Where have you gone Joey Gathright, our nation turns its lonely heart to you...

With the signings of Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron there has, not surprisingly, been an outpouring of dissention from ‘Red Sox Nation’. Of course, this is the Red Sox and doubtless their fans (and I count myself as one of these pitiable people) would have found someway to complain even if we had signed Pujols and Holliday rather than Beltre and Cameron.

I must admit I’m sceptical about the two acquisitions. While I am completely sold on the defensive prowess they bring to the team, I’m less convinced of their offensive value.

While I’m not one of those Sox fans who feels that all that was wrong with the 2009 team can be solved with a ‘big bat’. Upgrading the defence is clearly a priority. Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that, combining both their offensive and defensive value, Cameron and Beltre represent a significant upgrade.

Beltre, one could argue, has 40HR 120RBI potential. After all he did have that stellar 2004 season upon which his subsequent reputation (and salary) have been based. The trouble is he has never gotten close to those numbers again. Frankly, Beltre’s 2004 reminds me heavily of Brady Anderson.

My point is therefore is, does Beltre, who’s offensive production is likely to be around 25 HR 75RBI represent a clear upgrade over Mike Lowell? I don’t think he does.

Lowell is a tricky case. He was dogged by injuries the past two years but I can still remember the chants of ‘MVP’ that echoed around Fenway at the close of the 2007 regular season.

The way the Sox front office has treated Lowell this off-season has been shoddy, even in a sporting environment where mercenary players are the norm. Frankly the guy should be given the opportunity to make the starting 3B job his. Failing that, what is the worst that could happen? Youk moves to 3B, V-Mart spends time at C and 1B. We could call up Lars Anderson..... Plus we’ve picked up Bill Hall on the cheap....

Cameron is more cut and dry a bad idea than Beltre. At least with Beltre one can make the (very sound) argument that he is the best defensive 3B in the game today. No-one is quite as good at manning the hot corner than Adrian. While I doubt bringing him in represents a significant upgrade on a (healthy) Lowell, I don’t deny that it is an upgrade. My concern is that, while saving runs with our fantastic rotation and improved defence is great, we will also need to score some.

Cameron is a CF. The difference between good and bad defence in the outfield is far less noticeable in the OF than the IF. This is why guys like Andruw Jones and Torii Hunter are able to win gold gloves year in year out with seemingly now attention paying to how well they actually perform. Hell, Jacoby Ellsbury had everyone fooled into thinking he was defensively excellent until very recently.

Nevertheless, having Cameron at CF and shifting the web-gem king (and run prevention pauper) Jacoby Ellsbury to LF does represent a significant upgrade on Bay and Ellsbury defensively.

The trouble with Cameron is that he stinks offensively. He hit just .250 last year in Milwaukee (this is around his career average) and struck out A TON! Cameron is in the ten 10 ALL-TIME in career strikeouts. Has Theo Epstein completely abandoned his sabremetric creed?

Anyway, those are my views on the new acquisitions. I shall cheer them roundly when they step out onto the field at Fenway, but still I cannot help but think we could have, should have done better.

P.S. What has happened to Joey Gathright? He impressed me for the Sox last season.

Big Mac for the Hall of Fame...No, really

So Mark McGwire has finally owned up to his long-alledged, long-suspected steroid (ab)use during his storied career. The timing of this seems bizarre; yes McGwire came clean shortly after receiving less that 25% of the Hall of Fame vote for a third consecutive year, a percentage low enough for any “i’ll just keep quiet until I get into the Hall’ plans to disappear, yet he’s also come clean a matter of weeks before he is due to assuming his most high profile position in the best part of a decade, as hitting coach of the Cardinals.

At the time of writing it does seem that Big Mac has come away largely unscathed from his recent revelations. He is still adored in St Louis, has not (and cannot, given his famous taking of the 5th) been subject to any legal consequences, has not (and cannot, due to not breaking any MLB policy) been subject to any action from Bud Selig and Major League Baseball. What’s more Big Mac still has a job come April.

