John Smoltz discusses the new look Braves with Paul Newberry of the AP:

Still, when Smoltz looked around the Turner Field clubhouse on Monday, he couldn't help but wonder how the Atlanta Braves will pull off a 13th straight division title.

Greg Maddux's old locker? Empty. Gary Sheffield's former stall? Now occupied by rookie first baseman Adam LaRoche. Javy Lopez and Vinny Castilla? They're gone, too.

"This is not a team that's going to be able to rely on past experiences," Smoltz said, a bit of resignation in his voice. "We're not going to be able to just ride it out and keep saying, 'We know we'll be there at the end."'

Smoltz also believes that if the Braves had won the NLDS, the cost cutting would not have happened:

Smoltz approached last season with a sense of desperation, believing a championship might keep the team together.

"If we had won it all, I don't think all of this would have happened," he said. "That's why I was like, 'Man, don't blow this one.' I don't think any of this was written in stone if we had won a championship."

I've learned not to count out the Braves. They're an excellent organization, both in the front office and on the field. This year will be a challenge, but they still have some excellent players, and a few great ones can take you a long way.

The Yankees and Drew Henson have parted ways.

Henson and the Yankees have reached a resolution that frees him from the final three seasons of the six-year, $17 million contract he signed with New York in 2001, sources close to Henson confirmed Monday for ESPN.com. Henson will receive none of the $12 million he had been contractually guaranteed between this season and 2006, and the Yankees will not seek any of the money already paid to him.

It essentially was a clean, quick divorce with no alimony involved. The settlement was negotiated by Henson's representatives from the marketing and representative giant IMG.

Money for nothing...

The big question continues to be how the Yankees will fill the gap at third base. As people have pointed out in the comments on this post, Brian Myrow may be the Yankees best option. He's older (seasonal age 27 in 2004), but he's a walk machine. Twenty seven is peak age for ballplayers, so if you are going to get a great year out of a career minor leaguer, this would be the year. Let him bat ninth, set the table for Soriano, and see what happens. If nothing else, the Yankees will save a few million dollars.

John Gambadoro is ready for some baseball now that the Super Bowl is over, and he takes a look at how the Diamondbacks shape up at AZCentral.

Here's an excellent article by Dave Sheinin of the Washington Post on the changing landscape of baseball economics.

With baseball's free agent signing period almost over, the size and length of player contracts have fallen for a second straight offseason, threatening to upset the tenuous labor peace the sport has enjoyed since its new collective bargaining agreement was signed 16 months ago.

The owners' strategy of flooding the market with players and exercising financial restraint has created a new economic climate in Major League Baseball that is forcing players to accept deals that are shorter and less lucrative than those signed by free agents in previous winters.

It also has intensified the union's examination of the owners' negotiating practices and resurrected suspicions that the owners are conspiring to keep salaries low. "We may not be very far from raising charges" of collusion, one union source said.

Sheinin makes some good points as to why this is happening:

• It's tough to get insurance.


• Owners are aware that past huge contracts have been mistakes.


• Bargain hunters. (I'll call this the Billy Beane effect.)


• The flood of free agents.

The last is a point I've made in the past. Here's Sheinin's take on it:

Suddenly, the supply of players is outrunning the demand.

"We've had a role reversal," said William B. Gould IV, the former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board who helped broker the end of the 1994-95 strike. "In the 1970s when free agency was first established, the clubs were very anxious to limit the number of free agents. . . . Now, the clubs are anxious to create 'more' free agents because they realize the laws of supply and demand will cause prices to drop."

This winter, a record 211 players filed for free agency. Teams added another 58 players to that marketplace on Dec. 21 by declining to offer contracts to, or non-tendering, their arbitration-eligible players. With teams willing to wait for prices to drop after the non-tender date, some free agents felt pressure to sign early so as not to be shut out when the extra players hit the market.

"For second-tier players and below the market has changed," said Baltimore-based agent Ron Shapiro. "The teams seem to wait longer and have moved themselves from a bidding process to a buying process."

I love the way he sums up the article with these quotes:

"There have been some clubs that have been very aggressive, and some not very aggressive due to their financial situation," said Dombrowski, whose team is trying to recover from a 119-loss season. "Some players have made lots of money and some haven't. It's a free market, and decisions are made on individual basis. I always chuckle when I hear [talk of collusion] because, frankly, some players we've pursued are not even interested in talking to us."

The players and their agents have a slightly different take. "What has happened over the last two years, unfortunately, is vindication for the union [for saying] that the owners didn't need new a system. They needed to use the current system more effectively," Berry said. "The question is, are they using it too effectively?"

