The Futility Infielder

Tons of stuff to get to today...

• Thursday was one of the most exhilirating and exhausting days I've had in the short history of this website. Having woken to a premature report about the Aaron Boone trade, I spend the better part of the day counting down the hours, hoping that the deal would unravel and swapping nervous emails and phone calls with friends. Confirmation of the deal at 3 PM EST (a mere hour before the deadline) sent me scurring back to rewrite the second of two pieces that day, combing the web and my own baseball library for info about the prospects involved.

Still hungering for baseball chat later that night, I stayed up late watching the Yanks play the Angels in Anaheim, chatting on Baseball Primer's Game Chatter. While the Yanks outlasted the Angels to win 2-1 in 10 innings, several other Yankees fans including fellow blogger Larry Mahnken kept me abreast of developments in the Red Sox-Rangers game. That contest couldn't have turned out better from this Yankee fan's vantage point. The Rangers outlasted Pedro Martinez, who threw 111 pitches in 6 innings. The Sox tied the game in the ninth while Byung-Hyun Kim held down the fort, exerting himself for three innings. Kim yielded to Todd Jones in the 11th, and the card-carrying homophobe surrendered a game-winning grand slam to Alex Rodriguez. Since then the Sox have lost two to the Orioles, running their streak to four in a row, and giving the Yanks a 4.5 game lead in the AL East standings. Now, what was it all those New Englanders were gloating about a few days ago?

• Back to the trading deadline, several people pointed out a few salient facts worth passing on. For one, Aaron Boone's already mediocre batting stats are propped up by a huge home-road split: 896 OPS at Great American Ballpark, 719 OPS on the road. Eeech. Also, according to this website which calculates in-season Win Shares (the Bill James metric which takes offensive and defensive contributions into account within the context of a team's performance) has departed third baseman Robin Ventura as a superior fielder by a wide margin. Ventura leads all major-league 3Bs with 3.5 defensive Win Shares and 5.45 per 1000 innings. Boone, on the other hand, is 8th in the NL with 2.1 defensive win shares and 3.1 per 1000 innings. That Win Shares site is awesome, by the way, and you can bet your propellor hat and slide rule that I'll be back with more on that topic soon.

On the other hand, sabermetrically speaking, it was also pointed out that in terms of Baseball Prospectus' Equivalent Average stat, Boone's lead over Ventura was pretty slim, a .272 EQA to .269 (.260 is league average). In Boone's defense, it's worth pointing out that Ventura's numbers have been protected by being platooned with Todd Zeile, whose EQA is an anemic .234. This includes time spent as a first baseman and DH, but BP doesn't separate the stat out.

One more area where Boone represents an upgrade is on the basepaths. He stole 32 bases in 40 attempts last season and was 15 for 18 this year. Ventura, on the other hand, was considered the slowest Yankee and had yet to attempt a steal this season. Typical of the humor which surrounded Ventura and made him such a critical clubhouse presence, some of the Yanks joked that for Robin, running was merely "walking with his head down." Though his bat may have been slowing, as a character, the witty Ventura (who requested 100 tickets for Elvis on the night of his trade to L.A.) will surely be missed around these parts.

• Holy Homer, Batman! Robin Ventura's first hit as a Dodger was an inside-the-park homer. "Usually, someone has to go on the DL for me to get even a triple," said Ventura. According to the ESPN recap:

On a drive to the left-center gap, Darren Bragg jumped against the wall attempting a backhanded catch. The ball popped loose as he turned his glove and crashed into the padding. Sitting on the ground, Bragg snagged the ball with his bare hand before it struck the ground, holding it for the umpires to see.

But umpire Jeff Kellogg, running out from his position at second base, ruled that the ball had struck the wall. Bragg tried to flip the ball to left fielder Chipper Jones, but it sailed over his head. Ventura never stopped running, sliding across home before the Braves could retrieve the ball and throw home.

"That was a fall, not a slide," Ventura said with a smile.

I can't wait to see that one on SportsCenter.

• One of the considerations of the Boone deal was the status of a particular Yankee organization prosp... er, suspect: Drew Henson. Yankee GM Brian Cashman minced no words when it came to the quarterback-turned-third baseman: "The move on Aaron Boone speaks volumes on where Drew Henson is at this time."

