SB Nation User Blog: DanUpBaby

Type-B personalities

DanUpBaby — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:18:17 -0000

Your Type A and B free agents for the 2009-2010 Hot Stove season:

TYPE A

Matt Holliday: This seems pretty obvious. Bad news: the Mets, Holliday's current Media Suitor of choice, have a protected first rounder in 2010, leaving the Cardinals stuck with a second rounder should he end up bolting for Queens. I hate to root for the Red Sox, ever, for anything, but they do have the 29th pick...

TYPE B

Mark DeRosa: This also seems pretty obvious. I don't want the Cardinals to resign DeRosa, because his versatility is of questionable value for this team at this point in time, but I don't doubt that somebody will.

Joel Pineiro: Do it. Are the Brewers looking for another starter?

Troy Glaus: This is maybe the oddest case. Troy Glaus made $11.25 million last year, which works out to something like the league minimum per plate appearance, and while last season's salary is not inextricably linked to next year's, as it is for arbitration cases who aren't yet free agents, it's tough to imagine the Cardinals winning the case by offering less than, say, $7 million. That's still a lot of money per plate appearance.

But if the Cardinals aren't interested in going into the season with David Freese as the sole option there's no reason not to offer Glaus arbitration. Healthy, Glaus is as good a player as Adrian Beltre or [type A free agent] Chone Figgins, and he's the only one who would, if he accepted arbitration, be a one year commitment. If he's unhealthy, the Cardinals already have David Freese.

That seems like a low-risk shot at a draft pick, but last year the Cardinals didn't offer Braden Looper, another fair bet, arbitration, so it remains to be seen whether the Mozeliak Cardinals are avoiding the procedure as a general rule. After the jump: yet another outfield option emerges.

Not enough tires yet kicked? Ready to seek out the poor man's Mike Cameron? Randy Winn, the only sitting all-star to ever be traded for a manager, is officially out of a job in San Francisco. I'll be honest: I don't think I could get on board for this. But I can see a case made. Here's what it requires:

Complete faith in UZR. Do you believe it's possible for a 35 year-old career CF/RF tweener to be a defensive juggernaut in the corners? After a long career as a basically average tweener, Winn's spent the last two years almost entirely in left and right and put up 30 (Fielding Bible) or 34 (UZR) runs above the average corner outfielder, who admittedly is often a first baseman, a baseball hater, a crawling man with a glove painted on his back, or all three at once. If he'd been doing this his whole life, or if he had once been Colby Rasmus or Mike Cameron in center, I might accept this at face value, but as best we can tell Winn was once a marginally above-average center fielder, and that was several years ago.
More optimism than even the (still misleadingly named) Bill James projections, which have, in the past, seemed to regress all hitters in the general direction of year-2000 Coors Field. Freely available, now, at Fangraphs, these projections expect Winn to get an entire win back from his miserable 2009 season, which at .276/.337/.389 would still make him three runs worse than an average hitter. At his best—2008's .306/.363/.426 will do—he's Skip Schumaker with some extra power, which makes him an average corner outfielder before his apparently otherworldly defense is accounted for.
Most importantly, the intestinal fortitude to accept another minor disaster in left field. Winn is a good bounceback candidate, but so is Rick Ankiel, so was Chris Duncan; are the Cardinals, with Carpenter, Wainwright, and Pujols currently in their primes, ready to take another high-downside risk at perhaps their easiest-to-upgrade spot on the roster. Winn'll be cheaper than most outfielders who put up a four win season last year, but he's also got a better chance to be a one win player than most of them.

I'm not sure if I'm ready for all that yet, but I've always liked Winn as a player, and if the Cardinals have pinpointed other areas on which to spend their payroll windfall (I would be willing to sign for the minimum, so long as it's a short term deal) he's an interesting low-cost move.

2009 SBN Rookie of the Year

DanUpBaby — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:03:10 -0000

I'm going to be honest—the ballots went out a while ago, and until I got the results back I was relatively sure I voted for Cullerton Rasputin, at least in third place. His name must have slipped my mind.

Rk	Player	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Tommy Hanson	Atlanta Braves	9	9	6	78
2	J.A. Happ	Philadelphia Phillies	6	9	7	64
3	Andrew McCutchen	Pittsburgh Pirates	8	3	5	54
4	Chris Coghlan	Florida Marlins	7	5	4	54
5	Dexter Fowler	Colorado Rockies	-	3	1	10
6	Randy Wells	Chicago Cubs	-	-	6	6
7	Garrett Jones	Pittsburgh Pirates	1	-	-	5
8	Casey McGehee	Milwaukee Brewers	-	1	2	5
9	Seth Smith	Colorado Rockies	-	1	-	3

That said, I'm not sure I can argue with the results; Hanson was brilliant, J.A. Happ might end up the next Pat Listach but nevertheless qualified for the ERA title with a top ten finish, and Andrew McCutchen had twenty more runs created than Rasmus in thirty fewer plate appearances.

