Tagged: Charlie Morton

2010 Forecasts: NL Central

Having already tabbed the Rockies for a possible runaway in the West (pursued perhaps by the Giants), we move to the Central:

CHICAGO
may represent a startling fact about this division – there not only isn’t a
great team here, there isn’t even a good one. The starting line-up is
five-eighths made up of guys who significantly regressed from 2008 to 2009,
plus Marlon Byrd. The new ownership seems to have already committed to the age-old easy way out of worrying more about the ballpark than the ballclub. Larry Rothschild has gratefully plugged Carlos Silva and Tom
Gorzelanny into his rotation. The bullpen is headed by a shaky Carlos Marmol
and not one experienced right-handed set-up man. The Cubs are a mess.

It still
didn’t make any sense for CINCINNATI to invest in Scott Rolen, nor bring back
Ramon Hernandez, and with considerable irony, this might as well still be 2007
when the Reds were pinning their hopes on Homer Bailey and Jay Bruce. Their
epiphanies – Bailey’s last September, and Bruce’s during his injury – must be
lasting for the Reds to compete. But there is at minimum some sense of upswing
in Cincinnati. Dusty Baker gave Drew Stubbs the chance to play last year, and
might even find spots for Aroldis Chapman, Mike Leake, and Yonder Alonso this season. The
bullpen is strong, the rotation potentially deep.

For years,
Terry Francona’s top lieutenant, Brad Mills, has deserved a major league team
to manage. He may yet get the chance – for now he’s stuck with Houston. There
is an outfield and there are two starting
pitchers (providing Roy Oswalt isn’t seriously hurt, and doesn’t go home to his
ranch in sheer frustration). The rest of the line-up, and the pitching staff, are disaster areas, made no better by today’s news than Lance Berkman’s bionic knee is ‘cranky.’ Things could brighten somewhat if
Matt Lindstrom harnesses his talent, and if Jason Castro or J.R. Towles squat
up behind the plate, and if three fans turn out to be viable starting pitchers.
Otherwise, this is a franchise that has gone to seed.

What’s the
psychological saw about repeating the same unsuccessful action with confidence
that this time it
will succeed? The Brewers are confident Dave Bush, Doug Davis, and Manny Parra and/or Jeff Suppan constitute three-fifths of a pitching staff. They’re certain Rickie Weeks and
Corey Hart will harness their talent. Everybody knows this is the year Yovanni Gallardo
leaps to the forefront of NL starters. This is a recording. The Brewers will be
deceptively entertaining as long as Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder are around,
and they could get a wonderful spark if Carlos Gomez decides not to style his
way out of the game before his 25th birthday. But all the bullpen depth in the world
isn’t going to help that rotation.

PITTSBURGH
deserves better. Surely they are, on average, a better set of players than the
Astros. But nothing seems to progress in Pittsburgh; Andrew McCutchen and
Garrett Jones arise fully grown from the minors, but Freddy Sanchez and Jack
Wilson are dished off. They make a seeming salary dump to Atlanta and in fact
rip the Braves off, selling Nate McLouth at his high point, opening up a spot
for McCutchen, and getting the remarkable arm of Charlie Morton – and Morton is
the only guy in the state who doesn’t believe he has a remarkable arm. And still, if
lightning strikes – if Pedro Alvarez, Chase D’Arnaud, and Tim Alderson were all
productive big leaguers by June 1, they’d suddenly have an actual real-life
.500 team. And a .500 team might run away with this division.

Pittsburgh can hope, because
ST. LOUIS is the most overrated team in the majors. Albert Pujols glitters so
brightly, he makes you forget that the rest of the infield is an assortment of
Brendan Ryans and Felipe Lopezes and David Freeses. Chris Carpenter and Adam
Wainwright were so dominant that they obscured the reality of what happened if
you actually beat them on consecutive days – the Cards’ season would be snuffed
out in a sweep. This is a team that was ready to trot out a rotation in which
Kyle Lohse, Brad Penny, and Rich Hill would pitch more often than did Carpenter
and Wainwright (the first light bulb going off: giving the fifth spot in the rotation not to Hill but to Jaime Garcia). The bullpen is a jumble, the bench non-existent, and lord help
Tony LaRussa if Yadier Molina is really hurt or Pujols’ back is cranky for more
than 45 minutes at a stretch.

