The Futility Infielder

With the wife out on a dinner date with a friend last night, I was dining bachelor-style, just me and the TV, and my frutti di mare pasta made three. Belching and scratching with impunity, I naturally flipped over to the Yankee game, where Randy Johnson was facing the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Rays had beaten the Yanks the night before, ending their six-game winning streak, but with Johnson having grooved through his last two starts, I -- like most people -- figured he'd have his way with them.

Two batters into my meal, I was watching Damon Hollins circling the bases after swatting a two-run homer, the first runs of the game. Damn. I thought I was watching a replay of the ball's flight over the leftfield wall when Jim Kaat exclaimed "back to back" as Kevin Cash had deposited Johnson's next pitch -- another slider that didn't slide -- in a nearly identical spot, 3-0 Rays. Three straight hits followed, including a triple by the speedy Carl Crawford, and the Rays had extended their lead to 5-0. Shrimp was practically coming out of my nose.

I watched the Yanks get a run back in the bottom of the inning thanks to a seeing-eye ground-rule double by Jason Giambi, but when Johnny Gomes poked a two-run homer in the top of the third, I turned away in disgust. This was going to be one of those nights; as Derek Jacques put it today, "The Big Unit was getting smacked around like Zed's Gimp." Muttering under my breath, I puttered around the apartment with the game in the background, but when Scott Proctor, fresh off the turnip truck, came on to relieve Johnson in the fourth and gave up a hit and a walk, I decided to flip over to the Brewers-Cubs game in hopes of catching rookies Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks (alas they were hitless on the night).

By the time I learned about the Yanks' rally -- from down 10-2, they clawed back to 11-7 by the eighth (Gary Sheffield reports that when they'd cut the lead to five in the third, "I saw the guys on the bench running to the bat rack...") then dropped 13 runs on the hapless Rays to make the final score 20-11 -- it was via a flurry incredulous emails. First Joe Sheehan responded to some kvetching about the possibility of the Yanks acquiring Juan Pierre by telling me the Yanks were up seven runs. Then my brother chimed in from the west coast, marveling at an eighth-inning game log that included back-to-back-to-back homers by Gary Sheffield, Alex Rodriguez, and Hideki Matsui. Soon Nick Stone was invoking one of our favorite baseball lines (first heard via an article in the Brown Alumni Monthly by a professor named Jim Blight, who in the late Sixties had a brief minor-league pitching career that included suffering through a slugfest with an unsympathetic manager) that must have echoed Lou Piniella's words to Travis Harper, who gave up nine runs and four homers in two-thrids of an inning: "If you think I'm wasting another pitcher on this game, think again."

Piniella's hesitation wasn't exactlly Nero fiddling while Rome burned -- more like a drunken hobo ranting through a raging tire fire in Gary, Indiana, given the state of the Rays pitching and of Sweet Lou's increasinly short temper -- but even watching the rerun, it's unsettling. As Nick further opined, his leaving of Harper to suffer such an indignity was evidence of Piniella's general dislike of pitchers, and even Sheehan admitted that he'd never wanted to see a pitcher drill someone like he did Harper. Had I been Harper (and if you've ever seen my arsenal of junk, you'd realize that there's little separating us), I simply would have argued balls and strikes with the ump until I was put out of my misery.

The mayhem had ended by the time I checked in, but I did spend considerable time ogling the box score, one of the sickest you'll ever see. D Jeter ss 6 5 5 2... G Sheffield RF 6 3 4 7... H Matsui DH 5 4 4 2... B Williams CF 4 1 2 5, and that's just the Yanks, who rapped out 23 hits, while the Rays racked up 18. It's like somebody tallied up a beer-league softball match. For the blow-by-blow, check Cliff Corcoran's meticulous account over at Bronx Banter.

One more note from watching the replay on YES: Bernie Williams' glare into the Tampa dugout after smacking a bases-loaded triple following Jason Giambi's intentional walk which put the Yanks ahead was priceless. The ol' graybeard appeared to be telling Piniella, "It's June, bitch. Nobody gets me out in June." And indeed, checking the guy's track record, he's right: .335/.421/.580 in that month over the course of his career, his highest OPS of any month: .787, .881, 1.001, .805, .896, .842. I used to joke, "It's not a significant sample size until Bernie Williams is hitting .300," and though he's unlikely to push his stats up to where they once were, it's nice to see those vital signs climbing.

• • •

Alas, the Yanks' rally hardly put me in a festive mood. A four-word email from Will Carroll, subject: Gagne, had me cursing a Dodger blue streak: "Tommy John, scheduled asap." Aw, shit. Game over, indeed.

As I've said before, I'm livid over Gagne's stupidity in contributing to this injury, first by throwing through his early-spring knee sprain, then by reaching back for those missing MPH. In the Hit List, I suggested throwing the book -- Carroll's Saving the Pitcher -- at the lunkheaded closer.

But I'm equally angry at the Dodger management, coaches and training staff for failing to protect Gagne from himself. Gagne's a professional athlete whose hypercompetitive instincts are to try to get back to the dominant form he had ASAP, while lacking the roadmap for how to do so. The team is supposed to protect its investment -- in this case a two-year, $19 million deal going forward -- by forcing him to override that instinct, to proactively impart some perspective and prescribe a proper routine to prevent him from throwing when his body is less than 100 percent. They fucked up royally -- I can't put it anymore bluntly than that -- by not doing so, and now they've thrown about $10 million down a hole (Gagne figures to be back by next May, but the All-Star Break is a more conservative estimate). For once, L.A. Times columnist Bill Plaschke was right about something. Blind chicken, meet corn; corn, blind chicken:

When taking the mound for his first game this spring, baseball's toughest pitcher didn't swagger, he limped.