The purpose of this post is not to bash the Cardinals and cast aspersions about how that organisation is run. Nevertheless, from a point of view of the Cardinals front office and Tony LaRussa knowing about McGwire’s steroid use at least prior to his employment with them as a hitting coach, if not during his playing career, it is hugely suspicious.

No, the purpose of this post is to re-evaluate McGwire and his career in light of this revelation.

I’ve long thought of McGwire as a steroid user. I suspected and I, like 99% of baseball fans, was proved right. While I suspected McGwire, just as I suspected Canseco, Palmeiro, Manny and A-Rod, I still did not care whether it was true or not.

The sad fact is that we are going to have to accept that a sizeable portion of players who played during the 1988-2004 era were using steroids. We have seen that steroid use is suspected both of the era’s stars (Clemens, Bonds etc) and of its also-rans (Segui, Anderson). Steroid use occurred amongst ‘good guys’ (Pettitte) and amongst those players we loved to hate (Canseco). Simply put, it affected the whole game.

While I would never suggest that all players that played during the 90’s were juicing it will nevertheless be forever known as the ‘steroid era’ for very good reason; they were everywhere!

That being said, I do not believe that this is wholly damning for baseball. Was baseball any less competitive during the steroid era than in days gone by? Did the Yankees win all those World Series because of steroid use? No, of course not.

By extension, is the 1998 home run race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa now less exciting, less a part of baseball lore now that we suspect both of its participants of cheating?

I don’t think so. I accept the protestations of purists who complain that McGwire and Sosa have soiled the legacy of Roger Maris in their roid-fuelled quests for immortality, but I question how true these objections are. Surely Maris’ reputation was besmirched back in 1961 when the infamous * was added to his achievement. Maris’ career was never the same, he fell off dramatically in the years to come and subsequently is not enshrined at Cooperstown.

The 1998 home run race saved baseball. Yes, its a point that’s been made over and again but it is true. It returned public interest to a sport which many felt could not recover from the collusion scandals of the late 1980’s and the lost of the 1994 season.

The Hall of Fame makes provision for players who, through the course of their career, fundamentally affected the game. Branch Rickey makes the Hall for this reason. Jackie Robinson is in the Hall for this reason. Marvin Miller and Curt Flood should be in the Hall for this reason.

It was exactly this ‘change the baseball landscape’ concept that Paul Molitor pointed to when he was denigrating Ichiro’s Hall changes on the eve of the Japanese phenom’s accumulation of 3000 overall hits last year. Molitor’s point seemed to be that; being a hall of famer was more that statistical accumulation. I thought that this was a bit rich at the time as, without his 3000 hits Molitor would be paying his ticket just like Goose Gossage should. Ichiro fundamentally changed baseball in the United States (as, arguably, did Hideo Nomo) and therefore should be a Hall of Famer, first ballot even if he retired tomorrow.

I believe you can make a very strong case for McGwire, and certainly for Sosa, on the basis of having profoundly effected MLB. While how they achieved the unachievable may not pass the smell test of the baseball writers who feel the need to year in year out hold baseball players to a moral standard normally reserved for sainthood, the results speak for themselves.

I for one would be a lot happier seeing Big Mac and Slamming Sammy rewarded for breathing new life into baseball than I would seeing Barry Bonds enshrined for his cynical pursuit of the home run record.

Hall of Fame Thoughts

After all the speculation and campaigning the Hall of Fame votes are finally in, and I must say that this year's voting is a nice suprise with common sense and an honest appreciation of players' contribution to the game taking priority over big-market-centrism and an over-valuation of 'big characters' (i.e. Goose Gossage).

Andre 'Hawk' Dawson is 2010's sole inductee and my view on this, once I'd gotten over the initial shock of 'What? Just one new Hall of Famer?' is: well, fair enough.

There are very few who will seriously dispute Dawson's Hall of Fame credentials. He's got the Home Runs, the Hits, The MVP award. No problems there. The guy had to sit by and watch inferior player, such as Jim Rice enshrined and thoroughly deserves his moment in the spotlight.