PREDICTIONS:
You know what? I’ll take the long-odds bet on the dice coming up for the Reds
and not the Cardinals. It’ll be an exciting race, to see if you actually can
get into the playoffs with 79 victories. Chicago third, Milwaukee fourth just
ahead of Pittsburgh, and Houston sixth, unless they decide to conserve energy
and just forfeit all games in lieu of much needed fielding practice and weeding
through resumes of infielders and pitchers.

Self-Congratulations And Another Gem From The Hall

Nate McLouth, since his trade to the Atlanta Braves:

.263/.344/.433/.777, 6 HR, 19 RBI, 9 SB, 34 R

Andrew McCutchen, since McLouth was traded, and he replaced him in Pittsburgh:

.293/.349/.488/.837, 6 HR, 31 RBI, 9 SB, 37 R

This blog, from June 3, 2009:

Did Pirates Upgrade In Center?

Don’t get me wrong about Nate McLouth. Great guy, hustles, works hard, busted his butt at an All-Star Game, better than anything the Braves had in their outfield before tonight’s trade. I’m just not convinced Pittsburgh didn’t improve its line-up by replacing him with Andrew McCutchen….The key to this trade is that McLouth’s replacement does not come from it. McCutchen, who arrives in Pittsburgh as McLouth’s equal in speed and outfield skill, probably more than his equal for batting average, and eventually capable of producing 75% of his power, nearly made the majors out of spring training. The Pirates were sorely tempted to damn arbitration and take him north – that’s how authoritative a hitter he looked in Florida.

I do not see McCutchen keeping up homer-for-homer with McLouth and the RBI margin seems out-of-joint. But the point is, you’d be hard-pressed to criticize the Pirates for this trade – and this wasn’t the trade.


It was not McLouth for McCutchen, it was McLouth for Charlie Morton, Gorkys Hernandez, and Jeff Locke. Also, to this point, the first guy out of the minors in the haul for McLouth, Morton, is 2-3, 3.72, with three quality starts out of eight (and three out of his last five) and the number is so low because he left injured after one inning in his first, and was pulled after five and about a 90-pitch limit in two others. In short, he’s started eight times, pitched well six, pitched startlingly well, twice.

Two months is a pretty good sample size. This is not to say the Braves made a mistake dealing for McLouth. But the Pirates came out more ahead of the roster shuffling then did Atlanta, and the difference is likely to grow with time.

BACK TO COOPERSTOWN:

Spent three days, all told, in the library, in the photo archive (actually a giant room with 25,000 images, kept in cold storage, including the original images from Addie Joss day in Cleveland in 1911 – you’ve seen them – the American League All-Stars with Walter Johnson and Cy Young and Nap Lajoie, and Ty Cobb in a Cleveland uniform). I hope to illustrate something remarkable from the photo vault in the next few days, but in the interim, another special something from the scorebook collection:

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This is the 1947 book of veteran New York baseball writer Tom Meany – his bibliography is a couple of pages worth and he ended up as PR Director of the Mets. And that’s Jackie Robinson’s debut game. Closer:
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That’s him, batting second: “Robby.”
Better still, on the preceding pages, Meany shows he was at the final Dodger exhibition games, including Robinson’s last with Montreal against the Dodgers, and then two exhibitions at Ebbets Field for the Dodgers, against… the Yankees.

Recommended Prospects, Recommended Reading (Updated)

Funny that with all the big names moving before the deadline, the number of primo prospects was actually pretty low. I was particularly unimpressed with what the Indians got for Cliff Lee (and Ben Francisco) although I am only about ten percent insufficiently skeptical to address the Lee deal as I did the McLouth one – that the trading team was selling a guy, if not at peak value, then at the last moment he would be seriously overvalued, and were doing well to get anything hopeful back.

