Monthly Archives: December 2003

My man Christian Ruzich has a cinematic take on the Yankee-Expos deal. It’s “lol” as they say in cyberspace.

I’m sure that as festive as the off-season has been thus far for us in the northeast, fans around the country aren’t necessarily moved by the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry (not to mention the moves the Phillies have been making). Good thing that we are generally too self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing to care what the rest of the country thinks. On that note, David Pinto and Edward Cossette discuss a good article by Howard Bryant of The Boston Herald which accuses the Red Sox of being the evil twin of the New York Yanks.

David also has an interesting comparison between Flash Gordon and Paul Quantrill that you should check out. And Jay Jaffe has a tremendous piece of work on how the Yankees should build their starting rotation (one that will evidently need updating as of this afternoon).

According to Lee Sinins, the Expos have called a 2:00 press conference to announce a major move. ESPN is reporting that the Expos have traded Javier Vasquez to the Yankees in exchange for Nick Johnson, Juan Rivera, and a third player, believed to be southpaw reliever Randy Choate.

Is there any surprise that MLB is trying to make news on the day that Barry Bonds is due to tesitfy in court? I don’t know, is there any surprise that the Yankees made the deal on the day that the Red Sox introduced their new manager? You do the math.

And what about Sheff? Gary is talking the talk (like the straw that stirs the drink) in an interview with USA Today. This should end all speculation about whether or not he’ll be in New York next year:

“We’re not going to lose, you can be assured of that,” Sheffield said. “(Yankees owner) George (Steinbrenner) didn’t even bring up the Red Sox during our talks. I don’t think they’re even a concern to him.

“He just kept talking about how bad he wants to win more World Series championships. The Red Sox can say what they want, but look at us. Who’s going to beat us? Nobody.

“I know I speak my mind, but I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk. And if we don’t win the World Series, everybody can come and see me first, because I’ll take the blame.”

…”I really thought the final chapter of my story in baseball would end wearing a Braves’ cap, but I think there would have been a little piece missing, not knowing what it’s like playing in New York, and with George and the Yankees.

“I know there’ll be more criticism. I know the expectations will be great. But there’ll be no more pressure in New York that I don’t already put on myself.”

Sheffield has not been introduced as a Yankee yet, and he’s already talking like Reggie Jackson. This is not Paulie O’s Yanks anymore, in case you hadn’t noticed. Red Sox fans must be licking their chops; with Clemens gone, at least there will be one easy target for them hate in New York (as if they needed an excuse).

More later…

According to a report in The New York Times, Gary Sheffield will be wearing Yankee pinstripes next year, but the Bombers could wait until as late as next week to announce the deal. They have yet to officially introduced Tom Gordon or Paul Quantrill as the newest members of the Yankee bullpen, but they did announce that they had signed left-handed specialist Felix Heredia to a two-year deal (John Flaherty has also been resigned to a one-year deal to be Jorge Posada’s backup, a move that will continue to vex those who think the Bombers make horrible choices with utility players).

Steve Karsay, who is in Tampa working-out said that Sheffield was around the Yankees complex yesterday. Jeff Weaver, who had been working with pitching guru and Friend-of-George Billy Conners this fall before Conners had heart surgery last week, has made some adjustments to his delivery. According to the Times:

Weaver said in a telephone interview that Connors altered his arm angle, telling him he had been throwing sidearm too often and swinging his leg too far behind him in his delivery. Weaver was relieved to find a mechanical cause for his struggles.

“It’s like if you practice a bad golf swing over and over, you’re not going to really notice what you’re doing after a while,” he said. “I was throwing sidearm for so long, I didn’t even realize I was down so low and really dropping my head.”

Somewhere in Florida, Pat Jordan must be thinking, “Well, it’s about time.” Late this summer Jordan told me:

Iíd raise [Weaver’s] arm level about 45% and have him thrown 3/4 overhand, instead of that side arm shit that he throws. If he got his arm up, and was throwing 93, 94 miles an hour

Mike C over at Baseball Rants is one of the great baseball historians in the blogging community. Stop by and catch his latest on the new Hall of Fame ballot. Mike isn’t alone, as Rich Lederer is right up there with him. Rich has a nice tribute to Warren Spahn up at Rich’s Weekend Baseball BEAT (not for nothing, but Mike C is due up next in Rich’s interview series with bloggers).

