SB Nation - Billy Traber

Worst New York Yankees of the Decade

Ed Valentine — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:00:17 -0000

We had some fun the other day debating the Pinstripe Alley Yankee Team of the Decade. Good points were raised on several controversial choices.

Along the way, some of you asked for the 'Worst Yankees of the Decade' team. I thought that would be fun, so I decided to take a shot at it.

Looking at the rosters over the years, though, I found it almost impossible to narrow it down to a single team. Instead, position-by-position, here are some of the most forgettable -- and regrettable -- Yankees of the past decade.

I am sure there are many other names that could or should be added to this list. But, this should get you started strolling down the wrong side of Yankee Memory Lane.

C -- Alberto Castillo, Chris Turner, Chris Widger, Todd Greene, Joe Oliver, Bobby Estelalla, Wil Nieves, Sal Fasano, Michel Hernandez,

1B -- Travis Lee (.105 in 7 games)

2B -- Tony Womack

SS -- Erick Almonte,

3B -- Wilson Betemit, Drew Henson,

INF -- Alex Arias, Felix Escalona (.000, 5 games in 2004), Mark Bellhorn (.118, 9 games, 2005), Cody Ransom, Angel Berroa, Morgan Ensberg

OF -- Kenny Lofton, Matt Lawton (.125, 21 games, 2005), Mike Vento, Justin Christian,

DH -- Jose Canseco

SP -- Kevin Brown, Tim Redding (54.00 ERA in 1 game, 2005), Carl Pavano, Kei Igawa, Jaret Wright (Carl Pavano BEFORE Pavano), Christian Parker (one 2001 start, got hurt, never pitched again), Jeff Weaver, Darrell May, Sidney Ponson (multiple times),

RP -- Alex Graman (19.80 in 3 games, 2004) & 13.50 in 2 games, 2005), Colter Bean, Bret Prinz, Sean Henn, Gabe White, Billy Traber, Anthony Claggett (33.75 ERA in 2 games).

I am ashamed to admit so many guys like this have worn the pinstripes during the course of the last decade. Yuck!

Minor League Update -- 11/09/09

Ben Buchanan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:34:06 -0000

More photos » by Ben Margot - AP

Remember Javier Lopez? Turns out he's a free agent.

Browse more photos »

The Over The Monster top prospects list should start being compiled fairly soon. We'll be using reader voting again, with a slightly different format which should make it so that "write ins" aren't necessary.

Arizona Fall League

Luis Exposito: 3-8, 2B -- .286/.324/.429

-Expo's numbers just keep on improving since the bad start.

Jose Iglesias: 2-8, HR, K -- .222/.286/.378

-Again some pop out of Iglesias. His bat is clearly a work in progress, and he needs to work on plate patience BIG TIME (4 out of 5 at bats last game were 1-pitch at bats. The other was a strikeout. Though he did record RBIs on 3 of 5, so it's worth considering that it might have been somewhat situational.)

Ryan Kalish: 4-9, 2B, 2 BB, K -- .292/.368/.333

-After putting on a surprising power performance during the regular season, it's all but disappeared for Kalish in the fall. I wouldn't worry too much about it, though. It could be fatigue, it could be what he's working on, but he's shown he can smack 20+ out. His emergence as a patient hitter who's gonna get on base a lot is much more important.

Casey Kelly: 0-4, BB, K

-Whoo!

Randor Bierd: 3 IP, 4 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 1 HR, 2 BB, 4 K – 5.60 ERA, 12:9 K:BB, 1.19 WHIP

-A poor fall can't be a good sign for Bierd's flickering career.

Richie Lentz: 3 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K – 0.77 ERA, 13:2 K:BB, .77 WHIP

-Lentz is putting on quite the show after getting pounded in Portland this year. A dramatic improvement in control (33 BB in 36 IP to 2 in 12) can't hurt.

Chris Province: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 2 K – 3.12 ERA, 8:4 K:BB, 1.04 WHIP

Dustin Richardson: 3 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 3 K – 5.19 ERA, 13:7 K:BB, 1.85 WHIP

-Includes 1 IP, 2 H, 1 K in the Rising Stars game. That inning will not be included in season numbers.

Columbian Winter League

Reynaldo Rodriguez: .261/.352/.391 in 46 ABs

Dominican Winter League

Mark Wagner: 1-8, K – .296/.390/.500

-Can't dominate every week.

Jose Capellan: 7.1 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 5 BB, 0 K – 3.71 ERA, 4:10 K:BB, 1.53 WHIP

-The ERA isn't horrible. But the peripherals...Oh the peripherals.

Sydney Winter League

The brothers Moanaroa and Mitch Dening have been hanging out in Aussie.

Mitch Dening: .500/.600/1.500 in 4 ABs

Boss Moanaroa: .357/.500/.429 in 14 ABs

-Still want to see the power.

Moko Moanaroa: .250/.357/.250

Venezuelan Winter League

Yeiper Castillo: 2.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 1 K – 1.80 ERA, 4:4 K:BB, 1.40 WHIP

Felix Doubront: 4.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 0 K – 2.84 ERA, 2:0 K:BB, .95 WHIP

Leandro Marin: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K – 3.38 ERA, 4:0 K:BB, 1.13 WHIP

List of Red Sox Minor League Free Agents

Edit: I have been correctly called out by poster Chebornek for not crediting SoxProspects.com for having gotten my information for this list from them. It was an oversight, and certainly in no way malicious. SoxProspects.com is a fantastic site and I encourage any and all of Over the Monster's readers to visit it--they're honestly a better resource than I am.

Technically, some of these names aren't minor leaguers, but it's worth noting them separate from the obvious big name guys.

Zach Borowiak

Robert Coello

Nick Green

Derrick Loop

Dave McKae

Iggy Suarez

Good luck to all the free agents in finding somewhere to play—whether back with Boston or elsewhere.

(Javier Lopez is a pretty surprising name, if you ask me.)

Fire Everyone! - Mark Shapiro

Jay — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:53:11 -0000

More photos » by Tony Dejak - AP

Is just developing a good process enough?

Browse more photos »

This is the final installment in a 12-part series.

"A Hit Is A Hit" — The Sopranos, season one.