A more effective use of the system. The free agent system worked for the players for so long because owners wanted to get rid of it and go back to the old days of the reserve clause. They spent so much time trying to figure out how to destroy it they never bothered to figure out how to work it to their advantage. Now they are seeing the light. I don't know if the union will be able to prove collusion. I don't even know if it exists. But for the first time in my memory, the teams have figured out how to use the system as well as the players.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the Tigers will have a press conference at 1 PM EST to announce the signing of Pudge Rodriguez.

The signing will help the team. I-Rod posted 23 win shares last year vs. 6 for Inge and Hinch. That should add six games to the win column. The Tigers are paying a lot of money for Ivan, but they need to do something to get the fans back, and Ivan is fun to watch. He's not going to make them a contender over night, and he may be gone by the time the Tigers are rebuilt. But I sure love to see him throw out runners, and I hope Tiger fans will too.

Baseball Outsider is a new news and opinion site dedicated to looking at baseball from the outside in. I was impressed that columnist Mugs Scherer listed the Bill James Guide to Baseball Managers as one of her favorite books. (There aren't enough baseball writers named Mugs anymore.) Worth checking out.

Dominic Rivers points me to this Sons of Sam Horn thread in which Curt Schilling is answering real baseball questions. In it, he makes this comment about baseball analysis:

G38, I feel like I sense not only from the tone of the initial post but from the thread itself that you think statistical analysis has perhaps gone too far.

I think it's gone too far in some instances. The main problem I have is that hard core fans, IMO, are using this kind of stuff as their sole analysis of players, period. For the true hard core fan that really may be the only way to do it I guess. Problem for me is I see the real life application of these opinions formed by the stats. I eat, sleep live and breathe with those guys you love to hate, and hate to love. I see what happens when a stadium full of people boos the hell out of one of my teammates. Whether it was warranted or not, you go home at night, miserable with your player, mad at whatever he did, and I go to the clubhouse, and see the real effects of your actions and reactions to my teammates, and to me. I'm not whining, not in the least, it's all part of playing a professional sport, and for the most part we all understand that. That doesn't change the impact, the effect, that fans create. RSN is a nation of people that for the most part that determines their opinions on new guys based on their OPS and WHIP, which is understood given the passion and history here. I can't, and don't, and when the media creates or stirs that opinion in a way I know to be untrue, I am more than bothered. STats have their applications in the game, no one knows that more than me, but a media guy who's writing career is pretty much founded on these new stats and has a legion of followers, a guy like Neyer on ESPN, I tend to have more dislikes, than likes of.

I'm not saying he's wrong, or right, just that he talks about the numbers as they pertain to future performance almost as if it's an absolute. Oh I know he always inserts the italicized "maybe" and "potentially", but the tone of his writing suggests his belief lies more in what he is writing to be fact, than just trend and probability. I've seen him say things in the past about players, and be so far wrong it's ludicrous, but you do enough projecting, of enough people, and at some point you'll be right, or near right.

(Edward Cossette points to another part of this post to try to bolster his team chemistry theory). Schilling makes a very good point; that what statistical analysis yields is trends and probabilities. The question is, how good are those trends and probabilities? In Neyer's case, I'd say they are pretty good. I'm tempted to go through Rob's archives and see how many of his predictions were really ludicrous, and how many were right on the mark. One thing is for sure, Rob would not make such a statement about Schilling without having done the research to back it up. And remember, for every Rob Neyer, there are many more sports writers who comment on the game without any idea what the stats mean. I guess players look at Rob Neyer the way Democrats look at Fox News. :-)

As for booing based on stats, I find that hard to believe. Schilling seems to see the Sons of Sam Horn as typical Red Sox fans. My experience is that most hard-core fans still just look at batting average and RBI. They boo when a guy strikes out in crucial situations. They boo when a pitcher gives up a game winning HR. They boo when they see performance on the field that hurts their team, not because someone has a .340 OBA when they expected him to have a .360 OBA.

But for you hard core stat-head Red Sox fans out there, I would boo Curt Schilling if:

• He strikes out less than 7 per 9 innings.


• If he walks more than 3 per 9 innings.


• If he gives up more than 40% of his HR with men on base.


• If his winning percentage is below his pythagorean projection, unless it's the fault of the bullpen. (Exception: If Schilling actually blames the bullpen, he's destroying chemistry, and should be booed heartily. :-) )

My statistical analysis tells me Schilling will be pretty good. For the sake of Curt's sensitive nature, I hope I'm not ludicrously wrong.

I just got an e-mail from our friend at NASA reminding us of the shuttle disaster one year ago. We saw the launch as guests of Dave Brown. Here's what I wrote last year after the accident.

Over at the raindrops, Avkash looks at the sale of the Dodgers and a bit of a scandal at the Great American Ballpark.

Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts has much more on the McCourt purchase of the Los Angeles National League franchise. He strikes a very cautionary tone. (Hat tip: Priorities and Frivolities)

Frank McCourt makes me feel powerless.

He could be the next great disaster for the Dodgers. Or, he could be a hidden treasure of, well, adequacy.

But how disturbing is it that after Thursday's press conference to discuss his purchase of the team, there is nothing that actually inspires confidence? Every potential positive statement made by or about McCourt had to be qualified.

Whatever the future holds, good or bad ... today, the Dodgers really seem to belong to someone else. Maybe this feeling will go away, but they don't feel like the city's team right now. They don't feel like our team.

McCourt compares his ownership to that of the Red Sox. However, the Boston ownership moved immediately (and consistently) to impress upon Red Sox fans that they were running the team for the fans. From Jon's post, McCourt failed to do this.

Also, congrats to Jon on being tapped for a radio interview about the purchase! I've believed for a while that weblogs and radio have a natural synergy, and I hope more of my fellow bloggers will be finding their way onto the airwaves soon.

Frank McCourt has been approved to buy the Dodgers:

"Welcome to a new era of Dodger baseball," McCourt said during a news conference at Dodger Stadium. "I intend to restore the glory days of Dodger baseball with a team worthy of support from our fans."

The price is the second-highest for a baseball team, trailing only the $660 million paid for the Boston Red Sox two years ago. The highly leveraged purchase, likely to be finalized within a week, probably will set off the third change in management in six years for the marquee franchise, which hasn't advanced to the playoffs since 1996.

He's missed most of the good free agents, so I wouldn't expect the Dodgers offense to get much better this season. My guess is that by the end of the season, this will be a very different Dodgers organization.

I saw this link at Bronx Banter about Stuart Sternberg buying a controlling interest in the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. However, Vincent Naimoli remains the managing partner:

Sternberg, 44, is unknown to Major League Baseball. A former executive of the options-trading firm of Spear, Leeds and Kellogg, which Goldman Sachs bought on Sept. 11, 2000, for a reported $6.5 billion, Sternberg does not have an option to buy out Naimoli and become the team's managing partner, a baseball official said.

There's a man after my own heart. If I made 100's of millions of dollars in a business deal, I'd go out and buy a baseball team. My guess is that Naimoli has a price, and eventually Sternberg will find it.

A number of people have pointed out that Gary Sheffield has offered to play third base for the Yankees (Dom Cento had suggested the idea here):

The Yankees' newest outfielder offered his infield services to GM Brian Cashman, even though he hasn't played third in 11 years. Cashman wouldn't rule out the possibility - "you never know with this team," he said - but added that, at this point, it's not a realistic scenario.

Still, Cashman marveled at Sheffield's willingness to help his team.

"This is a man I don't know very well at all," Cashman said. "But this showed me something. Let's put it this way: (The offer) will go a long way."

Sheffield has a reputation as a bit of a selfish player. I especially remember his time in Milwaukee, where it seemed to me he was not playing up to his potential because he didn't want to play there. This seems like a pretty selfless move, but it could also be low risk. Gary may realize that there's little chance of the Yankees making this switch, so he'll come out looking like the good guy. Still, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say, "Bravo."

It also just goes to show how hard it is to find a good thirdbaseman. Compared to shortstops for example, how many really great third basemen are out there? Rolen, Chavez, maybe Glaus and who? Blalock is still young. Koskie's pretty good, but doesn't get a lot of publicity. After those, however, there's not much. It will be interesting to see how creative (or uncreative) the Yankees get in solving the problem.

My solution to use Pudge
may not be viable much longer.

Yesterday I got together for lunch with one of my readers, Dominic Rivers. Dominic graduated from the Sports Management program at UMass. He interned for the Pirates and has been looking for another job within baseball. Dominic told me about an article he published on-line, where he tries to determine how much weight on-base percentage should get in the on-base+slugging formula using linear regression. I find one statement very interesting:

Nevertheless, there are some aspects of this data that are difficult explain. Despite my deeply held intuitive belief that on-base percentage is always more important than slugging percentage, the two-year time period chart shows three eras where SLG appears to be more important than OBP. Those eras are 1981-1982, 1989-1990, and 1990-1991. Oddly enough, these periods happened to produce the lowest “r-squared” totals. For those who haven’t taken a stats class, or who had one but didn’t pay attention, “r-squared” tells you how much is explained by the regression equation. So for example, in the 2001-2002 time period ‘runs scored’ were approximately 88.2% (r-squared of .882) determined by OBP and SLG. The other 11.8% can be explained by other stuff. This “other stuff” might include baserunning, clutch hitting, and number of times reaching base on an error. Why does a “low r-squared” period correspond with a period where SLG is important? My opinion is that these eras, 1989 in particular, are characterized by a great deal of offensive parity. For example, in the National League in 1989, every team besides Atlanta had an on base percentage in the range of .305 to .321. In the American League in 1989, all but two teams scored between 4.13 and 4.78 runs per game. But these years are anomalies, and hence, I would not recommend that Major League GM’s attempt to build an offense based on numerous low-OBP/high-SLG Dave Kingman types.