Here is a good passage from “On the Run,” Maury Wills’ autobiography:

I refuse to get upset with modern ballplayers who can’t bunt or run the bases. They said the same things when I was playing.

So it doesn’t drive me nuts to got to a game and see players who can’t execute fundamentals. There were only a handful of players when I played who could do the little things like bunting properly. The game hasn’t really changed that way. Managers get made because someone didn’t sacrifice a man over, but very few managers insist that their players learn to bunt.

…They don’t have a column in the papers to tell who’s leading the league in sacrifice bunts. You don’t see guys demand that their salaries be doubled because they lead the league in sacrifice bunts. There’s not glory for bunters. All bunting does is win ballgames.

…Learning to bunt takes a lot of time. The manager ends up assuming that some guys can do it and others can’t and he leaves it at that. You have to have time for infield practice. You have to have time for batting practice, the great priority. You have time for all that other stuff, but you don’t have time for bunting.

If Wills wasn’t a great bunter, odds are that he would not have lasted in the big leagues too long, no matter how fast he was. I think he makes a good point about bunting. Think Frank Howard or Rocky Colavito were ace bunters?

Gary Sheffield is still not a Yankee, and who knows if and when he will come to the Boogie Down (though I suspect he eventually will). There is a new member of the Yankees today though. According to Peter Gammons, reliever Paul Quantrill has signed a two-year deal worth $6.8 million. I remember not looking forward to seeing Quantrill come out of the pen when he pitched with Toronto a few years back. But as David Pinto points out, Quantrill is a groundball pitcher moving to a team with a mediocre defense. My man Cliff isn’t too thrilled with either Flash Gordon or Quantrill.

The Yankee bullpen is improving and I’m sure there will be much ink devoted to how much money the Bombers are spending on their relief corps. (You can just see the snide remarks about how the Yankee bullpen costs as much as the total payroll of some teams. Mike Lupica, can you hear me knocking?)

As for the Kevin Brown-for-Jeff Weaver scenerio, it seems to be a lot of hooey. The New York Post says the deal is not likely to go down, at least not as it is presently structured. The Dodgers could be interested in moving Brown for a hitter, and the L.A. Times says that the 39-year old righty would be open to being dealt.

Lastly, David Pinto has a link to an interesting article on New York’s favorite imported monster, Godzilla Matsui, who talks about his first year in the Major Leagues.

Jon Weisman, over at Dodger Thoughts, thinks swapping Kevin Brown for Jeff Weaver makes sense for L.A.:

Brown is a significant injury risk with a huge salary on a pitching-rich team. Especially with the ownership in transition, they would be eager to add flexibility to the payroll. Moreover, he is the symbol of the misguided excess of the failed Kevin Malone “Bring ’em on” era. If the team can trade the other symbol of the Fox era, Gary Sheffield – which they did fairly easily – they could and should absolutely trade Brown. He is Cisco stock purchased at $80 a share.

Of course, Jon would be love to see Nick Johnson thrown in the deal too, but he’ll settle for Jeff Weaver. I don’t see how a one-for-one deal would go through. Right now, it seems like a whole lot of wishful thinking. But it’s good to know that Yankee fans aren’t alone in wanting to see this trade made.

There is no question as to who is running the Hot Stove Show in New York, reports Buster Olney. That’s right, the Boss of Bluster himself, George M. Steinbrenner. Olney thinks this is a bad sign for Yankee fans.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ ace pitcher, Matt Morris has a letter-to-the-editor today in the St. Louis Dispatch, defending the character of Tino Martinez, who was recently traded to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. There was noise out of St. Louis this past season that Martinez was a disruptive force in the clubhouse. Morris calls out a Novembeer 23rd article written Bryan Burwell–and if anyone has a link to the piece, please send it along–and basically goes on to say what a stand-up guy Martinez is:

I have a hard time believing that anyone who has ever stepped between the white lines with Tino believes his desire is anything less than a champion. He wanted to play every day and was angry when he didn’t. That is and always will be the kind of player I want behind me when it’s my turn to take the ball. We should all have the same attitude. If you can find one player, coach, manager or front office executive who believes Tino’s so-called attitude was part of our problem, then this club isn’t going in a championship direction.