Christopher has been bankrolling a band called "Visiting Day", who are managed by his girlfriend Adriana. He plays the band's demo to his associate Hesh, an old-timer in the music business.

CHRISTOPHER: So?

HESH: I think it's ... not good.

CHRISTOPHER: Wanna be a little more specific?

HESH: There's good. And there's not good. This is not good.

CHRISTOPHER: Okay, maybe it's not your era — no offense, but ...

HESH: Kid, music is music, talent is talent. I don't care who you are. I seen it all. I seen heavy metal invented by Hendrix at the Bottom Line, he just got out of the army. I told him, "Kid, I don't know what you call it — talent, charisma, magic — whatever it is, you got it." These guys ... [gestures to the cassette] ... I'm sorry, they don't.

CHRISTOPHER: That Vito is a great guitar player, Hesh.

HESH: Good, fine, he's a great guitar player. However, there's one constant in the music business: A hit is a hit. And this, my friend, is not a hit.

CHRISTOPHER: But why?

HESH: Christ. Reasons we can never comprehend or codify, you pitiful schlepper.

Of all the installments in this series, this is the one where it's most tempting to beg off and admit, this might just above my pay grade. I'll be honest, I can't say with much confidence whether Mark Shapiro should be fired. What I can say is that there are definitely good reasons to fire him.

Before we get to that, better face up to some hard facts. If you're going to fire Shapiro, you have to believe that a better option is available. Chris Antonetti is the heir apparent, but you fire Shapiro and keep Antonetti only if you think that in keeping Antonetti, you preserve the best parts of Shapiro while rooting out his shortcomings. Heck, maybe that's actually the case, but I personally couldn't say. It doesn't seem likely. And if Antonetti was the instant front-runner for most any GM opening, what would that make Shapiro if he were available?

Shapiro's calling card is turning walk-year veterans into prospects who become multi-year contributors to the team — a truly staggering haul, including Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee, Coco Crisp, Shin-Soo Choo, Travis Hafner, Milton Bradley, Franklin Gutierrez, Asdrubal Cabrera, Josh Bard and Kelly Shoppach. Add to that list, potentially, over the next several years, Matt LaPorta, Carlos Santana, Luis Valbuena, Michael Brantley, Lou Marson, plus a half-dozen significant pitching prospects, plus Mark DeRosa, Arthur Rhodes, Justin Masterson and Chris Perez. Even his least successful trade acquisitions — Alex Escobar, Jason Michaels, Brandon Phillips, Billy Traber, Andy Marte, Josh Barfield — have not been entirely bereft of big-league talent.

We've chanted that litany before, but it bears recalling because horse trading is one of the most important jobs of a GM, and it's notably one of the only jobs where success or failure is directly traced to his decision. Shapiro also has had an impressive run with third-tier free agent starting pitchers — Pavano made 33 starts and netted a decent prospect, Byrd completed three serviceable seasons, Millwood won the freakin' ERA title, and even Brian Anderson did okay for a couple of years. And while fans rightly bemoan the dead weight of Hafner's contract, Shapiro has not really made the big, crippling mistakes that befall most GMs — on the balance sheet, Hafner-Westbrook-Dellucci pale before Wells-Rios-Ryan.

If you're going to get rid of Shapiro and his like-minded colleagues, then you have to be willing to live without those exemplary skills — without his leadership, class, and intelligence, his deftness with trades and contracts, the respect he commands within the industry, and especially — especially — his willingness to take the public body blows when tough decisions need to be made. You can't assume that the next guy will excel in all of those areas. I am certain we'd miss those qualities.

Having said that, I can tell you why Shapiro should be fired in one word: Talent.

Baseball is never simple. As a rule, the world's most elite natural athletes cannot succeed as major leaguers. Hitting and pitching are simply too hard. Hitting at this level requires a knack that may be the hardest thing to quantify or characterize in all of sports, and if you don't have it, then all the talk or mechanics and approaches in the world can't save you, even if you have several NBA championships and MVP awards on your résumé. Pitching at this level requires a freakish combination of precise muscle control, huge arm-generated torque, resistance to elbow and shoulder injury under extreme stress, and intelligence.

Running a baseball club may be just as hard and just as unquantifiable; after all, more than a few titans of industry have tried and failed. A brilliant executive can't necessarily run a ballclub any better than a world-class athlete can hit a curveball. The brilliant executive can be an inspiring leader, managing and empowering his charges. He can define what kind of people he wants working in the organization, hire them, set expectations, evaluate them, act on them. He can fire people. He can order case studies and surveys of best practices. He can analyze statistics and devise processes, enact them, evaluate them, refine them, start over from scratch if need be. He can maintain outstanding communication with his staff, with his bosses, with the public. He can do all these things reliably, even predictably, because he simply has the tools and the skills.

For all that, however, the brilliant executive can't necessarily tell you whether it's better to overspend on Raul Ibañez or Kerry Wood. He can't necessarily devise a process to tell you that, and he can't necessarily hire the right person to tell you that, either. Nor can he devise a process to hire the right person to tell you that. It doesn't always come down to objective analysis or having a good process. Sometimes it comes down to talent: the talent to play, the talent to evaluate talent, the talent to develop talent, and the judgment to make decisions about talent.

Sometimes — often, maybe — it comes down to reasons we can never comprehend or codify, pitiful schleppers that we are.

Evaluating talent is a special skill, and here I can speak with some experience. Most of my professional life is centered around my ability to identify genuine talent — musical talent, IT talent, and even writing talent — people who reliably will perform at a high or exceptionally high level, just about 100 percent of the time. I have, on occasion, identified individuals with weak paper qualifications who later went on to excel in their field. In some cases, they thrived in part because I gave them an opportunity and aided their development. In other cases, their success was inevitable, and I just saw it earlier than some others.

I am not suggesting, by any stretch of the imagination, that I have the ability to judge baseball talent. Maybe, if I'd spent 20 years working as a baseball professional, learning from thousands of discussions with scouts and making and testing my own observations — maybe then, but perhaps not even then. For whatever it's worth, though, I can tell you that my ability to assess a person's talents is entirely intuitive. I have no ability to explain it, or to teach anyone else how to do it. I can be highly analytical in my assessments of people, breaking down facts and metrics, making rules and devising grading systems to create rankings — and I can teach these things by rote and by example. However, none of that has anything to do with being able to differentiate reliably between a high ceiling and a low ceiling.

