Oftentimes, when BBWAA voters release their Hall of Fame ballot choices, they do with little regard for common-sense analysis or even baseball reality. Ken Davidoff, however, offers up an exception. In a thorough blog post about his ballot, Davidoff explores how he has come to understand statistical tools and how he arrived at his ballot choices. If only every voter was so enlightened…
Chipper understands the Yanks’ spending ways
The Sporting News, the once-relevant bastion of all things sports, recently chatted with Chipper Jones on a variety of topics. While he swung and missed with his comments on the ongoing trash talk between the Phillies and Mets, he had a few interesting things to say about the Yanks’ recent spending spree.
It’s never happened to me personally, but I think anybody who hits the free agent market is going to wait and see what the offer is from the Yankees. Because everybody knows that they’re going to inflate the price. Whether they get you or not, they’re going to hike the price up.
Scott Boras and some of these other high-profile agents, they’ll use New York as a measuring stick. If New York is going to offer 5 percent or 10 percent or 20 percent more than anybody else, why not? They feel they have to offer a New York-style signing bonus on top of what a player is actually worth to the rest of the league just to get them to come play in New York.
Ten or 15 years ago, we could lure people to Atlanta strictly on reputation. You knew we were going to win, and we had a bunch of good players. Players would shun money from New York and take less to come here. For the past three seasons, we’ve kind of been on the downslide and not making the playoffs, so you can’t do that anymore. We can’t compete monetarily, so the only way we’re going to get players in here to play and win is to force them–and that’s done by trading.
The downside to trading is that it weakens your minor league system. But the only way that we are going to win now is through trades. We just don’t have enough money to compete with the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago teams.
While a lot of baseball commentators have problems with the Yankee money machine and some owners like to clamor for a salary cap that will never get passed, the players all seem to get it. Of course, the players stand to gain the most from the Yankees. Even though just 25 players, give or take a few, end up on the Yankees each year, every player in baseball benefits from the team’s spending.
Whether these other players have contact with the Yankees or whether they use offers from the Yanks to jack up their prices, our team in the Bronx is always on the radar of free agents and their representatives. In the minds of other team GMs, the Yankees always lurk because the Yankees could always potentially outbid another team for the services of a player they want.
Others can complain, and owners can cry poverty while promoting the idea of a salary cap. But as long as the players know it — and Chipper Jones’ words makes me believe they are well aware — the Yankees will be free to spend, and everyone except, perhaps, the 29 other teams will benefit.
(Hat tip to iYankees and Baseball Musings for this one.)
Open Thread: It was 36 years ago today…
Few Yankee fans realize it, but Jan. 3 is actually a rather significant day in Yankee history. It was on this day in 1973 that a syndicate headed by George M. Steinbrenner III paid a meager sum of $10 million to the Columbia Broadcasting System for the New York Yankees.
In today’s dollars, the Yankees cost Steinbrenner and his group around $47,843,468.47 or what Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter make an a season. That price was, according to The Times article about the sale, a real steal, and CBS took a loss on their investment. “It’s the best buy in sports today,” Steinbrenner said about the Yanks. “I think it’s a bargain. But they [CBS] feel the chemistry is right. They feel they haven’t taken a loss on the team.”
While Steinbrenner bought the team after it a decade of losing seasons and its first sub-one million attendance season since World War II, he has, as we all know, turned the franchise into the premier team in sports with six World Series championships over the last 36 years, a new stadium and a run of attendance topping the four million mark. Needless to say, the team is worth far more than $47 million today.
Meanwhile, the best part of the article announcing the sale is the final quote from Steinbrenner. “We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned,” he said. “We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships.”
Truer words are often spoken.
Anyway, use this thread as your evening open thread. We’ve got two NFL playoff games today, and the Nets, Rangers and Islanders are all in action. Just play nice.
The photo above is of Yogi, George and Billy Martin in 1976 and comes via The Daily News.
What Yankee blogs do you read?
Steve at WasWatching.com is running a survey of Yankee blogs. In the saturated realm of Yankee blogs, he wants everyone to vote on which ones you the blog-reading public check out on a daily basis. So head on over to this survey, and cast your vote. Just remember who sent you!