I'm a little suprised that Blyleven has gotten so close, just 5 votes shy of finally getting enshrined. Blyleven is an interesting case in terms of his Hall-worthiness. The argument against Bert is that he is little more than a 'compiler', slowly accumilating his stellar K and Win totals through 20 plus years of above average performance rather than the dizzying brief spells of Koufax and Martinez. I accept and agree with that argument in part, however in an environment where baseball players retain their place in the lineup only as long as there is no young stud waiting in the wings to replace them (see Tom Glavine) the fact that Blyleven was able to be considered worthy of taking the ball every 5th day for so long is certainly highly complementary of his abilities as a player.

I for one would certainly prefer a dependable if not astounding pitcher like Bert who played well into his 40s than elite pitchers such as Roy Oswalt and Carlos Zambrano who seem content to dangle threat of retirement in their early-to mid 30s in front of their team's fans.

Roberto Alomar narrowly missing the cut is perhaps more suprising. Certainly Robbie has the stats and the reputation to be a Hall of Famers and I doubt many eyelids would have been raised had he made it to Cooperstown in his first year of eligability. I know that many Hall of Fame voters seems to have a perculiar aversion to 1st time ballottees and can only assume this has hurt Alomar, a player who is not as 'open and shut' Hall-worthy as the likes of Cal Ripkin and Tony Gwynn. I certainly hope that the Hirschbeck incident and the recent rumours about his health have not hurt Alomar's Hall-chances. While ugly, the incident with Hirschbeck has now been long resolved and apologised, if not atoned for and ought not negatively impact Robbie's chances.

It seems likely that both Blyleven and Alomar will be admitted next year and in all honesty I have very little problem with that.

Further down the ballott i'm a little peeved that Lee Smith has once again missed the cut, although he had a slightly higher voting percentage than last year. Hopefully this trend will continue and Smith may well sneak into the Hall in years to come. Admittedly Smith has to be inducted before the likes of Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman become eligable for his stats to still stand out as memorable. Frankly, if Sutter and Gossage are Hall of Famers (and to my mind neither of them are) then Smith deserves to get in.

I was dissapointed to see that Harold Baines still languishes at the foot of the voting table, accumilating far less votes that Edgar Martinez and Mark McGwire. Baines, while primarily a DH has 2,886 career hits, WAY more than Martinez and Big Mac, both players who one could argue were far more one dimensional than Baines. I think we can now write the 6-time All-Star and White Sox legend off as a potential Hall of Famer, which is a crying shame as far as i'm concerned.

As for next year I expect to see Blyleven and Alomar inducted. Barry Larkin is an outside bet for enshrinement, although I believe Larkin to be a borderline Hall of Famer at best. His offensive numbers are perhaps negatively comparable to Ozzie Smith's and, given that Smith is in the Hall largely due to his defensive prowess, this does not do Larkin any favours. Jack Morris should also have a fighting chance, and to be honest, I would not object as Morris has always been one of those 'he's not in the hall?' type players for me (this, admittedly is born more out of reputation than exceptional statistics).

I expect the big, new numbers of next year's ballot to be done by Larry Walker, Juan Gonzalez and Jeff Bagwell. None of these guys are hall of famers but I'd imagine 1st year voting percentages in the high 30s-early 40s are in order. This should clear away the likes of Blyleven and Morris from the ballot in preparation for the bumper crops of 1st time inductees that will begin to appear in 2012 and 2013, including (gasp)....Barry Bonds

The Never Ending Outfield Part 1

Theo Epstein is losing his mind. That’s right, I said it. I never thought it could happen but I am beginning to lose faith in the Boy Wonder.

The reason: the cast of thousands that would appear to be the Red Sox outfield this year.

As far as I can tell (and this includes players not signed but not claimed by other teams) the Sox have the following players at or around the Major League level:

Jacoby Ellsbury
Mike Cameron
Jeremy Hermida
J.D Drew
Rocco Baldelli
Joey Gathright
Brian Anderson
Josh Reddick

This is before we get to the looming spectre of Jason Bay which has, well prior to the admittedly GREAT signing of John Lackey, dominated coverage of the Sox at the Winter Meetings.

