ESPN Rob Neyer Blog

My blog has a new name -- SweetSpot -- and it's moved here!

Last year, Kyle Farnsworth gave up 15 home runs in 60 innings. In his career, Farnsworth has allowed a .441 slugging percentage to left-handed hitters.

Jim Thome is a left-handed hitter with 541 career home runs.

Over the past three seasons, Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field has been the most homer-prone ballpark in the American League, both generally and for left-handed hitters specifically.

With two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning and two White Sox on base, the Royals held a 2-1 lead. Thome was coming up. If there's a single pitcher in the majors who shouldn't be facing Thome in that situation, it just might be Farnsworth.

Yet, face him he did. Threw Thome a fastball down the middle, he did. Gave up a long, three-run, (eventually) game-losing home run, he also did.

And Royals manager Trey Hillman? He sat on his hands and watched it happen. That's what he did.

Ben Shpigel on what's up with Ryan Church:

The more I think about it, the less I understand the motivation for tweaking Church the way the Mets have. When they acquired him from Washington, the Mets thought they got lucky, finding a talented defender with perhaps the best arm of a right fielder this side of Atlanta's Jeff Francoeur. They thought he would thrive playing his home games in a smaller ballpark, and that his 2007 struggles against left-handed pitching (.229) were an aberration. A career .256 hitter against lefties, Church batted .264 with four homers off them in 2008.

Church had two hits and stole a base Monday while also making an outstanding defensive play that, I suspect, the Mets realize that Sheffield almost certainly wouldn't have made. Manuel acknowledged Church's defense after the game, but in the very next sentence mentioned that Church could play center field, too, as if he was planning on using him more like a utility outfielder.

Manuel said the spacious outfield, quirky angles and limited foul territory at Citi Field would make him align his outfielders differently, bunching them toward the gaps. But he also said that he is afraid of Beltran's "weighing 145 pounds" by the end of the season from all the running he'll have to do. Surrounding him with Murphy and Sheffield could make for some, umm, interesting moments out there.

On Friday Manuel explained why he expected Sheffield to be an asset. And to me, it makes sense: adding someone with swagger and right-handed power for the relatively paltry cost of $400,000 creates the perfect low-risk, high-reward situation. Manuel's reasoning here makes sense, too:

"What this does for us is really create some depth in the team," Manuel said. "I believe that in the course of 162 regular-season games, depth is the one thing that is normally overlooked. So if you have on your bench quality players and you have players that are versatile, you can get enough at-bats to sustain them in their performance. In other words, you can rest guys and be comfortable that you can still have a chance that particular day in winning a ballgame because you have other people to replace them."

The challenge for Manuel going forward will be deciding who to rest and when to rest him. Where Church fits into that plan remains to be seen.

It's easy to get worked up on this stuff in March and April, in fact it's my stock-in-trade during those months. But talent usually wins. Ryan Church, if he's recovered from his concussion of last year, is the Mets' second-best outfielder (even if he can't match Sheffield's swagger). Eventually -- and probably sooner rather than later -- Jerry Manuel and everyone else will figure that out (if they haven't already).

I've been writing stuff like this for 13 years; now it's Eric Seidman's turn:

This will not be a lengthy or detailed post discussing what sample sizes are or why they carry importance, but rather a personal plea for fans and readers, especially of this site, to avoid overestimating talent based on a few good games in April. While we can deny ever falling prey to this issue, it is human nature to try and glean information from any and all angles, for whatever reason, be it an edge in a fantasy league or an article claiming why Player A should get more playing time/get a contract extension/get a date with Alyssa Milano.

Last night, Jordan Schafer kickstarted his major league career with a home run in his first at-bat. He followed it up with a single to centerfield. On the night, the 22-yr-old rookie went 2-3 with an intentional walk. Seeing as the Braves/Phillies matchup was the first of the season, on national television, I would not be surprised in the least if fantasy players flocked to free agent pools to put in a claim for Schafer's services. Now, Schafer may very well be a fine major league player but situations like this arise all too often, and they are particularly annoying. A player starts his season off on the right foot, fantasy players get all gooey-eyed, and then call the player a fluke upon dropping him in June on the heels of a .230/.310/.360 slash line.

Schafer could defy his projections and post excellent numbers this season but that is not the point. The point is that decisions should not be based on small sample sizes and we need to admit this is a problem before ever moving past it. It is one thing to discuss how a player has performed in a certain 10-game span, like during Lance Berkman's ridiculous stretch last season but it is a completely different animal to use such discussions or small samples as the basis for definitive performance claims. On a teamwide level, going crazy over Schafer right now would be equivalent to trying to decipher what is wrong with the Phillies. One measly game has been played. Let's not go crazy over players until we at least know a little bit about them.

Last year, Jordan Schafer batted .269/.378/.471 in the Double-A Southern League. Those were fine numbers for a 21-year-old center fielder with good wheels and a strong arm. Those numbers do not suggest that Schafer is ready, right now, to do anything more than hold his own against major league pitching. His projection according to Baseball Prospectus: .238/.308/.391.

We shouldn't be surprised if Schafer betters those numbers, because (1) projections are like shotgun blasts: We're just trying to get close; and (2) young players don't always develop the way you think they're going to. We also shouldn't be surprised if Schafer spends a good chunk of this summer in the International League, fighting for his next shot with the big club.

Russell Adams and Tim Marchman on the suddenly tenuous future of the baseball beat:

But throughout the last century, baseball writers have stood above their sportswriting colleagues. When the National League needed a president in 1934, it hired former Yankees beat writer Ford Frick. When San Diego named a ballpark in 1980, it honored Jack Murphy of the San Diego Union. In some press boxes, black-and-white portraits of writers line the walls in tribute.

Their exalted status gave rank-and-file BBWAA members unusual powers, from being assured entry to clubhouses and press box seats at the World Series to electing players to baseball's Hall of Fame. After 10 years, BBWAA members are given certain perks that continue even after retirement.

The changing world was on vivid display recently at McKechnie Field in Bradenton, Fla., the spring home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Opened in 1923 during the golden age of sportswriting, it held its first-ever night game last March -- 20 years after the lights first went on over Chicago's Wrigley Field. At a March 22 game between the Pirates and the Cincinnati Reds two writers from Pittsburgh papers were in attendance, along with two reporters from Major League Baseball's Web site. The Pittsburgh chapter of the BBWAA is down to nine members, an all time low, from 20 in 1988.

I have to admit … my first reaction upon reading that last paragraph was "Really? It takes nine guys to cover the Pirates? And it used to take 20?"

Well, no. I'm sure a fair number of those 20 were not actually covering the Pirates, but were columnists who dabbled or editors who just happened to have BBWAA cards. One of the odd things about the Baseball Writers Association is that many members were not (and still today, are not) actually baseball writers.

But that's a whole 'nother issue. The real question is "How many do we need?" And I would argue that once you get past the first few reporters and columnists covering a team, you reach a point of diminishing returns rather quickly. Considering that everything that all of them do is available with the click of your mouse. I don't know what the number is, for the Pirates or the Yankees or anyone else. But it's definitely less than 20.

You might think I take some perverse pleasure in all this. After all, (1) I've never worked for a newspaper,( 2) I've been in the middle of new media almost since the beginning and (3) I'm not a BBWAA member (yes, they told me I was going to be one, but that was months ago and I still haven't seen any evidence, so at this point I'm guessing the whole thing was a brilliant practical joke).

I don't take any pleasure in all of this, at all. Oh, there are certainly some writers we can do without because they weren't all that good at their jobs. Just as there are doctors and waiters and meter-readers who are better-suited for other lines of work. But I'm a baseball writer. It's all I know. And I can't see anything positive about baseball writers by the dozens getting thrown out of work.

Alan Schwarz on the utility within baseball of computer simulations:

Take the age-old question of how much difference a team's lineup order makes. This issue so vexed the former manager Billy Martin that he once literally picked his Detroit Tigers batting order out of a hat.

Luke Kraemer of Imagine Sports, which owns Diamond Mind, programmed the simulator to force the 2008 Yankees to bat their best hitter and cleanup man, Alex Rodriguez, ninth -- to see how scoring was affected. Mr. Kraemer got the run total not for just one season, which can fluctuate as much as 80 runs in each direction from simple randomness, but for 100 seasons -- more than 16,000 Yankees games in all.

