The Futility Infielder

For the first time since leaving my job in late February, I've been freelancing on a regular basis, with a former colleague whose current clients include the The Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation, for whom I've been designing a newsletter. So between work and getting adjusted to my new "roommate," this has been another busy week which found me a day or two behind all but the top baseball headlines. I've had a lot rattling around the junk-drawer of my mind, however. Here goes...

• Saturday was a landmark day for my new apartment, as our futon frame finally arrived. This is a big deal; in New York City, we call this a couch. After a month of lying on a mattress on the floor to watch TV, at long last I can return my seat to its upright position and type on my laptop while watching a ballgame, a situation which bodes well for more posts here.

• All hail TiVo! If you're a baseball fan who follows a team on a day-in, day-out basis, you need this, if for no other reason than to avoid watching the same ads 1000 times over the course of a season while your manager exhibits classic obsessive-compulsive behavior in playing the platoon advantage with his relievers. Condensing a 3-hour game into half the time without missing an out reaps additional benefits too, such as social interaction with other members of the human species.

After living with a gadget-freak roommate who turned me on to the wonders of the digital video recorder (not to mention the wireless home network), I bought one for myself when I moved. Actually, the purchase was the first move-related thing I did after signing the lease. There's simply no going back once you've experienced TiVo; any television without one feels like it's broken.

The Yankees mid-week West Coast swing, with all of those 10 PM games, was a perfect application for TiVo's magic. I could whiz through a ballgame in the wee hours or simply put it all off until the next day. Friday found me pounding my fists on the table over my morning coffee as I watched Thursday night's Yanks-Mariners game, where the Yanks put up a 10-spot on their nemesis, Freddy Garcia, and routed the Mariners 16-5. The Seattle lefty, who typically owns the Yanks (4-1 with a 2.63 ERA in 37.1 career innings prior to Thursday) looked listless and lost during that endless third inning, a far cry from his usual Yankee-whooping self. It's always fun to rack one up on those nemesis guys, but here's hoping Garcia's healthy, at least.

• Garcia's arm may be sound, but over at the U.S.S. Mariner blog Derek Zumsteg says that his problem is more a question of commitment and lifestyle: "Well, here's what's up. Freddy's known as a party dude, a nightclub-hanging-out guy with a reputation for enjoying the women his fame attracts. I have no personal knowledge of any of this, I only know that he does get spotted at clubs a lot. He's also got issues with his work ethic, preparation, and his tendency to come unraveled easily."

Zumsteg -- who from the looks of his recent articles on maximizing beer and baseball, knows a party dude when he sees one -- goes on to take the local Seattle writers to task for not delving too deeply into their allegations along those lines. But unless Derek wants to see scandal-sheet trash along the lines of the New York Post's coverage of the Mets current debacles (Haircutgate and Positionswitchgate), he should be careful what he wishes for.

Just prior to Thursday's meltdown, the Seattle Times had an article on the M's quality young arms, including the 26-year-old Garcia, and 24-year-olds Gil Meche and Joel Piniero. Though they haven't reached Zito-Hudson-Mulder status, that trio -- in the company of the ageless Jamie Moyer -- could yet return the M's to the postseason. Meche was particularly impressive against the Yanks in a game I attended back on April 29. He shut them out for 7.2 innings and allowed runners on second or third only three times, way back when the writers were still yammering about these Yanks possibly topping 116 wins. That got my attention.

Speaking of Zumsteg and TiVo, the writer had a good Baseball Prospectus piece last week on his own experience with the device. In particular, he noted the discrepancies over different second-base umpires' standards for calling a runner safe or out on a stolen base and a tendency to rewatch injuries. It's an impulse to which I can relate; I think we all saw Derek Jeter's shoulder dislocate about 100 times.

• Jeter's return is slated for Tuesday, which is good reason for any Yankee fan to smile. But it's been a fascinating time to watch the Yanks in his absence, especially to see Nick Johnson's emergence into the hitter for whom Brian Cashman fended off a thousand advances. Johnson's hitting .319/.469/.531 and averaging nearly a walk a game from Jeter's customary #2 spot in the order, and the Yankee offense hasn't missed too many beats. I'm waaaaay overdue for an in-depth look at the Yankees, so I'll get to it in the next couple of days.

