Manny being bye-bye

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on August 1, 2008
in Jason Bay, Manny Ramirez and Trade Deadlines
. 7 Comments

Some quick thoughts on the biggest trade since…well, since as far back as I can remember. (This dwarfs the Nomar deal of four years ago. Dwarfs, I say!)

* After three straight years of 150+ games a season, Manny topped out at 130 and 133 in ‘06 and ‘07. In that time, he hit 1 HR per 17.3 ABs and had an RBI every 1.4 games; over 150 games, that comes out to 32 HRs and 107 RBIs. That’s an impressive season. It’s also significantly off what he was doing previous to that in Boston, when he averaged 1 HR per 15.3 ABs and an RBI every 1.15 games, which comes out to 36/130.

* His OPS last year was 120, the lowest since he played 91 games in Cleveland as a 22-year-old rookie. His slugging dipped to below .500 for the first time ever. This year, even at .529, it’s lower than any other season save for last year and his rookie campaign.

* Much of the commentary thus far has been along the lines of, “the Red Sox are a worse team today than they were yesterday. That’s true if you assume Manny’s in the game. As Peter Gammons pointed out recently, he’s shown a tendency to ask for some time off when the Sox are facing particularly tough pitchers: this year he’s sat against Verlander, Duchscherer, King Felix (twice), and Joba (twice). Against those four pitchers he’s 3/20 with 7 Ks and no extra-base hits. (Amazingly, he appears — at least according to ESPN — never to have faced Joba.)

* In 2006, Manny logged 28 DNPs over the last 36 games. At the beginning of that stretch, the Sox were 5.5 out. They finished the year 11 back and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2002. That was the year, incidentally, that Papi broke the Sox’s all-time HR record, finishing the year with 54 round-trippers and 137 RBIs. There are those on the team that feel that Manny’s absence not only cost the Sox a shot at the playoffs but cost Ortiz the MVP award as well. I’m not one of them; I’m just throwing it out there.

Finally, despite the Sox’s valiant efforts to keep clubhouse disputers in the clubhouse, there are two incidents that couldn’t be hidden:

* On June 26, Manny shoved Red Sox traveling secretary Jack McCormick to the ground when McCormick told him he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get him 16 tickets to an Astros game, shouting, “Just do your job.” Let me re-phrase: the 36-year-old Manny Ramirez, a professional athlete who is paid $20 million a year to lift weights and stay in shape, shoved the 64-year-old Jack McCormick, a traveling secretary who is paid to make sure the players make it on the team plane, to the ground.

* On June 5, Manny took a swipe at Youkilis in the team’s dugout…apparently because he didn’t like how seriously Youk took every at-bat.

On the flip side of things:

* If the Sox had been able to keep Manny on the field, they’d have gotten a draft-pick when Manny signed with another team in the offseason, and the Sox have a good track record of taking advantage of those compensation picks. (See: Buccholz, Clay and Martinez, Pedro.)

* Things will not be pretty at Fenway if Jason Bay ends up being an Edgar Renteria.

* Picking up the rest of Manny’s salary, giving up Hansen and Moss, and getting only Bay in return…well, it does seem like a lot. Even if Bay is signed for under $8 for next year.

There you have it. My somewhat random thoughts. Oh, one more:

* It’s going to be an interesting couple of months.

Not a Manny culpa

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on August 1, 2008
in Manny Ramirez, Sports Reporters and trade deadline
. 1 Comment

Have you heard? Yeah - the Red Sox traded Manny. This may appear, at first blush, to be a near total refutation of my previous post, in which I accused Portfolio magazine of being full of crap for saying Manny wouldn’t be suiting up for the Crimson Hose next year.