The result? The Yankees scored 747 runs per season, 40 fewer than their real-life 787. (Diamond Mind was so accurate that 100 seasons with A-Rod batting fourth averaged 789, almost dead-on.) Most research suggests that those 40 runs would mean only about four fewer victories, for a strategy no manager would ever consider; so the difference with Rodriguez batting third or fifth would be insignificant, and nowhere near worth the forests of trees that would give their lives to the ensuing sports-page debate.

--snip--

The stolen base. Advancing from first to second puts the runner in scoring position, but he -- and the rest of your hitters -- will have a hard time scoring if he gets thrown out. Mr. Kraemer looked at a recent team that ran wild (the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays) and one that barely stole at all (the 2005 Oakland A's) and switched their mind-sets to see what happened. The A's scored 20 runs fewer, which probably says more about their players' inability to run in the first place. But when the speedy Rays stole sparingly, they increased their scoring by 47 runs per season -- suggesting that perhaps the Rays were running too often in real life.

The first of those is no real surprise; we know there's a real difference between lineups, but there's no real difference between reasonable lineups. You would score many fewer runs with A-Rod batting ninth (rather than fourth) because batting him ninth costs him roughly 90 plate appearances and a fair number of RBI opportunities. But the difference between batting him fourth and third or fourth and fifth is negligible, and worth worrying about only after you've figured out everything else.

On the other hand, the note about the Rays' steals is truly surprising. The generally accepted break-even point for steals is something between 70 and 75 percent (depending on the scoring environment). Well, last season the Rays stole 142 bases and were caught 50 times for a 74 percent success rate, comfortably within that break-even range. I don't know how to square 74 percent with those theoretical 47 runs … but if I were running the Rays, I sure would want to know.

On Monday, inspired by a reader, I threw out a challenge: Who are some players whose minor league performances gave us no idea of how good they would be in the majors?

Commenters suggested Matt Holliday, Larry Walker, Hanley Ramirez, Chase Utley, Geovany Soto, Ron Gant and Magglio Ordonez. Lone Star Ball's Adam Morris suggests Rusty Greer and Michael Young, while FanGraphs' Dave Cameron writes:

I always remember this one because of a lecture I got from a scout a few years ago about not trusting minor league numbers, but Travis Fryman is the best candidate for your didn't-hit-at-all-in-minors guy.

1,487 minor league AB, .254/.303/.371

The Tigers kept promoting him, even though he never hit, and he started hitting well from pretty much day one in the majors.

He did, but it's worth noting that Fryman never really was an outstanding hitter; he retired with a 103 career OPS+ (100 is considered league-average) and never finished in the top 15 in MVP voting. It's also worth noting that Fryman was pretty impressive in the minors, considering his age. The Tigers promoted him out of Class A for no obvious reason, but at age 20, he held his own in Double-A, and he held his own the next season in Triple-A, too. Without checking, I'd be willing to bet that Fryman was one of the youngest everyday players in the International League; at 21, that's impressive.

Greer? Same sort of thing. Greer reached Double-A (and thrived) in his second pro season when he was 22. That's pretty good. His career stalled for a short while, but he batted .295 in the minors and was playing every day for the big club in his fifth pro season.

Young? He was impressive in the minors. He fell off just a bit for half a season in Double-A, but a shortstop with an .817 OPS in the minors? Most teams would be thrilled with a guy like that.

Before zipping through the other guys mentioned above, I'll just mention that I'm not all that surprised by Young, Greer and Fryman. We tend to remember the struggles, but when it comes to stars (or near stars), the struggles are the exception rather than the rule. But maybe we'll find someone who fits the bill.

Not Ordonez, though; not really. He struggled as a teenager, but of course, many teenagers struggle. He established himself as a prospect at 20, and played well in Double-A and Triple-A at 22 and 23.

Gant, as a teenager, struggled at exactly the same levels as Ordonez. At 21, he established himself as a prospect by hitting 27 homers with the Durham Bulls in the Class A Carolina League.

Soto does fit the bill. He was always young for his level, and for a catcher, the bar wasn't set real high. But aside from a pretty solid Double-A season at 21 -- and yes, that's impressive for a catcher -- he never did anything, statistically speaking, that would lead one to think he would become a star. Well, not until 2007. In 2006, the 23-year-old Soto posted a .739 OPS with Triple-A Iowa. Not all that good, but good enough to rate (according to Baseball America) as the Cubs' No. 17 prospect.

And in 2007? Soto exploded with a 1.076 OPS, then duplicated that performance after a September call-up. And you know what happened in 2008.

Utley doesn't qualify at all. Yes, it took him a few years to reach the majors, but that's not uncommon for players drafted out of college. Utley was real good in his first pro season, and two years later, he skipped Double-A completely.

I'm not buying Ramirez, either. He was considered a top prospect in the Red Sox chain, and the only blot on his record is a weak 2005, when he was 21 in Double-A. (The year before, he had played brilliantly in high A and Double-A.)

Walker? At 19, Walker slugged .602 in Class A. At 20, he slugged .534 in Double-A.

And finally, Holliday … I'm in for half on Holliday. He struggled in his first high-A season and his first Double-A season, then struggled more in his second Double-A season … and yet, oddly enough, the Rockies promoted him to the majors early in his next season, even though he'd posted a career .750 OPS in Double-A and had played only a few Triple-A games. And you know what he has done since then.

So, can it happen? Sure. Does it happen? Occasionally.

But just very occasionally. I solicited candidates, and you responded with a list of solid hitters. Really, though, only two of them came close to qualifying under the original parameters. Only Soto's and Holliday's major league numbers seem truly incongruous with their minor league performance. An overwhelming majority of the time, we can trust minor league numbers.

Bruce Jenkins on the most interesting moments in Sunday night's game:

It didn't take long for someone to make a ridiculous pitch-count move in the baseball season. Derek Lowe wasn't just retiring the Phillies last night, he was owning them. Cruising along with a two-hit shutout, he needed just six pitches in the seventh inning and eight in the eighth. Pitch count: a very manageable 97, especially for Lowe, who had barely broken a sweat. As if to say, "Wait a minute -- let's make this game interesting," manager Bobby Cox brought in his closer, lefty Mike Gonzalez, in the ninth inning, and the Phillies immediately came to life. They couldn't believe their good fortune. Give Gonzalez credit for striking out Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez with two runners on after the Phils had cut the lead to 4-1, but for heaven's sake, Bobby, are you kidding? Put down the calculator and watch the game …

Lots of brain food here &133;

One, I suspect that Cox might have let Lowe try to finish the game in May … but managers almost never let their starters throw more than 100 pitches in early April. [Are you sure about that? -- ed. No. But I doubt if anyone will check.] I wonder how many pitches Lowe threw in his last spring-training start, or the one before that. Not 100, I'll bet. Plus, writers love to focus on how many pitches a guy threw, but that's not the relevant number; the relevant number is how many pitches he would have thrown, if he'd stayed in the game. And that number would almost certainly have topped 100, and well over 100 to complete the game.

Two, I'm not sure if the problem is that Cox summoned his closer from the bullpen, or that his closer is southpaw Mike Gonzalez. Watching him pitch Sunday night, I didn't get the impression that he had anything at all against right-handed batters. But you know, facts are pesky critters. Looking up Gonzalez's career splits, one finds that he's been almost exactly as brilliant against righties as lefties. Even last year, the worst season of his career, Gonzalez was fantastic against the righties; his 4.28 ERA was almost completely due to his struggles -- four homers in 27 at-bats -- against the left-handed batters. So if he's healthy, I wouldn't be worried about him. Against the lefties or the righties.

And three, the Phillies' lineup might look a little better if all those lefty hitters -- Chase Utley followed by Howard and Ibanez -- weren't lined up together. This was much commented about when Ibanez was signed, but is there any good reason for not tossing a right-handed batter in there somewhere?

From the mailbag:

Rob,

With all the talk about Matt Wieters and today's note on Daniel Murphy, I was wondering who some of the biggest upside surprises were in the majors after not terribly impressive minor league action. I would guess the best performers were those who saw very little minor league action or were very young for their minor league levels. Do you know of any standouts who had a "reasonable" sample size from which to project and then "just clicked" in the majors and greatly outperformed any projection that we would apply to them today?