Update 11:23 p.m.: Steve closed the poll. No more voting.
Dispensing with a tired Joba debate
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Do we really have to “revive” the Joba Chamberlain debate, as Justin Sablich attempted to do yesterday on The Times’ Bats blog? Is there nothing better to talk about during the first few days of January than something that should have been put to bed ages ago?
Since the answer to my rhetorical question is clearly “no,” let’s dispose of this attempt to put a potential ace into some overblown 8th inning role. The italicized parts are from Sablich’s blog post, linked above. The regular text is my response.
Despite his game-shortening ability as Mariano Rivera’s setup man, Chamberlain was converted to a starter for part of the 2008 season before tendinitis in his throwing shoulder sent him to the disabled list and eventually back to the bullpen.
So before we even get to the meat of the argument, already it’s distorting the issue. Chamberlain was not “converted to a starter” in 2008. He had been a starter his entire career and was converted into a reliever in 2007 because he was running up against his innings limit. He simply returned to the role in which the Yanks envisioned him when they drafted him.
Now with a revamped rotation for the 2009 season, a case can be made for keeping Chamberlain in the setup role. The Yankees simply do not need Chamberlain in the rotation the way they did last season.
Any starting rotation with Joba Chamberlain is better than any without him. He’s a far superior pitcher to Andy Pettitte at this point in their respective careers, and he has so far been a more effective Major League starter than Phil Hughes. We could even make the case that he’s better than Chien-Ming Wang and A.J. Burnett as well. The Yankees are far better putting a pitcher of Chamberlain’s caliber in the rotation than they are burning him in the pen.
Chamberlain in the bullpen would most likely make each starting pitcher better by shortening his starts. Fans concerned about Sabathia burning out in September or Burnett breaking down over the long haul could rest a little easier. A Chamberlain bridge would also make life easier for Rivera, who turned 39 in November and may not be able to crank out a two-inning save with as much ease as in the past.
You know what else would help shorten starts? Having CC Sabathia in the bullpen.
Seriously, though, the Yankees pen is not a problem. The bullpen had a 3.79 ERA last year and led the AL in strike outs. They can use Damaso Marte and Brian Bruney to shorten games and have a plethora of other options that can spell Mariano Rivera when necessary. Considering that around 25 percent of a set-up man’s appearances come in close situations with the tying run on base or at the plate, the value of a nearly perfect set-up man is diminished even further. This is just a psychological “we would feel better with Joba in the bullpen” argument with little support to back it up.
In addition to keeping others healthy, Chamberlain could be healthier by remaining a reliever. There’s no questioning his effectiveness as a starter. His numbers as a starter last season (2.75 ERA and 10.3 K/9) were almost identical to his stats as a reliever (2.31 ERA and 11.1 K/9). But his shoulder injury came about as a starter, and fewer innings could only help him keep his shoulder strong.
Except relievers are generally less healthy than starters. Ask Eric Gagne, ask Tom Gordon. The general consensus in baseball is that it’s far easier to monitor a pitcher’s workload if he’s starting every five days than if he is relieving on an erratic schedule.
A popular argument for having Chamberlain start is that you should not waste a player with such ability as a reliever because the more innings he can pitch the better. Wouldn’t you rather have 230 innings of Chamberlain rather than 90?
The problem with that argument is that you can say the same thing about Boston’s Jonathan Papelbon or a number of other great relievers. Are the Red Sox wasting Papelbon’s talent by limiting his innings and not converting him back to a starter?
I wish people would stop comparing Papelbon to Chamberlain. It’s just not an apt comparison. Papelbon was a B/B+ starting prospect with two good pitches. Joba has long been an A/A+ starting prospect with four good pitches. The Red Sox tried to use Papelbon in the rotation, and that plan did not work out. In other words, he — much like Mariano Rivera — is a failed starter. Chamberlain has a long way to go before anyone considers him a failed starter, and as Sablich points out not two paragraphs before this claim, Joba actually enjoyed great success as a starter until his shoulder flared up.
If the Yankees used Chamberlain to shorten games to six innings, is that really a waste of talent? It sounds more like an incredible advantage to me.