I can't tell you for sure that it's the same for baseball, but I worry that it is. Most of the people reading this could be trained in the rudiments of being a low-level scout — doing your homework and measuring some kid's raw tools on the field. Skills are another thing entirely — evaluating footwork and positioning on defense, observing quality of command across a variety of pitches, intuiting the difference between a bad day and a chronic problem. Beyond these, another level, the crucial, game-changing question: Will this ballplayer develop skills beyond what he's showing today? How does he project to a different level at a different age, or even just to a different ballpark in a different league?

I have no doubt that great baseball scouts learned a lot from the great scouts who came before them, and I have no doubt that a gifted executive can learn immensely from a great scout, purely by his ability to listen and communicate and absorb. At the same time, I am quite sure that the greatest talent evaluators in the game are possessed of something that is innate and ineffable. And I am genuinely concerned that the Indians don't employ any of those people — and that, in fact, Shapiro may have favored others in the organization to the point where the best evaluators left.

Take a look at the AP report of Neal Huntington being hired away by the Pirates:

Huntington formerly was the assistant general manager to the Indians' Mark Shapiro, but dropped behind vice president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti and assistant general manager John Mirabelli on the front office depth chart two years ago.

Huntington accepted a different role in 2005, Shapiro said, because Antonetti's skills were in the management and administrative side, while Huntington's were in evaluation and scouting.

"My skill set and passion were more that of an evaluator, but they never technically took me out of the front office," Huntington said. "I was exposed to some incredible things -- rebuilding an organization and being involved in every decision, every tough decision, that was made."

And from the MLB.com report:

As an adviser to Shapiro and vice president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti, Huntington was involved in nearly all personnel and staffing decisions, as well as trade acquisition discussions. He also spent the majority of his time evaluating talent on both the Minor and Major League level.

When asked about Huntington, Shapiro responded: "[Huntington is] one of our chief evaluators and one of our strongest voices on every level," Shapiro said.

Here's a guy who was the highest-ranking evaluator in the organization and possibly the best, a guy with a master's degree in sports management from UMass, and essentially, he was passed over — well treated, perhaps, but pointedly not in line for a future role as GM. So too, perhaps, was John Farrell, who upon leaving Cleveland — quite amicably, as Huntington did — was quoted to say that he was looking to have a larger voice in an organization. Farrell had been a major league pitcher and a college pitching coach, and with the Indians he served stints as Farm Director and Director of Player Development. Despite his experience and impeccable reputation, Farrell too was not viewed as the future leader of the organization.

Years earlier, there was Tony LaCava, whom the Indians hired in 2002 as national cross-checker, essentially rescuing him from the sinking-ship Montreal Expos. As the Expos very recent Farm Director, LaCava naturally was instrumental in selecting the prospects to be received in the Colon deal, which is not only Shapiro's signature trade, but arguably the most successful trade of a veteran for prospects by any GM, ever. LaCava, too, was not retained in the Indians organization, moving on to the Blue Jays as Assistant GM in 2003, just one year later, while John Mirabelli continued his string of generally disastrous drafts.

Like Huntington, LaCava is going to be a GM sooner or later, yet he wasn't good enough to be Assistant GM in Cleveland. None of these guys were given large enough roles in the organization to keep them around, and no doubt the Indians were possessed of too much executive talent to keep in-house — a nice problem to have. Still, given how things have gone since, it's telling that the prince-in-waiting anointment, and present-day "co-GM" status, went not to an ace evaluator, but instead to Antonetti, a man whose background and skill set are more or less identical to Shapiro's.

For all the talk about being open to all ideas and all viewpoints, the major player-evaluation talent in the Indians organization was basically told that being a solid administrator was more important, and that their path to bigger jobs would have to be in some other, presumably less enlightened organization — and never mind that it doesn't matter how well administered your organization is if you don't know who the best talent is. (Is it any wonder, then, that when Shapiro hires a former catcher for a manager, he then populates his coaching staff almost entirely with other former catchers? All leaders lead by example, first and foremost.)

This is not to say that an executive without a scouting background cannot be an outstanding GM, but it's noteworthy that other organizations that have gone with the "Ivy League whiz kid" GM model tend to have a "wise old baseball man" figure hanging close by, advising the gifted non-scout executive. The Red Sox had Bill Lajoie attached to Theo Epstein; Allard Baird is in that role now, while Lajoie is now advising Huntington in Pittsburgh. The Rays put Gerry Hunsicker with Andrew Friedman, and down in Texas, Jon Daniels has access to no less than John Hart and Nolan Ryan. But when non-scout-gifted-executives Shapiro and Antonetti huddle to make the big decisions, who are the wise old evaluators in the room — Charles Nagy and Jason Bere?

Later that night, at home, Adriana and Christopher discuss Visiting Day's potential. Hip-hop mogul "Massive Genius" has told Adriana that the band's demos are promising.

CHRISTOPHER: You know how I use the technique of positive visualization?

ADRIANA: I know you talk about it. You're fairly negative a lot of the time.

CHRISTOPHER: I think you should mentally prepare for the possibility that Visiting Day sucks.

ADRIANA: What?

CHRISTOPHER: I think that ... the only reason you've gotten this far with Massive is ... he wants to be in your pants.

ADRIANA: Boy, oh, boy.

CHRISTOPHER: Look, I had some experts listen to the demo ... they crapped all over it. Sorry.

ADRIANA: Who, Hesh? That old synagogue cantor?

CHRISTOPHER: Silvio. Hey, he owned rock clubs in Asbury. You heard what Squid said. A professional engineer.

ADRIANA: What about my opinion? That it's good. That it's special. This is just a way for you to keep me down.

CHRISTOPHER: That ain't fair.

ADRIANA: What's wrong with it, huh? What's wrong with Visiting Day?

CHRISTOPHER: I don't know ... but it's a problem that you don't know.

