Tagged: Jason Bartlett

More On Jeter And 1894

It would appear that the Derek Jeter mess is down to one escape route.

Jeter should take the Yankees’ last offer, adding only one demand to a deal that will already overpay him by 50% or more. To save both his tattered reputation and the equally-sullied one of the Yanks, he should agree to the three years at $15,000,000 per and append to it a deal for an undisclosed figure that keeps him in the employ of the team in some non-playing capacity for ten years or twenty or whatever number they choose to pull out of thin air. Presumably a clause giving him an out in 2014 if he still wants to play (Japan?) could be worked in and boasted about by both sides.
Add one hug, ignore the reality that the Yankees should’ve spent the winter seeking not to mollify Jeter but to replace him, and everybody’s happy – until Jeter hits .238 in 2011.
The urgency of settlement has never been more pronounced than tonight. It’s pretty bad when three or four of your four theoretical alternatives to being vastly overpaid in New York disappear on the same day: The Dodgers sign Juan Uribe to play second, the Giants are about to sign Miguel Tejada to play short, the Rays have just put Jason Bartlett on the block to make room for Reid Brignac and Cardinals trade for Ryan Theriot (conceivably leaving the other middle infield spot still open unless the Skip Schumaker fan club prevails) – oh and Troy Tulowitzki just set the real bar for what a superb shortstop is worth (as opposed to what he was worth).
So that leaves Baltimore (Japan?)

Bad day to be Derek Jeter. He and agent Casey Close were said to have met with the Yankees today, were said to have been a little more flexible when they did so, and Jeter supposedly says he and Close will meet again tomorrow. I think, perhaps, they should.
MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE TEMPLE CUP SCOREBOARD:
I am charmingly chastised by Jenny Ambrose of 

TempleTiernan.jpg

the Hall of Fame that the publication from which those first-ever Temple Cup photos were taken and posted here (that’s a detail of Giants’ rightfielder Mike Tiernan, warning up before Game Four at the Polo Grounds in New York, a thousand yards from Yankee Stadium, in October, 1894), “The Illustrated American,” lasted not from 1887 to around 1898, but from exactly February 22, 1890 through February 17, 1899. The magazine met an ignominious end. There may or may not have been a fire at its headquarters, but there was a bankruptcy of some sort. From the “Business Troubles” listing in the April 16, 1898 edition of The New York Times:

Deputy Sheriff Maguire yesterday sold out the office furniture, type, and plant of The Illustrated American at 209 and 213 East Twenty-third Street, for about $1,100.
Never mess with an archivist.
Jenny’s Cooperstown colleague Bill Francis tells us a little something about the events after the decisive game of the 1894 Temple Cup, in which the homestanding Giants swept the Baltimore Orioles 16-3. Again from The Times (October 9, 1894), hours after those photos were snapped:
…the victors and the vanquished saw “Dr. Syntax” at the Broadway Theatre, and afterward recounted some of the pleasant experiences of last season, over foaming bumpers of Nick Engel’s beer. In a few days the players will start for their respective homes, and the baseball cranks’ occupation will be lost until gentle Spring starts again.
You just don’t hear a lot these days about ballplayers reliving the season “over foaming bumpers of beer.”

Statistical Possibility Does Not Really Permit This: Update

This does boggle the mind. Since Mark Buehrle’s perfect game against them last July, the Tampa Bay Rays have now been no-hit three times in a span of 140 games. 

