Carl Cares About Baseball's Integrity

Forget everything I've ever said regarding the Mitchell Report.

This here is the definitive analysis. Pay special attention to why more Red Sox names weren't mentioned in the report.

I need those pants.

The League of Extraordinary Stoves, Pt. 2

To keep myself sorted out this winter, and to counter the doldrums induced by the immense lack of baseball playing, I've started an (ir)regular feature covering the off season trades, signings, and whatever else puts new players in new uniforms. I may still have no idea who plays for what team come spring, but at least this time I've tried.

Carlos Silva to the Mariners
Seattle needs some starting pitching help, and although Silva isn't great (though the M's think he's great enough to lock him up for four years) he should be able to positively contribute to the rotation. He's capable of producing good seasons (see 2005) but equaly as capable of producing blah seasons (see 2006). He gives up a lot of hits and doesn't strike out many, but whatever. The Mariners somehow finished with a decent 88-74 record despite having the fifth-worst team ERA in the league. Imagine how well they could compete with a real staff.

Geoff Jenkins to the Phillies
It's been pointed out that Jenkins only batted .215 against left-handed pitching last season, and that may prevent him from being the every-day right-fielder. Last year's regular right-fielder, Shane Victorino (a name straight out of a Rob Schnieder SNL skit) will likely move to center to fill in the gap left by Aaron Rowand, who's now a Giant. That leaves Jenkins and Jayson Werth (who batted .375 aginst lefties last season) to share right-field. As far as I can tell, every member of the 2008 Phillies is going to hit 25 home runs and bat .260 (except for Ryan Howard, who will hit 50 home runs, and Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins, who will both bat over .300).

Ron Mahay to the Royals
The Royals, whether you want to admit it or not, have a good-looking bullpen. Mahay was exceptionally good in 2007 with his 2.55 ERA and his 55 strikeouts in 67 innings. As long as the starters (and the defense behind them) can limit those early runs, and as long as there's some run support in there somewhere, the Royals should finish above last in 2008.

Kip Wells to the Rockies
Wells has led the league in losses twice and struggles to keep his ERA under 5.00, having not done so since 2004. Although he'll get more run support in Colorado (and consequently less losses), Coors Field isn't going to play nice with the rest of his numbers. I'm not sure why the Rockies (or anybody else, for that matter) would want to sign him as he's quickly filling in the mediocre void left by Jose Lima.

Cliff Floyd to the Rays
Two things that surprise me about Cliff Floyd: 1) He still plays baseball, and 2) he's only 35 years-old. I thought for sure he was 40 and retired. Anyway, he doesn't quite replace the holes left by Delmon Young and Elijah Dukes, not all by himself, but he'll be a decent offensive contributor.

Hiroki Kuroda to the Dodgers
There's not near as much hype as Daisuke Matsuzaka (or Hideo Nomo, if you want to keep the comparisons strictly in LA) generated, but apparently Kuroda's pretty good. He doesn't walk a lot of batters and has a ton of pitching experience in Japan. With Brad Penny, Derek Lowe, a healthy Jason Schmidt (whenever that might happen), and now Kuroda, the Dodgers have an excellent starting rotation.

Jim Edmonds to the Padres for David Freese
I'll miss Edmonds, but at the same time I won't. He's had some great Cardinal seasons, but he's aged and brittle now and his best years are behind him. As far as his new team, the Padres regular center-fielder, Mike Cameron, is looking elsewhere (rumor has it he's talkin' with the Phillies, which would leave the Philadelphia outfield in a little bit of a jumbled mess [at least after he returns from his 25-game PED suspension]), and his absence would leave the door open for Edmonds to field that gigantic outfield. I don't know if he's still capable of playing the Petco center-field as everytime he makes a diving effort I fear he'll give himself a concussion. His bat has seriously deteriorated as well and between his weakened bat and his weakened fielding ability I don't know if he'll be able to survive 2008.
If it seems odd to trade a veteran for an A-ball player, the Cardinals have also offered to pay part of Edmonds' contract. But Freese is somebody to look out for. He's already proven himself on the lowest rungs of professional ball and will hopefully advance easily through the Cardinals system. He does strike out a lot, but so does Edmonds. Look for Freese to emerge as a third base candidate for the Cards in a couple years.