Having said that, if you still consider Justin Masterson a prospect and not a full-fledged major leaguer, he was clearly the most gifted of all the players given up for “the names.” A year from now, when Brad Penny and John Smoltz and who knows who else are Red Sox memories, Boston would not have parted with him, and not just because of his pitching gifts. The Sox are astounded by his quiet leadership, an almost unheard-of quality for a pitcher. He doesn’t rant, he doesn’t yell, he doesn’t slap his glove against his thigh, and nothing bleeds from his sock. He just inspires his teammates to feel more secure about their talents and accomplishments, and their prospects for winning the game. Terry Francona will miss him, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of his life.
And ironically, given how they are howling in Pittsburgh over the exiling of McLouth, then Jack Wilson, then Freddie Sanchez, the head-and-shoulders pick for the top pure-prospect traded against the deadline was the guy the Bucs got for Sanchez, pitcher Tim Alderson. Harkening back to the Johan Santana/Yankees post here, the rule of thumb is that half of all pitching prospects fail. That would ordinarily discourage the ever-discouraged Pirate faithful. However, Alderson and Charlie Morton are both front-of-rotation, ace-of-staff prospects. If one makes it and the other turns merely into a righty Jarrod Washburn, they’ve done awfully well – and this assumes that very little else from the McLouth or Wilson trades bears great fruit, which is not necessarily a correct assumption.
One more deadline note. The amazement at the Adam LaRoche/Casey Kotchman trade itself amazes me. The Red Sox made a similar acquisition in 2004, a glove-first, low-power starting first baseman, about whom everyone said “where they gonna play him?” His name was Doug Mientkiewicz and the point was, his window as a starting player was pretty much over, as is Kotchman’s. He will never hit enough. So you keep the defensive whiz as your back-up and pay for it by spending the middling slugger with the middling glove. The only complication this time is that the Boston backup on those days when Victor Martinez is playing first, is a fellow named Youkilis, and he’s no slouch.
BRIEF UPDATE NOT WORTHY OF ITS OWN POST

The Rangers sent Frank Francisco out on rehab to AAA. To Frisco of the Texas League. Making him Frank Francisco of Frisco.
Nearly as good as Johnny Podres of the Padres, Jim York of New York, or Ted Cox of the Red Sox.
READ – IN FACT, YOU’RE DOING IT NOW!

Three books to endorse with high praise and the caveat that I’m mentioned in one, and two of them are written by friends. I write as a guy who was once the country’s only nationally-published reviewer of baseball books (who once gave the second edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia a panning for some awful typos) so finding three I like at one time is quite a feat.
First there’s Marty Appel’s Munson: The Life And Death Of A Yankee Captain. When a book reveals details of a man’s life to his own family, it’s a pretty good book. I am duly impressed both with the research effort and the clarity of Marty’s work, and the attempt to recreate that sad day 30 years ago tomorrow when Munson’s death shocked baseball. It is not happy reading, but it is worthwhile reading.
I think Ron Darling may have written (let’s broaden it out to all of them who didn’t go to Yale; even co-written) the best book by a pitcher since Kirby Higbe’s HIgh And Inside. Ron’s is called The Complete Game and it takes a novel approach: a pitch-by-pitch, thought-by-thought recitation of key innings of key games, nearly all of them his own, throughout his long span in college and major league ball. Apart from taking you inside an entire team’s thinking as the pitches succeed each other, Ronnie also underscores what is to me the most underrated skill among elite athletes: Memory. Nearly all of the microscopic detail (what he was thinking between the third and fourth pitches, to the third hitter, in the fifth inning, of his thirteenth start, etc) was pulled from his recall and simply verified in the record books. He rolls the details out the way Gordie Howe once rolled out each shot he took in a Detroit Red Wings-New York Rangers game, 27 years after he played it. A great read, and very well written.
Almost not at all written is the third suggestion: Chris Epting’s The Early Polo Grounds. This is 181 pre-1925 photos taken at the legendary home of The New York Giants and it borders on time travel, even if the captions aren’t always complete (a date of an October, 1910, photo is disputed by the author because the Giants didn’t play in that year’s World Series; he seems not to have known that in those days the Giants and Yankees regularly played post-season series for the “Championship of New York”). Having just spent hours in the photo vaults of Cooperstown looking at all the photos of the fabled ballpark, I can say that this collection rivals that part of the Hall’s from the 20th Century – plus, they won’t arrest you if you try to take it home.


