Hot Stove Thoughts

Here are the moves that I would like to see the Yanks make this off season.
1. They have to sign Sabathia. They are in desperate need of an ace and haven't had one in a while. There are no aces on the market this year. If they can’t get him they will have break the bank to get Brandon Webb next year.
2. They have to sign a second starting pitcher. My first choice would be Burnett. I know that he has a history of arm problems, but he is worth a shot in my opinion. If the Yanks can’t get Burnett I would take Lowe, Peavy, or Dempster.
3. Get a third starting pitcher, an end of the rotation type of guy. I would even take Pettitte back, although he is on the back nine for sure.

If they do get these starters, their rotation will be supplemented by Wang and Hughes. Not too shabby. They will have Aceves, Coke or Giese for spot starts if they need them.

I am sure that you notice that Joba isn’t in the rotation in this scenario. He only threw about 100 innings this year and they won’t let him jump past 130-140 innings for this year. If he throws 30 starts that wouldn’t even be an average of 5 innings per start. Plus, he makes that bullpen even stronger, and will be groomed to take over for Mo as the closer when he retires. With Joba setting up Mo, that leaves Bruney, Veras, and Ramirez as righties and Marte and Coke as lefties in the pen. Robertson, Giese and Sanchez could see some innings as well.

On the other side of the ball I like the flexibility that they have right now. Where is Posada going to play? If he can't catch because of his arm, he will have to do some DHing and play some 1B. The Yanks traded for Nick Swisher yesterday. I like the move for its flexibility. If Posada isn’t catching Molina is a strong #2 catcher, and Swisher can relinquish some of the at bats at 1B to Posada. Swisher can also play some corner OF, he is a switch hitter, and they got him pretty cheaply due to a down year last year.

If the Yanks need to go the trade route to get one of those starting pitchers I would use Cano as the trade bait, and then go get Hudson to play 2B. Cano hasn’t endeared himself to me with his lack of hustle. Even though Cano had a bad year, he still has some trade value and an inexpensive salary.

The left side of the infield is locked up with Jeter and ARod. In LF the platoon of Damon and Matsui works for me. The one not playing LF will probably see a lot of DH time depending on how Posada works out behind the plate. I wouldn’t be surprised to see either of the LF solutions being traded, but they aren’t going to get much for either one.

Nady is a great solution in RF, but could also see some time at 1B if they wanted. He played there early in his NL career. That leaves CF. I know that there are lots of people that want to see the Yanks go get a big name CF, but I would rather see what Gardner can do, with Melky getting some time out there as well. If they both fail Damon or Swisher could do the job while they look at the trade market.

I like Cody Ransom as the utility infielder. He has some pop in his bat and can play the corner infield positions quite well. They will need to find someone to back up on the middle infield, and maybe do some pinch running.

If I were in Cashman’s role this is what my plan would be. I can’t wait to see what actually happens. I love the hot stove league!!

Lester's no-no

A great story happened in baseball last night. A no hitter is an exciting story no matter who throws it, but add the element of a young pitcher coming back from cancer and it becomes historic. Getting away from baseball for a second, it is great for those that are battling cancer to see something like this accomplished. It can only buoy their internal outlook to see that you can come all of the way back from this dreaded disease. It is also a neat side story that Mike Lowell (another cancer survivor) was about 75 feet away from him to share in the accomplishment. Maybe this will erase the picture of Dave Dravecky's arm breaking on the mound during his comeback from cancer.

Kudos to Terry Francona for not being a slave to the pitch count as well. Too often baseball decisions are reduced to formulas. Being a math person myself, I am an advocate of the use of numbers to inform decisions, but I hate when decisions are pre-determined based on pitch count, or innings allowed in a year, etc. Francona understood the moment that was before him.

Things that make you go hmmmm...

I heard on a sports talk radio show earlier this afternoon that this was the year of the pitcher. They were comparing what is happening this season to 1968 when Bob Gibson and Denny McLain dominated baseball. While there are a lot of big name sluggers that are struggling, the same could be said for some big name pitchers. As of this afternoon, May 6th, you could make up an all-star team with batters hitting at or below the Mendoza line:

C- Ramon Hernandez
DH- Jason Giambi
1B- Ryan Howard
2B- Robinson Cano
SS- Troy Tulowitzki
3B- Richie Weeks (I know he plays mostly 2B now, so you could substitute Casey Blake hitting .202 and make the same point)
LF- Scott Hairston
CF- Andruw Jones
RF- Jose Guillen

Not too shabby right?

