The Futility Infielder

Call me a prophet. Last Friday, Seattle Mariners reliever Jeff Nelson ripped his team's front office for failing to make an impact trade before the July 31 deadline. Over the next couple of days, I emailed a few friends and then posted a comment over at Bronx Banter, asking: "Anybody else think that the next stop on Nellie's train is 161st St.?"

That street, for those of you who don't know, is the location of Yankee Stadium. Nelson toiled there for five years as a premier setup man, earning four World Series rings in the process before talking his way out of town. He signed a 3-year, $10.65 million contract with the Mariners (the team who traded him to the Bronx in 1995), and the Yanks have never adequately replaced him as their top righty setup man. They haven't won a World Series since then either. Hence "The Curse of Jeff Nelson."

On Wednesday the Yanks took a big step towards eradicating that curse, trading Armando Benitez to the M's for Nelson, one headache for another. Benitez, of course, was acquired by the Yanks from the Mets on June 16, and though his stat line is relatively tidy (1-1, 1.93 in 9.1 innings), he lost one game to the Red Sox, aided in another, and took Joe Torre's team on its share of bumpy rides. Torre clearly didn't trust Benitez, relieving him in mid-inning four times in nine games, three times calling on Rivera for four-out saves with some rocky results. In other words, the prized setup man actually increased the closer's work load. Is it any wonder Rivera's been struggling lately?

Now Torre will have a reliever he trusts almost as much as Mo. Nelson has earned that trust. In a twelve-year career split between the M's and the Yanks, Nelson has had an ERA better than the league average every single season, 39% better than the league for the course of his career coming into this year. He's struck out more than one batter per inning in every year except his rookie season. And postseason experience? Even better. Nellie's put up 47.1 innings in October with a 2.66 ERA and 54 strikeouts, and has been scored upon in only six out of 17 postseason series. This is a reliever built for October. He's put up a 3.35 ERA in 37.2 innings this season, striking out 47, but he's been lights out lately: twelve consecutive scoreless appearances, dating back to July 5. In that span he's pitched only 9.2 innings, but he's struck out 16 and walked only one. Talk about a weapon out of the bullpen.

My friends and I were giddy at the news of the trade. The thought of having the 6'8" Nellie coming out of the pen with that drop-down motion and that vicious slider had us swapping emails late this afternoon. "Pinky's back!" my pal Nick exclaimed, using our nickname for the flush the fair-skinned Nelson takes on in the heat of battle. Alex Belth was similarly elated. Here is what he wrote:

I was just thinking last night what an asshole Benitez is, and how difficult he is to root for. Nellie is an asshole, but he's our kind of asshole. Now at the very least the rest of the hacks in the pen look better: Orosco, and Hammonds throwing junk from the left side. And when Gabe White comes back they'll have a lefty with some pop. Add Osuna -- who is a dead ringer for the great New York character actor Luis Guzman -- and the soporific Cuban Contreras in the mix, and the Yankees bullpen is a likable motely crew. They could even be good enough to win a championship with.

...from karma point of view, it's like a breath of fresh air for the Yanks. (Fuck all the Mets fans who were waiting for us to suffer through Benitez in the post-season.)

What's suprising is that both players slipped through waivers. As I understand it, the transaction rules that govern this time of year require each player to pass through waivers, in which every team gets a crack at the player with the worst teams in the player's same league getting first dibs. The player claimed can then either be dealt to the team claiming him or withdrawn, closing the window on any trade opportunity for the season. For both Benitez and Nelson to have made it through means that the two teams chasing the M's and the Yanks, Oakland and Boston, respectively, passed up the opportunity to claim the player either as a means of aiding their own bullpens, or at the very least of blocking a trade to their rivals.

What's in this for the Mariners? Their regular closer, Kazuhiro Sasaki, has been on the DL since June 11 after fracturing two ribs and tearing an abdominal muscle when he fell carrying his luggage. Sasaki's reportedly ready to return, but he's expected to be eased back into the closer role. Shigetoshi Hasegawa has done an admirable job picking up the slack, but the M's felt they needed some "insurance" at closer, hence the trade. Warning: this guy carries his own baggage.

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Julian Headley of Julien's Baseball Blog had a rather curt dismissal of former Yankee prospect Brandon Claussen as a non-prospect based on his low strikeout rate at AAA Columbus this season. I fired off an email to Julien looking to set the record straight. That letter, along with his response, is up at his site, so I won't rerun it here.

Some of the missed communication on Claussen centered around his Tommy John surgery. ESPN does a lousy job publicizing it, but their recent Outside the Lines episode on the surgery is definitely worth catching. The show featured the heavy hitters of the TJ world -- Dr. Frank Jobe, who invented the operation, Dr. James Andrews, who performs as many as seven a day now, and John himself, as well as recent recipients Jon Lieber and A.J. Burnett. The show explained the surgery in graphic detail (make sure you're not eating when you watch), Andrews noted that recovery rates are now around 95%, Jobe called for stronger pitch count monitoring of young pitchers and discussed the future possibility of growing new ulnar collateral ligaments in a lab from stem cells, John discussed his own famous surgery, and Burnett described his recent experience. Don't miss if you get the chance to watch this episode.

• • •

And now for something of the non-Yankee variety. The Dodgers have been struggling for runs all season, to no avail. On Sunday, with their offense last in the NL in runs, homers, walks, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, they fired hitting coach Jack Clark. John Wiebe of John's Dodger Blog has an insightful take on the situation, laying a good portion of the blame on GM Dan Evans and his failure to upgrade the Dodger offense this past winter:

But who, outside of the team, really knows how much Clark could have done? The correlation between acquiring poor hitters and scoring very few runs is pretty high, suggesting that GM Dan Evans should probably have expected a crappy offense out of this team. Clark's preseason motorcycle accident didn't help matters any, and some have said that part of the problem this year was that Clark was physically unable to perform some of his duties.

... So Clark is the one who is dismissed, perhaps because Evans is starting to feel pressure on his own job, what with the pending ownership change. His influence on the team we may never know, but one thing that we do is that the team's offense slid nowhere but back during Clark's tenure. He probably won't get another shot in the big leagues as a batting coach, unless there is a GM or a manager out there who really thinks it wasn't his fault in LA.

Meanwhile that other excellent Dodger blog, Jon Weisman's Dodger Thoughts, has a tough look at the big contracts the Dodgers are saddled with for next season -- $72.4 million for 10 players, including $16 mil for Shawn Green, $15 mil for the always-fragile Kevin Brown, and $11 mil for ever-injured Darren Dreifort. Weisman runs through a couple scenarios for how the Dodgers can fill their lineup without breaking the bank. Let's just say the news is not so good for Dodger fans.