Rolen Down Memory Lane

The Blue Jays’ visit here allowed me to visit with an old, old acquaintance. “Still the highlight of that season,” Scott Rolen insisted again, for at least the third time since it happened, just the other day – in 1996.

The late Bill Robinson was managing the Reading Phillies of the Eastern League. I had known him since I was a kid and he was the next great Yankee superstar who fizzled out, only to reclaim a terrific career as a clutch 4th Outfielder for the Phillies and Pirates. Robby sent me a note one day, saying he wanted to give his team a tour of ESPN the next time they came to play in nearby New Britain, Connecticut, and he dangled considerable bait. If I arranged it, he’d let me be his bench coach for one of the games against the newly-christened “Rock Cats,” who played only about twelve minutes from my house.
I did not let Bill know I would’ve given his guys the tour, no charge.
They got the guided visit (far less interesting than it would seem, then or now), and Robby and I agreed on a date. And soon I was there with him on the bench, in full uniform, and wearing the spare shoes of the only guy with feet approaching mine, the one and only Wayne Gomes. Robinson even made me work for my living: I had to chart hits and defense. But mostly I was there to talk to the kids on the team, no fewer than fourteen of whom eventually made the majors (though they weren’t all there at that juncture). The highlights were Marlon Anderson, as great a guy then as now, Bobby Estalella, Matt Beech, and Rolen, who spent half his time practicing an imaginary golf swing. 
I also took some ribbing from the pitching coach, Larry Andersen, most of it along the lines of “I’m getting paid to do this. What’s your excuse?” That’s when I reminded him he was in New Britain, where the guy he had been traded for in 1990 had insufficiently impressed the parent Red Sox. “What was his name, Larry? Bagwell? Whatever happened to him?”
It was, of course, a tremendous education. As I’ve alluded to before, it would obviously be the dream of any fan to watch a game from such a venue, with such entree to the process. But how much you learn and how many presuppositions you are disabused of. And the game moves twice as fast as it does from the stands or the press box, which is why players stare blankly at you when you talk about enforcing speed-up rules.
And then there’s the practical joking. In the 7th, as I was explaining the ESPN experience to two players, one of whom was an infielder named Matt Guiliano, the other guy barked out at umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, “Hey, Blue, where was that one?” Wendelstedt ripped off his mask and barked “who said that?” The complaining player and Guiliano both pointed at me, and Wendelstedt promptly ejected me from the game.
He ran me.

I thought it was quite funny and I continued to sit in my spot on the bench and started to resume my story to Guiliano when Bill Robinson came over. “You know, he really did throw you out. You’ll have to go. But you should give him hell before you do.” I ran out onto the field and as Wendelstedt barely contained his laughter, I started screaming at him. As I recall, it went like this: “My one lousy game in uniform and you run me? I can see you’re going to make the big leagues and not just because your Daddy’s an umpire. And let me promise you, one day I will be avenged. I will get a highlight of you and I will run you into the ground with it. Your father will change his name to Runge. I swear!” Then I kicked dirt on the plate and on him and I said “Okay, have I put on enough of a show?” and he sputtered out yes, and I left, throwing my shoes and cap as I did (I retrieved the cap).
Six years later, Rolen had already gone from the Phils to the Cards and they appeared at Yankee Stadium and I saw him near the cage and went over to ask him if he remembered it, when I suddenly realized he was running over to me. “Where was that when they threw you out of our game?” I told him, New Britain, in 1996. “The highlight of my season,” he said. We both laughed and I reminded him that a few weeks later he was called up to Philly to make his big league debut. “Like I said,” he said dryly. “Highlight of my season.”
Sunday afternoon we visited briefly and we repeated the exchange. “I know, I know, the year I broke in. Still the highlight of that season.”
BRIEFLY…