• None of my blogging brethren have been as busy lately as Alex Belth. The Bronx Banter boy's got a two-piece Rob Neyer interview up at his site, and the first part of what looks to be an equally satisfying one with Roger Angell at Baseball Prospectus. Here's one exchange from the latter:

BP: When did you first write about baseball?

Angell: In '62. I had written some sports pieces, I had written a piece about the New York Rangers. I was a hockey fan; I was a sports fan. I did a couple of other things. And I had written a baseball piece for "Holiday," sort of a generic baseball piece. I said if you want I could go down to spring training. I certainly did not have it in mind to write a lot about baseball. The thing was, (my editor) didn't want sentimental writing about sports and he didn't want tough guy writing about sports, which were the choices back then. You were either weepy, or you were tough. The first year I went to spring training I found the newborn Mets in St. Petersburg. This is 40 years ago. I didn't think of myself as a sports writer so I didn't dare go in the clubhouse or sit in the press box. I sat with the fans. And I realized that the stuff that's ignored and never gets reported on is the fans. Nobody ever wrote about the fans. So I wrote about the fans, and I've continued to do so. I've continued to write in a form that allows me to write in the first person. And that allows me to say I am a fan of this team, or react to things as a fan as well as a baseball writer that now knows something about the game.

The Mets were just a great fan story when they arrived. They played in the Polo Grounds and they were one of the worst and most entertaining teams that ever played. And that was a terrific story. And New York was used to the Yankees, winning all the time. Somebody said they had become like General Motors. And here was a team that was just terrible, but large numbers of people turned out to cheer them on, and if they won a game there was wild excitement. So I wrote that. They were something like anti-matter to the New York Yankees. I remember sitting there at the Polo Grounds, and there was a guy sitting near me in the stands blowing this mournful horn. TWUUUHH-TRUUUHP. And I wrote that there is more Met than Yankee in all of us, because losing is much more common than winning. When I heard that horn blowing I realized that horn was blowing for me. In some way, I began to settle into the kind of writing that I would do later on. They call me a "baseball essayist," or a "baseball poet laureate," and I hate that. I'm not trying to write baseball essays, and I'm certainly not trying to be poetic. I try to avoid it. I've been able to find myself and baseball a natural fit, and everybody wants to write about himself. That's why we do it (laughs).

Good stuff again from Belth, with whom I'll be attending a Yanks game in the near future.

• To borrow a line from South Park, "Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ!" Because he apparently misses having a rag-armed starter like Livan Hernandez around, Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker allowed Kerry Wood to throw an astounding 141 pitches in only seven innings Saturday. Baseball Primer's Don Malcom lights the barbecue for the pitch-count police, but he also breaks down some play-by-play data from the game and points out the way Baker painted himself into a corner:

Wood labored in the third inning, and he really had trouble getting first-pitch strikes from the third through the fifth (just five of fifteen). He pitched well in the sixth, however, and this is where the "pitch count police" will argue that he should have been removed. To do that in a way that created a tactical advantage, Baker would have needed to make a double switch in the seventh, most likely replacing #5 hitter Hee Seop Choi with a pitcher, and inserting Eric Karros into the #9 slot.

Baker decided to try to get Wood through another inning, though. And opposing pitcher Woody Williams, who'd worked Wood for a walk in the third, just kept foulding off pitches, winding up with an 11-pitch at-bat before grounding out. Wood fanned two in the inning, using "only" nine pitches on his K's, but the other two batters (Williams and Fernando Vina, who was hit by pitch) used up 19.

Color me skeptical that Dusty will emerge from his tenure with the Cubs with great reputation intact. I'm guessing he blows out at least one of those prized arms sooner or later on the road to nowhere, and that his predilection for playing vets over youngsters squanders some of the Cubs' prized talent.

• Speaking of pitcher abuse, ding-dong, the witch is dead! The Florida Marlins fired manager Jeff Torborg and pitching coach Brad Arnsberg, and while the stated reasons may have more to do with their turbid 16-22 start than the rash of pitcher injuries induced by the Tor-bore, there's no denying that the latter was a factor. Mark Redman's bum thumb, A.J. Burnett's T.J'ed elbow, and now Josh Beckett 's sprained elbow put three of the team's starters on the DL, while a fourth, Michael Tejara, hurt himself on a play Saturday. Bad luck, some of it was, but it all adds up to good riddance to a manager who finished under .500 in 9 of 11 seasons, yet showed a hell of a lot of intransigence over silly little things like pitch counts for somebody so, um, loserly. I'm already of the opinion that the Fish can Rot, and while Torborg's dismissal is no credit to the Loria/Samson/Beinfest brainlesstrust, if it protects somebody's arm somewhere, I'm for it.

