TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Friday, September 10, 2004

So Much for Mr. Consistency

I've always been an admirer of John Flaherty, although more in the closet since he joined the Yankees a few years back. He hit a homer in one of yesterday's games versus Tampa Bay, which ruined a weird streak he had going of hitting exactly four homers four years in a row. With number five, he'll have to start on a new streak.

posted by The Crank 1:19 PM

Thursday, September 09, 2004

MLB'S COMMISSIONER SHOWS LACK OF LEADERSHIP

By Diane M. Grassi


Everyone always gets their gander up when the New York Yankees are ever involved in a controversial matter or dispute. In the case of the New York Yankees v. Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the main issue has again been obfuscated and turned on its head since the Bronx Bombers are involved.

The story, although it's another "he said - he said" situation, concerned the Labor Day doubleheader which was to have been played at Yankee Stadium on Monday, September 6th. However, Tampa Bay did not make it into NY until Labor Day evening due to the delay in travel accommodations in Florida given its state of emergency resulting from Hurricane Frances.

There was only enough time left to play the first of the two scheduled games after Tampa Bay's arrival on September 6th. It was not known until Tuesday, September 7th whether the second game of the double header would be made up, played only if necessary at the end of the season, or would be a forfeited game as requested by the NY Yankees. And it is because of the Yankees request, rather than the sequence of events, that has clouded the whole matter. The Yankees initially asked that the game be made up at the end of the season if necessary, and since MLB President, Bob DuPuy, rejected their request, they then asked for a forfeit.

What has not been addressed or touched upon other than by Hall of Famer and ESPN baseball analyst, Joe Morgan, is that the whole matter showed the need to revisit the administrative structure of Major League Baseball. He made reference to the elimination of the league presidents which normally in the past would have addressed such a matter. Previously a decision would have been made immediately by the league president, and it would have ended there eliminating all of the speculation and in-fighting.

Commissioner, Bud Selig, eliminated the American and National League presidents in 2000 which included their oversight of each league and rules matters, in an effort "to unify the leagues." And since 2002, Selig and Bob DuPuy, have exclusively micro-managed all matters baseball. This explains a lot of the delay in major issues being finalized such as the relocation of the Montreal Expos, promised a year ago.

But in this instance, a matter of physical safety and well-being should not have had to go before the Commissioner of Baseball and to wait on him to come up with an answer. He has never been known to be quick to respond and at times even unreachable when a decision is immediately needed. It became obvious to Tampa Bay that when there are no other persons to go to other than DuPuy or Selig in an emergency situation on a holiday weekend and time is of the essence, they must decide and took the issue into their own hands by remaining in Tampa until Monday.

This should never have come down to a proverbial shoot out between the front offices of NY and Tampa Bay. After all, this was a natural disaster area and no longer just a "team issue." On Tuesday, Bob DuPuy, on behalf of the Commissioner announced that no games would be forfeited and the double header would be played. But the double header had to be rescheduled again for Wednesday which also got rained out, so the actual days remaining and practicality of actually making up this initial game plus now an additional rained out game remains in doubt if not impossible. NY has acquiesced to the Commissioner's decision but still remains concerned about having to make up the now two games given the tightness of the remaining schedule. NY is still awaiting another decision from the Commissioner's office about the second rained out game.


Yes, NY should probably have stayed away from asking for a forfeited game. Ideally it should have been handled as a rain out. Tampa Bay's decision to stay in Tampa and face the consequences later given little time to decide about the impending storm was not a bad decision. MLB claims it ordered Tampa to leave for NY prior to the hurricane's hit on Florida although the Devil Rays dispute that claim. The Yankees were led to believe by the Commissioner's office that everything was on schedule. So, this whole matter started with the Commissioner's office. We do not need a special investigation of this whole mess. What we need is direct communications oversight within the Commissioner's office to address matters of emergency whether weather or security related to avoid this debacle again.

Major League Baseball, always so concerned about its image, failed in its leadership once again in the handling of this matter. It allowed the Yankees to take the black eye for the whole Hurricane Frances situation while it much more importantly reflects the disorganization and lack of procedures in place within the Commissioner's office on matters of safety and security. And given the additional national security measures we all must now deal with on a daily basis across the country, such a delayed and ambiguous response from the Commissioner's office is not only unacceptable but irresponsible.

posted by Diane M. Grassi 6:37 PM

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

Hot Winds Blow Hard in September

Blustery Venting in Pennant Chase

The Yankees have asked the commissioner's office for a forfeit in yesterday's first game of a would-be double-header with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays after Tampa didn't show up on time for a 1 p.m. start (delayed to 3 p.m. before being cancelled.). The Yankees claim the D-Rays could've come up to New York on Friday, before Hurricane Frances hit Florida, and thus could've been right on time bright and early Monday morning.