This series of articles perhaps has only demonstrated the obvious, that a club this bad — which decides in June that it must not only tank the current season but the next season at the same time — has suffered multiple failures in more than one part of the organization. In any one area, we can talk about how much control that one group of people — coaches, scouts, trainers — really had, compared to the influence of the other groups and the whims of the fates. But a systemic failure points ultimately to Shapiro, who hired and is accountable for all of those groups, and the harsh truth is that every club must contend with the whims of the fates — or fail to contend with them, as the Indians have.

Amateur scouting has been a disaster since Shapiro took over; maybe time will reveal that it was fixed two or three years ago, but maybe not. Big-league scouting has been a mixed bag, with veteran acquisitions missing a lot more often than they hit — in Barfield's case, about four times more often. The training staff has won high praise from some in the industry, but they haven't stopped the Indians from being undercut severely by injuries to a half-dozen key players in just two years — in some cases, multiple injuries and disappointing rehab processes have afflicted a single player like Jake Westbrook over and over again. The farm system has been another mixed bag, producing too many players who dominate at Triple-A but can barely perform at replacement level in the majors. If all clubs were like the Indians in this regard, those MLE formulas might look a lot different.

We had a manager whose playing-time decisions often defied any imaginable logic or reason, who thought it was important to have Ramon Vazquez on his bench rather than future 30-30 man Brandon Phillips, and who thought it was a good idea to put Ryan Garko in the outfield, with a rookie flyball pitcher on the mound — scratch that, ever — and we had a GM who let him do these things. It's true that Shapiro fired Wedge, and he may be sincere in saying that bringing in a new manager is an exciting opportunity. Even so, Shapiro made it abundantly clear that he didn't think there was any real, qualitative reason why Wedge shouldn't continue to be the manager — his exact words were, "it's a cop-out."

We had extraordinarily bad — and sometimes historically bad — bullpens in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2009. Those volcanic fiascos were, at least, largely Shapiro's direct creations, and at most, entirely the fault of Shapiro and people who were hired by Shapiro, and who generally have not been fired by Shapiro. They have turned too many contenders into also-rans, too many decent squads into train-wrecks, and too many season ticket holders into non-customers.

The sum of these observations is this one, frightening, inescapable conclusion: Shapiro has not given us any concrete reason to believe that he knows how to put people into critical positions who are capable of evaluating, developing and coaching real talent — the kind that can thrive at the major league level. Without people in key roles who are possessed of that kind of judgment and talent, it doesn't make any difference how good your organizational processes are or how much class-acting you do. We cannot contend on a diet of trade-acquired minor leaguers and recycled starting pitchers alone. If these things weren't clear five years ago, or even one year ago, they ought to be crystal clear now.

I am just a scribe, neither scout nor coach, not a baseball executive and certainly not a former major leaguer. So I don't really know what's wrong with the Cleveland Indians. But it's a problem if Mark Shapiro doesn't know either. And as much respect for him as I have, I'm not at all convinced that he does.

Too Soon, the Victor Martinez Era Ends

Jay — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:27:42 -0000

More photos » by Tony Dejak - AP

Talent, dedication and leadership put Martinez in the front rank of this era's signature stars.

Browse more photos »

In case anyone is having trouble understanding the deep sobbing of Indians fans over the departure of Victor Martinez, here are a few of the things that Martinez represented and embodied in his time here: Hope and faith. Great hitting, situational and otherwise. A new beginning. A slugging, switch-hitting catcher, the kind of player you build a team around. Leadership in the clubhouse and on the field. The possibility of a small-market club getting over on big-market clubs. Genuine devotion to his team.

Victor Martinez was the total package; he was family. An era in Cleveland Indians history ended this week, and though it featured a half-dozen major stars, this era belonged to Victor Martinez. He authored the greatest season ever by an Indians catcher in 2007. In fact, he owns three of the five best seasons by an Indians catcher, and this year, he was on his way to notching a fifth entry in the top 10. He is the greatest catcher in franchise history — this cannot be disputed with any seriousness, and in fact, with all due respect to Alomar and O'Neill and everyone in between, there isn't even a close second.

It is a cruel world in which the Indians do everything right with a player, and the player does everything right for the Indians, yet he's still out the door after just six short years in the majors. Until the past week, few dared to see this move coming. This love affair — among team, player, city and fans — was going to end someday, but we assumed we had another year and a half at the very least. In our hearts, if not in our brains, we all wanted it to last much longer.

It is, simply, too soon.

In June 1996, the Indians drafted Paul Rigdon, Sean DePaula, John McDonald, Mike Bacsik, and David Riske, among many others. In July 1996, they signed 16-year-old switch-hitting shortstop Victor Martinez out of Cuidad Bolivar, Venezuela. It was a sign of the times; Latin American signings loomed large over draft picks in this era across baseball, and especialy for the Indians. In an alternate universe, Martinez became the slowest-running shortstop in big-league history. One suspects the Indians never worried about whether Martinez would hit enough to be a middle infielder, but rather, they saw a player whose unique physical gifts and raw intelligence could make him an outstanding catcher. Martinez had that knack for getting good wood, certainly, but he was also a fascinating athletic specimen who not only could switch-hit but also switch-throw, as he often shagged balls in the outfield and threw them back in left-handed.

Martinez looked like a good prospect when he debuted with the short-season Scrappers in 1999, but he really opened eyes in 2001, when he emerged as the Carolina League's best player at age 22, posting an 882 OPS, and he was also voted the league's best defensive catcher by opposing coaches and managers. He followed that up with a jaw-dropping season for the Aeros in 2002, during which he lead the Eastern League in OPS by over 100 points.

There is a generation of Indians fans who more or less discovered the minor leagues in 2002. Information about baseball (and especially about sabermetrics) exploded on the Internet through the late '90s, as the Indians dominated their division and made multiple postseason appearances. As the decade drew to a close, the Indians farm system was so bad that it was becoming a punchline within the industry, but we knew nothing about that. As John Hart planned his timely exit, the Dolan family okayed one last glorious charge for the Jacobs Era Indians, deficit spending to one more division title in 2001. After one more first-round exit for the Vizquel-Thome cohort, changes would have to be made, as the old talent got older while the young talent simply wasn't there.