Well some big name pitchers are doing poorly too. Let’s take a look at pitchers that have an ERA above 6.00. How about a starting rotation of Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, Barry Zito, Kenny Rogers and Bronson Arroyo? What about a bullpen of JJ Putz, Jason Isringhausen, and Trevor Hoffman?

You put the salaries of the players listed above and it would total approximately $130 million for 17 players. I even left out the likes of Eric Gagne who nobody thought was going to be successful anyway (except the Brewers) and if I had written this posting a week ago I could have included the likes of Big Papi, David Ortiz.

For some reason there are a large number of big name players having a horrible first month of the season. My guess is that numbers will even out for the most part over the course of the season, but being the season after the Mitchell report, is anyone else wondering???

The Clemens drama continues.....

Another conspiracy theory. I am not sure if Roger Clemens is smart enough to think this far ahead, but do you think that the reason that he changed his tune from I have never been injected by Brian McNamee to I have never been injected with anything except B12 and lidocaine by Brian McNamee was so that if McNamee produced syringes he could claim that he had no idea that what he was being injected with was steroids? It seems like that might be where this is headed. I am hearing today that McNamee has handed over syringes and bloody gauze with Clemens’ DNA on them. When the lab rats test what is inside of the syringes they will likely find steroids. So how this is likely to play out would be Clemens would then say he thought that it was vitamins and pain killers that were in the shots, and McNamee was injecting him with steroids without his knowledge.

When asked why McNamee would do this, he could then say that he was training Clemens, and if Clemens was getting stronger and performing well he might think that it was due to how good a trainer McNamee was.

I think that this is all a bunch of crap and that Clemens and McNamee were on the same page all along. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the way things go in the coming weeks.

Johan Santana

I am quite relieved that Johan Santana went to the Mets and not the Sox. I would have liked to see him land on the other side of NY, but if that wasn't to be, then at least he isn't in the AL East. I think that he would have put the Sox in dynasty mode if he went there. Especially for what they were offering. In fact, I think that the new Twins GM blew this one bigtime. Both of the Sox offers and the Yankee offer were better than the one that they actually accepted in the end. In fact, I think that the Mets offer was even better earlier in the off season then it was last week. With the fact that Peter Angelos won't allow Bedard to be traded to an AL East team, it looks like the Yanks are probably done with their big moves. I see that they signed Morgan Ensberg to a minor league contract. He might factor in at 1B from time to time, but that isn't a big move.

My next consideration is what to do to improve that bullpen. If they can't make any moves to bolster the pen, I don't see how they get around putting Joba back into that role from last year. Hopefully Ohlendorf can be the 7th inning guy, and then Farnsworth, Hawkins et al can be the middle relief corp. If they don't make that move and those middle relievers have to be setup men, I think that the Yanks are in trouble.

If Joba is in the pen, that leaves a servicable rotation of Wang, Pettitte, Hughes, Kennedy and Mussina. But there still is no ace among them. Pitchers and Cathers don't report for another couple of weeks so I won't go off quite yet, but I will just say that I am concerned.

Clemens and performance enhancing drugs

I am so sick of talking about (and hearing sports talk radio talk about) performance enhancing drugs. We will never know all of the cheaters. We can talk forever about our speculation about who was juiced. I want to get back to talking about trades, rotations, lineups and expectations. The hot stove league has fizzled because of all of this noise with the Mitchell Report. The fact is that the Mitchell report is the tip of the iceberg. To say that these 75 people are cheating is one thing, but it is far from an exhaustive list. It also is bogus that most of these names have no real proof associated with them at all.