You could expand the All-Star Rosters to 75 guys and somebody would still have a complaint, but Mark Reynolds isn’t going? The only thing besides Justin Upton keeping the Diamondbacks from sinking into the PCL?… Chad Gaudin looked like a BP pitcher in the first inning Friday against the Dodgers, then recovered fairly well thereafter, but still has a little ways to go. On the other hand, Rule V shortstop draftee Everth Cabrera may be there already… the Pirates may be serious about dealing Matt Capps. If they can get a juicy package for him, and something that will make them all go dreamy like they have over Charlie Morton, they’ll do it… and lastly, if this hasn’t shown up anywhere, old Yankee Stadium is now enmeshed in protective netting like a widow at a funeral, and the bit-by-bit demolition of the superstructure isn’t far off. I was literally offered a full piece of the outfield frieze and the price was not a blood-letting for unique stuff like that. But then they said it weighed a ton and I said “I bet it does,” and they said “no, literally, it weighs 2,000 pounds” and I envisioned apartment walls collapsing and I said no, thank you kindly.
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Did Pirates Upgrade In Center?

Don’t get me wrong about Nate McLouth. Great guy, hustles, works hard, busted his butt at an All-Star Game, better than anything the Braves had in their outfield before tonight’s trade.

I’m just not convinced Pittsburgh didn’t improve its line-up by replacing him with Andrew McCutchen.
McLouth’s explosive 367 at bats before his epic night in the Bronx? 19 homers, 65 RBI, .281.
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His 346 at bats since August 1st of last year? 13 homers, 66 RBI, .261. And he is approaching his 28th birthday in October, the time at which the all-time graph of batters suggests improvements stop. The great hitters plateau at the peak. The others begin their descent. What you are seeing with McLouth is what you are likely to get henceforth: around 20 homers, around 20 steals, around a .270 batting average. Nothing to sneer at, but nothing to make Pirates’ fans believe that they have just had another Jason Bay or even Xavier Nady ripped from their bosom. Let us not forget that only a year ago, McLouth barely shook off Nyjer Morgan for the starting job, and the year before he lost a lot of playing time to Chris Duffy, for goodness sakes.
The key to this trade is that McLouth’s replacement does not come from it. McCutchen, who arrives in Pittsburgh as McLouth’s equal in speed and outfield skill, probably more than his equal for batting average, and eventually capable of producing 75% of his power, nearly made the majors out of spring training. The Pirates were sorely tempted to damn arbitration and take him north – that’s how authoritative a hitter he looked in Florida.
The worthiness of the trade depends on which Charlie Morton appears for Pittsburgh. The version Neal Huntington dreams of, dominated the International League last spring and this one. The other appeared as Atlanta’s starter fifteen times last year and could’ve been mistaken for a BP pitcher – but he was both hurt (back) and ill (weight loss). It should also not be assumed that the Braves think Morton is a washout – they have already seen sparks of interest caused by Kris Medlen, and are confident Tommy Hanson will shine as he steps into Medlen’s slot in the rotation on Saturday. The second pitcher in the deal, Jeff Locke, is an intriguing lefthander with a curve and control. If he and Morton both make it, the Pirates will have won the trade. 
This is not to say Atlanta didn’t have to make it. McLouth not only fills a huge hole, but also takes enough pressure off Jordan Schafer that we might see the latter return this year, or at worst next, and force McLouth to either corner. McLouth might also serve as some sort of last-stab-in-the-dark at resuscitating the almost tragic Jeff Francoeur, before the Braves – do what? Sell him to a Korean League team?