As for that lone Garrett Jones vote, he was awesome, but I think this is the first time I've ever seen the Manny Ramirez Postulate used to justify a rookie of the year vote.

At 11: more arbitration discussion!

Signing Most-Valuable Players

DanUpBaby — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:33:01 -0000

You shoulda come to the first party—we didn't get home 'til around four in the morning. I was blind for three days...

View full size photo »

There's no new news, which means it's time we go over some old news: the decision to sign Ryan Franklin to a multi-year extension stipulating that he was not allowed to record another out in 2009. That particular clause was the main problem with the Franklin deal in particular, but since we didn't know about that at the time I think it's the principle of the thing that's wedged so tightly inside the Cardinals fanbase's collective craw. This team's management does so many things correctly; it's identified free talent like Ryan Ludwick, it's signed Adam Wainwright to a long-term deal at actual wainwright rates, and its drafts have improved tremendously since the seeds of what's become the new regime were first planted.

But Ryan Franklin was the second time in as many years that the Cardinals broke, to their own detriment, what was originally a Branch Rickey tenet and has since become a Sabermetrics 101 truism: Don't sign a player at the top of his value! This shouldn't be a difficult thing to grasp because it's so categorically true as to be basically meaningless; if you sign a guy at the very peak of his value, things can only go downhill from there.

I've thought about these contracts assuming, above all else, that John Mozeliak is a rational, above-average general manager; most of them are at this point, so it might be worthwhile to consider who else has made these two moves in recent years, and where it's left them.

THE LOHSE DEAL: Three long-term contracts obviously weirder than Kyle Lohse's

3. Juan Pierre. Five years, $44 million, 11/2006. What a terrible year for contracts this was—at the same time all of this was happening the Cardinals were getting ready to tear up Chris Carpenter's last two years, worth $15 million, so that they could hand him three more at an annual value of $15 million. Pierre is probably the nearest analogue to Kyle Lohse of the three I've got here; he's an intermittently useful regular who is being passed off, as salaries go, as the second banana on a pretty good team, not the guy who goes to the bench when somebody better shows up.

But more importantly, when the Dodgers pounced on Juan Pierre here—before the winter meetings, even—they seemed to be bidding against themselves. Pierre had just been traded from the Marlins for what at the time was a platter of second tier pitching prospects, and his year in Chicago hadn't exactly brought him back to the front of the national conscience. Who else was ready to offer Juan Pierre $44 million? Or Kyle Lohse $41?

2. Gary Matthews, Jr. Five years, $50 million, 11/2006. Stop me if you've heard this one before, maybe three times before: a player who has been useful in his own way for some time has a brilliant season that gets a lot of attention, not all of it for his tangible value. In the offseason he's signed to a contract that seems out of touch both with his apparent market value and the likely bounds of his performance, but the team in question is convinced that, despite being in his thirties, this player has found a new level of performance. He has not.

What makes the Sarge Jr. contract crazier than the Kyle Lohse deal, besides the additional year, is that the real Gary Matthews Jr. was a fourth outfielder with an inconsistent bat and a flashy glove. Since the Angels signed him, that's exactly what he's been. When it comes to inexplicable career year contracts, we're all Gary Matthews, Jr., Jr. Except for this man:

1. Vernon Wells. 114 years, $573 billion, 12/2006. Recently we were talking about how great it is to be able to lock up your own homegrown talent—how that's one of the keys to the Yankees' success, and, in the Blue Jays' case, one of the keys to competing with the Yankees. After looking at the Vernon Wells contract to this point, one might be tempted to never, ever sign another homegrown player again.

Vernon Wells was a trap; that's all there is to it. He looks like a homegrown franchise player; he plays center field, and in his second full season in the league he had an enormous season, hitting .317/.359/.550 and doing everything well. In his ill-fated contract year, he nearly reprised that season, hitting .303/.357/.542. But between those lines, and even between the lines' lines, there are more warning signals than you'll find on a pack of Canadian cigarettes. Between 2003 and 2006 are two extremely average lines; even in 2003 and 2006 there's a walk rate that keeps him from being an elite hitter. The Blue Jays were signing a player that they'd gotten for two non-contiguous years out of four to a deal that might even have been rich for that hypothetical guy.