Where Henson is, of course, is Columbus, Ohio, hitting .228/.287/.400 for the Yanks' AAA affiliate. He's shown power, of course, hitting 12 homers and driving in 58 runs, but his total strikeouts (97 in 390 at-bats) and 4-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, not to mention his 22 errors, pose doubts about his viability as a prospect. With Boone only arbitration-eligible after 2003 and open to the possibility of a long-term deal, the Yanks may effectively bury Henson's chances with the organization in an effort to free themselves of their backloaded commitment him. That comes to $12 million over the next three seasons ($2.2 mil in '04, $3.8 in '05, and $6.0 in '06)..

There's now plenty of speculation that Henson might shift careers. As one headline put it: "Henson's Next Position May Be Quarterback." His NFL rights are owned by the Houston Texans, who would likely deal him since they're set with a budding star, David Carr. And though Henson has stated that he only wants to play for the Yankees (a situation which led the Reds to trade him back tothe Yanks a couple of years ago after he was sent to Cincy in the Denny Neagle deal), agent Casey Close expects his client's baseball rights to be dealt as well: "He's a guy they're still paying $12 million to and wants to continue playing baseball. You'd think they would want to move him, rather than keep sending him to Columbus every year."

Close, who has also discussed the possiblity of a position switch for Henson, says that Columbus itself is a problem for him. From the New York Daily News:

"There are some of their high-ranking officials who think he'd be better off if they just brought him to the majors," Close said. "I don't think people realize how bad things are in Columbus. You know what's going on down there."

There has been turmoil at the Yanks' top farm club as manager Bucky Dent has clashed with player development officials. At one point, Steinbrenner gave Dent control of the club and tried to limit the role of Gordon Blakeley, the Yanks' VP of baseball operations, who oversees the minor leagues.

Blakeley has since said things have settled down, but Close maintains that Columbus has been a difficult place for Henson to play.

"People there haven't forgotten that he's a Michigan football player; there's still the whole thing about Ohio State-Michigan," Close said. "It's not the best nurturing environment for him. Getting out of Columbus would probably be the best thing for him."

Does Close thinks that the intense scrutiny of the tabloid media and the Bleacher Creatures in da Bronx will make for more nurturing environment for the disappointing Henson? As my dad used to say when I wanted him to cut me some slack when it came to baseball drills: "Don't hit 'em so hard, Reggie!"

• Speaking of Reggie Jackson, he can still stir things up. At a celebration honoring the 30th anniversary of the 1973 World Champion A's, Reggie told an Oakland crowd that the Yankees (his current employer) have the better team, drawing plenty of boos. Jackson pointed to the Yanks' superior grasp of baseball fundamentals, a point illustrated when a mental blunder by pitcher Barry Zito on a rundown play led to a throwing error and five unearned runs.

• Speaking of the '73 World Champions and their aftermath... The main holdup in the announcement of the Boone deal, it turns out, was commissioner Bud Selig's intervention. According to this Peter Gammons piece, Selig was concerned about the amount of money the Yanks planned to send the Reds. Initially, when the deal included both Boone and reliever Gabe White, the Yanks were sending Claussen and $3 million. But baseball has a long-standing rule that no more than $1 million cash may change hands in a deal, a rule that dates back to 1976, when Oakland A's owner Charley Finley held a fire sale to dismantle his three-time World Champions.

Finley's sell-off of Vida Blue to the Yankees, and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox was nullified by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who invoked the "best interests of baseball" clause in baseball's working agreement (Hall of Fame curator Bruce Markusen has an excellent recap of that situation) and set a precedent which still stands. Selig was in the thick of that situation because as owner of the Brewers he was pursuing Oakland 3B Sal Bando. As Gammons reports:

"I was trying to get Sal Bando," said Selig. "Charlie Finley answered the phone, 'Finley's Meat Market.' He told me he wanted between $1 million and $1.5 million for Bando. I told him I'd give him prospects, that I had some good prospects.

"He told me, 'I don't want any prospects, what would I do with them?'," Selig recalled. "I tried to suggest that he needed players to put on the field, and he told me to forget it."

Selig's bud-in (with the cooperation of his lieutenant, Sandy Alderson) resulted in the brokering of two smaller deals: the Boone one, which included prospect Charlie Manning, and $1 mil, and the White one, which was for $400,000 and the PTBNL.

