Wednesday, June 04, 2003
"Say it ain't so, Sammy"
If you've opened any paper in the U.S. today, or happened to catch a glimspe of the sports segment on the news, I'm sure by now you've read or heard about Sammy Sosa and his infamous corked bat incident at Wrigley last night. If you happened to catch SportsCenter, you got hit over the head with at least three segments on Sammy's corker, including Buck Showalter-turned-Bob Vila at the workbench showing us precisely how to cork a bat. "But don't do it, it's illegal," Buck admonishes at the end. But Buck, you make it look so easy and so fun...
I don't have much of an emotional reaction to this, as I really don't feel like I have much of a stake in the successes and foibles of Sammy Sosa. He's been fun. Fun to watch hit home runs and fun to watch run around like Hulk Hogan in the outfield. Outside of that, I don't necessarily find him an intriguing or particularly interesting subject to write about or talk about.
I'm not saying that breaking a rule isn't condemnatory; it is. But I find it very difficult to get worked up over the fact Sammy Sosa used a corked bat last night. Maybe it was the first time he used an illegal piece of lumber in game, maybe it wasn't. My gut tells me he's done this before, and maybe even once or twice that action has had an impact on the outcome of his team's games, which is what is really damning. But is it really worth getting this upset about? I heard one source argue that this puts his Hall of Fame status in question, which is the definition of absurdity.
"Sosa's legacy could be broken beyond repair" This is the headline running in Jayson Stark's article today on espn.com. I'm sure his editor came up with that, but isn't it a little much? If Sammy Sosa hits 650 home runs, and God forbid ever wins a pennant with the Cubs, is that broken bat last night that was stuffed with material more appropriate for a bottle of Chardonay really going to be his legacy?
What was the most bizarre aspect of this story was not that he used a stuffed bat in a game, but that he admitted almost joyously, without any sense of irony, that he regularly uses a corked bat in batting practice! That, he said, was the explanation for how he ended up bringing an illegal bat into a game: he got confused rummaging through the bat rack. He said he uses a "juiced" bat in practice "for the fans," for our entertainment. What a dolt. The reason why fans ooh and aah over Sammy's blasts in BP is that he's doing something superhuman (at least to baseball fans) in the same arena that he'll play the real game, albeit against 70 mph pitches that are intended to meet his bat squarely. What's the point if he's using, in essence, in a "fake" bat?
Sammy Sosa's fun. He will remain fun. But that was the worst excuse he could've come up with. Not only does it make him absent-minded for a night, it means he's been putting fans on all along, at least in batting practice.
Toronto's Almost-Experiment
When I heard on Sunday afternoon that the Blue Jays were going to switch to a four-man rotation for the month of June, I was sure we'd be hearing from Rob Neyer on the matter.
Of course, we have, and in addition to his fiery vitriol directed at "idiots" and one Toronto writer in particular, he had a couple of interesting facts that I did not know.
* The last team to employ a four-man rotation for any significant length of time was the 1995 Kansas City Royals. The three main pitchers on that team were Mark Gubicza, Kevin Appier and Tom Gordon. When Appier broke down in July (not necessarily as a result of the workload), the idea was ditched out of necessity.
* The last team to use one for an entire season, according to Neyer, was the 1978 Orioles. Four starters accounted for 148 starts.
Statistically, it hasn't been proven that there is any real difference between a four-man and a five-man rotation. Theoretically, a four-man staff is beneficial, because it's easier to find four good starting pitchers than five.
Toronto was ready and willing to do it apparently, until a couple members of the staff (which is comprised of Roy Hallady, Cory Lidle, Kelvim Escobar and Mark Hendrickson) spoke up and said they weren't crazy about the idea. So as of yesterday, they have scrapped it.
I thought this proposal was interesting on a couple of levels. One is that the Blue Jays are being run by one of the "New Breed" of baseball men, J.P. Ricciardi, and this was really the first opportunity to see a specific idea of his play out on a day-to-day basis. Second, with the Blue Jays run through May (best record in the majors in that month), and their recent success against Boston and NY, they find themselves in the thick of a race. So this experiment wouldn't be played out in meaningless games, but would have a level of importance to them. And third, it couldn't make things for the staff any worse:
Ultimately, one or more of the pitchers spoke up and said, "Hey, this isn't for me." And as much as analysts like Jim Kaat who play the role of Grumpy Old Ex-Pitchers ("In my day we didn't have no fancy-schmancy pitch counts! We pitched from dawn till dusk, both ends of double-headers on back-to-back days. We pitched until we snapped the tendons in our wrists, and popped the ligaments in our shoulders. And if that wasn't good enough we pitched with our toes. And we liked it!"), will discredit these pitchers as "pampered," "soft" or something worse, the bottom line is that I can't blame Cory Lidle or Hendrickson, or whoever backed out of the deal.
As Neyer wrote at the end of his article:
In the long term, the true comeback of the four-man rotation might require an organization that trains its starters to pitch on three days' rest from Day One in the minor leagues. Because baseball pitchers, like nearly all of us, are stubbornly conservative by nature. Once they get used to pitching on four days' rest, most of them don't want to do anything else.
We've already seen it with the bullpen-by-committee this year. Once you put creatures of habit in unfamiliar environs, they tend to get a little antsy, if not downright nasty, and may even become unproductive. Just as you wouldn't deny Wade Boggs chicken on a game day or wouldn't make Nomar bat without gloves, maybe you can't tell a major league staff in 2003: "Boys, we're switching to a four-man rotation."