Jason Bay needs to wake up and smell what he and his agent are shovelling. All this talk of mammoth contracts elsewhere is simply wishful thinking for one simple reason: Jason Bay is not THAT good.

Sure the guy raked last year and has put up extremely respectable power and RBI totals throughout his career, but Bay is asking for the sort of money elite players get, the sort of player who could fit into any lineup anywhere money. Bay is not that player. He had the luxury of being the star player in Pittsburgh and was able to cut his teeth and develop as a big leaguer without any of the pressure that comes from playing for a team that actually expects to win. In Boston Bay’s mediocre average, pull-happy swing is flattered HUGELY by the Green Monster. Essentially Bay (who I’d never thought was a big money-grabbing type of player) wants Matt Holliday money, and if that’s the case then why on earth are the Sox not just biting the financial bullet and spending that sort of money on getting Matt Holliday, the superior player.

I also cannot for the life of me work out why the Sox have signed Mike Cameron. Why on earth would we want to pick up another mediocre bat/good defence CF and then platoon him in LF with Hermida (assuming of course, that Bay doesn’t re-sign)? Added to that is the fact that Cameron is known to have violated MLB's substance policy. That’s not innuendo or hearsay, that guy was suspended for it. After the fiasco with David Ortiz last year and the fall-out from Manny’s very high-profile suspension, you would have thought that last thing the Red Sox would want to do is associate themselves with another guy tainted with the steroid, or in Cameron's case, stimulant brush. I certainly hope that getting this guy is part of some higher Epstein plan to lure Adrian Gonzalez to Fenway as I cannot see myself ever rooting for Cameron in a Red Sox jersey. He is a journeyman outfielder at best and the disruption finding somewhere to put him in the OF in 2010 is more trouble that he is worth.

J.D Drew is like the weather, there is simply no point in either praising or complaining about it, it will just do what its going to do regardless. Drew will play 150 or so games, hit .270 16-20HR 65-75RBI, get paid extremely well for doing so, blah blah blah.

Not much to say about Reddick and Anderson either. If Anderson resigns he is a AAAA type guy and won’t be missed much. Reddick has potential but stunk up Fenway Park as a surprise call up last year and belongs back in AA/AAA for another year.

The only remaining point of contention concerns our 4th outfielder. Certainly at this point it would seem that Hermida is going to take this role, presumably alongside Cameron if Bay returns. I’ve no problem with Hermida, always liked the guy when he was coming up with the Marlins and if he can show some of the promise he once had he can’t help to make the team better and could be productive at DH occasionally.

Unfortunately this appears to leave my favourite Red Sox player, Rocco Baldelli, without a job come April. While I know that it doesn’t make any baseball sense to keep a guy on the big league roster who is incapable of playing back to back games, I will be sorry to see Rocco leave and certainly hope that he gets a shot at staying in the big leagues somewhere else. After all this is a guy who, I believe, we would be talking about as the equivalent of Jason Bay and Matt Holliday had he not fallen ill. What’s more Baldelli is a New England guy and everyone I talked to in Boston this October loves the guy.

Still, dollars and cents abide.

The Best of the Rest

I hate to say it but maybe Albert Pujols isn’t the most valuable player in the National League after all.

Certainly all the boxes are ticked when it comes to Pujols being MVP-worthy. The guy rakes, his OBP is consistently high, his glove is amongst the best in the league at 1B and you know that year in, year out Albert is going to hit around .330. But is this enough to make the NL award the foregone conclusion it seems to have been for a while now?