I always remember stories about how Jeff Bagwell came out of nowhere to put up great power numbers, but I looked at his minor league numbers and he did hit quite a few doubles (34 in 481 ABs) in his second professional season as a 22-year-old, and his power output (ignoring the otherworldly 1994 MVP season) seems to increase with his age peaking as it should (maybe starting a little early) for season ages 25-32 before starting the slow fade followed by steep decline with increasing age and arthritic shoulder problems.

I rambled long enough to ask two questions: 1) Who is the best (among the best) who outperformed their minor league stats? And 2) Can Bagwell's base-running and defense (pre-shoulder I can't throw days) along with his OPS+ machine (149 career) get him out of the steroid era cloud and into the Hall?

Cheers,
Tom

Thanks for the note, Tom. (I left out all your kind words about my work because I'm just so darned modest, but I do appreciate them.) Anyway, this is a fantastic question, and I wish I had a good answer for you. For some reason, the first name that popped into my mind was "Jim Edmonds," but he's not a good answer, at all. After a slow start as a teenager, Edmonds reached Double-A when he was 21 and was holding his own in Triple-A shortly after turning 22.

I don't know that Jeff Bagwell outperformed his minor league stats, either. Especially when you consider his age, too. He posted some real fine stats at 22 while playing half his games in a tough ballpark in (as I recall) a pitchers' league. The interesting question, I think, isn't which players outperformed their stats; it's which players outperformed their performance. Which ones surprised us after we considered their ages and their home ballparks and any other mitigating factors.

As I said, I don't have a good answer. So I'm going to throw this question to the crowd, because I'm sure you all can come up with some solid candidates. In the meantime, I'll just say that Bagwell will wind up in Cooperstown, but I don't know whether it'll be in five years or 25.

No one has asked for them, but here are my predictions anyway:

NL West
1. Dodgers
2. Diamondbacks (WC)
3. Rockies
4. Giants
5. Padres

I had the Diamondbacks in first place until Manny re-upped with the Dodgers, but it's still going to be close and I like Arizona for the wild card. The Padres won't be as bad as everybody thinks, and could almost as easily finish third as fifth.

NL Central
1. Cubs
2. Cardinals
3. Brewers
4. Reds
5. Astros
6. Pirates

I've got the Brewers and Cardinals both winning 83 games, but I'll give the Cardinals the edge because Chris Carpenter and Jason Motte might be twin sensations (though probably not). The Pirates probably are the one team in the majors most likely to lose 100 games.

NL East
1. Mets
2. Braves
3. Phillies
4. Nationals
5. Marlins

The Marlins are drawing some positive reviews because of their unproven-but-obviously-talented starting pitchers, and I have to admit they could surprise me. But the numbers I've seen argue that the Marlins are the worst team in the division, a few games behind the Nationals. As for the Phillies, they'll be pretty good but I believe the gimpiness of Cole Hamels and the oldness of Jamie Moyer will drop the champs to third place (also, Brad Lidge won't be perfect again this year).

AL East
1. Yankees
2. Red Sox (WC)
3. Rays
4. Blue Jays
5. Orioles

It has quickly become a meme: The three best teams in the majors all are in the American League East. This happens to be true. Doesn't mean they'll finish with the three best records, or that they'll be the three best teams three months from now. But at this moment on paper, they're the best. What's more, they're close enough that the order could easily be reversed. But I think the Rays' best won't come until 2010 and '11, and that this year they'll miss the playoffs by a couple of games.

AL Central
1. Indians
2. Tigers
3. Twins
4. Royals
5. White Sox

There won't be any terrible teams in this division -- in fact, I can't find any terrible teams in the American League -- but I'll be shocked if anyone here wins 90 games. The Indians are seriously deficient after their top two starters, and that's without even considering the possibility that Cliff Lee was a fluke last season and Fausto Carmona was a fluke the season before that. I just think the Indians' deficiencies are less damaging than those of the other contenders.

AL West
1. Athletics
2. Angels
3. Mariners
4. Rangers

I know, I know … It's probably a little bit crazy to pick the A's, considering that their current pitching rotation includes five pitchers who have combined for the grandly splendiferous total of 18 major league wins. Actually, that might make me certifiable. But if two or three of them pitch well and Justin Duchscherer comes back strong and the Angels continue to miss three of their starters … Hey, it could happen!

ShysterBall, touching on an article about the first five years of Petco Park:

More subjectively speaking, I have a brother who has lived in San Diego for about 12 years, and his impression is that, on balance, Petco has been a positive for both the city and the Padres. It's very nice and the area in which it sits has been transformed.

Which isn't to say that Petco's example has caused me to rethink my strong opposition to public stadium projects. It may be among the best of these sorts of projects, but (a) I've seen no evidence that Moores and the Padres wouldn't have or couldn't have done this without so much public money if the city said no (and given the dearth of other viable locations for the team, exactly what kind of leverage did they have to begin with?); and (b) I've seen no evidence that, even if a large public component was inevitable, San Diego got the best deal it could. As one critic of Petco in the article says after noting that the city pays part of the park's operating expenses, "what possible rationale is there for ballpark's operating costs to be paid by the city? The Padres are a business, and a business pays for its operating costs."

Which is another way of saying that, no matter how nice these parks are from a baseball and aesthetic and municipal development point of view, it doesn't mean that they represent anything close to good government, and that's my ultimate problem with them.

Craig is right: They most assuredly are not good government. Which is my ultimate problem, too. The ballparks usually are strong-armed through the system by well-heeled power brokers with the enthusiastic assistance of corrupt politicians.

But there's another issue here, too. I don't doubt that the area around Petco has been transformed … but that's what every team and mayor claims for every neighborhood around one of the new mallparks, and those claims are always overblown and sometimes flat untrue. What's more, nobody wants to grapple with the question of opportunity costs. Sure, the money spent on Petco probably contributed to improving the surrounding area … but was that the best way to spend that money? Probably not. Tossing a few hundred million dollars toward millionaires and billionaires usually isn't the A-No. 1 best way to promote the public good. Just as, you know, a general guideline.

Dave Cameron on what looks like a truly odd move:

Even with the GM having resigned in disgrace and promises of a new organization going forward, the Nationals have managed to screw it up. Elijah Dukes, the best player on the team, is not in the line-up today. He's not injured. He's not being punished for an off the field transgression. He just had a bad spring, and Austin Kearns had a good spring, and that was enough for [Nationals manager] Manny Acta to decide that Kearns should get the first chunk of the playing time pie that will be split up amongst the crowd of outfielders the Nationals have.

Dukes had a .382 wOBA last year to go along with a UZR/150 of +13.7. In about 60% of a season's worth of playing time, he was worth 2.9 wins to the Nationals, which put him on a +5 win pace over a full season. Five win players go to the all-star game, sign really big contracts, and become heroes to their fans.

Dukes will spend Opening Day on the bench.

I like Kearns as much as (probably more, actually) the next guy, but he's not Elijah Dukes. He's got some rebound potential and could be a nice role player on a team that needs a good defensive OF who can hit a bit, but he's an expiring contract with no real future in Washington. He's not a franchise cornerstone. He's not even someone who will be with the organization next year.

Seriously, Washington, you have a 24-year-old coming off a .382 wOBA and a +13.7 UZR/150. I don't care if he went 0 for 60 in spring training - you should play him whenever he's healthy. This isn't the kind of talent that you ask to share playing time, especially not with the likes of Kearns or Josh Willingham.

Happy Opening Day, Nationals fans. Hope you weren't planning on seeing the team's best player.

Look, I'm no bigger on spring training stats than Cameron is. Dukes batted .212 in 52 at-bats this spring and homered just once, and those numbers probably don't mean anything … probably.

But what if there were some off-the-field transgression we don't know about? What if Dukes came to camp overweight? What if he had showed little enthusiasm about getting his work done during spring training? What if he just didn't seem to give a tinker's damn?

We've a tendency to think -- especially these days -- that we have perfect knowledge. We don't. As anyone who has worked inside baseball can tell you, for every odd thing we hear about, there are a dozen we don't.