In fact, it’s not…although I made the mistake of throwing in some opinions in a post that criticized another reporter as passing off an “experts” musings as if they were a reflection of what was going on inside the front office. (The difference here: I made the difference clear.) My beef, as I said, is that “neither I, nor Andrew Zimbalist [heretofore mentioned expert], nor Franz Lidz [author of said article], nor anyone else who isn’t actually in the room has any idea what’s actually going on in the Sox’s front office. To pretend any differently is, well, a load of crap.” It’s something we see again and again in sports reporting — one stray voice in the wilderness being quoted as if it represents a team’s view. We saw that being illustrated again and again (and again) over the last few days: just go back and look at how many reports cited a “senior level executive” or “a source close to the team” as saying a deal would not get done…or a deal with Florida was just awaiting Selig’s sign-off…or that the Sox would holding out for a package with a host of good young players.

Portfolio says Manny will be gone; toilet bowl overflows.

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on July 25, 2008
in Andrew Zimbalist, Franz Lidz, Manny Ramirez, Portfolio and Sports Reporters
. 1 Comment

This morning, Portfolio magazine — a Conde Nast business title, for those of you not living in the Manhattan media echo chamber – published a report with a juicy sub-hed: “Red Sox appear increasingly likely to let Ramirez go in 2009.” The magazine has had some buzz-worthy sports stories in the past, notably last year’s dispatch in which Franz Lidz gave the best evidence yet that George Steinbrenner is no longer all there (before this year’s golf-cart trip around the field during the All-Star Game, that is).

Lidz is the author of the magazine’s Manny column as well. Unfortunately, it amounts to — to further a metaphor that Lidz labors over in his lede — an overflowing toiletbowl full of crap. There’s a drawn out anecdote provided by a “prominent relief pitcher” about how Manny refuses to use toilet paper that sounds an awfully lot like similar tales peddled to me back when I was with the team in ‘04 and ‘05, except the way I heard it, the overflowing toilet was in a hotel room, not the clubhouse. There’s a quote from an anonymous “fuming” member of “the Red Sox hierarchy” saying that Manny is “totally passive-aggressive.” (It took an anonymous source to figure that one out?) And there’s a rehash of the much-discussed incident in which Manny watched three of Mo’s pitches sail by him for a called K to end the ninth of a tie game in the Bronx.

Besides that, the “evidence” Lidz marshals is a series of quotes from Andrew Zimbalist, a Smith College professor. Zimbalist has done some good work on the economics of sports, and has become a particular thorn in Bud Selig’s side in regards to his frequent, and frequently spot-on, critiques of MLB’s contra-logical profit-sharing system. But to say that he “has a pretty good idea what the Sox are thinking” is ridiculous; he has no better an idea of what the Sox are thinking than any stat geek with a well-thumbed collection of Bill James Abstracts on his bookshelves. He might, in fact, have a worse idea; Zimbalist’s conclusion is, according to Lidz, based on his belief that the team got “burned” when they signed Schilling to an $8 million deal and Zimbalist’s conclusion that Manny is an “adequate, injury-prone left fielder” with diminished sentimental value. Then, for good measure, Lidz reminds readers that the Sox placed Manny on waivers back in 2003, citing that as one of the “numerous occasions” that the team has “tried to bid farewell to Ramirez.” That’s like saying John McCain won’t carry South Carolina in the fall because he lost the state to George Bush in the 2000 Republican primary.

Back in 2006, I spent some time explaining why Manny would likely remain with the Sox and unpacking the extent to which the market has changed since 2003; these days, with low-revenue teams collecting more money from the rest of the league, it’s not as easy to spend $20 million on an immediate impact player as it once was. And the Sox are not, as Lidz quotes Zimbalist as saying, “very cautious about signing older players,” nor are they convinced that “performance peaks at age 28.” (See: Drew, J.D., signed at age 31 to a five-year, $70 million deal in 2007.) They are cautious — but they’re also cautious about signing younger players. And considering that Manny’s first year in Boston came when he was 29, he’s shown that players on the so-called downside of their career can do pretty well; in his seven full seasons with the Sox, he’s average 36 HRs and 114 RBIs.