When he played for the Yanks I found Tino to be a high-strung guy, even a bit of a red ass, but not a jerk. It says something about him that one of his former teammates would be willing to defend him in print.

(more…)

Tom Boswell weighs in on the Yankee-Sox rivalry, which seems to get hotter with each passing season.

I hit a couple of used bookstores in Middlebury, Vermont last weekend and came away with a few good items. The first shop must not have recovered from when I was there last spring, because they had zilch in the baseball section. Vexed, I found another shop that had three shelves full of just baseball books. Ohhhh, bacon. I didn’t end up buying much on the count of I didn’t have too much money to spend and I’ve already got a stack of books at home I haven’t read yet.

Of course, I did pick up inexpensive copies of books I already have and love, so I can give them away as gifts. They include, “Here Me Talking to Ya,” an incredible collection of interviews with jazz musicians compiled by Nat Hentoff, and “Life On The Run,” Bill Bradley’s fine account of a year-in-the-life of a professional basketball player.

But I did get a few baseball books of interest, including, “All Those Mornings,” an autobiography by Washington Post scribe Shirely Povich; “Charlie O and The Angry A’s,” by Bill Libby; a nice, first edition copy of Curt Flood’s autobiography (written with Richard Carter), “The Way It Is,” and Maury Wills’ autobiography, “On the Run,” (written with Mike Celizic).

There was a book of letters exchanged by Joe and Phil Neikro during the 1987 season, that looked like fun and a couple of books by Charles Einstein on Willie Mays that I’d like to get to at some point too. But I chose the Wills book because I remember Bill James commenting on it in one of his books. So far, it hasn’t been a disapointment. In the first fifty pages, Wills comes across as a true son-of-a-bitch. He tells the reader that he is a drug addict. One of thirteen children, and went on to have seven of his own. He was married while he was still in high school and he and his wife never got along. (He claims to have never seen his wife naked either.) Wills writes about what a lousy father he was, and how the woman he loved after he left his wife, slept with his son Bump. A loner on the Dodgers, he talks about being a bed-wetter until he was in his early ’30s. Oh yeah, he also mentions that he single-handedly revolutionized the game of baseball. A sombitch, yes. Boring? No.

Gary Sheffield is not a Yankee…yet. The Daily News reports that negoitations have hit a snag, with the two sides divided by…you guessed it, dollars. But Kevin Kernan thinks the deal will eventually happen, and that Sheffield is a perfect fit for the Yankees. Rob Neyer also thinks that signing Sheffield (as well as Boston inking Schilling) is a risk well worth taking:

Sure, Sheffield might pull something or strain something, and wind up playing 120 games instead of 145 (which is roughly his norm). But if not Gary Sheffield, then who? If you can afford to pay him what he’s asking, he’s worth the risk, and the same goes for Schilling. The Yankees and the Red Sox are essentially playing a different game than all the other teams, and spending big money on great players who might be slightly more likely to get hurt is just a part of that different game.

While Yankee fans wait for Sheffield, the Bombers are involved in a series of other moves. There is talk that Kenny Lofton will come to New York to play center field. (If that happens, we can kiss our boy Nick Johnson goodbye, don’t you think?) Yesterday, the much-maligned third baseman, Aaron Boone agreed to a one-year deal; the Yanks resigned weeble-wobble utility infielder Enrique Wilson to a one-year contract too.

The bullpen is also changing. It’s improving, aging and getting more expensive as Tom “Flash” Gordon has reportedly inked a two-year deal worth $7.5 million to set up Mo Rivera. Paul Quantrill, a right-handed sinkerball specialist could join the Yankees soon too. Fianlly, Brian Cashman is close to resigning left handed relievers Felix Heredia and Gabe White.

Whew. If that’s not enough for you, Newsday is reporting that the Yankees and Dodgers are talking about a Jeff Weaver-for-Kevin Brown swap:

The Dodgers haven’t agreed to take Weaver, of course, and they may very well never agree to do so. Yet the trade would bring some positives to Los Angeles, as well. It would give the Dodgers some payroll relief, and they could reinvest the money they saved to improve their ailing offense.