Stick around if you can stand it for a Part Three to come.

The Mitchell Report, or, Way To Underwhelm The Masses, George

I suppose I'm obligated to weigh in on the Mitchell Report.

Here it is in all of its .PDF glory. Since it's hundreds of pages of bland "so-and-so received such-and-such from so-and-so", what I would do is read over the list of those mentioned in the report, then do a search within the .pdf file to find more information about your favorite cheater.

Honestly I am less than impressed with the report as a whole. Maybe I was expecting something harsher or more damning. Maybe I was expecting more big names. Maybe I was expecting clever and witty prose. Maybe I was expecting Joe Don Baker. But I suppose it is what it is: a concise history of performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball, reasons why PEDs are bad, some obvious conclusions, some recommendations that the Commissioner and the Players Association may or may not pay attention to, and, most scandalously (and the only part of the report that people care about), details of former and current players' dealings with illegal substances.

Ah sweet, named names. This'll be like Christmas. The anticipation is killing me.
Not so much.

The names, as you peruse the list yourself, are a little bit disappointing and fall into two categories:
1) Unsurprising names. Clemens, Giambi (both of 'em!), Tejada, Sheffield, Juan Gonzalez. High-profile fellows, but a bit on the beefy side. And don't forget about Canseco and Bonds!
2) Desperate bottom-rung players. Athletes who've teetered between the Majors and Minors, who've made careers out of being back-ups, athletes who lack the physical abilities that would allow them to have a comfortable big league career, athletes who needed something to prevent them from falling into obscurity. Mike Bell, Gary Bennett, Larry Bigbie, Howie Clark, Cody McKay, some guy named Nook.

When I initially looked over the list of names it seemed like there were an awful lot of Toronto Blue Jay players. There was Howie Clark (probably most famous for being a part of that "Alex Rodriguez yelled in my ear" incident earlier in the 2007 season), Troy Glaus, Gregg Zaun... as well as former Jays like Clemens, Canseco, Benito Santiago, a couple others, etc. Fortunately for me Wikipedia has already organized the named names by team, and the Jays aren't anywhere near being the worst offenders. Nope, just like in everything else, the Yankees need to be the biggest and best in every single category. Twenty-three former and current Yankees have been cited in the report. But just in case you were thinking that artificially enhanced athletes make for more championship teams, in come the Orioles with eighteen current and former offenders.

In fact, just from looking at this list you could probably throw out the notion that using PEDs correlates with success. If you could somehow quantify overall baseball ability, plot it on the y-axis, and then make the x-axis the number of fluid ounces of HGH injected into the bum, your plotted points would look pretty scattershot. PEDs do not make you a superstar. Now as to whether or not they enhance your own personal ability, I don't know. It's like with corked bats; everybody perceives and assumes that a corked bat will make you a better hitter, but there's not enough scientific evidence to support this.

Some players, most notibly Andy Pettitte and Rick Ankiel, claimed that they only used HGH to recover from injury. This seemed okay with me (especially since this was before HGH was specifically banned in baseball) until I realized that 1) HGH use isn't a ligitimate means of injury recovery, especially when 2) it's obtained through shadey doctors and iffy clinics. It's illegal, actually, for doctors and clinics to distribute HGH to athletes for injury recovery or to bulk up or things like that. I don't know if it's outright illegal for a person to possess HGH, but you're sure not allowed to pass it out for these purposes.

HGH is approved for those with short bowel syndrome. If I were an athlete caught with the stuff, I'd be claiming short bowels.