• Back to those Mets. With the sharks swimming around Steve Phillips in three shifts a day, it's no wonder such a minor and probably apocryphal incident as a sub-Mendoza futility infielder's haircut turned into such back-page tabloid fodder. But that particular circus doesn't excuse the botched job they did on suggesting Mike Piazza ready himself for first base. The New York Times' George Vescey nailed it:

The Mets' front office has a severe case of bone spurs of the thought process. In addition to all the gruesome things happening on the field and in the sick bay, the Mets have ticked off their best player, Mike Piazza.

They are a national example of how not to run a sports team: dawdle, and duck an inevitable decision. Then, when backed into an unfortunate corner by injuries, embarrass your big guy in public. This has all the feel of one of those epic Metsian meltdown seasons.

Rule #1 in New York City sports (and just about everywhere else) is that if you really want to create a negative spectacle of your team, piss off your players by telling them what to do through the media. Ugly.

I didn't get a chance to respond to a reader who commented on my recent Phillips piece: "What does throwing phillips overboard do for the team right now?"

The answer at this point ought to be as obvious as a 2 x 4 to the forehead. A drowning GM in New York City is just cheap meat for the media. The resulting feeding frenzy magnifies every stupid little thing that happens to the team, and some of those moments go on to live in infamy. It's good for laugh so long as it's not your ox being gored, but from the standpoint of the organization and its $120 million payroll, being the butt of this town's jokes is the worst possible position it could occupy.

If there's a silver lining to the Mets woes, it may be the possibility that Mo Vaughn is truly cooked. Lee Sinins had this to say in one of his daily newsletters this week:

X-rays and a MRI on Mets 1B Mo Vaughn's knee surgery showed he has "more significant osteoarthritis," fluid buildup, 10-12 bone spurs and even surgery may be not be able to cure the problem.

I spoke to BP's Will Carroll about Vaughn and Will says that, medically, this isn't season ending. Will confirms that Vaughn won't be able to return from the DL and regain a spot in the everyday lineup, but will able to play as long as he gets regular rest.

But, there can easily be more going on here than just medical considerations. The Mets have an insurance policy on Vaughn that will pay 75% of his $17,166,167 salary, but not a penny until he's out for 90 days.

It may only be a matter of time before management decides it's time to rip this team apart. When they come to that realization, they have to know that it will be almost impossible to trade him. So, having him be out for the season, letting them collect on the insurance may become a very tempting option.

Without wishing to further kick Vaughn now that he's down, it's worth noting that Mo's making the rounds to several doctors, something might be more of a CYA maneuver on the part of the team than a genuine effort to salvage his season. From the Mets standpoint, paying "only" $7 million to have Vaughn's ample butt clogging up a spot on the 40-man roster through 2004 (which he'd have to do for insurance purposes, á la Albert Belle) certainly appears more palatable than paying $29 mil to watch a once-fearsome slugger sink the hopes of the team.

Ideally, Vaughn's injury should give an opportunity for Tony Clark, one of the team's few productive hitters, to show he can still play. A bit of rest for Piazza and then the chance to let him get his feet wet SLOWLY at first -- once a week, while Clark buys them time -- would make more sense than the trainwreck the Mets have orchestrated this past week.

If anything can top off such a trainwreck, it's the vision induced by this quote from Vaughn about Rey Sanchez's haircut: "If we're in first place, nobody cares. You could be getting a full body shave."

• It's good to see Rafael Palmeiro finally getting some good wood on the ball. Okay, that was just tasteless, but it stopped you from thinking about completely hairless disabled sluggers for a moment, didn't it?

• In the category of Betcha Didn't Know: George Vescey is the "with" in Loretta Lynn's autobiography, Coal Miner's Daughter Damn, that was probably a better paycheck than he's seen for any of his sportswriting.

• One final note: later this week, I'll be rolling out a line of Futility Infielder merchandise -- shirts and mugs -- via CafePress.com. Weeks of battle-testing have left me quite excited about all of this, and though I'm a little nervous to see how it will be received, I'm satisfied that at least *I'm* enjoying the stuff. So long as you're not dribbling it down the front of a Futility Infielder t-shirt, drinking coffee out of a Futility Infielder coffee mug really makes those ten-run rallies a pleasure.