If you've opened any paper in the U.S. today, or happened to catch a glimspe of the sports segment on the news, I'm sure by now you've read or heard about Sammy Sosa and his infamous corked bat incident at Wrigley last night. If you happened to catch SportsCenter, you got hit over the head with at least three segments on Sammy's corker, including Buck Showalter-turned-Bob Vila at the workbench showing us precisely how to cork a bat. "But don't do it, it's illegal," Buck admonishes at the end. But Buck, you make it look so easy and so fun...
I don't have much of an emotional reaction to this, as I really don't feel like I have much of a stake in the successes and foibles of Sammy Sosa. He's been fun. Fun to watch hit home runs and fun to watch run around like Hulk Hogan in the outfield. Outside of that, I don't necessarily find him an intriguing or particularly interesting subject to write about or talk about.
I'm not saying that breaking a rule isn't condemnatory; it is. But I find it very difficult to get worked up over the fact Sammy Sosa used a corked bat last night. Maybe it was the first time he used an illegal piece of lumber in game, maybe it wasn't. My gut tells me he's done this before, and maybe even once or twice that action has had an impact on the outcome of his team's games, which is what is really damning. But is it really worth getting this upset about? I heard one source argue that this puts his Hall of Fame status in question, which is the definition of absurdity.
"Sosa's legacy could be broken beyond repair" This is the headline running in Jayson Stark's article today on espn.com. I'm sure his editor came up with that, but isn't it a little much? If Sammy Sosa hits 650 home runs, and God forbid ever wins a pennant with the Cubs, is that broken bat last night that was stuffed with material more appropriate for a bottle of Chardonay really going to be his legacy?
What was the most bizarre aspect of this story was not that he used a stuffed bat in a game, but that he admitted almost joyously, without any sense of irony, that he regularly uses a corked bat in batting practice! That, he said, was the explanation for how he ended up bringing an illegal bat into a game: he got confused rummaging through the bat rack. He said he uses a "juiced" bat in practice "for the fans," for our entertainment. What a dolt. The reason why fans ooh and aah over Sammy's blasts in BP is that he's doing something superhuman (at least to baseball fans) in the same arena that he'll play the real game, albeit against 70 mph pitches that are intended to meet his bat squarely. What's the point if he's using, in essence, in a "fake" bat?
Sammy Sosa's fun. He will remain fun. But that was the worst excuse he could've come up with. Not only does it make him absent-minded for a night, it means he's been putting fans on all along, at least in batting practice.
Toronto's Almost-Experiment
When I heard on Sunday afternoon that the Blue Jays were going to switch to a four-man rotation for the month of June, I was sure we'd be hearing from Rob Neyer on the matter.
Of course, we have, and in addition to his fiery vitriol directed at "idiots" and one Toronto writer in particular, he had a couple of interesting facts that I did not know.
* The last team to employ a four-man rotation for any significant length of time was the 1995 Kansas City Royals. The three main pitchers on that team were Mark Gubicza, Kevin Appier and Tom Gordon. When Appier broke down in July (not necessarily as a result of the workload), the idea was ditched out of necessity.
* The last team to use one for an entire season, according to Neyer, was the 1978 Orioles. Four starters accounted for 148 starts.
Statistically, it hasn't been proven that there is any real difference between a four-man and a five-man rotation. Theoretically, a four-man staff is beneficial, because it's easier to find four good starting pitchers than five.
Toronto was ready and willing to do it apparently, until a couple members of the staff (which is comprised of Roy Hallady, Cory Lidle, Kelvim Escobar and Mark Hendrickson) spoke up and said they weren't crazy about the idea. So as of yesterday, they have scrapped it.
I thought this proposal was interesting on a couple of levels. One is that the Blue Jays are being run by one of the "New Breed" of baseball men, J.P. Ricciardi, and this was really the first opportunity to see a specific idea of his play out on a day-to-day basis. Second, with the Blue Jays run through May (best record in the majors in that month), and their recent success against Boston and NY, they find themselves in the thick of a race. So this experiment wouldn't be played out in meaningless games, but would have a level of importance to them. And third, it couldn't make things for the staff any worse:
Ultimately, one or more of the pitchers spoke up and said, "Hey, this isn't for me." And as much as analysts like Jim Kaat who play the role of Grumpy Old Ex-Pitchers ("In my day we didn't have no fancy-schmancy pitch counts! We pitched from dawn till dusk, both ends of double-headers on back-to-back days. We pitched until we snapped the tendons in our wrists, and popped the ligaments in our shoulders. And if that wasn't good enough we pitched with our toes. And we liked it!"), will discredit these pitchers as "pampered," "soft" or something worse, the bottom line is that I can't blame Cory Lidle or Hendrickson, or whoever backed out of the deal.
As Neyer wrote at the end of his article:
In the long term, the true comeback of the four-man rotation might require an organization that trains its starters to pitch on three days' rest from Day One in the minor leagues. Because baseball pitchers, like nearly all of us, are stubbornly conservative by nature. Once they get used to pitching on four days' rest, most of them don't want to do anything else.
We've already seen it with the bullpen-by-committee this year. Once you put creatures of habit in unfamiliar environs, they tend to get a little antsy, if not downright nasty, and may even become unproductive. Just as you wouldn't deny Wade Boggs chicken on a game day or wouldn't make Nomar bat without gloves, maybe you can't tell a major league staff in 2003: "Boys, we're switching to a four-man rotation."