I don't mean to excuse Manny Acta for what seems a very strange decision. I think he's probably just making a mistake that will quickly become apparent. But I think we have to at least acknowledge the possibility that he has a good reason for doing what he's doing. And someday maybe we'll know for sure.

Will Daniel Murphy justify the Mets' faith in him? Or will he revert to his minor league performance, which was decent but far from scintillating? Ted Berg on the latter:

Of course, there are plenty of nattering nabobs who believe he will. In message board threads around the Internet this offseason, statheads and opposing fans pointed to Murphy's small Major League sample size and good-but-not-dominant Double-A stats from 2008 and argued that Mets fans are primed for disappointment in 2009. They said the expectations levied on the young left-handed hitter are patently ridiculous given his history.

Mets fans have seen enough to know better, though. We've witnessed his professional approach to hitting, heard his teammates and coaches rave about his work ethic and even listened to Keith Hernandez compare him to a young Pete Rose. So as Mets fans, we should be confident in Murphy's Major League success for 2009 and beyond. Right?

The truth is, we have no idea. Nobody does. Naysaying and yaysaying is all just guesswork, and until Murphy gets a reasonable sample of at-bats at the big-league level, we don't know how he'll pan out. There's certainly a lot to like from everything we've witnessed, but remember: We've been led astray before. And Murphy, in particular, has been so Paul Bunyaned that if he posts an .800 OPS, he'll disappoint most Mets fans while outpacing most major preseason projection systems.

The important thing for fans of Murphy and all young players is patience. Not everybody is David Wright -- remember that after Jose Reyes' hot start in 2003, it wasn't until 2006 that he again became even a league-average hitter. If Murphy stumbles out of the gate in the season's first two weeks or two months, don't dismiss him as another Gregg Jefferies or Kevin Maas.

Here's the basic problem: As Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster points out, Murphy did exceptionally well when putting the ball in play in the majors, which is great except he hadn't done that in the minors. What are you going to believe? His 151 plate appearances in the majors? Or his 1,078 plate appearances in the minors?

An .800 OPS? Even that's not likely. Murphy has some pop, but his on-base percentage is mostly batting average-driven, and his .313 batting average with the Mets last season was a mirage. He's just not a .300 hitter. Not yet, anyway. I like the Mets and I think they're going to win. But the sooner they figure out that Murphy isn't nearly good enough to start against left-handed pitching, the better their chances.

Good news! The Marlins have settled on their leadoff man! And he's fast!

Bad news! The Marlins' leadoff man has a .300 career on-base percentage. …

Manager Fredi Gonzalez said on Friday that he plans to use Emilio Bonifacio as the leadoff hitter for the early part of the season. The team had been weighing whether to go with Bonifacio or Cameron Maybin in the first spot.

There was some consideration of splitting the two depending on if they were facing a left-handed or right-handed starter.

Bonifacio has a career .167 average against left-handers, compared to .264 against right-handers.

"In the past, there has been a big difference -- a big split there," Gonzalez said.

Florida opens on Monday against the Nationals, who are pitching left-hander John Lannan.

--snip--

Gonzalez said he will show patience with Bonifacio at the plate.

"We'll give [him] an opportunity. What's the opportunity? I can't pick a number for you," Gonzalez said. "I don't know if it's 30 at-bats, 40 at-bats, 25 at-bats. But he will get an opportunity. You can see it, if he's overmatched, then maybe we will make an adjustment. We've got some pieces."

Two points here, both of them so obvious that perhaps you don't need me to make them. …

One, 30 or 40 or 25 at-bats isn't really any opportunity at all. Even a good hitter might easily go 8-for-40 (.200) and (by Gonzalez' logic) lose his job.

Two, Bonifacio's career averages in the majors against lefties and righties aren't all that interesting, because he's not spent a great deal of time in the majors. What are interesting are minor-league splits: .265/.325/.333 against lefties, .310/.364/.402 against righties.

What do those numbers tell us? They tell me that if Bonifacio plays fantastic defense at third base, he might be good enough to be in the lineup against right-handed pitching. Not good enough to lead off, mind you. But good enough to play. They also tell me that he shouldn't play against lefties, ever.

Today's links come to you with -- as Jon Miller put it Sunday night -- my best New Year's wishes …

• Josh Wilker's hit the big time, and someday we'll be able to say we knew him (and here is Josh's reaction, wonderful as ever).

• Speaking of the New York Times, I'm thrilled to find that Doug Glanville is back for another season.

• From The New Enthusiast, the only 2009 baseball preview you'll need.

• Well, except for this one: Rany Jazayerli and I preview the 2009 Royals.

• Zack Greinke is one of the reasons some pundits think the Royals have a chance to surprise us this season, and Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski's got a nice long piece about Greinke.

• Why isn't Matt Wieters in the majors? Andy MacPhail explains (sort of).

• I haven't seen Ron Darling's book, but it "sounds" pretty good.

• Alex Belth on the new Yankee Stadium …

The overall impression I got was that this place is a mall featuring a baseball field. I spoke with some people who think it feels bigger than the old park, but it seemed smaller to me, because of the restaurant, but chiefly because of the mammoth HD TV that is the centerpiece of the scoreboard section high above center field. The TV is so captivating, so impossibly clear, that it virtually overshadows the field and serves to shorten the space between home plate and center field. I had a hard time turning away.

Some years ago, I came up with the term "mallpark" to describe all the new stadiums (not including Camden Yards, as I recall). Now, it's possible that I borrowed/stole it from someone else. If so, the inventor can have it back, with my apologies.

The Seattle Times' Geoff Baker on the Ulcer Heard 'Round the Northwest:

Ichiro has been placed on the 15-day DL after doctors found he had a bleeding ulcer. The M's say it's no longer bleeding, but obviously, playing baseball is not in his best interests at the moment.

"It was a very difficult decision to place Ichiro on the disabled list," Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik said in a release, "especially since we know what a fierce competitor he is, and how important it is to him to help the team. However, we determined it was in both his best interest, and the best interest of the club, to place him on the DL at this time."

Ichiro will be eligible to come off the DL on April 15. He had played in 197 consecutive games.

What causes bleeding ulcers? A variety of things. Stress being one of them. Let's hope he has a speedy recovery. Not for the ballclub's sake, but his own. This is a very dangerous medical condition if not treated properly.

Who replaces him at leadoff? Endy Chavez would be a candidate. Franklin Gutierrez another. But seriously, this all seems a little trivial at the moment. Ichiro's health is of prime concern, as I just mentioned. We'll worry about the first two weeks of the season a little later on in the day.

If, one week ago, I had asked you to rank the stars in order of their likelihood of having a bleeding ulcer, wouldn't Ichiro have been very near the bottom of the list? Do Zen masters get ulcers?

Maybe it's got nothing to do with stress. But I'm reminded that whatever we might think we know about a public figure's inner life, we're probably at least half wrong. Probably a lot more than half.

From the New York Posts' Joel Sherman, today's hottest rumor!

The Mets were closing in on signing Gary Sheffield, likely today, with an eye on giving him significant playing time, according to two people involved in the talks.

"Unless something drastic happens, he is a Met," one of the sources said. "Someone would have to offer him a second year, and I just don't see that happening."

--snip--

What is interesting from a Met perspective is that Sheffield's signing is as much about giving them protection in right field with Ryan Church as in left field with the inexperienced Daniel Murphy. There are factions of the club that are down on Church, wondering if he will ever hit lefties with any consistency or totally fulfill his promise.

The Mets dispatched two scouts to watch Sheffield in Tampa on Thursday, which was first reported by SI.com. But the element that the Mets were most interested in seeing was Sheffield throw. That is because they envision that he will be playing some right field, which is Church's position. One person briefed on that workout said the Mets were satisfied that Shefffield could throw well enough to be competitive. Sheffield has been slowed by shoulder issues in recent years.

The Mets also believe, according to one source, that even diminished that Sheffield remains a legitimate threat and still has good, long at-bats with a willingness to accept a walk.

Having seen that workout, the Mets intensified their efforts to beat out the Phillies and Reds to sign Sheffield, and they delivered a message to the veteran slugger that has apparently won his affections: "They told him if he plays well, he will play a lot," a Sheffield confidant said.