The Devil Rays responded that they never had any intention of coming to New York early, since (a) they had a series with the Tigers scheduled, just in case the hurricane changed directions at the last minute (this happens), and the Tigers didn't leave until Tampa Bay until after Friday night's game had been cancelled. And more to the point, (b) the players have families, many of them live in the Tampa Bay area, so they had other priorities, like making sure everybody stayed safe, that superceded the demands of the Yankees.

This should've closed the issue, but Brian Cashman and Randy Levine of the Yankees were out there having a press conference claiming the Rays should've found a way out. I wonder if it had been the other way around -- let's say the Yankees were due to play in Tampa Bay the day the hurricane was supposed to arrive -- if the Yankees would've been so strident. Maybe Florida, instead of postponing the weekend Cubs series, should've sent nine players through the storm to Old Joe Robbie, had an umpire call "play ball", and claimed three forfeits from the Cubs.

So the protest is pointless. The Commissioner's office has said basically there's no way they're going to call a forfeit for a delay caused by a major weather event. The game will be made up if necessary at some other point (possibly Monday, October 4), although why they can't just play back to back double headers today and tomorrow hasn't been answered.

Do we sense some desperation coming out of the Bronx, that the Yankees want to claim a win without the necessity of playing a game? It's not enough that the Devil Rays stepped off a plane in mid-afternoon and had to rush to the Bronx to play a game, not a batter having had batting practice in five days. The Devil Rays, in a show of "sportsmanship" or something, didn't even reset their rotation. Predictably they lost to the Yankees, who complained that they'd had to come to Yankee Stadium early, and then because they were such great guys, they held batting practice for the benefit of the 500 or so fans who'd shown up for the supposed 1 p.m. start. This despite the fact the Yankees already knew the Rays weren't going to be able to get a flight out until early afternoon.

Did we hear a call from the Yankees front office yesterday to collect donations to send to the victims of Hurricane Frances? I didn't. Maybe the players could've had an impromptu home run derby to raise money for Floridians, with those Yankee fans in attendance pledging money for each batting practice homer.

I seem to recall citizens of 50 states donated over $3 billion of their own private money to help New York out after 9/11. I see that President Bush is using pictures of his throwing out the first ball at Yankee Stadium two weeks after those attacks in his campaign commercials, presumably to demonstrate through the association with the Yankees (which are owned by a man, George Steinbrenner, who has a felony conviction for illegal contributions to the Richard Nixon re-election campaign, ironically enough a Tampa Bay resident) how as a nation we always come together in times of disaster.

The Yankees didn't forfeit any games the week of 9/11 that I recall.

Calling for a forfeit because the other team chose to stay home during a hurricane? Bad sportsmanship, old bean.

Trapped in Oakland, Boston Wins

I've been to major league games in all but three of the current major league cities and maybe 100 more minor league parks. I think Oakland has the best fans of any of them. This is no knock on any other group of fans, especially not my hometown Boston Beaneaters. Oakland fans are more engaged with the game, generally more knowledgeable, and interested in the game of baseball in a way which neither takes the whole enterprise too seriously nor dismisses its many finer points. I have yet to sit down next to a season ticket-holder at the Coliseum and fail to come away from a conversation with them having learned something. It's a mixed-income, mixed-race crowd, something hard to find at many other luxury-priced ballparks these days. You can still get into an A's game for less than the price of a movie. The ballpark isn't great in the sense that it has little pure-baseball charm like a Camden Yards. With the erection of the centerfield monster bleachers for football, you can't even see out of the place. The angles are weird, the stands removed from the action, raised up or pushed back, compared to other ballparks. But the fans show up. They blow trumpets. They carry hand-lettered signs. There are rooting sections for practically every A's player. A legion waves A's flags from centerfield. You couldn't even bring in a flag on a pole in most ballparks these days, under the guise of 'security'. A's fans know their baseball, they follow the game well, they root hard. They complain from time to time, like any set of fans, but it's not the kind of ranting screed I hear every know and then on the radio waves from my fair home town.

So I was a little surprised yesterday when, after a blown call by an umpire, some A's fans protested by showering the field with debris. Manny Ramirez trapped a ball, and the third base umpire missed it and called the batter out to lead off the bottom of the seventh in a tight ballgame. The play was re-shown on the jumbotron, which probably paradoxically backed the umpires into standing by the call since they didn't want to apepar to have their decisions dictated by instant replay. Mark Kotsay, the victim of the play, went ballistic and tried to charge across the diamond; the A's coaching staff restrained him. Oh, the bitter irony -- next inning, Kotsay trapped a ball, one which was correctly called a hit by the same umpire. Kotsay let the kid have an earful. The fans had been treated to video of Manny laughing and Pedro joining in with some kind of joke, which perhaps was taken as mocking of the fans themselves or glee in having got away with something. Neither call ended up really affecting the game, in that the Red Sox blasted their way to the lead in the eighth and it's hard to see how either call would've made a difference. But the debris rained down after the second call, and play was stopped for a few minutes before order was restored.

