Bleacher Creature Feature

#23: Catching Up

23 August 2002

Here's an entertaining comparison

Line #1: 16 G, 11 GS, 3-6 W-L, 0 S, 2 CG, 1 SHO, 76.2 IP, 57 H, 31 R, 29 ER, 10 HR, 24 BB, 59 K, 3.40 ERA
Line #2: 9 G, 5 GS, 1-3 W-L, 1 S, 0 CG, 0 SHO, 47.1 IP, 56 H, 32 R, 32 ER, 11 HR, 11 BB, 33 K, 6.08 ERA

Line #2 has given up virtually the same number of hits, runs, and home runs in almost thirty fewer innings pitched than Line #1, and then, of course, there's the rather gaudy ERA difference.

Line #1 represents Ted Lilly's stats while a Yankee before being traded, along with two top prospects, for Jeff Weaver. Line #2 represents Jeff Weaver's stats since coming over in that trade.

And this is our insurance policy. Roger Clemens has balky legs. Andy Pettitte has a balky elbow. David Wells has a balky back. Orlando Hernandez has a balky brain. Mike Mussina's having an awful year. Sterling Hitchcock is pitching like someone who's four years removed from his best season, which he is, and has been injured half the year. Any of these guys can go down easily. At this point, the Yanks have to pray that the old guys keep it together into October, 'cause I sure as hell don't want to rely on Weaver in an important game. Hell, I don't want to rely on him in an unimportant one (viz. his meltdown against the Angels Wednesday). What I want is Ted Lilly back.

My opinion on the ongoing labor mishegos: the owners dug themselves into a hole and want a) the players and b) George Steinbrenner to bail them out of it. All of baseball has to pay the price of the most incompetent owners. Rangers owner Tom Hicks talking about how owners have to curb spending had all the intellectual honesty of Claude Rains in Casablanca being shocked that there was gambling in this establishment, and was particularly laughable given that a) Hicks was the one who bid against himself to give Alex Rodriguez a $252 million contract and b) Hicks made these statements from his personal yacht. Uh-huh. To quote Jim Baker on ESPN.com's MLB Insider: "First, here's a tip for anybody who owns a company and wants to talk about cutting or limiting employee earnings: do not make such pronouncements while aboard personal luxury sea craft. I cannot emphasize this enough. It really undercuts the message that expenses must be curbed."

Of course, the problem isn't really Alex Rodriguez, because if anyone deserves the largest contract in history, it's Alex Rodriguez. No, it's bloated contracts for mediocre or declining players like Darren Dreifort, Denny Neagle, Chan Ho Park, Roberto Hernandez, Mo Vaughn, Juan Gonzalez, Charles Johnson, Brady Anderson, etc., ad nauseum.

That said, a strike would be a massive PR hit for the players, and they know this, and they set the date anyhow. The owners obviously have a front that's about as united as the Soviet Union was post-1989. I suspect setting the date was mainly to enforce a deadline so these jackasses could get their fecal matter together.

In any case, that's my final word on the subject for the next week. As far as I'm concerned, there will be a remainder of the season until I'm given a real reason (other than a desperate need for newspaper and web site columnists to fill space) to think otherwise.

Thanks to the good graces of a kind colleague, I got to see the Yankees/Royals day game on Thursday 8 August from some fantastic first-base-side field-level box seats, and so got to see another vintage Pettitte performance. I knew he was on when I realized that Pettitte got the first pitch over for a strike (mostly a called strike) on each of the first six batters. The seventh batter swung at the first pitch and grounded into a double play.

High point of the game was Pettitte almost picking off Chuck Knoblauch (who really should've known better), and only not doing so by dint of a throwing error by Ron Coomer, playing first to spell Jason Giambi while Nick Johnson is injured. (Every game, the Yankees show a baby picture and fans try to guess who it is. That day, it was Coomer, and he looked exactly the same -- he was perfectly round as an infant, too...) Also fun were the two phenomenal catches by Rondell White (both of which made "web gems" on ESPN's Baseball Tonight that night).

One of the nice things about the seats were the spectacular view of Pettitte's pickoff move. You know what? It really is that good.

Speaking of Coomer, he apparently has a fan club. All four (sic) members were in the right-field bleachers on the 11th, a game against the A's that saw the beginning of the return of The Mike Mussina We Paid All That Money For -- who came back even further on his next start (a five-hitter against the Mariners), only to piss it away tonight against the Rangers.

Sadly for the fan club, Coomer went 0-4 on the 11th, though he was robbed of a double by a spectacular Terrence Long catch. Nobody could begrudge it, however, given that Long's stellar defense was responsible for robbing Manny Ramirez of a game-winning home run just a few days earlier at Fenway. Besides, we won 8-5...

Speaking of White, he hasn't been covering himself in glory of late. What is it with the Yankees and left field? White looked to be the first real left fielder on the Yankees since Mel Hall in 1995, but he's 4 for his last 85.

An interesting quote about catchers from Chris Kahrl at Baseball Prospectus. It was part of his "Transaction Analysis" column, specifically in a piece about Javy Lopez being activated from the DL:

"Is it just me, or have a really high number of catchers seen their offensive number crater this season? Glove men like Einar Diaz, Gary Bennett and Bengie Molina have plummeted down to Matheny territory, but well-regarded offensive catchers like Ramon Hernandez, Charles Johnson, Jason LaRue, and yes, Javy Lopez, have all done worse than expected as well. Combined with the usual 'contributions' of guys like Brad Ausmus or Joe Girardi or Brent Mayne, or the continued entropic spirals of Todd Hundley and Jason Kendall, you're left with a divide between the nine or ten good regular catchers, and a bunch of situations which didn't pan out as well as you would have expected. Overall, catcher is now the weakest offensive position in the majors, well behind second and short. It all adds up to another way of saying that Jorge Posada and Mike Piazza tower over everyone else. It seems strange that something involving baseball in New York would go under- or uncommented upon, but the Big Apple has baseball's best catchers, and it falls short of being an overdone story?"

Snideness about New York notwithstanding, this is an interesting observation, and one easy to miss given that New York does have the two best catchers in baseball (now that Ivan Rodriguez has spent so much time the last three years on the DL).

Speaking of Piazza, you've got to feel for Mets fans right now. I mean, yeah, they've had worse teams -- in fact, they set the futility bar in their very first 40-120 year of existence -- but this is just sad. They've lost eleven in a row, and are burrowing their way to a twelfth in Coors Field as I write this (as I type, they have all of three hits after 5.1 innings at altitude). Only two players have an OPS over .800 -- Piazza and Edgardo Alfonzo. A lot of it you could've seen coming. The outfield has been an offensive black hole for two years, and an on-the-decline Jeromy Burnitz was not the solution (he has the worst OPS of the three regulars). They continue, against all logic and good sense, to put Rey Ordonez in the starting lineup even though he demonstrates no skills to justify it (his defense, always overrated, has gotten worse, which just makes his embarrassing .251/.285/.328 year an even bigger burden than it already was; I'm convinced that the only reason the Mets made the postseason in 2000 was because Ordonez broke his arm and missed half the year). Roberto Alomar, Burnitz, Vaughn, and Roger Cedeno were all risks, all on the down side of their career, and one, Vaughn, coming off a year away from the game with an injury, and while there was a chance that at least one of them would be useful, it's, looking back, not much of a surprise than none of them have been.

A close friend of mine, who lists "Met fan" as his religion, confided in me recently that he was seriously considering becoming a Yankee fan right now....

NEXT: Boomer vs. Wells

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