At the risk of being a hypocrite, I do think that a ton of players in this era were juicing. We can all point to the Brady Anderson, Lenny Dykstra, Barry Bonds, and others and look at the size of their head, or the change in their physique and draw our own conclusions. It happens in all sports. I think that this is so much more significant in baseball because of the importance that we place on statistics and records in this sport. Name the top 5 single season HR hitters of all time and most average baseball fans can do so. Ask an average NFL fan to name the top 5 rushing leaders of all time, or an NBA fan the top 5 scoring leaders of all time and they would have a much harder time doing so. The stats mean so much to us as baseball fans. The steroid era has irrevocably harmed us for that reason.

On to Clemens “performance” last night on 60 minutes. I do think that he juiced. I think that he was so pissed off at Dan Duquette for saying that he was washed up that he decided he would risk the side effects to regain his glory. I see his motivation, but that doesn’t mean that it is right. How would Griffey Jr’s numbers look if he had doped up to recover from injuries? What would Mickey Mantle’s career numbers look like? How about Joe DiMaggio or Sandy Koufax? If they went to HGH or steroids to recover from injuries and lengthen their careers their numbers would have been even more amazing then they are.

I cannot stand the argument that Clemens or Bonds should be put into the hall of fame because they were hall of famers before they started cheating. That is such a farce of an argument. If I am honest on 90% of my tax information and then cheat on the last 10% and get a refund is the IRS going to say to me, we won’t prosecute you because we looked back at the accurate information that you provided and you would have gotten a refund anyway? Of course they aren’t. They are going to nail my ass to the wall, and rightfully so.

If your argument is that they should be in the hall of fame because the era was riddled with the use of steroids and nobody did anything about it. I still don’t buy the argument, but at least put them all in (McGwire et al included) a separate wing. Call it the steroid era wing. That way when I bring my kids there some day they will easily be able to tell that this era in baseball had a lot of questionable stuff going on. And when I do get to do this trip, I will be telling my stories about the “real” record holders. Ruth, Maris, and the rest.

A few thoughts

A bunch of friends have asked me why it has been so long since the last blog posting. With the holidays over it is time to get back to talking baseball.

Here are some things that will be water cooler fodder as the hot stove league continues:

• What will the fallout be over the Mitchell Report? My guess is that the players that decided to come clean have already done so. There is the thought that if you remain silent you are essentially admitting guilt. So I fully expect a lawsuit or two to accompany Clemens hiring of the private investigators to find out what really happened. Is it just me or does this remind anyone of OJ Simpson’s quest for Nicole’s killer? My guess is that most of the information in this report is true, however the evidence that brought this information out isn’t exactly convincing. The skeptics among us are asking why so many former Yankees are on the list. It only makes sense since one of the main sources of information was a former Yankee clubhouse guy.
• Where will Johan Santana land? Frankly I am surprised that the deal hasn’t been done yet. I am guessing that the Twins are less than impressed with the offers that they are getting for him. I think that both the Yankee offer of Melky, Hughes and a couple of decent minor leaguers is a strong one. I also think that the Sox offer that included Ellsbury, Lowrie, and a couple of other minor leaguers is a good one. I have no idea why they are reluctant to include Lester in that deal. I don’t think that he is going to be a top of the rotation starter, and landing Santana would be an almost certain ticket to a couple of more world series in the near future. Not including Lester is especially confusing because if they do the deal their rotation will have Beckett, Santana, Matsuzaka, Schilling, Wakefield and Buchholz to fill the 5 spots.
• On a similar note I have a lot of concern about the current state of the Yankee rotation. They still don’t have an ace. The only guy that might step into that role is Chamberlin, but that is a lot to ask for a guy that has never started a major league game. Wang is a #3 at best, Pettitte is about the same, and the other three spots are likely to be occupied by the aforementioned Chamberlin, Hughes and Kennedy. Mussina is waiting in the wings in case one of the kids doesn’t work out, and he is a shell of what he was just a couple of years ago. I think that this is the biggest hole that the Yanks have. They need an ace. This is why, as much as I like Hughes, I would include him in the deal to get Santana. The other piece to this trade puzzle is that if they include Melky in this deal, that makes Matsui and Damon the every day LF/CF combination. That is not a strong defensive pairing.

I look forward to hearing your comments on these topics and will try to be better about keeping up with posting as the hot stove heats up again.