They couldn't have known that his offense and defense would both take a complete nosedive by 2009, making him one of the worst players in baseball just in time for his contract to get to these numbers:

2010—$12.5 million
2011—$23 million

If I stopped here it would be a bad deal. But I've got more, one entirely separate bad deal—

2012—$21 million
2013—$21 million

That's like signing Vernon Wells to a bad contract—five years, $63 million—and then signing him again, at the conclusion of the contract, to Manny Ramirez's deal. (You know? It really is...)

THE FRANKLIN DEAL: Three mid-contract renegotiations less necessary than Ryan Franklin's

3. Vernon Wells. Why on earth did they renegotiate after his career year when they had one more on which to base things? Were they concerned that the Vernon Wells would take it as a serious personal affront?

2. Travis Hafner. You've got a slugger who has just turned 30 and who, while brilliant, has serious old player skills. He's gotten off to a slow start this season, but it's alright—you've got him signed through the end of the next year on a deal that's beneficial for all parties concerned. Do you A) wait out his slump, or B) sign him to a four year, $57 million contract that wipes out your attractive year and a half as a show of good will?

1. Chris Carpenter. It hurts, it really does. But at least we don't have to blame this one on John Mozeliak. I'm aware that this is easier for us to do, as armchair GMs, than it is for the actual executives, who are dealing with actual human beings they will have to see on a semi-regular basis. And it's not just the player—fans can be pretty quick to accuse teams of not opening up DeWallet, and the Vernon Wells deal was apparently engineered, to some degree, by the Blue Jays' owner.

But in general, contracts like Lohse's and Franklin's—on a smaller scale, luckily—illustrate how risky a business it is to use contracts to send messages to players, fans, or owners. A pat on the back might have done more good for Ryan Franklin than an extra $4 million on his head.

SBN Manager of the Year

DanUpBaby — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:41:17 -0000

More photos » by Jeff Roberson - AP

Tony La Russa, right, is about to give a very awkward acceptance speech. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

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The cloud of white smoke your computer emitted last night might have tipped you off, but this year's SBN blogger awards are going to be revealed this week. They're just like the BBWAA awards, except that tomorrow's post isn't set aside for ragging on the choices. Yet. Stop the drumroll:

Rk	Manager	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Jim Tracy	Colorado Rockies	24	1	2	125
2	Tony La Russa	St. Louis Cardinals	3	7	10	46
3	Fredi Gonzalez	Florida Marlins	2	6	5	33
4	Joe Torre	Los Angeles Dodgers	-	9	2	29
5	Charlie Manuel	Philadelphia Phillies	-	3	5	14
6	Bruce Bochy	San Francisco Giants	1	1	1	9
7	Bobby Cox	Atlanta Braves	-	1	4	7
8	Bud Black	San Diego Padres	-	1	1	4
9	John Russell	Pittsburgh Pirates	-	1	-	3

I think manager of the year is the one award for which the Manny Ramirez Postulate—"He came in halfway through the season, so obviously he was more valuable than the guy who was there the whole time"—might not be totally preposterous. Coming in at midseason is its own managerial tactic, as time-honored as the sacrifice bunt and getting yourself ejected from a listless blowout. The replacement, even if he's as establishment as Jim Tracy, must be the thrower-over of the money changers, out to—depending on his predecessor's style—either loosen or fire things up in the clubhouse.

As for our own Tony La Russa, it's his customary good showing, and it surprises me; I thought he'd had a fine season, but storyline-wise—and that's most of what we have to judge managers by, to be honest—he was less interesting than Tracy, the midseason replacement, Gonzalez, the exciting young manager, or Torre, who went to all the trouble of going from one gigantic media market to another.

In other news, you heard it here first: the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates is named John Russell.

During SBN Award week we are offering two threads for the price of one; expect the second piece around noon.

La Russter's Millions

DanUpBaby — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:47:32 -0000

More photos » by Lynne Sladky - ASSOCIATED PRESS

I'd feel the same way.

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I am seriously and late-breakingly jet-lagged, so I've got to make this quick; I've fallen asleep five or six times in the course of writing this sentence.

Decent AAA LOOGY (Tyler Norrick?) and hazy AA pitching prospect (???) for Jeremy Hermida would have been an interesting play for these Cardinals for the same reason it was for those Red Sox—there has to be some plan to fall back on in the event of a failure to sign one of Jason Bay or Matt Holliday, and this particular ex-top-prospect—who hit a grand slam against the Cardinals in his first MLB at-bat—even coming up on five years since his day in the sun, is a solid low-risk choice. The usual encouraging splits apply: he could be platooned effectively (.792 v. .697) and he'll do better outside of TSFKA Pro Player (.815 v. .721.) Provided there's no pre-existing psychological condition rendering all of this wishcasting moot in five months, this seems like a good move.