By the time the Indians traded Robbie Alomar to the Mets in December 2001, Baseball America had started to provide significant content online, including their constantly cited rankings — rankings by organization, rankings by position, rankings by league — you name it, they had a ranking for it — which gave us some kind of concrete sense of how valuable guys like Alex Escobar and Billy Traber were. The Baseball Cube had increasingly complete minor league stats for prior seasons. And while milb.com wasn't yet up and running, most minor league clubs had their own websites, where fans around the world could go to check the box scores and track the progress of special prospects, the guys we hoped would be our future stars.

So when the Indians made The Trade on June 29, 2002, we all scurried to BaseballAmerica.com to find out how Brandon Phillips and Cliff Lee measured up (and oh, yeah, might have glanced at that other guy, too, but only for a second), and in the weeks that followed, we got in the habit of looking at those Bisons and Aeros box scores every day. The season was in shambles, but unlike the fans of a decade earlier, we were conditioned to believe that another great era could be just around the corner. So every morning we just had to know, how are our future Belle-Baerga-Loftons doing today?

Much to our surprise, the most impressive player we found in those box scores was not a new acquisition, but rather a shockingly impressive prospect named Victor Martinez. This switch-hitting catcher was — by far — the best hitter in his league. Not super-young, but young enough. A slugging catcher, and rated as a good-to-great defender to boot, Victor Martinez was too good to be true. It turned out that the farm system hadn't been completely devoid of talent. We had at least one home-grown gem, one guy worth believing in. More than any other one player — and notably more than Escobar, Phillips or Lee — Martinez put up the numbers in 2002 that told us that another Era of Champions was not only possible, but worth getting excited about.

I mean, it was a 993 OPS! By a catcher! Are you kidding me? Obviously we were going to have another Great Team, because what better way to start building a Great Team than by grooming a slugging catcher?

One thing you can say about Victor's career in the majors — and perhaps the key to why he is so beloved — is that he never once disappointed in his six years with the club. Oh, sure, he spent some time on the DL, including the bulk of 2008, and he had his deep slumps, but those never lasted more than a month or so. In his first full season, he overcame a slow start in the first 10 games to post a 1015 OPS over the next 60, earning his first All-Star appearance in the process. He shattered the club record for RBI by a catcher with 101, and perhaps most surprising, he settled in as the club's cleanup hitter. More than that, he emerged incredibly quickly as the glue that made a group of players feel like a winning team. He played with passion, joy and persistence, always smiling or shouting, and he famously had a different handshake for every single player in the clubhouse. By the middle of that first full season, he was as close to a team captain as the Indians would have this decade.

He was rewarded the following April with a five-year guaranteed deal, locking in his services through the 2010 season — and clearly, we all felt, this was more than enough time for us to reap the rewards of his superstardom. Before Grady Sizemore had even won a starting job with the Indians, Martinez was already locked in — on the field and off, in the box scores and under contract — as the cornerstone of the new-look Indians. That year, Martinez went on to be the key player in an improbable 67-34 surge that took the team to the brink of the postseason, posting an OPS of 900 in June, 916 in July, 1058 in August, 925 in September — and yes, a 902 OPS in that final, horrendous week.

In 2007, Martinez again took center stage as the MVP of one of the best teams in the majors. Best player, you ask skeptically, on a team with two legit Cy Young candidates? Yes, Victor was that squad's MVP — in part because he called 63 of the 67 games those two Cy contenders started, in part because he started a staggering 142 games at catcher that season, in part because he handled a shakey relief corps and helped them get the job done far more often than they should have been able to, and last but not least, because he was simply the best hitter on that team. (Go ahead, look it up.)

Fans of all generations remember that 2007 squad as their favorite Indians team ever. The season ended in disappointment, as 61 out of the last 61 have, but that team delivered dozens of great moments, and through it all, we had the persistent sense that this wasn't just a great group of ballplayers, but a group of great guys as well. We've heard from Shapiro so often — admittedly, too often — that the Indians aspired not just to win a championship, but to win with a certain kind of player, with a certain kind of person. Victor was everything Shapiro ever wanted a Cleveland Indian to be — not only a stellar performer but also a great teammate, devoted to his family at home and his family at the ballpark. The pain in both men's voices spoke volumes this week. Not only is this not what the fans wanted, it isn't what either one of them wanted. What they wanted was a championship not just for the Indians, and not just for Victor Martinez, but for the Victor Martinez Indians. Our favorites.

They came close. That era is done now. It ended quickly and harshly this week, the moment Cliff Lee was traded, the moment the Indians started focusing on a season beyond Victor's contract, which almost certainly, prudently, meant a season beyond when Victor could be a star player on a small-market club competing for a championship. He was our best and greatest hope in 2002, the leader of our revival in 2004 and 2005, and the best player on our favorite team in 2007. It ended far too soon.

However Beautiful the Strategy

Jay — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:48:32 -0000

The season is over. We've had some dreadful luck, but a reversal of fortune by itself couldn't change the commanding position our rivals cumulatively hold over us. We're five games behind Chicago and no better than they are, in terms of runs scored and allowed. We're six games behind a Minnesota squad that overall has been 37 runs better. And we're now ten games behind Detroit and 49 runs worse than them.

The differences in runs matter for two reasons. First, they show that our poor standing isn't just about bad luck, timing and leverage. Just because we're 13 games under .500, with 12 losses that should have been wins, doesn't mean we should be 11 games over. It doesn't work that way. We should have won most of those 12 games but not all of them, and we stole a few back, too. Bad luck and timing aside, this club is still a mediocrity at best, and injuries happen to all clubs, not just ours. That leads me to the second reason that the differences in runs matter: They suggest strongly that there's little reason to think we can catch Detroit or Minnesota, and we're not even 50-50 to catch Chicago.

Let's be honest. Luck can't explain the club's manifest mediocrity, three years out of four. The Indians front office has won respect and accolades within the industry, adoration across the blogosphere and plenty of lavish praise on this very site. The Indians consistently have put together good teams on paper that fell apart on the field. We've excused them for bad luck, for random variation, for injuries and variance and vagaries. At this point, it is fair to say, simply, that the people in charge have not gotten the job done.