I’m not going to make any case whatsoever for Prince Fielder, the guy is just Pujols-lite in my opinion. If you stack up Fielder’s 46HR, 141 RBI .299/.412/.602 offensive line from 2009 against Pujol’s 47HR, 135RBI .327/.443/.658 you find that RBI totals aside Albert is by far the superior offensive player (even with his turgid September hitting slump). What’s more Albert is a gold glove calibre defensive first baseman. While I’ve slated the gold glove voting in previous posts and still maintain that a player’s ‘star-quality’ unduly impacts the likelihood of them taking home the trophy, it should be clear to anyone watching the Cardinals or the Brewers on a regular basis that Albert is vastly superior to Fielder defensively. Fielder will be lucky to last more than a few more seasons playing defensively every day whereas Albert is the calibre of player who one could easily see playing out the rest of his likely-to-be hall of fame career at the position.

OK, that’s Fielder dispensed with.

Now comes Hanley Ramirez, who, as far as I’m concerned IS the 2009 NL MVP.

Just thinking of how good Ramirez is fills me with chagrin regarding the fact that this guy was never given the opportunity to suit up at Fenway Park. Yes, I know, we got Lowell and Beckett out of that deal, and likely would not have won in 2007 had it not been for the trade. But nevertheless, with Mike Lowell becoming the 10 million dollar white elephant in the room for all of the Sox’ off-season plans and Josh Beckett never quite being the perennial Cy Young candidate he should be, one can’t help but wonder ‘what if’ when it comes to the Ramirez deal.

Ramirez has had a phenomenal season. 24 HR, 106 RBI .342/.410/.543. Those are elite numbers. As the Marlin’s website tellingly states, Ramirez was “second to one” in the MVP voting this year.

The trouble is, the MVP award is not about crowning the best player in the division. If that were the case Dustin Pedroia would not have had a prayer in 2008. It is about choosing that player which was most valuable to his team. That the Cardinals still limped into the playoffs despite Albert not going deep once in September must surely tell us something about his value to that team. While Pujols is the face of the organisation and a vital, invaluable part of that team, it is not like the Cardinals were devoid of talent without him. Holliday, Carpenter, Wainwright, even guys like Skip Schmacher and Ryan Ludwick all made up the pieces of the puzzle for the Cards in ’09. It was not simply the Albert Pujols show.

Not so the Marlins. While the team benefitted from the emergence of Chris Coghlan and got another year of all-or-nothing production from the soon-to-depart Dan Uggla they were a very different team from the Marlin’s sides of 2006 and 2007. Gone is Miggy Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez is now, to once again pilfer the infamous Reggie Jackson quote: the straw that stirs the drink. Simply put, (Josh Johnson’s pitching aside) Hanley is everything to the Fish.

The Marlins were a contender for much of 2009. Without Ramirez the story would have been far different and would have seen them rival Pittsburgh and DC for the most hopeless franchise in baseball.

All that and what’s more is that Hanley is a short stop. A short stop! The very heart of the infield. In the thick of everything, all year long. Surely one could make a convincing argument that having an elite offensive player at a position generally reversed for mediocre hitting, fleet-footed players is inherently more valuable that having a slightly more productive player at first base, a position renowned (along with LF) for housing hulking, defensively sub-standard players of the Adam Dunn/Ryan Howard variety.

I for one expect Hanley to win this award comfortably in 2010. Hopefully then this guy will finally get what he deserves; the opportunity to play for a team that cares one iota about winning, can actually draw an attendance that isn’t a league-wide joke and give him the treatment an MVP calibre player deserves.

Love that dirty water, Boston, you’re my home.

The Gold Glove Conspiracy

So the gold glove winners have been announced and I can’t say there are too many surprises in this year’s winners. Nevertheless, and perhaps because of, this I find myself just as annoyed by these awards as I am every year.

And no, it’s not because no Red Sox players won. We were a defensive shambles from the jump in 2009, a defensive shambles that ultimately lost us the division. Youkilis and (in a prime example of ‘its better late than never’) Alex Gonzalez (the now without a contract for some Theo-only-knows reason Alex Gonzalez) were the only bright spots defensively for the ‘09 Sox. Apparently Jason Bay was perfect in LF for us this year, but the guy has a Johnny Damon-esqe arm, so he doesn’t count.