Anyway, does the Mitchell Report destroy baseball? No, not hardly. This is less an urgent crises than it is a tumor that's been allowed to grow for too long. It's a shame that Major League Baseball only within the past couple years is trying to remove it. The Report is kind of like a spade used to dig it out. Painful, yes, but everybody knew it was coming.

And besides, organized baseball has been around since the Civil War and has withstood many a dour day. The Black Sox of 1919, the Pittsburgh drug trials of 1985, the strikes of 1981 and 1994... baseball has always survived and the fans have always returned.

The League of Extraordinary Stoves

I just learned where the term "hot stove league" might've come from. During the winter, baseball fans warm themselves around a hot stove and discuss off-season wheelings and dealings. Sounds like good ol' Depression-era fun!

Anyway, I've already lost track of who's going where, and by spring I'll be completely lost. I'm usually sorted out by May, but for the first few weeks of the season I'm always surprised to see certain men wearing a new team's uniform. "He plays for THEM now?" "Why isn't what's-his-face in the line-up, or on the roster... oh, he's in a different league now." Etc.

So in an effort to keep myself sorted out, I'll gloss over some so-far transactions. While warming myself by a hot stove.

Apparently Eric Gagne is going to Milwaukee. This'll be good for him both in effectiveness and in self-esteem (as he's fairly hated in Boston right now). He did well with Texas earlier in 2007, and he should fare even better back in the National League. He also seems to do well when he's the team's go-to closer instead of the set-up man and back-up closer roles he dismly served with the Red Sox.
But don't the Brewers already have closers? Francisco Cordero, who had 44 saves in 2007, is now a Red (thanks to free agency), and Derrick Turnbow, who saved 63 games in 2005 and 2006 combined before becoming Cordero's set-up man, isn't wholly reliable.
I don't expect Gagne to continue sucking as much as he did with Boston, and so I'm not terribly anxious to have him pitch all those games against the Cardinals in the 2008 season. But we'll see how he turns out.

More Brewer happenings...
Milwauke gets Salomon Torres. Pittsburgh get pitching prospects Marino Salas and Kevin Roberts. Torres is a lot like Gumby, in that he's very flexible. Middle relief, a closed ballgame here and there... he's even good to start. The Pirates liked him so much that they used him in over half their games between 2004 and 2006. This might explain his inflamed elbow (and his subsequently poor season) in 2007, but the Brewers should get good use out of him.
As for Salas and Roberts, the Pirates could use all the pitching help they can get. Salas is a decent prospect who put up so-so AAA numbers in 2007, but he still might get the call in 2008. Roberts still needs a couple years of work, and I don't know if he'll ever make any impact in the major leagues. But again, Pirate pitching is crummy, so who knows.

The Brewers also signed relief pitcher David Riske. Milwaukee's pitching was shoddy in 2007, and they're obviously trying to do something about it. Do you hear that, St. Louis? Making bad pitching good again?

Aaron Boone, one year contract, Washington Nationals.
...Will remain inconspicuous.

Andruw Jones is a Dodger now. Two years for $36 million dollars? Shoot, I'll strike out a bunch of times and hit .220 for free! But he can still field, and the Dodgers will probably boot Juan Pierre to left (formerly occupied by Luis Gonzalez, who's now a free agent), keep Jones in center, and make Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp fistfight for rightfield rights.
Honestly, though, I don't anticipate Jones performing as craptacularly with his bat as he did in 2007. Just because.

