September 7th, 2006 → 10:23 am @ Seth Mnookin
On Monday, the always illuminating Rob Bradford wrote a story about the Red Sox’s troubling tendency to trade away young talent while holding on to players that appear to be more borderline. (And: it’s actually online!)
Braford touches on a number of recent Sox minor league players who’ve been traded away — Anibal Sanchez, Hanley Ramirez, Cla Meredith. (I’d add in Freddy Sanchez.) For those convinced that Boston’s front office is determined to hold on to its young, cheap talent at the expense of putting together a more expensive, veteran, go-for-it-now team, these names should be more than enough to convince anyone that’s not the case; what’s cause for concern (or at least discussion) is that these names were the ones let go. Sanchez, in his second year of MLB service, is leading the NL with a .344 average. He was the trade bait used to get Brandon Lyon, Jeff Suppan, and Anastacio Martinez from from Pittsburgh in 2003. (Supan and Lyon combined to go 7-10 with 9 saves and a collective ERA of over 5.00; neither of them made the postseason roster for the Sox.) Ramirez and Sanchez, who were sent to the Marlins for Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell, have been standouts in Florida: Ramirez’s stat line — .283 average, 13 HRs, 49 RBIs, 104 runs scored, and 44 stolen bases — would be good for any rookie, never mind one who can play a decent shortstop. Sanchez is 7-2 with a 2.89 ERA; last night, in just his 13th career start, he threw baseball’s first no-hitter in two years. Beckett, meanwhile, is 14-10 with an ERA of over 5.00, while Lowell’s numbers are about equal to Hanley’s. Oh, and Ramirez and Sanchez make well under a million bucks. Combined. Beckett and Lowell make well over $10 million. Finally, Meredith has gone 5-1 out of the Padres bullpen…with a Papelbon-esque ERA of 0.75.
Suffice to say, none of the young’uns the Sox have seemed so adamant about holding on to — Craig Hansen, Manny Delcarmen, Jon Lester, Dustin Pedroia — have thus far had success comperable to their former teammates. That doesn’t mean they won’t, and the success of the young NL phenoms who cut their teeth in Pawtucket and Portland doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have struggled in the AL, or struggled in Boston’s fishbowl atmosphere (San Diego, South Florida, and Pittsburgh ain’t exactly known for their rabid fanbases). But collectively, they do raise questions about the state of the Sox’s behind the scenes operations.
Specifically, I wonder the extent to which the loss of a number of non-household name guys — scouts, talent evaluators, etc — has hurt a Red Sox front office that’s long on brains but short on on-field experience. In the last couple of years, Boston has lost Miguel Garcia, Tom Moore, and David Chadd to the Tigers, where Garcia and Moore were reunited with Dave Dombrowski, who’d been their general manager in Florida and is now their GM in Detroit. (Garcia is currently Detroit’s director of Venezuelan operations and Central American scouting; Moore is the assistant director of Latin American and professional scouting; and Chadd is the VP of amateur scouting.) Justin Verlander was scouted, drafted, and signed by this crew; so was Jonathan Papelbon. Another loss (and another former Marlins hand) was Louie Eljaua, who was big on David Ortiz because of Ortiz’s play in Dominican summer ball; Eljaua is now with the Pirates. Departures like these don’t get a lot (if any) attention; still, there are those within the Red Sox who worry about these departures and wonder the extent to which their experience and acumen is missed.
The return of Theo Epstein in spring training has meant the Sox’s baseball ops crew has retained continuity despite the departure of Josh Brynes and Peter Woodfork to Arizona in the offseason. The off-field staff of a baseball team — coaches, trainers, scouts, GMs, and on and on — contains so many moving parts, and there are so many variables that come into play when considering and nurturing young talent. But the immediate results of the Red Sox’s development machine, and the decisions the team has made about who to keep and who to trade away, has been less than ideal. Maybe it’s time to look a little further down the chain of command for some possible answers as to why this is the case.
Post Categories: Minor League talent & Red Sox front office & Scouts
September 6th, 2006 → 9:48 am @ Seth Mnookin
The last several nights — nay, the last several years — have had their share of unlikely pitching heroes. Seriously, who among you thought we’d be relying on this guy or this guy to stifle the World Champs in a September series?
But, of course, that irascible wanna-be rock star named Bronson had to go and remind us once again that he’ll never be Saturn Nuts for Boston again. (Hey, at least Schilling didn’t nickname him Pluto Nuts; if he had, BA would currently be the proud owner of a pair of dwarf testicles.) After early season dominance and mid-season mediocrity, Bronson three a three-hit, complete-game shutout last night against the Giants. Which is great and all, but let’s admit it: the real season we miss Arroyo is because it’s unlikely the Sox will ever again have a player who can take the field acting as if it’s totally normal to look like this.
(Picture brought to our attention courtesy of the always on the ball(s) Deadspin.)
Post Categories: Bronson Arroyo
September 6th, 2006 → 9:26 am @ Seth Mnookin
For all you New Yorkers, I’ll be reading tonight at 8 pm as part of the “Varisty Letters” program at the Happy Ending bar. It’s menage àauthors, with Warren St. John, author of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey Into the Heart of Fan Mania, and Jeff MacGregor, author of Sunday Money: Speed! Lust! Madness! Death! A Hot Lap Around America with NASCAR.