The other marginal outfielder trade from yesterday—that one I don't like quite as much. We'll always have Moneyball, but what gives teams the idea that Mark Teahen hits enough to be a starting outfielder? As a rich man's Eric Hinske he might have a lot of value for a team with a fragile third baseman and a flexible outfield, but he only replaces Jermaine Dye inasmuch as he might have one of Jermaine Dye's bad years. Josh Fields is no prize, and I'm not sure what the Royals are going to do with him except play yet another third baseman out of his depth in left field while trying to get Alex Gordon going, but I'm not sure what problem Mark Teahen solves.

I've always had a soft spot for Hermida, and—well, I've always had a soft spot for Moneyball, at least. But yesterday's Bobby Abreu deal seems like a more likely eventual route for the Cardinals; if they don't get Holliday I just can't see the payroll staying as low as it is. So I have a question for you, the viewers: what does the Cardinals' last thirty million look like in the offseason? My guess right now, in the non-Holliday division, is that they spread it out; as much as I like John Lackey, I just can't see this organization giving up a first rounder for a guy who's basically the pitcher they thought Kyle Lohse was.

My guess: they spread it out among the team's current holes, in a way that is both useful and completely, unsatisfyingly boring. Jon Garland/J.J. Putz/Johnny Damon? Come on down.

What the Cardinals can take from the Yankees, besides the luxury tax

DanUpBaby — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:15:44 -0000

First, some briefs on yesterday's roster moves:

It's interesting to see the Brad Thompson perception gap—the RotoWorld box in the sidebar thinks he'll have no problem finding a job, even as a fifth starter; the Baseball Primer thread is remarkably positive, for BTF. But I think the average VEBer wrote off the artist occasionally known as WonderBrad a long time ago.

I'll always think of him as a better pitcher than he probably was and is; I'm as susceptible as anybody else to overvaluing a player when he gets off to a good start, and there were moments there in 2005 (it seems like it's been longer) where his weird sinker seemed like the makings of a uniquely valuable short reliever. But I'm hard-pressed to think of any team that's strapped enough for choice to give him a clear shot as a fifth starter coming off a year with a K/9 of 3.8.

Jarrett Hoffpauir leaves the 40 man roster—and, though this wasn't the Cardinals' intent, the organization—a victim of circumstance; without the Julio Lugo deal he might come into 2010 as the Cardinals' best free choice for Skip Schumaker's equally awkward right-handed caddy, but Lugo has a name and at least theoretically plays short. It's tough luck for the Cardinals; finding purchase on a big league roster is hard for backup infielders who can't play shortstop, but Hoffpauir, with his occasionally impressive bat and his consistently impressive BB:K ratio, has one more definable skill than most of these guys. (Being a Cardinals farmhand is apparently also a path to gainful MLB employment for these guys—Edgar Gonzalez and the poor man's Jarrett Hoffpauir, Mike McCoy, both saw big league time this year.)

In 2010 he would have had Lugo on one side and Daniel Descalso, who somehow failed to receive regular playing time in his 2009 AAA stint, on the other, though, so maybe it's best he's gone to an organization without a veteran playing for free and a prospect at second. (Which makes it even weirder that Joe Thurston didn't get the Brad Thompson treatment—hopefully he'll spend his Memphis summer working on his footwork rounding second base, not standing next to it.)

With that out of the way, the big news: the Yankees have finally beaten the Curse of Clay Bellinger. It was a tough road, but I can only hope that they have enough footage of Jimmy Fallon running out onto the field to properly commemorate those long years in Fever Pitch 2. What did these Yankees do that the Cardinals can emulate, multi-billion dollar payroll aside?

1. Make the Free Agent deals count. The list of Yankees busts in the years between 2000 and 2009 is comical both quantitatively and qualitatitively—these guys signed Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, and Kei Igawa to deals totaling $106 million. The spending binge prior to 2009 will justifiably get a lot of attention as the difference-maker between this club and the ones that preceded it, but this time around Brian Cashman was at least forward-thinking enough to sign players who have established track records of performing in a way that resembles their enormous contracts.