The Mets only have to pay Sheffield $400,000, the major league minimum. He was waived recently by the Tigers, who would owe him the remainder of that salary.

If the Mets sign Sheffield, Fernando Tatis probably will become more of a pinch-hitter and potentially play more as a reserve at first and third base than in the outfield. …

If true, this is a perfectly beautiful example of a baseball executive weighting past accomplishments more than current performance. Sometimes you get the feeling that if Hank Aaron announced his comeback, teams would be lined up around the block to make an offer.

Sheffield and Tatis both are corner outfielders with obvious defensive limitations, the obvious differences being that Tatis is six years younger and can play a little third base (not that the Mets often need an extra third baseman). The not-so-obvious difference? Tatis figures as the better hitter in 2009.

Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster's got Tatis with a 797 OPS, Sheffield 747.

Marcel the Monkey's got Tatis at 801, Sheffield at 742.

FanGraphs has Tatis at 758, Sheffield at 734.

Granted, the Bill James Handbook has Tatis at 759, Sheffield at 785. So everybody doesn't think Tatis is, right now, the better hitter. And when you factor in the boost Sheffield would get from going from the American League to the National League, whatever gap between them does close a bit.

Objectively speaking, though, there's simply no reason to shake up your roster by adding an old, often-gimpy player who duplicates skills you've already got. And if Gary Sheffield's name was Joe Shlabotnik, the Mets wouldn't even think about doing it.

This morning I was thrilled to find that New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott really likes this new baseball movie. Money:

The game of baseball, ungoverned by the clock, is notoriously full of surprises, and the surprise of "Sugar" -- I don't mean the major third-act plot twist, which is astonishing when it happens and utterly logical in retrospect -- is that it's not really about baseball at all. It's about, among other things, the way America looks through the eyes of a stranger, about the beauty of the Caribbean, the Midwest and the South Bronx (skillfully evoked by the cinematographer Andrij Parekh), and about what it is to be a young man full of desire and potential in a world that seems starkly divided between haves and have-nots, success and failure.

Perhaps nowhere are these divisions more extreme than in the world of professional sports, which beguiles some of the poorest people in the hemisphere with specters of fabulous wealth. But even in that world, a lot of space is taken up by the middle ground: the modest paychecks sent to the family back home; the careers that culminate neither in glory nor in disgrace, but that flare up and peter out; the tiny increment of luck or timing that separates strike three from ball four.

And so "Sugar" walks away from clichés about the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat, preferring to contemplate the satisfactions and frustrations that lie in between. It is both sad and hopeful, but the film's sorrow and its optimism arise from its rarest and most thrilling quality, which is its deep and humane honesty.

Making a good baseball movie -- or rather, a good movie about other things, but with baseball right in the middle of them -- isn't easy. There's "Bull Durham," and there's … well, "Bull Durham."

I exaggerate. But only a little. I've got high hopes for this new one, though. And with Brad Pitt set to play Billy Beane, who knows? Maybe we've entered the golden age of baseball (and everything) movies.

At least one reader took some offense at my take on a new tool for checking the umps' work:

You consistently argue for the common man, unless that common man forms a group to gain some sort of leverage against The Man. The umpires work extremely hard. They shouldn't be subject to discipline for performance. Conduct is a totally different issue. Intentionally missing calls deserves discipline. Refusing to carry out the rules of the game is conduct. Mistakes are performance and don't deserve or require discipline. Should you be docked a few days pay every time you miss a comma or misspell a word? How about when you miscalculate a stat? Or identify a cited author or player incorrectly? That's essentially what MLB wants to do to umpires. It is the union's job to prevent or mitigate discipline of its members. Moreover, the union ensures that these people, who have no home base, unlike teams, receive fair wages and benefits for being on the road 210+ days per year. March through September or October (if assigned) these people are on the road. Could you do that with your family? Would you be willing to do that if you didn't have someone protecting your rights and preventing your employer from taking advantage of you? I'm sick of you spinning a yarn about the common man, when all you are is an Ayn Rand disciple.

- Eugene Freedman

This is probably the first time anyone has ever mentioned Ayn Rand and Rob Neyer in the same breath. Granted, I did spend a few months after college living in an Objectivist collective. [Is that supposed to be some sort of joke?--ed. Yeah. Supposed to be.] But I didn't think anybody knew about that …

Look, I'm a union man. Or I would be, if there was some union for me to join. I could really use the group insurance, and I've always wanted an excuse to hang out with Teamsters. [Another joke?--ed. Yeah.]

But to suggest that a major league umpire is a "common man" is awfully silly. Umpires start at close to $100,000 per season -- mind you, that's for seven months of work -- and the experienced arbiters can top $300,000 per season. Now, we might argue about the definition of "common man," but I suspect that most definitions you'll find won't include someone who makes that much money for that little work.

When they're working, they do work hard. Well, the plate umpire does. The others aren't taxed much. But it's not an easy job and they generally do it well. Umpires shouldn't be evaluated by their performance, though? To my knowledge, nobody has ever suggested that umpires should be "disciplined" for making mistakes. But what if an umpire makes so many mistakes that he's clearly inferior to an umpire in the minor leagues? Shouldn't he eventually be replaced? Should subpar umpires be kept on until retirement age? Should umpires not be told when their performance is suffering?

Oh, and one other thing about this: Major league umpires are absolutely not "on the road 210+ days per year." Not unless they want to be. Some of them live in major league cities, and are occasionally able to sleep at home even when they're working. And all of them get vacation time during the season. No, it wasn't always like this. Before the umpires unionized in the 1960s, they did have to work crazy schedules and be away from home for many months at a time. And they weren't paid all that well, either. They could make a good, solid, middle-class living, and maybe do a little better if they could tell a good story or three on the rubber-chicken circuit. But they had to worry about all the little things and were sometimes treated terribly unfairly by their employers.

Very little of that is true today. Today, umpires live well; they make good money and have a great deal of vacation time, and every real Common Man would kill for a job like that.

I've seen the Common Man -- and Woman -- at the ballpark. They're not on the field. They're in the stands, well past midnight and into the morning, cleaning up the peanut shells and congealed nacho cheese and dregs of $8 beer that you and I were too lazy to throw away. You want me to throw my weight behind a union? When those minimum-wage commoners organize, I'll be right there with them.

Some highlights from Baseball America's latest list of minor league transactions:

• The Red Sox signed 29-year-old reliever Rocky Cherry, who was taken by the Mets in the Rule 5 draft, then offered back to the Orioles … who didn't want him. As Baseball America notes, "It's a reasonable gamble for the Red Sox, seeing as Cherry has a 95-to-28 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 91 Triple-A innings."

• The Cubs released their top picks from the 2003, 2004 and 2005 drafts, and in the process waved goodbye to the $5.41 million they initially invested in those three players. Scouting's tough, man.

• The Mets released 21-year-old pitcher Pedro E. Martinez, the son of 37-year-old ex-Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez. Pedro E. logged 37 innings in two rookie leagues, and one can't help but wonder whether he was signed to keep his old man happy.

• The Yankees released Zack Greinke's kid brother Luke, a 12th-round pick out of Auburn last June. Should we be surprised if the Royals sign Luke to keep his older brother happy?

• The Giants released right-hander Justin Hedrick, a reliever with a 2.38 career ERA and 379 strikeouts in 317 innings. As you might have already guessed, Hedrick doesn't throw hard (at all), but he does get guys out, and presumably he can keep pitching for beer and Skittles if he's got nothing better cooking.

• And finally, it's official: The Nationals honored Jim Bowden's handshake agreement and added Dmitri Young to the 40-man roster. Good luck with that.

Ah, finally … the last Link-O-Rama that doesn't feature real games until November:

• From the Times, fantastic panoramic looks at Citi Field and the new Yankee Stadium.

• Huston Street has aced out Manny Corpas as Colorado's closer, and everyone is saying the right things. I don't think they can go wrong with those two, regardless of who's pitching the eighth and who's pitching the ninth. Street did finish last season with a so-so ERA, but his strikeouts were fine and he finished strong.

• As Geoff Baker writes, the Mariners won't be the first modern team to go without a lefty in the bullpen … and one of the other teams was real good.