I'm a little bit excited to see Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera in Detroit uniforms next season, mostly because I like the Tigers a lot more than I like the Marlins. Florida, in turn, gets six players.
Breakdown time. First the trimmings.
The Marlins now own:
Cameron Maybin - He's been tearing up the minors with his bat, but he also strikes out a whole lot. He was unimpressive during his 2007 big league cup of coffee, but his future looks bright, especially with Florida.
Mike Rabelo - In Florida he'll either start or platoon or third-string or do something. I don't really care. I'm more interested in who the new back-up catcher in Detroit will be. In 2007 it was all Ivan Rodriguez and Rabelo. Pudge sure ain't gonna catch 162 games, and the organization's minor league catchers are all "all field, no hit" (although Nick Trzesniak down in Erie looks promising). Brandon Inge caught for a few seasons before moving to third base, but he's paid too much to be strictly backup. Maybe the Tigers can deal for Crash Davis or something.
Andrew Miller - The Marlins are getting a fine young pitcher. A lefty, too. Maybe he'll be the next Dontrelle?
Dallas Trahern - Pretty good minor league numbers. He'll probably help the Marlins win another World Series in two years.
Eulogio De La Cruz - Best. Name. Ever.
Burke Badenhop - Great minor league numbers. The Tigers weren't just trading away fillers.

The Tigers now have:
Dontrelle Willis - In Detroit his D-train moniker works doubly well. Last season was no good for Willis, but he was also pitching for a last-place team. Hopefully with the Tigers as 2008 contenders Dontrelle will once again excel.
Miguel Cabrera - People make fun of Cabrera because he's chubby/fat (and it should be noted that his listed weight at baseball-reference.com is off by about eighty pounds -- no joke). Whatever. We can address the weight issue when he's not hitting .320, when he's not hitting 30 home runs, and when he's not knocking in a hundred (plus a dozen) RBIs. Besides, doesn't the extra girth help him smother the ball at third base? No? Oh.

Good players at both ends of the deal. But whereas the Marlins are looking at world domination down the road, the Tigers are planing for victory NOW.

Moving on...

Outfielder Jose Guillen, like in 2007, is capable of good seasons. But, like in 2006, he's also susceptible to bad ones. Which Jose Guillen did the Royals just acquire? Kansas City also has a lot of young talent in the outfield (now that the old man talent, Reggie Sanders, is a free agent), so I'm not sure how they're going to sort that all out.

Sure, Elijah Dukes isn't going to get in any trouble in WASHING-freaking-TON D.C.
(Off-field problems + area of high crime = fun times for all)

Randy Wolf is pretty good when he's healthy, but he's hurt all the dang time. Even so, the Padres have a spot for him now that David Wells is a free agent. But due to Wolf's tendency to not pitch all the time they may want to pick up/call up another starting pitcher.

I know David Eckstein will probably sign with another team, but couldn't the Cardinals find somebody better? Instead of somebody worse? Instead of Cesar Izturis? Fortunately it's just a one-year deal, and he's not a bad fielder (Gold Glove in 2004), but I'm sure the Cards could do better. The Angels have a ton of shorstops, maybe they can spare Cesar's brother.

The Mets acquired catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church from the Nationals in exchange for Lastings Milledge. Let's break this one down into chunks.
Schneider to the Mets... but what about Paul Lo Duca? He's talking with Toronto now, which is weird because he'd have to split time with Gregg Zaun. Lo Duca is more valuable than Schneider both in ability and moneys, but maybe the Mets are looking to free up some bucks. Or maybe Schneider was just part of the deal. I don't know.
I don't know about Ryan Church either. The Mets' outfield is stacked full of Beltrans and Greens and Alous and Reyeses and Chavezes. If there was no room for Milledge than there's really no room for Church.
I don't even know why this deal even happened as it doesn't appear that the Mets will be benefitting from any of this.

Not only do the Rays need a reliable closer, they need reliable middle relief, set-up men, starters, everything. Troy Percival, one of the few bright spots in the Cardinals pitching staff (of course they're letting him go), will be good for Tampa Bay.

The Astros signed Kaz Matsui to a three-year, $15 million deal. His bat loved Colorado (and bitterly broke up with New York after starting off so well), but I imagine it'll "just be friends" with Houston. Matsui is replacing the retired Biggio at second, so he's got some pretty scrappy shoes to fill.


I've got things to do, so I'm going to shelve the rest of this for a Part Two.
And I'm sure between now and then everybody else will switch teams and I'll have to do the whole thing over.