…Money is the primary reason the Dodgers would consider such a trade, but it isn’t the only one. While Brown put together an excellent 2003, it came in the wake of two injury-plagued seasons. He made just 10 starts in 2002, when he sprained his right elbow and underwent lower back surgery, and 19 starts in 2001, when he tore a flexor muscle in his right elbow and required surgery. Including a 17-day stay on the disabled list this past season because of an abdominal strain, he has made 11 trips to the DL since 1990.

Chew on that one. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are still after Keith Foulke, and Pedro Martinez is interesting in working out a contract extension. This just in from the pundits at ESPN: The Yankee-Red Sox rivalry never sleeps.

Rich Lederer has the latest installment of his interview series up. Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus is featured this week, and Will gives a lengthy, highly engaging and entirely enjoyable interview. Surprised? Didn’t think so. Don’t sleep.

Terry Francona is expected to be announced as the next manager of the Boston Red Sox this week. He could have been introduced as early as today, but according to Bob Hohler in The Boston Globe, he will have to wait a bit longer. Meanwhile, Bill Madden–who is not a fan of Theo Epstein and the John Henry regime–thinks that Francona is a poor cherce to lead Boston to the World Serious.

Dennis Eckersley and Paul Molitor are the most impressive new candidates eligible for the Hall of Fame. I would assume that both men will make it in. Hopefully after Eck is selected, the voters will reconsider both Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage. Maybe someone like Rich Lederer will write an analysis about the great modern closers and illustrate just how deserving Sutter and the Goose really are.

According to Peter Gammons, the Yankees are set to sign free agent outfielder Gary Sheffield to a three-year deal worth somewhere between $36-$38 million. The only question is: when will the deal be announced?

New York may wait until after the Dec. 7 deadline for teams to offer salary arbitration to former players who became free agents to finalize the deal with Sheffield, a baseball official with knowledge of the Yankees’ deliberations said on condition of anonymity.

If the Atlanta Braves don’t offer arbitration to Sheffield, the team that signs him after Dec. 7 would not lose any amateur draft picks as compensation.

The signing of Sheffield is inevitable. The suspicious part of me fears that this is Danny Tartabull all over again, but to be fair, Sheffield is a much better player than Tartabull ever was. Sure, there should be concerns about the health of a 35-year old player, not to mention Sheffield’s history as a malcontent. One the other hand, the optimist in me says, here is a great hitter, coming off his best season. (Since when do the Yankees sign players who are past their prime?) If he can remain healthy, he should continue to produce for the next three years.

Aaron Gleeman thinks it’s a good move for New York:

The immediate reaction from many people seems to be that New York is making a mistake, mostly because Sheffield does nothing to solve their defensive problems up the middle.

I certainly agree that the Yankees middle-infield and middle-outfield situations are pretty bad on the defensive end. That said, Sheffield is one of the best hitters in baseball and adding his bat to the lineup is going to be a massive improvement over the production New York got from their right fielders last year (.256/.317/.465).

And really, what is the difference if you are improving a team by 50 runs on offense or 50 runs on defense? It’s the same 50 runs. Actually, I don’t think that’s completely true, but you get the general idea. And improving the team by 50 runs on defense would probably require more than just signing one player, which is all they had to do to improve the offense that much.

I never used to like watching Sheffield hit. He just had too many tics. He was so hyped up I felt uncomfortable just watching him. He made me nervous. But Sheff doesn’t seem to spit as much during an at-bat as he used to though, and I have to admit I’ve been won over during the past few seasons by just how impressive an offensive player he is. Sheffield’s bat speed is tremendous, and boy, does he ever hit the ball hard.

Yeah, I would have liked to have Vlad, but the Yankees aren’t interested in adding another long-term contract. Sheff wants to play here, and George wants him. Like it or not, here he comes.

The Yankees are also close to inking Tom “Flash” Gordon to a two-year, $7 million pact to serve as Mariano Rivera’s set-up man. Paul Quantrill and LaTroy Hawkins remain options as well.