• Cito Gaston: one of Roger Clemens' biggest fans … not. But what's really funny about this story is that … it's based on something that's not true. Information rocks.

• It's been way, way too long since I've linked to Cardboard Gods, where Josh Wilker writes as brilliantly about baseball and life as anyone ever has.

• Dave Cameron on the ethics of service-time manipulation.

• Here's the only performance enhancer you'll ever need … and it's not only legal, but available on almost every street corner in America.

What a lovely way to open the season:

The Minnesota Twins have placed catcher Joe Mauer, as well as pitchers Scott Baker and Boof Bonser, on the 15-day disabled list.

Additionally, the club announced that Francisco Liriano will start Minnesota's home opener Monday against Seattle.

Mauer is still dealing with inflammation in the sacroiliac joint, which was diagnosed in early March through a magnetic resonance arthrogram. At the point of that examination, he had been experiencing back pain for over two months, further limiting the two-time All-Star following surgery to remove a kidney obstruction this offseason.

Mauer has not appeared in a game this spring, though his condition has improved since switching medication to reduce the inflammation. However, he is still focusing on strength and conditioning, and is planning to ease back into baseball activities.

There is no timetable for Mauer's return, and his absence is a blow for the Twins' lineup, as he led the club in batting (.328) and on-base percentage (.413) last season. Mauer, a two-time AL batting champ who will turn 26 on April 19, also hit nine home runs and drove in 85 runs last season.

Baker was placed on the disabled list, retroactive to March 28, because of stiffness in his right shoulder. He is eligible to come off the DL on April 12.

This looks like a down year for the Twins. If they win, it's because they've got four or five starters who keep them in most games and because they've got one of the best players in the majors behind the plate. Sure, Baker is eligible to pitch on April 12. But will he? And when he does, will he be 100 percent? And what if another starter goes down? Baker may be the first but he almost certainly won't be the last.

As for Mauer, nobody seems to know how to fix him. And again, when he's back, how good will he be?

The Twins are always operating on the margins because, with the notable exceptions of Mauer and Justin Morneau, they don't have any excellent non-pitchers (unless you count Denard Span, and I don't yet). Take away one of them and replace Baker with R.A. Dickey -- and yeah, I love the knuckleballer, but c'mon -- and you're looking at a .500 team. At best.

I'm with Bruce Jenkins. These silly teams really do need to stop babying their pitchers …

Late last summer, your 3-Dot proprietor composed a two-part series on pitch counts for the Sporting Green. It was a plea for teams to use common sense and visual observations, not strictly a set of numbers, to get their pitchers to work longer into games and eventually become complete-game masters like so many stars of the past. As a team-wide philosophy, it doesn't come overnight; it would require a school of thought that blankets the system, stretching all the way down to Class A ball, and it would probably take two or three years to really take hold.

There are also pitchers in every organization who are capable of handling 130-pitch complete games right now. Stifled by the paranoia of their manager or front office, they just don't know it yet.

--snip--

Vin Scully, the peerless announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers, reckons that Sandy Koufax threw more than 200 pitches to win the last game played at the L.A. Coliseum in 1961. Koufax went on to compile three seasons of 300-plus innings, three with at least 20 complete games and three with at least 300 strikeouts, while leading the National League in ERA in each of his last five seasons.

Asked about the so-called Quality Start (at least six innings, no more than three earned runs), Koufax scoffed, "To me, a quality start is when the starting pitcher is still on the mound when the game is over, and his teammates rush out of the dugout to congratulate him on the victory."

Jenkins' column/post runs 1,275 words. Maybe he just ran out of time or space. [Space? It's the Web!--ed.] I know, but he's a fellow BBWAA member so I'm bending over backward, as usual. But all those words, and it wasn't worth mentioning that Sandy Koufax didn't throw a single angry pitch after his 31st birthday?

I mean, if you want to throw Nolan Ryan out there as the exemplar of high pitch counts, great. But Sandy Koufax doesn't make your case; he destroys it.

(H/T: BTF's Newsstand)

MLB Trade Rumors on The Curious Case of Nate Robertson:

Upon learning that he'll begin the 2009 season in the bullpen, Nate Robertson wondered aloud Thursday whether his time has run out in Detroit: "The cycle of a player's time in an organization comes and goes, and maybe my time is nearing its end." (Quote is courtesy of Steve Kornacki of MLive.com).

Robertson, 31, has gone 49-65 with a 4.90 ERA since showing up on the scene in 2003. His '08 season was a disaster, however, and probably nullified any trade value that he once had. (He finished with a 7-11 record and a 6.35 ERA).

Tigers manager Jim Leyland spoke briefly about his Nate's fall from grace on Thursday morning: "If someone had told me in 2006 that Robertson would be in the bullpen, I'd have told him, 'You are crazy.'"

Look, Robertson was never a particularly good pitcher, and his three-year, $21 million contract never made a great deal of sense. But unless he's hurt (and nobody's talking), I don't see a great deal of evidence suggesting he's appreciably different than he was in 2006.

Right now, the Tigers' No. 3 (or No. 2) starter is Armando Galarraga, who sort of came out of nowhere last season to go 13-7 with a 3.73 ERA. Meanwhile, Robertson was going 7-11, 6.35.

Was there really a great deal of difference between them, though?

Each started 28 games. Galarraga gave up 28 homers and 61 walks, and struck out 126. Robertson gave up 26 homers and 62 walks, and struck out 108. I wouldn't argue that Robertson pitched as well as Galarraga, but the difference between their fundamental performances was a great deal less than their ERAs suggest. The real difference was that Galarraga gave up a .247 batting average on balls in play, while Robertson gave up a .343 average … and neither of those figures are sustainable. Galarraga was exceptionally lucky last season and Robertson exceptionally unlucky.

Not that Robertson has any right to complain. Not much, anyway. He got that big contract thanks in part to a 2006 season in which he was exceptionally lucky, "holding" (that is, "lucking") batters to a .282 average on balls in play. Of course, what the Fates may give, they may also take away ... although rarely in such dramatic fashion as this.

Robertson has never been a good pitcher. He's never been worth $7 million. Not fundamentally. That the Tigers owe him $7 million this year and $10 million next year betrays a terrible lack of familiarity with basic statistical analysis. But if he's healthy, he's good enough to start for a fair number of teams. His talents, meager as they might be, are essentially wasted in the bullpen.

Admission: I stole the Robertson/Galarraga comparison from someone, and I apologize for not remembering who (and yes, I Googled but with little luck).

Todd Zolecki wonders if the Phillies might have a big announcement this afternoon:

Tigers manager Jim Leyland told reporters yesterday that three teams have expressed interest in Gary Sheffield.

We know the Phillies are one of them, and the fact Ruben Amaro Jr. has acknowledged that interest publicly tells me the Phillies very much want to sign him once he clears waivers at 1 p.m. today. If they were just kicking the tires, Amaro might not be so upfront about it (although he really hasn't said much other than he has talked to Sheffield, Sheffield's agent Rufus Williams and that they are interested).

But we also know today that the Reds are talking to Sheffield.

There probably are more than three teams that have interest in Sheffield, but we know two of them are National League teams and we know ESPN's Buster Olney reported yesterday there don't seem to be many fits in the American League, where Sheffield would be an ideal fit.

The Phillies' chances to get Sheffield? Not knowing who the other teams are or what the other teams are promising in terms of playing time, I'd still say it's less likely than likely, but I wouldn't say it's a tremendous long shot, either.

Update: Sheffield told Dusty Baker that he wants playing time. The Phillies can't give that to him, but it sounds like the Reds can't, either. So it remains unlikely Sheffield is a fit, but if nobody can offer Sheffield playing time then he might have to reconsider.

Oh, the suspense is just killing me.

Me too. I just can't live without knowing which uniform Sheffield will be wearing when he hits his 500th home run. Because, you know, that's such a special number these days.

No, really … I kid 500 because I love 500.

Well, maybe not love. But I'm surprised to see how rare that milestone remains. Sheffield will be just the 25th player with 500 homers, and the list isn't going to grow much in the coming seasons. Carlos Delgado has 469 and will probably get there in 2010. Otherwise, the only active player with at least 400 homers (but fewer than 500) is Chipper Jones, and he's got just 408 so is just semi-likely to reach 500.