This hasn't been true of the Cardinals' last three pitching free agents—Kyle Lohse was signed at the absolute peak of his value, for a dollar value that seems blissfully disconnected from the rest of his body of work. The Joel Pineiro and Mark Mulder contracts, each two years, $13 million, were both affordable risks, and one of them worked out better than the Cardinals could possibly have imagined, but they were an extremely speculative way to spend $26 million; there wasn't much in their recent history to suggest they were multi-million dollar pitchers, of a separate species from recent gambles like John Smoltz or even the first appearances of Lohse and Pineiro.

Matt Holliday is, for all his Boras-sized ambitions, a guy who will come into the first year of his contract almost certain to play up to it. He's durable, he's still within sight of his peak years, and he's a consistently excellent hitter with a broad base of skills. Which combines with makes Joe Strauss's recent, inexplicably phrased chat insinuations an interesting, if not instructive, topic of discussion:

Chairman Bill DeWitt recently denied that the club has made Holliday an offer; however, there are suggestions that the Cardinals discussed a 6-year, $96 million framework with Holliday's agent, Scott Boras.

I'll be honest: I have no idea what "suggestions" means when it is both unsourced and right after an official club denial but also accompanied by an extremely specific contract "framework." No idea whatsoever. But assuming that Joe Strauss is not the one suggesting this, or Joe Strauss's barber, this seems like a fine deal for a team that, as a recent fanshot noticed, is filled with a ton of decent players. $16 million could be parceled out to three or four basically average guys, hole-fillers, and probably earn more wins above that famous replacement player than Holliday himself. But this team doesn't need Reggie Sanders—it needs MV3.

An argument could be made that these big free agent contracts need to be seen as the reward for, and culmination of, years spent cultivating guys like Skip Schumaker and David Freese to negate the need for the Kyle Lohses. But at $96 million, instead of $180 million, I guess two out of three isn't so bad.

2. Develop an inconceivably long-lasting internal core. How are three of the Yankees' best players still holdovers from 1996? Asking the Cardinals to develop three to five borderline Hall of Famers over the course of the next three years is probably a little too much to ask, but it's nice to see the Cardinals progressing in this direction; Pujols and Wainwright were locked down early, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Colby Rasmus follow along the same path.

Losing Brett Wallace leaves them one future core player short, but I'm glad the Cardinals still have at least one in the system; winning 78 games in 2007 isn't far removed from having top prospects like Jimmy Journell and post-surgery Blake Hawksworth a few years earlier. Get here soon, Shelby Miller.

3. Look at all those young, successful relievers! The Cardinals made—and have continued to make—a good-faith effort at this with guys like Jason Motte and Chris Perez and Kyle McClellan. And since I am lost as you to the reasons for the enormous gap between Motte's PCL and MLB numbers, it's frustrating to see the Yankees' three fine young relievers, even if two of them had less than impressive postseasons.

Interesting, though, to see how the three came to be important parts in the Yankee pen—one should probably still be in the Yankee rotation, another was a minor league free agent and career starter.

Travel Day

DanUpBaby — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:51:17 -0000

I'm about to begin the seemingly endless travel process between Tokyo and O'Hare, and I feel totally disconnected from American baseball. But some bullet points while I pack:

Can I say, as an unrepentant baseball-card watcher, that I love C.C. Sabathia? This is one of my least favorite things about the Rick Ankiel saga: we were deprived of the chance to watch him begin a career as a 20-year-old pitcher with double-digit victories and a high strikeout total. Sabathia won 17 games at 20, which is great; he stayed above .500 during the leaner years, always winning at least ten games, which is crucial; and now he's working on a nice-looking peak. Albert aside—just look at it—he's probably got the most aesthetically pleasing baseball card of any active player. Things to work on: don't get traded midseason again, because it always looks messy, and use the MLB-leading win total in 2009 to begin racking up the black ink, because right now it's a little sparse.
Having started there, on more neutral ground, can I also say that I don't mind if the Yankees win this World Series? Call it residual, retroactive angst from a certain World Series in 2004, but I don't think I've ever minded the Yankees all that much; they are, if nothing else, totally forthright in their ability and intentions to use their financial capabilities as often as possible, and columnists don't have to chew up inches whining about failures to open up the Steinbillfold. It's also made my postseason to watch said columnists backtrack on their long-standing hypothesis that Alex Rodriguez's bat contains all the universe's known reserves of anticlutch.
That said, the Phillies do play in the National League, and they also have my favorite non-Cardinal, Chase Utley. While I'm on the subject of baseball card aesthetics, how about Chase Utley's 2009? .280 average, 31 home runs, 150 games, and 23 stolen bases in 23 attempts. Your better sets will also bold his third league-leading HBP total in a row. The only thing that's missing are the seven RBI that kept him from driving in 100 runners for a fifth straight year; for that I will cast a stern glance in the direction of the Jimmy Rollins card.
Finally, I saw Yu Darvish pitch last night in the second game of the Japan Series. Watching an NPB playoff game on Japanese TV is a decidedly different experience from watching it on FOX; for a country whose glossy TV tarento include the likes of Razor Ramon Hard Gay and this fish-hatted man, baseball broadcasting seems rooted, for better and for worse, in the late eighties. So I didn't get a million camera angles, but I came away impressed by what was apparently his first game appearance in a month and a half. Without the upper-nineties velocity he sometimes flashes, he looked something like Adam Wainwright, huge curve and all.