Winston Churchill said it best: "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."

Can we discuss this like adults? Should we even try? Hard to say. It is so much simpler just to say, fire the manager. The Indians have failed; we know that much. We have a pretty clear idea how they've failed, but we're pretty fuzzy on why. There are web forums now boiling over with the usual reasons and theories, the sorts of things that get dismissed here out of hand. For most of those theories, it's time to redouble our dismissiveness — the problem surely isn't that we've failed to give Barfield more of an opportunity. For others, it may be time to reconsider.

I won't fault Shapiro's front office for having a plan. (How stupid is that? Would we rather they didn't have a plan?) I would like to pose some theories as to why the Shapiro program has failed much more than it has succeeded up to this point. Each theory deserves a lot more thought and research than a new dad is likely to cough up after midnight — that would be none — but that will come later. For now, let's just try out some new ideas — and old ones.

Theory #1: They might as well be bloggers.

Maybe the joke is on us. The Indians make the "right" moves, like signing Dave Dellucci, not the "wrong" moves, like signing Raul Ibañez. They know the stats, we know the stats, so when they make a move, it looks right to us. Problem is, we tend to forget that the numbers rarely tell us the full story. It's one thing to argue the numbers with a fellow fan — all I've got is the numbers, and all he's got is the numbers, because neither of us are scouts — but it's quite another to praise a front office for being able to Paint By Numbers. I mean, hell, any of us could paint by the numbers.

Maybe it isn't a good thing that I can understand and explain most every move the Indians make. Maybe they should be making moves that don't make sense to me — because after all, all I've got are the numbers. The saberblog view is essentially that since the numbers are all we can be sure about, the numbers are all that matter, and anything else is pure luck. In other words, the entire career of a GM like Pat Gillick was pure luck.

The Indians have done a great job at amassing value on paper, but they've shown little ability to discover value that isn't evident in the numbers. I've been able to explain pretty well why the Indians do almost everything that they do — aside from burying Marte. Maybe that's a problem.

Theory #2: The scouting and player evaluation is mediocre.

It is entirely possible that the Indians simply don't have a good scouting apparatus and don't have a genuinely gifted group of evaluators in the organization. Where there's a clear track record and a big sample size of performance data, the Indians have done a pretty good job of figuring out which players have value, but they rarely are in the market for such players. More often, they're in the market for a third-tier veteran, with a spotty or inconsistent track record, often distorted by injury.

Samples in baseball are never really "controlled" in a scientific sense, but drastic variance in a player's physical health render a player's entire performance record essentially moot. Imagine if some ballparks half as large and others twice as large, and imagine you never really knew which ballpark a player was playing in for any given game — injuries are like that. For many other players — for every reliever — there isn't that much of a record to go on, and the ability to amass performance data and project it forward is basically useless; what your evaluators see with their own eyes and report to the club is paramount.

Antonetti pointedly noted last winter that no team consistently out-performs the market in free agency, but this is an odd defense. For an organization with the stated goal of producing industry-best results in all phases of its operation, the failure to out-perform the market is simply that: a failure. It is the front office's function to outperform the market on statistical analysis, and also to outperform the market on valuation and risk assessment, and finally to outperform the market on scouting. That is, if there are five players who project stastistically to similar performance in the coming year, the Indians ought to be able to pick which one is likeliest to outperform (and least likely to underperform) that statistical projection, based on the scouting alone. There is little evidence that the Indians have the ability to do this, especially when you look at the ways the Indians have outperformed and underperformed in acquiring talent.

The Indians often are criticized for a conservative draft strategy, but the criticisms don't really add up. I think the numbers show that the Indians' strategy makes perfect sense, but there's a much stronger case that their mediocre yield is simply the result of mediocre scouting. Right strategy, wrong players.

In free agency, the Indians can't shop at the top of the market, nor can they usually sign second-tier players who generally represent very poor value in terms of risk and marginal wins. The analysis leads them to third-tier players, but their scouting may not be good enough to select the right ones. Right strategy, wrong players.

Business analysis has the Indians investing heavily in much of Latin America, while pulling back in the corrupt and over-saturated Dominican and moving into other international markets. They've done very well in this area, but why? I submit to you that the Indians have had some breakthrough conceptual ideas in their development strategy — education and dentistry among them — and that beyond that, this is basically a numbers game. The Yankee Years has a great digression about how the Indians ended up with a guy like Fausto Carmona, and Shapiro essentially concedes that it's a cattle call. You don't need great scouting to sign a few dozen 15- and 16-year-olds with really great tools, and beyond that, productivity in Latin American signings is about process and volume, not evaluation.

Yes, what I'm suggesting is that scouting 16-year-olds may not be all that hard, and that's why the Indians can excel in this area. It may be that scouting 18-year-olds isn't hard either — maybe the Indians could outperform other teams if they drafted more high school players, but their analysis is telling them (correctly) that that's a bad idea. Perhaps the analysis says they need to focus on more fully developed college players — the kind they may not be all that great at scouting. How would that be for irony?

The Indians have also done very well in trades for prospects, but they are always acquiring prospects who are thriving in Double-A or who are performing very well at a young age in Advanced-A. Think about the big line that the PTM system draws, between age-22 in Advanced-A and age-23 in Double-A. It takes great scouting to identify college players who eventually will perform very well in Double-A, or high schoolers who someday soon will thrive in Advanced-A. Once they've done that, however, it probably doesn't take particularly good scouting to figure out that they're probably going to make good major leaguers.

Or maybe we really needed to keep Tony LaCava. I can't help but notice that Brian Tallet is having a much better career than Billy Traber.

Theory #3: Their statistical analysis isn't all that great.

I know, this one seems like it's out of left field. I think it's beyond question that the Indians are doing an amazing job of collecting the data. They're collecting all kinds of crazy things, from the distance the catcher's mitt has to move to catch each pitch to the quotes that players give to reporters after the game. There's no question that high-quality data collection is the foundation of high-quality data analysis, but not everyone who's doing the former is getting the latter.