Why the Phillies, though? Sheffield can't play left field; Raul Ibanez is there. And there's no reason for him to play right field; Jayson Werth is both young and (probably) better than Sheffield. Would Sheffield be content as a pinch-hitter? Sure seems unlikely.

I've seen this a million times: Once-great player suddenly becomes available and the eyes of the GMs glaze over and get real wide, as if they were two years old and the player were a bright shiny object. Gary Sheffield … scary hitter … must find place in lineup … Except he can't field, the evidence that he can hit is underwhelming, he's probably not going to be happy unless he's playing almost every day and you probably don't want him around if he's not happy.

Sheffield might be able to help someone as a DH against lefties. I can't figure out how he helps the Phillies or the Reds or anyone else in the National League.

Today's links were thrown together quickly with the help of a potassium-filled banana (and if you want to know more exciting details about what I'm doing at any particular moment, follow me here) …

• As ShysterBall notes, the Giants have (unofficially but literally) marked their territory.

• Bill James speaks (and I've been meaning to write, for at least a couple of weeks, about the various books this spring that have Bill's fingerprints all over them).

• Is the Verducci Effect real? As Michael Salfino writes, nobody seems to know … even though a fair number of somebodies are acting as if it's real enough. I wonder, though … don't the smart teams have their own research?

• Colin Wyers is skeptical about BP's projections for Matt Wieters. So am I. Sort of hard to believe that Wieters was the fifth-best hitter in professional baseball last season. Anyway, I'd love to see a rollicking debate on this subject.

• In case you missed my interview with Leonard Mlodinow (and don't like reading "old" material), Joe Posnanski raves about Mlodinow's book (and revisits the always fascinating Monty Hall Problem in great, Posnanskian detail).

• Albert Chen on the state of sophisticated defensive metrics.

• Marc Hulet's got a nifty rundown of what's happened (or is happening) to last winter's Rule 5 draft picks (short answer: as usual, not much).

• A day late, I know … but some of you younger pups, if you haven't already, really should read the Greatest April Fool's Joke Ever.

Who should sign the just-released Dallas McPherson? River Ave. Blues' Mike Axisa offers a pretty good candidate: the Yankees:

First things first, McPherson had a phenomenal year last year (.275-.379-.618) in his first healthy year since 2004, but he was in an extremely favorable environment. The PCL is a hitters' league in general, plus Albuquerque is at altitude (his home OPS was nearly two hundred points greater than his road OPS), giving him another nice boost. Translating his numbers to a neutral MLB environment (via the MLE Calculator) gives you a .207-.295-.440 batting line with a Mo awful 181 strikeouts in 468 at-bats. The .233 IsoP is dead sexy, and that's pretty much right in line with his .213 career mark. There's no doubt about it, the guy can hit the ball a long way. He just struggles making contact.

The second part you need to understand about his offense is his massive platoon split. A lefty, McPherson hit just .217-.308-.528 against his fellow southpaws last year, down from .285-.395-.635 against righties. In his big league career (128 total games), he's managed just a .176-.218-.297 line off lefties, with a 38.5% strikeout rate. If the Yanks were tempted to bring McPherson aboard, it would have to be in a platoon situation only, which is fine because Cody Ransom is a righty and annihilates lefties (1.056 career OPS).

Whether A-Rod is back in the lineup on Opening Day or May 15 or some other fateful date, the Yankees could use some insurance. It's not just the date of the A-Rod's return. It's the distinct possibility that once he's back, he might not stay for the rest of the season.

Granted, Brian Cashman knows a lot more about Rodriguez's long-term prognosis than I do. But I don't know that Cashman will be able to live with himself after the season, if for want of a platoon third baseman the pennant was lost.

Ah, the gift that keeps on giving:

Joba Chamberlain had his best outing of the spring Tuesday, limiting the Reds to five hits and two runs in 51/3 innings. He was so good, in fact, that he pitched the Yankees almost to the point where, ideally, Joba Chamberlain would come into the game.

And that's the problem.

Not even Joba, as good as he is, can fill two roles at once. He can start a game or he can finish it.

The Yankees, who have an abundance of guys to start their games this year, think it's a good idea to take the greatest two-inning pitcher since Mariano Rivera, circa 1996, and turn him into just another starter.

I think they're nuts.

The reality with starters is that they are six-inning pitchers on most days, seven- and eight-inning pitchers on their best days.

In four out of every five starts, they are going to need a guy to come charging out of that bullpen in the seventh inning to hold the game until the closer gets there.

A guy like Joba Chamberlain.

But Joba isn't doing that anymore. Greater baseball minds than mine have analyzed this situation at great length and determined that Joba for the first six innings every five days is better than Joba out of the bullpen five times a week.

I say that's like hiring Picasso to paint your garage door or asking Mozart to come up with a toothpaste jingle. Many can start; few can finish. Joba can finish. He was a great setup man, and someday he'll be a great closer. Those commodities are a lot scarcer on the market than starting pitchers.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but nobody believes this except for a few ink-stained BBWAA members. Usually I wouldn't even bother mentioning it again, but Wallace Matthews' language here compels me:

Commodities?

Scarcer on the market than starting pitchers?

Look, the markets don't work perfectly. Not in baseball or anywhere else. Generally, though, they do a pretty good job of reflecting scarcity. Shortstops who hit home runs usually make more money than shortstops who don't. Starting pitchers who win games generally make more money than starting pitchers who don't. And effective starting pitchers generally make more money than effective relief pitchers. Why? Because the former are scarcer than the latter.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the two highest-paid starters this year will be Johan Santana and CC Sabathia, who between them will earn $34 million (a figure that jumps significantly in 2010). I believe the two highest-paid relievers will be Mariano Rivera and Francisco Rodriguez, who between them will earn $23.5 million (which will not jump significantly in 2010).

It's always been this way, and always will be this way, because of course a pitcher who can give you six or seven good or great innings is almost always worth more -- is scarcer -- than a pitcher who gives you one great one. Everybody in baseball knows this. Well, almost everybody. Just watch out for the ink stains …

(H/T: BTF's Newsstand)

A couple of surprises today in Lakeland, Fla., as youth shall serve Detroit's pitching staff. The Free Press' Jon Paul Morosi:

At around 9 this morning, Rick Porcello and Ryan Perry walked into manager Jim Leyland's office. Together.

When they emerged a few minutes later, the right-handers were met with curious stares. Their teammates, familiar with cut-day protocol, figured their faces would reveal what they had been told. For a brief moment, the two friends succeeded in stifling their grins. But there is no way to hide the emotion of life-changing news.

Soon, they wore smiles more commonly found in college cafeterias from unshaven late-breakfast-eaters -- the universal expression of those who had a bit too much fun the night before.

Porcello and Perry, two reasons for hope in an upside-down spring, had made the team.

Later in the morning, team president/general manager Dave Dombrowski made it official: Porcello will be in the rotation, and Perry will be in the bullpen.

Neither Porcello, 20, nor Perry, 22, have pitched above Class A. But team officials determined that they were among the 12 best pitchers in the organization.

"You see Porcello and Perry walk into Jim's office like that, they're very impressive individuals," Dombrowski said. "They're talented. They're competitors. We think they give us the best chance to win."

Porcello threw only 125 innings in the regular season last year, and Dombrowski acknowledged that Leyland will monitor his workload closely.

--snip--

"I think he's ready. I think he'll do well. If he has some tough times -- every pitcher does -- I think he's mature enough to handle it. Is he a 100% finished guy? No. But he'll keep working on what he needs to work on. And he has a pitch that can help get him out of jams -- a very, very nasty sinker."

Oddly -- for a pitcher who just turned 20 and now is going to break camp in the big club's rotation -- Porcello is not generally considered one of the game's premier pitching prospects. Not by everyone, anyway. In Baseball America's Prospect Handbook, the three editors list him as the 10th-, ninth- and 11th-best pitching prospect.

For whatever reasons, not a single 20-year-old started more than 20 games or pitched more than 99 innings in the 1990s. In the current decade, though, six pitchers have done both: Rick Ankiel (2000), CC Sabathia (2001), Jeremy Bonderman (2003), Zack Greinke (2004), Felix Hernandez (2006) and Clayton Kershaw (2008). And with the exception of Bonderman (6-19, 5.56 ERA) all of them pitched (at least) reasonably well in those seasons.