I should have a full-size post for Tuesday, and I'll be back on a regular basis by Thursday. Thanks for waiting things out in this compounded off-season lull, and thanks to the red baron, tom, and vep for doing their usual excellent work.

Friday Notes

DanUpBaby — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:37:32 -0000

I'm still in Japan, but the internet situation has gone from worse to bad.

Sister blog South Side Sox has its own reasons to wonder about the value of hitting coaches—in this case, of standing pat following Alex Rios's disastrous first year in Chicago. I'm not extremely familiar with the situation, but the case against Greg Walker seems to be the case against Hal McRae and, to be fair, most hitting coaches who find the welcome wagon revoked: in the face of a systemic offensive collapse, he... continued to be Greg Walker. The blog entry's in reaction to another blog entry, this one from the Sun-Times:

Walker, a self-admitted "organizational guy because the White Sox are my family,'' once again came under fire by the fans this season, especially in the second half when Carlos Quentin came back from injury looking lost at the plate, Jermaine Dye went into a second-half rut and the Alex Rios experiment seemed to blow up in the entire club's face.

Forgotten in that mess was A.J. Pierzynski putting together a career year, rookie Gordon Beckham being rescued from an 0-for-13 big-league start, Paul Konerko back to being Paul Konerko, the rebirth of Scott Podsednik, as well as the emergence of Chris Getz.

In these paragraphs, if nothing else, we have a list of things for which we can potentially blame and praise hitting coaches: the veteran collapse (Rick Ankiel? Mark DeRosa?), the botched return from injury (Mark DeRosa?), the second-half rut (Mark DeRosa?), the failed experiment (Mark DeRosa? Khalil Greene?)—and then, on the other side, the late-period career year, an 0-13 stint, a return to form, the emergence of a utility guy.

What this shows, for me, is that if we can't have a truly analytical approach to analyzing hitting coaches, we must at least have a reason for placing the blame. Did A.J. Pierzynski change his approach? (No.) Did Gordon Beckham really totter on the brink of disaster before improving to 1-14?

The best coaches, or at least the best-tenured coaches, aren't "organizational guys." They have a philosophy, or an approach, that—even if it can't be separated from the undulations of talent and luck in a satisfying way—can be observed. That Mark McGwire worked on his own with hitters, and has been credited with both successful and unsuccessful tinkering, is promising to me.

Over at the Post-Dispatch blog they're doing the post-mortem on Rick Ankiel. Bernie Miklasz:

Easily one of the most overhyped Cardinals in franchise history. Just think of all of the money, time and patience invested in a guy who pitched 242 innings and had 1,044 at-bats at the big-league level since joining the Cardinals in 1999.

I don't know how, exactly, one can "overhype" what transpired between Rick Ankiel joining the Cardinals in 1999 and (almost certainly) leaving them in 2009. Overrated? As an outfielder, maybe. Over-discussed? The out-of-town announcers have to talk about something, I guess. But as a pitcher Rick Ankiel had the best season by a pitcher who couldn't drink since Doc Gooden, then he had a collapse that was so swift, immediate, and final as to make Doc Gooden blush.

In 2004 he made a positive, hope-inspiring comeback, and in 2005 he realized he couldn't do it—then after a serious knee injury he not only made the majors as an outfielder but did it as a center fielder, one who could hit for power and throw out Wily Taveras flat-footed from the back of Coors Field. He had a brilliant start and a great first year and a miserable 2009, but I don't know that any moment of Rick Ankiel's career could be described as overhyped—it was, and is, simply filled with hype. He has, apparently unintentionally, and often to his detriment, followed the most hype-filled, movie-like career path of any baseball player ever. That he pitched so-many innings and had so-many at-bats seems irrelevant to me when discussing the story of Rick Ankiel, which went on most of the time when he was not on the field.