The Happy Ending is at 302 Broome St., between Forsyth and Eldridge; to get there, take the J, M, Z, or F to Delancey or the B or D to Grand Street; on Broome Street, look for the hot pink awning with the words “Health Club” on it. Unlike most happy endings, this one is free. And it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity: you can not only heckle me, but hear two great authors read. See you there.
SEPT 21 EDIT: At the explicit request of the curator of the Happy Endings Reading Series, I want to make clear that this was not a part of that program. This, apparently, is a very important distinction to make. Especially two weeks after the fact.
Post Categories: Feeding the Monster Readings
September 5th, 2006 → 10:28 am @ Seth Mnookin
Gates’s=overly sweet, very overrated (save for the sweet potato pie, which is perfectly sweet and not at all overrated)
Bryant’s=as always, coma-inducingly delicious
Pixie=face-scrunchingly cute
My dance moves=inspiring
Tucker Carlson’s dance moves: Nowhere to be seen
Jake and Jennifer=tear-inducingly sweet
Midwest Airlines=surprisingly comfortable (especially the rear exit row, which reclines)
Mike Lyon‘s artwork=placidly, surreally, eerily beautiful
The American Jazz Museum=pedistrian
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum=Inspiring. And fascinating. And depressing.
The NLBM probably deserves more than a couple of trite words. I don’t need to convince people the museum is something everyone should see; far more eloquent people than me have made that point. So I’ll stick to a couple of quick thoughts:
I know there’s some fundamental difference between using performance-enhancing drugs and playing in a segregated league…but I get a bit bogged down when trying to articulate precisely why, say, Babe Ruth’s home run total should be considered more legitimate than Barry Bonds: Ruth didn’t need to bat against Satchel Paige (who supposedly once started 29 games in a month, said he went 104-1 in 1934, was “the best and fastest pitcher I’ve ever faced” according to Joe DiMaggio, and “the greatest pitcher in baseball” according to Ted Williams), while Bonds didn’t need to adhere to the laws of aging.
Speaking of career totals, I understand why, say, Hank Aaron and not Josh Gibson holds the career MLB HR record, or Roy Face and not Paige holds the single-season win-loss percentage record. But shouldn’t the Negro League stats at least be a part of the conversation?
Finally, there’s one aspect of the Nego League Museum I found unsettling. There are several plaques (or disembodied voices, in the form of James Earl Jones) that say something to the effect that the saddest part of the full integration of MLB (which didn’t come until 1959, when the Red Sox brought up Pumpsie Green) was that it led to the death of the Negro Leagues. The Negro Leagues are a vital, dynamic, exciting aspect of 20th century American History…but isn’t it a short leap to arguing that the worst part about the repeal of Jim Crow laws was that it led to the decline of once-vital non-white theatres, restaurants, and nightclubs?
Post Categories: Kansas City & Negro League Baseball Museum
September 5th, 2006 → 9:01 am @ Seth Mnookin
53 at bats, 9 hits, 2 HRs, .170 BA, .200 OBP
— Manny Ramirez’s stats as a September call-up with the Cleveland Indians in 1993
39 at bats, 4 hits, .103 BA, .125 OPB
— Dustin Pedroia’s stats (so far) as a late-season replacement with the 2006 Boston Red Sox
(Thanks to The New York Times‘s Sunday “On Baseball” column by (gulp) Murray Chass for pointing out the Sept. stats. The relevant stats box isn’t re-printed online.)
Post Categories: Dustin Pedroia & Manny Ramirez
September 5th, 2006 → 8:50 am @ Seth Mnookin
“[Men’s Health editor] David Zinczenko is making his 17th appearance on the ‘Today’ show, this time opposite Steve Schirripa — who plays Bobby Bacala on ‘The Sopranos’ — on the subject of ‘heavy men.’ Heavy as in large, overweight and lacking any evidence of abs, quads or tone. …
“Mr. Zinczenko (pronounced zinn-ZENK-oh) has made a career out of doling out advice to men, helping them muddle through their post-metrosexual worries about their guts, their athletic prowess and their health.
“His prime vehicle is Men’s Health, a magazine with a circulation of almost 1.8 million — up by more than 100,000 from when he took over in 2000 — that has won readers and awards for its well-researched articles about men’s lives.
“From that success has come the appearances on the ‘Today’ show, where he is frequently trotted out (19 times and counting) as the spokesman for Everyman, combining cheerful quotability with extensive data culled in the interest of getting to know ‘Him.'”
— “Who’s the Man? Dave”
by Erica Kinetz
The New York Times
September 3, 2006
(I know: the opening anecdote must have occured some time ago, and since then, Zinczenko must have graced “Today” two more times. But you’d think a news-gathering operation with more than 1,000 journalists could figure out some way to get this point across without causing head-scratching confusion.)
Post Categories: New York Times
September 5th, 2006 → 8:35 am @ Seth Mnookin
“The 2002 deal was surprising because it left a void for those of us who had become accustomed to writing about work stoppages. It’s as if the entire season were played, and suddenly there was no World Series.”
— “Baseball Without Strikes? Talks Could Make it Happen.”
Murray Chass
The New York Times
September 5, 2006
Chass was writing about an August 30, 2002 deal between the players union and baseball owners that averted a September strike.
Post Categories: Murray Chass