Why didn't I scream about the limp?

When throwing his first pitch to an opposing hitter this spring, baseball's most fearless pitcher didn't fling, he lobbed.

Why didn't I rail about the lob?

After Eric Gagne's first appearance in late March, in the quiet of the Vero Beach clubhouse, I approached him with the intention of writing a column.

He was altering his mechanics to compensate for an injured knee. He should stop pitching immediately or risk damaging his arm.

I had seen it a dozen times before. It was Baseball 101. The story was clear.

But Gagne talked me out of it.

He talked the Dodger organization out of it.

"I know my body, my arm is fine, my mechanics are the same, I would never do anything to hurt myself, it was a normal first day," he said at the time.

Plascke invokes the chilling fates of Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela, two Dodgers greats who carried the team to World Championships as they passed through Tommy Lasorda's patented Arm Mangler. He then dredges up the Paul Lo Duca trade, which sent setup man Guillermo Mota to the Marlins as well, but I'll part ways with his opinion while noting that young Yhency Brazoban, now the Dodger closer, has handily outerperformed Mota since the trade:

            IP   ERA   K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP  VORP  Salary
Brazoban   61.2  3.50  7.88  2.16  0.58  .268   14.2   $0.32M
Mota       53.2  5.37  7.88  2.24  1.01  .300    2.1   $2.60M 

Mota did a stint on the DL with elbow inflammation early in May and then came back too quickly; he's been getting lit both before and after. It wouldn't be a shocker at all if he winds up in Gagne's boat. But while the Dodgers made an astute move in dumping Mota and anointing Brazoban, they've undone that good work by failing -- miserably so -- to take care of their blue-chip asset in Gagne. Paul DePodesta's regime is going to take some heat for this one, and rightly so. Will Carroll often writes about smart teams gaining an edge in their ability to keep their players healthy and on the field. For all of their ballyhooed brainpower, the Dodgers look incredibly stupid here. Honeymoon over.

• • •

While I was busy sulking about Gagne last night, Neil deMause gave me even more cause to fret about the new Yankee Stadium. Over at his Field of Schemes site, deMause offers up an overlay comparing the upper decks of the current and proposed stadia. At Saturday's ballgame, Derek Jacques and I spent time bemoaning the fact that the very seats in which we were sitting, in the lower part of the upper deck, would be the ones earmarked for extinction, and judging by deMause's diagram, that's exactly the case:

As you can see, the main changes from the existing stadium would be: Eliminating the middle loge deck entirely to make room for luxury suites, and replacing some of these seats with new rows at the back of the two-level lower deck; and shifting the entire upper deck about 30 feet further back from the field, while lopping off the top few rows. While the resulting stadium would be shorter than the current stadium, it would also have about 12% fewer seats, meaning the 50,000th ticket sold would still be at about the same height. And with the upper deck pushed back from the field, the worst seat in the new smaller-capacity building would be just as far from the action as the worst seat in the current 57,000-seat stadium.

Damn, damn, damn.

• • •

Though it won't be available until September, I'm pleased to announce that the long-awaited Baseball Prospectus book on the Red Sox, to which I contributed two chapters, is now available for pre-order via Barnes and Noble's website. Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart and Finally Won a World Series by Steven Goldman and the Baseball Prospectus Team of Experts, is on sale for the low, low price $11.65. Step right up and buy yourself a copy.

I'm even more pleased to note that my chapter on David Ortiz is prominently featured in the blurb:

The Red Sox finally did it. By making decisions that other clubs would not have made and using talent that other clubs ignored or lacked the statistical understanding to perceive, the new, focused Red Sox management built a championship team that overcame 86 years of baseball history. And along the way, argue the writers of MIND GAME, created a blueprint for winning baseball.

Savvy, insightful, statistically brilliant, and filled with the thudding sound of the sacred cows of received baseball wisdom biting the dust, Mind Game relives one of modern baseball's greatest success stories while revolutionizing the fan's understanding of how baseball games are really won and lost. Created by Steven Goldman and the writers and analysts at Baseball Prospectus--the preeminent annual on the inside game of baseball, with 91,000 copies in print, and Web site, baseballprospectus.com, that receives 5 million hits a month--Mind Game explains why the unenlightened Twins gave up on David Ortiz; what led the Sox to understand Johnny Damon's true value and give him the ideal place in the batting order; how Boston actually gained by having Keith Foulke as a closer vs. Mariano Rivera; and what would likely have happened if the Boston-A-Rod trade went through. (Hint: even worse for the Yankees.) And as the suspense ratchets up before the historic seven-game AL playoff, readers will never look at baseball the same way again, learning that leadoff hitters don't need to be fast and RBIs are not the rock solid barometer of an offensive player's contribution. And all that stealing and bunting? Forget it! Just wait for a three-run homer.

As for the curse of the Bambino? Hogwash! The real curse behind Boston's 86-year drought was its decades of bigoted, inept ownership and management.

Finally, something from the night -- other than my sweetheart coming home to rescue me from my bachelorhood -- that put a smile on my face. Awww yeaaaaah!