It looks like Matt Holliday substitute #1 might be staying in Boston; Jason Bay's reportedly been offered four years, $60 million to stay in town. I don't think any player has been hurt more by the recent proliferation of PBP defensive metrics than Jason Bay, who's apparently been a -15 run disaster in left field for the last several years. I'm hard-pressed to believe that anybody is 15 runs worse than an average left fielder, even the proverbial rock-in-the-outfield, but pegging the length of the deal at four years seems like the best anybody's going to do on Jason Bay.

$15 million a year is market value for what he's done three years out of four, especially if you think that the plus-minus number of -17 runs in the last three years—as opposed to UZR's -44—is closer to his actual ability. Is that good enough for the Red Sox? Would that be good enough for the Cardinals?

For what it's worth, the World Series is broadcast without commercial breaks in Japan; after each inning the Japanese announcers kick back in and analyze, very thoroughly, whatever Hideki Matsui has done most recently. Also, everybody to whom I mention this blog asks what So Taguchi has been up to lately.

Community Projections: Future Young Pitchers of St. Louis

DanUpBaby — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:11:28 -0000

More photos » by Tom Gannam - AP

5 months ago: Blake Hawksworth pitches in the ninth inning against the Colorado Rockies in a baseball game, Saturday, June 6, 2009, in St. Louis. Hawksworth was making his major league debut. (AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

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I know we don't normally get this desperate until December, but where I am right now the only thing on my mind is whether or not the Cardinals should lure Tuffy Rhodes back to the National League for another shot if Matt Holliday doesn't work out. So let's begin: what will the following Cardinals swingmen do next year? And where will they do it?

Mitchell Boggs: He's the reason I decided to start on this weird collection of fifth starters and ostensible set-up men. Mitchell Boggs always throws really hard; he usually has bad command. The Cardinals will probably sign one more pitcher, thereby squeezing him out of the rotation, but said pitcher, if the current free agent class is any indication, will probably be made of glass.

In the bullpen—well, nothing's quite set in the bullpen. He could end up pitching Brad Thompson innings, sure, but with two good weeks he could find himself, like Hawksworth and McClellan before him, lifted from lowly swingman to vitally important set-up man before that's probably a good idea. His fastball/slider combo doesn't just play better in the bullpen, it seems to change entirely. The Cardinals need to make some decisions, and I think this should be the first one: put him in the bullpen until proven otherwise. But you can, and should, project him either way.

Blake Hawksworth: The longtime danup suspect of record (Gary Daley, come on down!) put himself on the radar of non-stalkers with an excellent turn in the McClellan role after a shaky start in middle relief. His fastball hit the mid-nineties, heretofore the province of pre-injury Hawk, top prospect in a system with one prospect, and his changeup looked as good as advertised now that it was combined with a fastball it could, you know, change up. His curveball—well, he had one of those.

He seems like a sure bet to start the season in the bullpen, but as good and self-assured as he looked, he didn't strike anybody out. That's unfair. He struck out a few more batters than Joel Pineiro did. With a 95 mph fastball. As with McClellan himself, the numbers simply didn't match the number, his 2.02 ERA. In general it's a bad idea to take a reliever with a low strikeout rate and make him a starter, but maybe his stuff simply doesn't benefit from the bullpen like it seemed to? Or maybe the strikeout rate is a fluke. This'll be a tough one to project—observation vs. the record at its most infuriating.

Jaime Garcia: It was great watching him climb back through the system last year. I have nothing else to say: I just want the Cardinals to put him in the rotation. If you project him as making fewer than ten big league starts this year—well, I hope you've also projected Smoltz and, I don't know, Lance Lynn combining for sixty impressive starts, too.

Is it a more ominous sign of a bad bullpen or a shaky back of the rotation that two players are competing for stabilizing positions in both roles at the same time?

This'll stay open for a while, because I might not be online to tabulate the results for a few days. So take your time. As always, comma-delimited; let's project...

G,GS,IP,W,L,HR,BB,K,ERA,WHIP

Let's talk about the past just this once

DanUpBaby — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:21:20 -0000

More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

20 days ago: FILE -- This is an Aug. 7, 2009, file photo showing St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa during a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates, in Pittsburgh. Nearly two weeks after his team was swept in the first round of the playoffs, Tony La Russa is still trying to decide whether he wants to return for a 15th season as St. Louis Cardinals manager. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

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I'm writing this post at 6:30 PM Sunday, CDT. Right now, it looks like Mark McGwire will be the next hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. As someone who first heard the opening strains of "Welcome to the Jungle" as an eleven year old in Busch Stadium while everyone emptied out their disposable cameras, I'm excited.