Before hiring Keith Woolner last year, the Indians didn't even have a full-time data analysis executive. It was, apparently, assistant GMs and interns running numbers in Excel whenever they wanted to analyze something. So we had a club spending $100 million on players every year, spending upwards of $1 million on data collection, and apparently not spending $100,000 on dedicated data analysis. And while the Indians' decisions have been sabermetrically sound, again, there's scant evidence that their methods are more advanced than those used by dozens of bloggers every day. In particular, they seem to be fixated on positional value — VORP, Sabermetrics 101 — while evidently being baffled by defensive value — until recently, a doctoral-level topic in sabermetrics.

Think about it. We could have stuck a group of defensively excellent, mediocre hitters in center field, at shortstop and catcher, while moving Grady, Jhonny and Victor to LF, 3B and 1B — years ago. We would have had outstanding defense at basically all six of those positions — and the kicker is, we ended up with a bunch of crap hitters at all the corner positions anyway. Gootz in center, Asdrubal at shortstop, Shoppach at catcher. Hell, we could have done that this year.

How long did we stick with Jhonny at shortstop? How many runs did it cost us? And now, quick — what's the difference in positional value between shortstop and third base? Would you believe it's only five runs over 162 games? And the difference between LF and CF is ten runs. Does anyone believe that the difference in defensive skill between Sizemore-Gutierrez and Dellucci-Sizemore is only ten runs?

Let me assure you, I am only playing devil's advocate here. It is by no means clear that any of those decisions were wrong. I'm just saying, there's a case to be made that the Indians' application of sabermetric concepts is fairly unsophisticated. I mean, seriously, they're putting Garko in the outfield. You can't tell me they really understand defensive value when they do things like that.

Theory #4: Eric Wedge has no clue.

I have long held that fire-the-manager is the lowest form of baseball discourse, but as many here have noted, my tune changed earlier this year. It's one thing to argue, year after year, that we can't prove that the Many Bad Things that happen to the Indians are the manager's fault. But after a certain number of years, the question rightly should be reversed. With so many qualified candidates in the world for such a tiny number of jobs, at some point, the question becomes not why fire him, but why hire him?

In other words, what reason do we have to believe that he's helping this team win games in any way?

Eric Wedge may be a special guy. He may be special friend. He may even be a great motivational speaker. But it is time to put to rest the assertion that he is a great motivator. We have had some great talents who've had some great seasons, but apart from them, it seems we've seen a lot more down years than up years from our regulars. If Wedge is such a great leader, how has his leadership helped Peralta, Garko, Francisco or Carmona?

Who, in fact, has it actually helped? Guys like Sizemore or Martinez, who are so famously self-motivated?

Understand, I'm not impressed with dissection of Wedge's tactical game. Managers are often criticized for sticking with their starters too long — allegedly trying to get them the "W" — but this criticism misses the basic fact that a struggling starter is almost always a better pitcher than the club's 6th or 7th best reliever, and that's the pitcher who's going to get used in the 5th or 6th inning. As for bunts and hit-and-runs and the like, those plays more often than not are close to break-even, with the specific personnel involved more than capable of tilting the balance one way or the other.

No, the apparent problem with Wedge is much worse. He doesn't seem to have any kind of grasp on which players deserve playing time. Time after time, we've seen hundreds of plate appearances given to hitters whose results are terrible and have been terrible for a long time. This gets back both to player evaluation issues and to the monoculture. Wedge consistently and openly favors players whom he feels are giving him a "quality at-bat" or who have "the right approach." (I don't mean to mock by my use of quotes, only to quote.)

Here's what Wedge doesn't seem to grasp. Those players with the lousy results and great approach are getting the lousy results despite the great approach. The great approach doesn't suggest that the player will do better; rather, if the Indians are right about what constitutes a great approach, then a great approach suggests that that player can't do any better than he already has been doing. Specifically, it doesn't mean that Dellucci is going to bounce back; it means that this is the best he can do. He's seasoned and maximizing his game, and his production likely can be matched by even a raw and inconsistent Matt LaPorta. In decision after decision, Wedge has favored a player whose approach he respected over one with actual upside.

Theory #5: They've created a monoculture.

We've been kicking this one around for about three years, and the evidence has mounted that not only is it true, but it's harmful. They're looking for a certain kind of player personality, and they've found about 18 of them, and a little too often, all 18 of them slump at the same time.

If you aren't one of Shapiro's Right Guys, you can't get in this organization. And if you aren't one of Wedge's Right Guys, you can't get in the lineup. I don't excuse Brandon Phillips for his crap attitude, and I don't excuse Jhonny Peralta for being a young veteran who doesn't respond to coaching. Still, it is undeniably a failing of this organization that with players who don't fit a certain mold, there is a total breakdown in communication. If you're not in, you're way, way out.

The monoculture extends most noticeably (and humorously) to the front office personnel, where it has produced a group of people whose ideas, speech patterns and jargon are utterly interchangeable. (If we asked Brad Grant about th Hafner contract and Antonetti about the draft, would the answers really be any different?) The Indians insist that they have an open organization where everyone is empowered and ideas are heard. But what if they seek out and retain people who essentially have the same types of ideas?

Shapiro's character test has always been at once admirable and dubious. His job is to build a championship-caliber baseball club, and the Indians already have the deck stacked against them when it comes to financial resources. Is it really wise to further restrict the players who we're willing to sign based on highly subjective character judgment? I recognize that creating a great clubhouse culture has its upside, but it's inevitable that in a limited marketplace for talent, you can't put a premium on personality while holding constant your premium for talent.

Sandy Koufax said it all: "In the end it comes down to talent. You can talk all you want about intangibles, I just don't know what that means. Talent makes winners, not intangibles. Can nice guys win? Sure, nice guys can win — if they're nice guys with talent. Nice guys with a little talent finish fourth, and nice guys with no talent finish last." (I've pulled this one out before, but it bears reprinting.)

This doesn't just apply to players, either, but to everyone in the organization. Here's a chilling thought for you — maybe by insisting on the Right Guys across the board, they've managed to miss out on many of the best scouts.

Theory #6: This is all one big problem.