The trouble I have with the gold glove awards is the seeming ease previous winners are able to retain their glove. Take Torii Hunter for example. Now nobody disputes his brilliance in the field, nor his offensive prowess, nor, for that matter, that he seems like a really nice guy. But the fact of the matter is that Torii will likely take home the AL CF gold glove until the day he hangs up that glove, is this really fair?

No, it makes a mockery of what is supposed to be an award given out on merit. Torii wasn’t the best CF in the AL this year. Carlos Gomez of the Twins was. Gomez played more games at CF, has more assists and compiled the exact same .997 fielding percentage as Hunter did. Torii Hunter has won the award based on reputation and superior offensive value, two factors that should play no part in selecting the best defensive players at each position.

That being said, I used to love Eric Chavez and never had a problem when he’d win the third base gold glove year after year despite being more fragile than glass.

One also has to feel sorry for poor Kevin Kouzmanoff of the lowly Padres who has been pipped to the post by Ryan Zimmerman of the even more lowly Nats. Going back to what I said about Hunter, by rights Kouzmanoff should have won this award as he was the best defensive 3b in the NL in 2009. However, there wasn’t much in it, both players are first time winners playing for awful teams, and Zimmerman made ‘gold glove plays’ all year.

What frustrates me about Kouz losing is that the Padre’s have essentially done this to themselves. According to MLB.com the Pods GM sent a highlight reel of Kouzmanoff’s plays and defensive stats to all the other NL GMs instructing them to vote for his man. If I were Kouzmanoff I would not like this one little bit. I was always taught that praise (and by extension, reward) is something given, not asked for. Certainly were I in a position to award gold gloves, and found my vote was split between a player who did no electioneering and let his record speak for itself, and one who’s GM had been cheerleading for him since season’s end, I’d go with Zimmerman every time.

As for Ryan Zimmerman, I can’t help but think he’d look very good manning the third base at Fenway.

All Hail King Petey

You know what? The Phillies might just pull this one off.

I’d thought this series was a done deal when the Yankees elected to go with CC on short rest in Game 4 (which I might add shows an alarming lack of faith in the rest of the staff). Yet somehow Jimmy “the False Prophet” Rollins are the rest of the Philly squad have managed to bounce back.

I must admit that I am loving this World Series. Game 2 in particular was awesome, the atmosphere at Yankee Stadium during the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys performance was incredible. I must also admit that once the Yankees made it 3-1 my attention began to wander and the all too familiar, and slightly hypocritical given the Red Sox expenditure of last, “well, they just bought themselves another championship’ barbs began to enter my vocabulary. But Philadelphia are at least making a series of it.

Ultimately I’m enjoying this 2009 World Series for what it is; a battle between two hugely talented yet hugely flawed teams both in possession of some of the best fans in baseball.

One thing stands out especially, and no its not Chase Utley’s Ruthian stats or Cliff Lee out-classing CC Sabathia at every turn. No, 2009’s Fall Classic should forever be remember for signalling Pedro Martinez’s return to the big stage, in what may well be his final hurrah.

Petey has been incredible. Even if his 7k performance in Game 2 wasn’t enough to convince the world that this is beyond all doubt the greatest pitcher since Koufax, we have witnessed the return of the “greater interview in Sports”.

Pedro has turned in some great quotes, from his proclaimations of his own ‘specialness’ to his announcement that he is the Yankee’s most feared adversary, everything out of the man’s mouth has been pure gold.

This is what we’ve all been missing since Martinez was at his dominant pinnacle in Boston. The arrogance, the confidence, the real Pedro!

Given Pedro’s performances down the stretch with Philly I see no reason why he won’t stick around in MLB for at least another couple of years, and I welcome it whole-heartedly. This man is one of the reasons I fell in love with this game, a loud, exciting character that truly captivates an audience. What’s more I’d love to see the guy get to 250 wins.

Give me an over the hill Petey over CC and Cliff any day of the week.

Right, that’s it, love-fest over. I’ll be back to slagging off the Yankees again soon.