For the Tigers, the most encouraging examples must be Hernandez and Sabathia, both of whom topped 30 starts and posted ERAs right around the league average. But it probably is worth noting that both had significantly more impressive minor league track records. At 19, Sabathia had struck out 159 hitters in 146 innings, including 17 Double-A starts. And King Felix's age-19 season had included a dozen major league starts with a 2.67 ERA.

Porcello? He spent all of last season in the Class A Florida State League and struck out 72 hitters in 125 innings. His control was excellent, and he posted an admirable ground-to-fly ratio. I can't help but be reminded of Bonderman, though. Like Porcello, Bonderman was a first-round draft pick who skipped Double- and Triple-A and jumped right into the Tigers' rotation.

Bonderman is just one pitcher and probably doesn't mean anything. I still would like to see more experience before exposing a 20-year-old starter to most of the best hitters on the planet.

And speaking of experience, Perry has almost none -- a grand total of 14 professional innings. As a reliever, though, it's relatively easy to prevent him from being too badly exposed.

Wave goodbye to QuesTec. As Alan Schwarz reports, there's a new tool in town.

An improved camera system to monitor umpires' calls of balls and strikes will be used in all 30 major league stadiums starting opening day, ending the contentious QuesTec era but expanding the scope of baseball's oversight program. And it appears to be rankling umpires anew.

Major League Baseball had been using QuesTec since 2001 to try to standardize the functional size of the strike zone, which often varies from umpire to umpire, despite the rulebook definition. But QuesTec cameras were installed in only about a third of major league stadiums, raising the suspicion among players and fans that umpires called games differently depending on whether QuesTec was watching. Umpires also questioned if the system was sufficiently accurate to gauge their performance.

The new system, called Zone Evaluation, relies on pitch-tracking data already collected by cameras in all 30 parks and distributed through applications on MLB.com and iTunes. Zone Evaluation software will rate umpire performance more quickly and accurately than QuesTec, according to Mike Port, baseball's vice president for umpiring.

"It's an upgrade from where we were," Port said in a telephone interview. "The umpires, they don't want to miss a pitch any more than a batter wants to strike out. Where the Z.E. system will give us a lot of help is more data to help identify any trends: 'The last three plate jobs, you missed seven pitches that were down and in. Here's how one of the supervisors can help you adjust your head angle or your stance to have a better chance of getting those pitches.'"

Anyone care to argue with that?

Someone, maybe. The umpires, maybe …

Although a strike is unlikely, their silence suggested that the situation could hurt the relationship between Major League Baseball and its umpires, which had been improving.

The concept of monitoring umpires by camera and computer has been debated since QuesTec made its debut as part of baseball's taking more control over umpires. In 2003, the umpires union filed a grievance concerning baseball's use of QuesTec. It was finally resolved in late 2004, when the union and Major League Baseball completed negotiations on a new labor agreement.

--snip--

But, umpires have pointed out, the accuracy of the system suffers once a pitch enters the strike zone -- because the zone hovers above the five-sided plate as more of a three-dimensional prism, not the rectangle that television viewers see. They have maintained that although QuesTec (like Zone Evaluation) collects data in three dimensions, a hitter's position in the batter's box or distractions like bat movement can cloud the information, making it unfit for evaluative decisions about umpires.

The umpires -- as a group, i.e., their union -- will never be pleased with anything resembling an objective evaluation, because it's difficult to game a system based on objective evaluation. Port is right: Umpires don't want to miss pitches. It's not the way it used to be, when a great many umpires would boast about having "my" strike zone. As Joe Morgan loves to say, it's not their strike zone; it's baseball's strike zone. During the past decade or so, that message has gotten through, finally.

What umpires do want is the freedom to miss pitches occasionally without having to worry about anyone's noticing or -- more to the point -- being able to back up the noticing with actual proof. But those days are gone, and they're not coming back. It's simply not realistic to think that everything on the field would be tracked, the information dispersed to every franchise and around the globe … and yet somehow the umpires could continue to be evaluated as if digital video and computers had never been invented.

One of baseball's dirty little secrets is that umpiring is not that hard. Oh, it would be exceptionally difficult for you or me or your mailman. But thousands of men and women do good work in high school, college and minor league games, and I suspect that hundreds of them -- with a bit of training and experience -- could step right into the majors and perform as well, or nearly as well, as most of the current major league arbiters.

I might be wrong. Maybe it's actually dozens rather than hundreds. But don't think MLB doesn't know that umpires are relatively fungible and shouldn't be pampered any more than absolutely necessary. Thanks to the union, it's still exceptionally difficult to fire an underperforming umpire. But if one of them is consistently missing those pitches down and in, then by God he's going to hear about it.

Who says we need newspapers to dig up the hot stories? Bleed Cubbie Blue's Al Yellon was the first with the news about a blockbuster trade!

At last, BCB readers have had the influence over Cubs management that we have long sought. There have been numerous readers here who have sung the praises of Micah Hoffpauir. But Lou Piniella took his cue from BCB readers Clutche and cubswynn, who have been the most adamant Hoffpauir supporters on this site, and has named the hottest spring training hitter on the club, Micah Hoffpauir, as the Cubs' starting first baseman. Said Lou: "The BCB readers are right. Micah's leading everyone in RBI's. Why shouldn't he start?"

To make room for Hoffpauir in the starting lineup, Jim Hendry took my suggestion from last October 22 (and to think, so many of you laughed at me when I suggested this) and, after several weeks' worth of secret negotiations carried out at the Paradise Bakery in Scottsdale (the very same location where Nomar Garciaparra himself, the subject of one of Hendry's biggest deals, was spotted buying bagels and coffee during spring training in 2005), Hendry convinced San Francisco GM Brian Sabean to take the two remaining years on Derrek Lee's contract in exchange for pitcher Matt Cain.

"We love Derrek, but after Sean Marshall's performance yesterday, we felt we needed some more depth in the starting rotation," said Hendry. "Sean can go to Iowa and keep Jeff Samardzija company."

Yes, of course it's an April Fool's joke. But Micah Hoffpauir did hit his sixth homer of the spring yesterday, he does lead everybody in Arizona and Florida with 26 RBIs and he did slug .752 in a half-season with the Iowa Cubs last summer. Does he really belong at No. 2 on anyone's depth chart except perhaps the Yankees and the Cardinals?

Well, yeah. But it's closer than you think. We can't take Hoffpauir's off-the-charts Triple-A stats all that seriously, as he didn't play well at that level until he was 27, and in his third season there. On the other hand, we can't completely discount his performance last year (or the year before, when he was quite good), and if he were better with the glove than Lee, you could swap them in the lineup and not lose all that many runs.

But Lee's still pretty good and the jury's still out on Hoffpauir's defense (though he did win the equivalent of the Gold Glove in the PCL last year). I'd love to see Hoffpauir get a real shot somewhere, but it looks like the Cubs are going to keep him around as a spare part, and he might well hit a few pinch-homers this summer.

Today's links were compiled with a help of a machine:

• Wezen-ball asks (and answers) a question I've pondered a few times over the years (but never bothered to answer, myself).

• Tony La Russa's not really talking, but it looks like the Cardinals have their closer … and some closer he is; Jason Motte struck out 126 batters in 78 innings last year, mostly in Triple-A but also 11 brilliant innings with the big club. I don't know that Motte makes the Cardinals contenders, but he should make them pretty interesting.

• Today I have to submit my 2009 picks to ESPN.com's editorial board. Tim Marchman says it's a fool's errand.

• Jonah Keri wonders: Is this the year the Angels fall back to earth? I say yes: I've got them winning 82 games.

• According to a new poll, fans think baseball tickets cost too much. In other breaking news, swallowing boiling liquid is bad for your throat.

• Gosh. Tough crowd. Last season in Triple-A, Dallas McPherson hit 42 homers in 127 games. Yesterday, the Marlins released him. Considering McPherson's .298 OBP in 127 major league games, I don't suppose he's good enough to play every day. But I'm not sure he can't be the new Russell Branyan.

• Hey! Free book!