One suspects A's fans have a frustration as yet unexpressed with the Red Sox after they lost last year's five-game LDS in dramatic fashion. Barry Zito, last night's starter, was at the center of that loss as well. One thing about sports, it's a way of displacing a lot of emotions from the real world, and even within the game itself, emotions get projected onto completely unrelated field activities. Just look at most beanball wars. When the fans get into the action, though, booing somebody, throwing stuff on the field, it's usually over an injustice they feel has put them under the bootheel unfairly just one time too many. It's also got to be hard when the Red Sox are in town, when half the stadium is filled with Boston fans.

Still, I was surprised that the great A's fans could so easily be prodded into an act of projection against the Red Sox and the umpires when the fault was bad play on the field. I tuned into the post-game call-in show on the radio afterwards to try to see what was up.

Ah, those great and reasonable A's fans. They were still ticked on the radio about the umpires and a little bit at Manny and Pedro's antics, to be sure. But they not only blamed Zito, fan after fan dissected the nuances of the match-up. The Red Sox were waiting out Zito's curve ball, knowing that the overhand drop was going over and around the strike zone and that all they had to do was wait for the hanger. Whereas in Boston they'd've been calling for the umpires heads until the wee hours of the morning, the hardcore A's fans were back on baseball quicker than a Ken Macha hook.

That's good sportsmanship.

posted by The Crank 8:13 AM

Monday, September 06, 2004

Should Have Looked at the Schedule More Closely

My chance to look prophetic was foiled by too much writing. Originally I had predicted that Santana would take a no-hitter into the 7th in one of his remaining starts. I then refined that to a no-hitter into the 7th by the end of August, a modification that turned out to be too clever by half, as the British are wont to say. Santana no-hit the Royals through 6 in his first start in September, of course, and had I looked at the Twins' schedule at the end of August, which saw them playing the Rangers and Angels, and at the beginning of September where the Royals series was, I might have only modified my prediction to "before Labor Day" or not at all.

Ah, well, at least I think I was a little ahead of the curve in identifying Santana as a CYA candidate back when he was only 8-6. Now that he's 16-6 with a 2.95 ERA he has to be no worse than co-favorite, considering his league lead in K's and his closer-like 0.95 ratio. If Santana gets to 20 wins, I think he wins in a landslide. If not, and one of Mark Mulder or Curt Schilling gets to 21 or 22 wins, it'll be an interesting vote. Right now I'd put 1-2-3 in the order of Santana, Schilling, and Mulder, with Pedro Martinez a strong 4th.

How Much Will The Cubs' Bullpen Suffer?

There was some talk on Baseball Tonight about how much the Cubs' bullpen is in danger because of the extra games they'll have to make up. I understand what they're driving at, but their analysis definitely overlooked the fact that the Cubbies have Glendon Rusch waiting in the wings as an emergency starter. So even though the Cubs might have to play 26 games in 24 days without a day off, Rusch can be pressed into service in the 2nd game on the 9th and 20th, for example, and then the normal rotation can keep up its regular 5-man cycle.

Specifically, Mark Prior and Kerry Wood look to be the guys who will go Friday and Saturday in some order with Rusch the likely starter in the nightcap game on Friday (assuming this really happens), and then Rusch can be "handcuffed" to one of Prior (more likely) or Wood, after which he'd be on a more or less normal rotation for a makeup doubleheader in Florida on the 20th. Heck, with the off day on Thursday it's possible that the Cubs could trot out both Wood and Prior on Friday, have Zambrano pitch on his normal day Saturday, and Clement on Sunday. There would be a snag when one of Prior or Wood has to go on Tuesday, so Rusch could fill in there. I like the 6-man rotation a little better myself, as thing are set up perfectly to work that way, and then the Big 5 just go like clockwork every fifth day in September, and the bullpen basically gets used in the way it always has.

The Adam Dunn Watch

Dunn whiffed two times today to bring his season strikout total to 164 through 136 games for the Reds, in which Dunn has played in 135. Assuming one day off down the stretch, at his current whiffing pace Dunn would wind up with 194 for the season. He currently sits in third place in the NL HR race with 41, three behind Adrian Beltre and two behind Albert Pujols.

The real question is whether Dunn gets put into the lineup every day down the stretch. When Jose Hernandez got to 188 K's a few years back, the Brewers sat him to protect his K total. Dunn being in the middle of the HR race might make it harder to sit him. It should be noted that competitive integrity really only demands that Dunn appear in 10 games, the last two this week against the Astros, and the eight games the Reds have left against the Cubs. The other 16 games on the Reds' schedule include 6 with Pittsburgh, 4 with Milwaukee, and 3 with Atlanta and Philly. There won't be anything on the line in terms of post-season play in those game, so there's a real chance Dunn could be held out of the lineup in some of those games.

posted by Tom Renbarger 9:54 PM