As someone who watched multiple Cardinals flail around last year without even the unsubstantiated insistence of some new approaches in the air, I'm even more excited. Mark McGwire is—or is typically seen as—a less-than-engaging communicator, so we know, at least, that the various Cardinals and future Cardinals who have shown up at his door to retool and refine their swings in the last several years have not done it because he's hilarious, or the nicest guy you'll ever meet.

These are the straws we grasp at, when talking about hitting coaches: he hit a lot of home runs and he did not subscribe to Vladimir Guerrero's newsletter. (As funny as it can be to think of Mark McGwire, one of the unique hitting talents of all time, suggesting an approach for Matt Pagnozzi ["don't swing"], his approach, provided he does not tell Joe Thurston to take that outside pitch and just pull it 500 feet, can be basically replicated by mortals.)

We don't yet know what McGwire will say, if he accepts the job, and how sportswriters will respond to whatever it is. Which makes this the eye of the news-cycle hurricane. But while I'm out I'd like to suggest, if nothing else, a little measured calmness; if this really is the beginning of a three day festival of pomposity, just look congress in the eye and say: "I'm not on the internet to talk about your idea of the past."

What, bad advice?

That's the exciting part of the day's almost-news, but of course there's more, and maybe more important: Tony La Russa may be returning, possibly on a multi-year deal. So the real news is this: The Cardinals braintrust is ready to keep refining the Cardinals of the aughts into a second decade. Given those teams' success, this is probably a good idea, and a confirmation that Mozeliak and company aren't the overreacting types.

With organizational restructuring unlikely, then, and new blood coming in the form of a good-faith attempt to get the team's hitters to at least face in the right direction when they swing at pitches out of the zone, the off-season narrative comes down to this: how crazy will Bill DeWitt get?

Possibility #1: Really crazy. I think all of these possibilities come with the understanding that, within a year of his shopping spree, the erstwhile DeWallet will realize that lots of season tickets depend on him getting Really Crazy and trying to pretend that there isn't a blank giant novelty check with Albert Pujols's name on it behind one of his filing cabinets. With that in the back of his mind, I think getting Really Crazy in 2009 is a remote possibility. But it's not my money.

With that in mind, the Cardinals are currently in the running on Aroldis Chapman, who wants Daisuke money despite having spent his career, to this point, not in Japan's major leagues but in Cuba, which is usually assigned a position somewhere in the A-ball spectrum. They're also at least theoretically interested in retaining Matt Holliday. If they do both of those things the payroll is immediately somewhere in the vicinity of $95-100 million, and all of the payroll relief they got when Pineiro, Glaus, and Greene became free agents is gone. That's a workable team this year, if the Cardinals see Chapman as an immediate contributor in the rotation, but when Pujols comes due and Adam Wainwright's contract becomes less unbelievable these moves are going to require a long-term move from around $100 million to, say, $120 million. Again: it's not my money. And I get the idea that DeWitt was impressed by the bump in fan interest that followed the team's dramatic trading deadline activity. But we'll see.

Possibility #2: A little crazy. La Russa's return means that 2010 will not be a rebuilding year, and for me that signifies a probable move in this direction. The bare-bones team we saw in the roster matrix would be great for a rookie manager, who can be content with Surprising People—in the real way, not its current status as a La Russa mind-games chit in good standing—but with Pujols, Carpenter, and La Russa all under contract a surprise-year would seem like a waste of resources in the short term.

Retaining Matt Holliday without, well, wasting resources gets tough past a certain point. And Aroldis Chapman's contract demands might put him in a position where his only career option is to become an inevitable Yankees Disappointment by only winning 16 or 17 games in his first year. (The Cardinals could do worse than to hire Hideki Irabu and Jose Contreras to talk to future pitching phenoms as their official emissaries.) But those are the two spaces in which the Cardinals could most easily improve the skeleton team they have now; signing one, or going after John Lackey, makes this a better team in 2010, and as of today that seems like an important objective.

Possibility #3: Not very crazy. The Cardinals have two holes, in left and at the back of the rotation, and there are cheap ways to fill them, too. But there were cheaper ways to fill out the coaching staff, too; unless La Russa is signing up with the idea that he's going to steward this current team toward further surprises over the next two or three years, this seems like an increasingly odd combination.

[Programming note: First: great job by tom and vep, right? I was glad they were both willing to help out around here. Second: I've noticed some minor blow-ups of late, and I realize that Mark McGwire is a potentially explosive topic. I'm not going to be around as much as usual to moderate, so I'd like to urge, well, moderation; if a discussion gets both heated and all the way to the right side of the page, take a step back. Jay Mariotti is one thing, but assume, at least, that your fellow Birdos are reasonable human beings.]