This is just what I would have expected. If teams are very close in OBP, slugging will dominate. If they are close in slugging, OBP will dominate. But there's another lesson to be learned here as well. There's more than one way to score runs. Having a team with a high OBP is a great way to score runs, maybe the best way to score runs, but it's not the only way. You can do just fine with high slugging averages. You can do fine with high batting averages. You can do fine by being okay in all of those and just being lucky. As with so many things in life, there is no one right answer.

I saw this note at Baseball Crank:

* The Giants have agreed to change the name of Pac Bell Park to the even-more-antiseptic-sounding SBC Park. Much as these corporate stadium names bug me, it wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t keep changing all the time. Like your local bank, it’s getting altogether too difficult to keep some of these parks straight due to their frequent name changes. Grumble, grumble. (Check out this site, if you’re motivated to do more than grumble.)

It used to be easy to remember ball park names. Now, they are named after some business I haven't heard of, or they change every other year. Let's cut the corporate crap and go back to naming these parks after people and places. When I think about where the Padres play, I'd much rather remember Jack Murphy than a cell phone or a pet store.

The Cleveland Indians may be paving the way for openly gay players in the major leagues:

Indians minor leaguer Kazuhito Tadano is asking for forgiveness for what he called a one-time mistake -- his appearance in a gay porn video in which he engaged in a homosexual act.

I suppose we'll know that MLB has become tolerant when a player only has to apologize for appearing in a porn video, not for what he did in it.

"I did participate in a video and I regret it very much," he said. "It was a one-time incident that showed bad judgment and will never be repeated. I was young, playing baseball, and going to college and my teammates and I needed money.

"Frankly, if I were more mature and had really thought about the implications of what I did, it never would have happened."

Through an interpreter, Tadano added: "I'm not gay. I'd like to clear that fact up right now."

Not that there's anything wrong with that. :-)

The players and management don't seem to have a problem with this:

Twice in the minor leagues last season, Tadano stood before his teammates and confessed to his participation in the video, which Nero said can only be obtained on the black market in Japan.

Tadano received overwhelming support from players at Kinston, N.C., where he started the season and later at Akron, the Indians' Double-A affiliate.

"I wanted to tell the truth to my teammates," he said.

A former starter, he pitched in all three levels of the minors last season, going 6-2 with a 1.55 ERA and three saves. At Akron, he didn't allow a run in his first 28 innings and struck out 78 in 72 2-3 innings.

Outfielder Grady Sizemore said Tadano's speech last year was well received in the clubhouse.

"You could tell he was nervous," said Sizemore, a top prospect who lived with Tadano this winter. "But I don't think it changed anybody's opinion of him. After it was said and done, nobody thought anything more of it. He's a great guy and a great pitcher."

If he pitches well during spring training, Tadano could win a spot in Cleveland's bullpen. Whenever he joins the Indians, pitcher C.C. Sabathia says Tadano will be welcomed.

"This is the right team and the right organization for him," Sabathia said. "We have good guys here. Everybody has done something that they regret in their lives. He's a person just like everyone else."

In the last year you have the Colorado Rockies publicly condemming Todd Jones for anti-gay remarks and the Indians management and players accepting a player who has appeared in a gay porn movie. It seems to me an openly gay ballplayer can't be too far into the future. A team with young players, like Cleveland, may be the right place for the first homosexual ballplayer. After all, these young men have grown up in a much more tolerant society than I did (I was born in 1960), and may not think it's such a big deal.

Dom Cento points out in the comments to this post on Boone that Gary Sheffield used to be a third baseman. Why not move him to third and have three center fielders in the outfield? It'll be a really bad defensive infield, but you don't have to out and buy anymore players.

Truisms is a new blog, mostly about baseball. I like some of his post titles, like, "Why is it so impressive that a man sprints to first base on a walk?" Give him a look.

Tyler Cowen at the Volokh Conspiracy gives a nice review of Transition Game, a new blog about sports and technology. Nick Schulz is the author, and to my delight he's linked to Baseball Musings. Check out this post on steroids. I'm in agreement with Nick, especially his last paragraph. And this post on uncertainty is the type of thing I like to study. Maybe we can do it with pitchers instead of tennis players.

Stop by and wish Nick good luck with his new blog.

Jay Jaffe at Futility Infielder was nice enough to calcuate DIPS for 2003.

The Baseball Crank continues his research on win shares with a look at the established win share levels of players in the AL West.