched,” a “reclamation project” who “couldn’t be reclaimed.” Ouch again.

I’m sure the Red Sox knew what they were getting into and if Jenks pitches well, as he has in the past, no one on the team or in the stands will care much about the guy’s flaws, whatever they might be. If he doesn’t, though, Boston is not a place where it takes very long for things to get ugly.

Anyway, Oney Guillen’s rant was clearly unprofessional and inappropriate, but in these days of corporate-speak, careful PR men, and dull canned quotes, I’ve gotta say I’m glad somebody is still able to go off the reservation like that.

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Photo via Chicago Now

Baseball never feels farther away than when you’re wading through three-foot snow drifts. I drove back to the city from upstate New York on Sunday and got home just as the roads started getting really adventurous. Yesterday, stuck and abandoned cars were all over the streets, and today everything is still eerie and off-kilter, if pretty sweet-looking. It’s hard to even imagine April.

Here’s something that helps, though: the 2011 Bill James Handbook, which my dad got me for Chrismukkah (he’s also the one who got me James’ Historical Baseball Abstract one fateful holiday when I was still in college). I don’t get as excited about the Handbook as I do about Baseball Prospectus every year – or as I would have for James’ yearly abstracts had I been old enough to read them at the time – simply because it is almost entirely tables and numbers, with very few essays and little analysis. It’s a very handy reference, though, and there are always some gems in there; and in a blizzard, in the early dark, at the tail end of the year, you take your baseball where you can get it.

Interesting things from a first flip through the Handbook:

*Maybe some of you already knew this, but in  bit of an upset, our own Brett Gardner won the 2010 Fielding Bible Award for left field, beating out three-time champ and 2009 winner Carl Crawford.

*The first-ever unanimous Fielding Bible winner was three-peater Yadier Molina. Sigh.

*The most intriguing thing in this year’s handbook, to me, was the new section on Managers, a feature I expect to refer to often this year. For every Major League manager it includes, among other stats:

• Lineups Used (LUp)
• Platoon Percentage (Pl%, the percentage of players in the starting lineup who have the platoon percentage)
• Pinch Hitters Used (PH)
• Pinch Runners Used (PR)
• Quick Hooks and Slow Hooks (with more detailed explanations of what those terms mean these days)
• Long Outings (LO, meaning more than 110 pitches in a start)
• Relievers Used on Consecutive Days (RCD)
• Long Saves (LS)
• Stolen Base Attempts
• Sacrifice Bunt Attempts (SacA) (“Per 162 games, Clint Hurdle’s teams averaged 108 sacrifice bunt attempts, which was necessary because it is so difficult to score in Colorado”).
• Pitchouts (PO)
• Intentional Walks (IBB) and also their results: Good, Not Good, or Bomb.

Like I said, very cool. So we can see that Joe Girardi had more quick hooks than most managers (46), and that he used a fairly normal number of lineups (114 – Trey Hillman’s Royals used just 24, the Red Sox used 143, and Tony LaRussa, naturally, led ’em all with 147). He and his players attempted fewer stolen bases than in any of his previous years as a manager,  and he ordered 37 intentional walks – a slightly higher number than most AL managers – of which 26 got a good result.

One item that I found particularly interesting: in 2006 with the Marlins, Girardi faced some criticism for overusing pitchers and wearing them out, risking injury; last year, he was sometimes criticized for being overly cautious with his pitchers. And yet over the course of his career, he has remained pretty consistent in how often he uses relievers on consecutive days, and in how often he has a slow hook on his starters. Obviously those stats don’t tell the entire story, but they do suggest to me that some assessments of Girardi’s managing probably have more to do with perception than facts.

There are also projections for every hitter and pitcher, but I prefer to wait and see how James’ projections compare with BP’s PECOTA and other systems, to get a better sense of the general range a player’s numbers are expected to fall in. (I will be a lot more zealous about that if I decide to do a fantasy team this year. Until I get organized enough to remember to arrange my pitching staff over the course of a season it’s probably a futile undertaking). But I couldn’t resist checking on our favorite demigod Mariano Rivera. James’ projection:

61 games, 62 innings, 47 hits, 3 HRs, 11 walks, 58 Ks, 1.89 ERA.

That’s what I like to see.