This doesn’t mean that the Sox will pick up Manny’s $20 million option for 2009.* I could make arguments that would support either position, but at the end of the day, neither I, nor Andrew Zimbalist, nor Franz Lidz, nor anyone else who isn’t actually in the room has any idea what’s actually going on in the Sox’s front office. To pretend any differently is, well, a load of crap.

* It is worth pointing out that Manny is fourth in the league in OBP, tied (with Youk) for fifth in OPS, and ninth in RBIs. It’s also worth noting that while the last month or so worth of shenanigans are frustrating, they’re nothing the Sox haven’t dealt with before. Are there better players making less money? Of course. Are there better players that will be available next year for a one-year deal for $20 million? Unlikely.

lo Spiderman! lo Spiderman! fa qualunque un ragno può!

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on July 24, 2008
in Crappy Fans and Leslie Nielsen
. 1 Comment

The year’s most brilliant movie: Italian Spiderman. Enjoy.

The Baghdad BoSox

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on July 21, 2008
in
. 0 Comments

Among the many reasons I haven’t been posting as much as of late is that I recently returned from several weeks in Iraq. While I was there, the only exposure I had to baseball was during the pair of meals I ate in a D-Fac — that’s military for “dining facility” — in Diyala province a couple of hours north of Baghdad; the US Armed Forces does keep its troops sated with a steady diet of SportsCenter and Fox News. For most the trip, however, I was unembedded, which meant no baseball for me.

I did get one jarring reminded of the global reach of the Crimson Hose. One afternoon, I set out (with the mandatory armed guards) to spend a quick half-hour exploring a local market which has only recently re-opened. Included among the too-large, garish Iraqi shirts–my wife is none too fond of the Maystro brand number I’ve been sporting since my return–was a table of counterfeit Sox hats…decorated with glued on sequins formed into a heart with the word “Love” written out in the middle. This is not a joke.

For what it’s worth, there were no Yankees hats to be seen.

The Night of the Gun: Buy this book

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on July 21, 2008
in Bad Advertising, Car Salesmen and Wally the Green Monster
. 0 Comments

It’s late July and humid enough so that my sweat feels like it’s sweating. Perfect time, in other words, to distract yourself with some great book reading. Or magazine reading, as the case might be: take the time to read this excerpt from David Carr’s about to be published memoir, Night of the Gun. David is a good friend, but even if he wasn’t, Gun is the type of bracingly honest and shockingly well-written book that would make a man jealous if we wasn’t so impressed. Once you start down that wormhole, there’s plenty else to explore, ranging from a rash of press coverage to what is perhaps the best book-related web site I’ve ever seen.

HST, RIP: Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on June 5, 2008
in Red Sox Nation, Ron Gant, Ugueth Urbina and homophobia
. 1 Comment

The University of Mississippi Press has just released Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson, which is not, as it might seem, a series of interviews but a collection of 30 articles about HST written over the last forty some odd years. The table of contents is impressively eclectic: there’s a Doug Brinkley piece from The Paris Review, a Craig Vetter article from Playboy, and — no joke — a old Ron Rosenbaum story that first ran in High Times. (If you’re wondering: yes, that’s the same Ron Rosenbaum who wrote Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars.) (There are also, predictably a pair of articles titled “Still Gonzo After All These Years.”) (Triple parens alert. The book is also co-edited by someone with one of the all-time great handles: Beef Torrey. I’ve spoken with him, and that’s his honest-to-goodness, god-given name. His parents, I assume, were not vegetarians.)

All of that should more than enough to recommend the book. There is also an essay I wrote back in 2000, when I first met Hunter during a couple of all-night editing sessions at his ranch in Owl Creek. I hadn’t read the piece, titled “Fear and Writing,” in a good five or so years, and it made me both sad and proud: I miss that old fuck, and the piece is actually pretty good. And since it ran in the now-defunct Brill’s Content, this the only place you’ll ever get to read it.