They’ve now been victims of a perfect game in a day game after a night game (Buehrle), victims of a perfect game on an ordinary road weekend game (Dallas Braden, in Oakland, this season), and victims of a no-hitter in their own stadium, at the hands of a pitcher whom they once thought might become the ace of their own staff, Edwin Jackson, tonight.
These are not the 1998 Twins or the 1999 Expos, light-hitting, fringe-player-filled line-ups that are the kinds ordinarily slightly more susceptible to being utterly blanked. Ever looked at the line-up David Wells knocked down with only 27 tries in ’98? Lawton, Gates, Paul Molitor, Cordova, Coomer, Ochoa, Shave, Javier Valentin, Meares. Not quite murderers’ row.
The Rays, on the other hand, have sent Jason Bartlett, Evan Longoria, Carlos Pena, B.J. Upton, and Ben Zobrist to the plate in each of these games. They are a combined 0-for-42. Carl Crawford did not bat tonight due to his cranky shoulder, but he managed another 0-for-6 in the perfectos.
These are good hitters who have, in essence, been stymied three times in what amounts to 22 games less than a full season. The laws of statistical possibility are angry at some one or some thing.
UPDATE: From Marc Topkin of the St Pete Times on Twitter the Rays are indeed the first team to be no-hit three times, in full length games, in such a short span. The 1906 Brooklyn Superbas were blanked three times between May 1st and September 24th (Johnny Lush of the Phillies, Jake Weimer of the Reds, and Stoney McGlynn of the Cards), but the last two of the games were seven-inning jobs (the McGlynn game, in fact, was a tie). That was not uncommon then in the time when doubleheaders were frequent and lights were 30 years in the future – second games of DH’s often were pre-arranged to last only seven frames. In fact some were played not to an inning total but to the clock, so teams could catch trains to get from city to city.
The ’06 Brooklyns, by the way, also had a decent offense. Tim Jordan led the NL with a then-******** dozen homers, and Harry Lumley led in Slugging Percentage (.477). But they were frequent victims in that era. Nick Maddox of the Pirates would no hit them in September, 2007 (thus four no-hitters in 16 months), and Johnny Lush would come back and throw a six-inning no-hitter in August of ’08.
One other creepy thing of which an MLB.Com headline just reminded me: Edwin Jackson pitched his no-hitter a year to the day Michael Jackson died.

2010 Forecasts: AL East

Having careened through the NL (Rockies beating the Braves in the NLCS, after the Rockies had beaten the Reds, and the Braves the wild-card Giants), we begin three nights’ worth of AL divisional previews, in the East:

Wow does
BALTIMORE not have pitching. Surely they could have pitching by 2011, but right now
there is nothing on which to rely beyond Kevin Millwood, and no team relying on
Kevin Millwood has made the post-season since 2002 (and what is the excitement over
a pitcher who has produced exactly three winning seasons since that long-ago
last playoff appearance?). There are also worries offensively. Adam Jones was a
superstar at the All-Star break, but flatlined soon after, and any team relying
on Garrett Atkins clearly has not seen a National League game since 2006.

Here is
the unasked question in BOSTON: would the Red Sox rather have David Ortiz at DH
this year… or Luke Scott? Where, production-wise, will Not-So-Big-Papi fall in
2010? I think he’s behind Guerrero, Kubel, Lind, Matsui, Scott, and maybe
others. If the demise of the beast continues, the Red Sox are suddenly
presenting a very pedestrian line-up, one that might be the second weakest in
the division. Of course, Theo Epstein might have made this determination
already, which would explain the willingness to fill the big openings with the
great gloves of Beltre, Cameron, and Scutaro, rather than slightly bigger bats
that couldn’t have changed the overall new dynamic – the Red Sox are a pitching
and defense outfit. Mind you, as those outfits go, they’re among the best in
recent years. The rotation is deep enough to survive Matsuzaka on the DL, the
bullpen robust enough to survive if that soggy finish by Papelbon in the ALDS
was more than a one-game thing, and the cadre of young cameo pitchers has been
refreshed with the rapid maturation of Casey Kelly. But no matter how the Old
Towne Team fairs in 2010, keep the Ortiz thought in the back of your mind. What
if the second half of ’09 was the aberration, not the first half? Will the Sox
have to bench him? And if so, could the twists and turns of fate find them
suddenly grateful that they had been unable to trade Mike Lowell?