• Former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette has found a new line of work, at least for the time being. The Duq is playing manager Benny Van Buren of the Washington Senators in a community theater production of the musical "Damn Yankees." The production is being performed at a ballpark which should be familiar to readers of this column: Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the same ballpark that Jim Bouton made his pitch to save in Foul Ball.

That park is now occupied by the Berkshire Black Bears of the Northeast League, and one of the team's minority owners, Jenny Hersch, is a theater buff who hit on the idea as a fundraiser to restore Pittsfield's colonial theater. The Sox GM became an obvious choice for Hersch: "The only missing ingredient was a real baseball guy to be in the show," Hersch told the New York Times. "Dan Duquette made perfect sense. I knew he was out of work and returning to his native land, so I knew he'd be around and maybe available." Sez the Duq "If George Steinbrenner can get in a conga line with Derek Jeter, why can't I do this?"

No word on whether Bouton, a former Yankee, plans to attend the show.

• I've had a soft spot for the Milwaukee Brewers which dates back in the late '70s and early '80s, particularly for the '82 pennant-winning "Harvey's Wallbangers." No player epitomized the Brew Crew more than their shaggy, unkempt, beer-guzzling slugger, Stormin' Gorman Thomas, who hit 175 homers for them from 1978-1982. A blue-collar superstar in a blue-collar town, Thomas was always a fan favorite; as he put it in Daniel Okrent's classic dissection, Nine Innings: "They come to see me strike out, hit a home run, or run into a fence. I try to accomodate them at least one way every game."

Along with Willie Randolph, Thomas just became an inaugural inductee into the Charleston (Ohio) Baseball Hall of Fame. The Charleston Post and Courier checks in with the swaggering slugger, who's still hacking away... on the golf course. The best line from the piece is this description of Thomas from one of his friends: ""big, loud and thirsty." Thomas lives in the Milwaukee area and remains connected to the club, signing autographs on a regular basis and lending his name to a Miller Park grill, Gorman's Corner.

On the subject of Thomas and the Brew Crew, bard of baseball Roger Angell had this to say in a lengthy interview with a literary website called Identity Theory:

[Like] The 1982 Brewers, there is a chapter in the book [Game Time] called "Blue Collar." This was really the last blue collar team that played in a industrial town and was blue collar itself, Gorman Thomas, Paul Molitor and a lot of other people of that ilk. And the manager Harvey Kuenn lived in the back of a restaurant, Cesar's Inn. It was bar, a tavern and a lot of the players would come back and work behind the bar after a game. And that feeling about that team was deeply, deeply, that old feeling that these guys represent us and that, with a little luck, I could be doing this. Which we don't think any more about athletes. The greatest change of all is that athletes are beyond us.

Heavy stuff, but well worth your time.

• It's been a long time since I checked in with Only Baseball Matters' John Perricone. That probably has to do with the fact that I can't bear to read about how far ahead of the Dodgers the Giants are in the NL West. But since John asked, and since the Giants have lost four out of five, I'll mention that John has a new URL (http://www.onlybaseballmatters.com) and is now powering his blog via Movable Type. In a recent post John notes that new acquisition Sidney Ponson bears more than a passing resemblance to a departed Giant:

Ponson reminds me of another out of shape pitcher, Livan Hernandez. Actually, I'd say he's a lot like Livan, groundball pitcher, team wants him to drop a few pounds, if he keeps the ball down he's terrific.... The only significant difference is that Ponson's looking for 10 million per in his new deal, so this trade just might be a rent a pitcher for a ring type of deal, and if it works, great. If he's gone after this season and the Giants watch the World Series on TV, well, then you've essentially traded Russ and Kurt [Ainsworth, swapped in the Ponson dea for nothing. That's two young pitchers for nada, not the way to handle your franchise.

"Russ" is Russ Ortiz, now a Brave in a trade for Damian Moss. "Kurt" is Kurt Ainsworth, who along with Moss was sent to the Orioles for Ponson. The Aruban Knight has been a league-average inning-eater for the lousy O's for a long time, but this season has seen him turn a corner, going 14-6 with a 3.77 ERA. It will certainly be interesting to see if Sir Sidney can keep up that pace.

• Damn, I could do this all day.