Again, not an “incredible” advantage. In 1996, when the Yanks used Rivera to shorten games, he made 61 appearances. Of those, 15 were with the game tied or the Yanks up by one run. So that means that in 75 percent of his appearances, Rivera was protecting a lead of at least two runs or holding a deficit. As I said already, the Yankees would basically be sacrificing Joba in the rotation for around 20 innings of actual “clutch” pitching. It’s just not worth it.
In the end, in a few years, the Yankees may wind up putting Chamberlain in the pen, but that won’t happen until and unless he can’t handle the rigors of throwing 200 innings a season. We’re a long way from that point, and this debate is just a tired old rehash of things that should have been settled long ago. The Yankees are far better off with Joba Chamberlain making 30+ starts a year, and it shouldn’t even be called a debate anymore.
NY Pol wants to delay stadium vote
In a couple of weeks, just one day after a public hearing and four days after releasing the appropriate numbers to the public, the New York City Industrial Development Agency is scheduled to hold a vote that would grant another round of tax-exempts bonds to the Yankees and Mets for stadium construction. The details of this $450-million bond have yet to be released to the public, and the IDA has scheduled just one hearing for Jan. 15. According to Assembly Richard Brodsky, this is not acceptable.
In a letter released yesterday and sent to the IDA, Brodsky called upon the board to delay the vote and solicit more public opinion, a sentiment a long time coming and a little bit late in the process. Brodsky originally called upon the IDA to move the vote from its originally scheduled time, three hours before Barack Obama takes the presidential oath of office.
This time, Brodsky would like more time to investigate the need for these funds. Wrote Brodsky:
The lack of public information, the controversial nature of the proposal, the undue haste and secrecy surrounding this deliberation are inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the state laws governing IDA procedures. As you can see from the Interim Report, the manipulation of the IDA process including the use of a Deviation Letter and an Inducement Resolution inconsistent with each other, the artificial inflation of property tax assessments by the City, the successful pursuit of a luxury suite for City officials, the failure to consider the affordability of stadium tickets, the lack of permanent job creation, the uncertainty about the Community Benefits Agreement and the parkland replacement are issues that must be considered as the additional funding is advanced. We are particularly interested in the justification for the new funding, inasmuch as the initial funding was justified on a supposed Yankee threat to leave the City. Since the Yankees have signed a non-relocation agreement, it is unclear what justification can be made for the additional funding.
And in a statement, the Westchester pol and head of the State Assembly’s Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions took a shot at the IDA:
“At a time when we can’t fund the MTA or schools, the Bloomberg administration’s insistence on an additional $454 million of corporate welfare makes no sense. The IDA is an independent State agency which is not supposed to be under the thumb of the Mayor’s office. We are asking IDA board members to allow for a deliberate and open process to ensure that all points of view are heard and that New Yorkers are protected from more corporate welfare for the wealthiest corporations in our area. The spate of taxpayer bailouts of large corporations was at least justified by the threat that they would otherwise go out of business. There is no reason to provide public assistance to these hugely successful businesses at a time when taxes are rising, services are being cut, and jobs are being lost. We call on the IDA to do the right and legal thing.”
I don’t disagree with Brodsky here. I don’t think the stadium financing has been nearly as public as it needed to be. Our elected officials should have questioned this deal a long time ago. But at this point, Brodsky needs to deliver an endgame that constitutes more than just being a thorn in the side of all involved.
For better or worse, the new stadium will open in April. It’s about 45 days away from completed, and the project passed the point of no return basically the day after Yankee and city officials broke ground in 2006. Brodsky and his fellow committee members can make sure the city coffers get the money it deserves, and they have already made sure that future projects will be subject to more oversight. I guess these are small victories we should celebrate in the fight of good government and stadium construction.
Don Larsen couldn’t get home again
Don Larsen and Yogi Berra have ushered in the MLB Network to rave reviews. While the airing of Larsen’s famous World Series perfect game has been the perfect inaugural broadcast for the new TV station, Larsen suffered through a terrible trip to film the piece. In a story reminiscent of a John Hughes movie, Jack Curry relates how it took Larsen six days to make what should have been a 60-hour round trip. The former Yankee hurler was stranded in the airport, delayed and delayed again which is just proof that even famous baseball players go through hell when dealing with the airlines.