Oh is this
a conflict of interest. This will be the 39th season my family has
had season tickets in NEW YORK, and I’m not convinced the Yankees will be
hitting me up for playoff ducats this fall. Things I do not expect to see
repeated from 2009: 1) A.J. Burnett’s reliability and perhaps even his stamina;
2) Joe Girardi’s ability to survive without a reliable fifth starter (if Phil
Hughes really can pull it off in this, his fourth attempt, he might become the
fourth starter if my instincts on Burnett are correct); 3) Nick Swisher’s
offensive performance (his average and his RBI totals have never increased two years in a row); 4)
Derek Jeter’s renaissance (as the Baseball Prospectus folks note, 36-year old shortstops
deteriorate quickly); 5) Jorge Posada’s prospects of getting 433 plate
appearances (which begs the question: if you were hoping to DH Posada on
occasion, why did you sign as your primary DH, a guy who cannot play the
outfield, and can barely play first base?). As I have written here before, I am
not buying the premise that what in essence was a trade of Melky Cabrera,
Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui, for a full-time Brett Gardner plus Curtis
Granderson and Nick Johnson was necessarily an upgrade – even if Javier Vazquez (9
career post-season innings; 11 career post-season earned runs) was thrown in,
in the bargain. Anybody wanna buy some of my tickets?

In TAMPA
BAY, I’m betting 2009 was the fluke and not 2008. What does one not like about
this team? Is rightfield confused? Stick Ben Zobrist there and let Sean
Rodriguez have a shot at second. That doesn’t work? Wait for mid-season and the
promotion of Desmond Jennings. You don’t like Crawford and Upton? Bartlett and
Longoria? Pena? The law firm of Shoppach and Navarro? The Rays seem to summon a
fully-grown starter from the minors each year – Price in ’08, Niemann in ’09,
Wade Davis in ’10. I do not think Rafael Soriano is the world’s greatest
reliever, but his acquisition is an acknowledgment that championship teams do
not muddle through with closers who pitched in All-Star Games prior to 2001.
What is the most remarkable fact about this extremely talented and balanced
team can be summed up by the caveat I have to offer in praising them. Shortly
after they were ransomed from Vince Naimoli, I discovered to my shock that a
college pal of mine had, for all these years, been married to the man who had just
done the ransoming. A
few innings later, Stu and Lisa Sternberg and I sat in their seats at Yankee
Stadium and he was earnestly asking how I thought he could convince the players
to accept a salary cap so the Rays could contend. I told him I wasn’t sure, but
he wouldn’t have to worry about it any earlier than our next lifetimes. So what
you are seeing in Tampa is, in fact, Plan “B” – and it may be the greatest Plan
“B” in baseball history. 

Did you
know TORONTO is a small market team? Here is something the writers apparently
promised not to tell: the Jays got almost nothing for Roy Halladay. Sorry. When
the reward was Travis D’Arnaud, Kyle Drabek, and Michael Taylor, it was only a
pair of pants being pressed. When the Jays inexplicably swapped Taylor to
Oakland for the lump-like Brett Wallace, it became the full trip to the
cleaners. One of the oldest rules of talent evaluation is: if a prospect has
been traded twice in four months, he may not be quite the prospect you think he
is (one of the older rules is: if one of your starting middle infielders has a
weight clause in his contract, you only have one starting middle infielder). On top of
which, when you consider the Jays paid $6 million in salary offset for the
privilege of giving Doc away, this trade has to be called what it was: a salary
dump in which ownership was admitting it had no interest in competing. Jays
fans are left to cheer three very exciting hitters in Aaron Hill, Adam Lind,
and Travis Snider; to try to get the correct spellings and pronunciations of the
guys in their rotation (“excuse me, are you Brett Cecil, or Cecil Brett?”);
and, since there really won’t be much else to do under the roof this summer,
buy and read injured reliever Dirk Hayhurst’s marvelous book The Bull…
oh, sorry, did I already mention it?

PREDICTIONS:
Tampa Bay steps back into the forefront in an exciting race with the
well-managed but decreasingly potent Red Sox, and bests Boston by a game or
two. The Yankees contend – possibly even dominate – into June or July before the
rotation, and/or Posada, and/or Jeter, blow up, and they fade to a distant
third. The Jays and Orioles compete only to be less like The Washington
Generals.