A few years ago, it was fashionable to speculate about why Billy Beane's "stuff" doesn't work in the postseason. A better question now might be, why doesn't it work in Cleveland? The most obvious explanation is that Shapiro cares a great deal about things that Beane basically doesn't care about at all. Specifically, he cares about the character of his players, he cares about what each player might mean to the community, and he cares about what his manager thinks. While I'm sure all of that makes for a more rewarding workplace, there is scant evidence that any of it has helped the Indians win games.

Analysis and decision-making often drift toward areas of organizational confidence, even if that drift puts decisions out of balance. The Indians are appropriately humble about statistical projections, but they must figure that they know as much as anyone else about this. They're confident that they know what makes a player a good teammate, and they know what "the right approach" looks like. Given the subjectivity of scouting, they favor the player with the best statistical projection. Given the uncertainty of statistical projection, they favor the player who has a great approach and is a great teammate. And given the vagaries of defensive evaluation, they favor putting a player in his most valuable position, because that math is simpler. They are sure that a slugging catcher is more valuable than a slugging first baseman, and they are sure that Dellucci's approach is better than LaPorta's, and they are sure that Casey Blake is a better teammate than anyone in the world.

So if you're looking to wrap it all up in one big theory, here it is: The Indians are smart, serious and well-intentioned. But when they make their decisions, they put a lot of emphasis on a bunch of things that, in the grand scheme of things, really do not help a baseball team win ballgames. I can't tell you how to build a bullpen that isn't historically bad, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have much to do with statistically analyzing a very small sample of innings or showing up to camp in good shape, and it doesn't have anything to do with being a good teammate or getting along with Eric Wedge. The Indians seem to know an awful lot about those subjects and almost nothing about putting together a non-horrible bullpen.

That, and maybe their scouting sucks.

Wednesday's Frosty Mug

KLSnow — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:54:22 -0000

Some things to read while re-evaluating your retirement fund.

So Brewer management is headed out to Las Vegas for the Winter Meetings, but even before leaving they were working to lower expectations. There's a new poll in the right sidebar asking what you'd like Doug Melvin's priorities to be this week.

Speaking of polls, have you voted in the BCB Reader Survey yet? I'm almost done bugging you about it, I promise.

Ben Sheets has until Sunday to accept or decline the Brewers' offer of arbitration. Using these salary estimates from August, Eric Seidman of FanGraphs has crunched the numbers and estimates Sheets' value at $16.25 million for 2009 or $44 million over the next three seasons. Overall, Dave Cameron estimates the Brewers can afford to spend about $1.8 million per win above replacement if they hope to reach 90 wins.

It seems more and more unlikely the Astros will be able to afford Ben Sheets. They couldn't afford to offer arbitration to Randy Wolf.

For once, I'm four paragraphs into the Mug before mentioning CC Sabathia. The Angels are denying reports that they've shifted their focus from Teixiera to Sabathia, and the lefty reportedly hasn't heard from the Dodgers in weeks.

It's been a few weeks since we've heard any rumors about Prince Fielder, so I guess this is news: he could be available in a deal for starting pitching or a closer.

Do you have some time to burn and an intense desire to vote on awards? Gabe Kapler, Ryan Braun, CC Sabathia and doug Melvin are in the running for This Year in Baseball awards. Voting is open until 11 pm Monday.

As noted below, the Brewers handed out 48 playoff shares yesterday valued at approximately $29,000 each. Elsewhere in baseball, the Rays' playoff shares were over $223,000, which is more than half the 2008 salary of a significant portion of the Rays' roster. Also, somehow the Mets got $9,185 each despite not making the playoffs at all.

As noted in the FanShots, Baseball America rated Caleb Gindl the #12 prospect in Hawaii Winter Baseball. Congratulations to him on the honor.

Meanwhile, the Brewers continue to fill in the gaps in their scouting department. They hired two new scouts and promoted a third yesterday.

Here's what's on the hot stove:

Astros: Re-signed Doug Brocail, somehow convincing the Type A free agent to take a pay cut, even after declining arbitration.
Braves: Acquired Javier Vazquez from the White Sox for three prospects.
Cardinals: Still have not finalized a deal with Trever Miller, which was reported weeks ago. Rumor has it Miller failed a physical.
Giants: May be looking to sign former Cubs reliever Bob Howry, especially now that the Cubs declined to offer him arbitration.
Indians: The team is reportedly unwilling to offer a multi-year deal to free agent Orlando Hudson, more or less eliminating any chance they had of signing him.
Rays: The team may or may not be willing to make a trade involving SS Jason Bartlett.
Red Sox: Signed journeyman lefty reliever Billy Traber to a contract for 2009.
Reds: Walt Jocketty is downplaying reports that the team may be interested in signing Kerry Wood.
Tigers: The team is reportedly engaged in ongoing conversations with the Pirates regarding Jack Wilson.

Two Cardinals blogs, Fungoes and Viva El Birdos, are disappointed by the Cardinals' decision not to offer arbitration to Braden Looper, who made 63 starts for the Cardinals after being converted from the bullpen, and posted a 2008 ERA+ (102) only slightly lower than A.J. Burnett's (105). So if Derek Lowe and A.J. Burnett are both seeking five year deals, Looper could position himself as a cheaper alternative and still get a pretty nice contract.

Can you really cite "tough economic times" as an issue when you're owned by a company worth nearly 11 figures? The Blue Jays are citing economic struggles as the reason for mass layoffs in their sales department. Metro Canada (via The Southpaw) is reporting 20 workers will be laid off, but The Boston Herald (via Baseball Musings) is citing a team source saying it will be "in the 30's."

The Giants' sales department is pursuing a new strategy that doesn't involve lots of empty desks: Approximately 2,000 upper deck seats will be priced based on demand. The story suggests tickets for the Giants/Brewers series in April could sell for as little as $8.

Will time change the Hall of Fame fate of Mark McGwire? A's Nation offers their thoughts and a poll.

Odds are I live closer to Cedar Rapids than most of you do, but if you're within driving distance you might see me at The Cedar Rapids Kernels Hot Stove Banquet, featuring guest speaker (and former Brewer) Jim Abbott. Tickets are relatively reasonably priced and the proceeds go to local charities.

Oh, and I know the economy is tough, but you're just buying someone else's trouble when you purchase a used wheel.

Drink up.