The Reality of the Yankees’ Playoff Chances

Regardless of what happens in today’s game against the Red Sox, the Yankees are still going to be in position for a run at the last realistic Wild Card spot. Ignoring that they’re injury-ravaged, have no pitching left and are staggering toward the finish line, that is not going to change in the next several days at least.

No matter how many times we hear the mathematical probabilities from the New York Times, the truth about their current and future state from the New York Daily News and Mike Francesa’s death bed postmortem, the fact remains that the Yankees are still only 2.5 games behind the plummeting Rays and 1.5 games behind the Orioles and Indians. They have a four-game series in Baltimore this week and, obviously, if they pitch as they have against the Red Sox the real funeral for the Yankees of 2013 will be underway. But now? No. They’re a three game winning streak and a little luck away from suddenly being in the lead for the second Wild Card.

Of course, one thing that many seem to ignore is that making the playoffs with the Wild Card isn’t a guarantee of anything beyond one extra game. Given how battered the Yankees are and that the team they’re going to play in the game is the Athletics or the Rangers, their chances of advancing even if they make it that far are weak. They’re old and in significant transition. The overwhelming likelihood is that they’re as done as the above-linked articles say. The idea that they were “the team no one wanted to face,” or other clubs were feeling the Yankees’ breathing down their necks, or that the old warhorses Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Andy Pettitte still had something to say in the playoff race were no more than reminiscing for remember when. Pettitte has been good and A-Rod has had his moments.

Then we come to Jeter.

The decision by manager Joe Girardi to pull Jeter from yesterday’s game was made because he didn’t like the way Jeter was running. It’s clear that he’s nowhere near 100 percent. In fact, he’s probably at around 70 percent. His range, never that great to begin with, is even worse; he’s not hitting; he’s not helping the team on the field. All the talk of the lineup not looking the same without him in it and how his mere presence in the lineup is a lift for the team is a politically correct thing to say to play up Jeter’s value. Except his current value isn’t all that much. He can lead from the clubhouse and they can put someone into the game who’s going to provide more on the field and considering that someone is Eduardo Nunez, that says about as much about what Jeter can currently do as anything else.

This could change within the next 2-3 days, but the fact is that the Yankees are still in contention no matter what the numbers and opinions say.

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What Ryan Braun And Lance Armstrong Have In Common

Lance Armstrong’s long-awaited admission for using performance enhancing drugs set the standard for non-apology apologies. At the time I called it a half-hearted allocution and stated that there’s a certain nobility in blatant unrepentance. Armstrong’s performance combined a clear lack of regret with the type of combativeness that you’ll rarely see in someone who wants to regain public support.

Like most other athletes and celebrities who have to publicly confess to save their careers after a scandal, Ryan Braun has failed to learn from the mistakes or follow the examples of others, especially Armstrong. Rather than take the next step from Armstrong and do the one thing that might have granted him forgiveness—admit what he did without excuses or context—he stuck to a safety-first script hoping it will fly. All he succeeded in doing, however, was to make himself appear to be the same seedy, self-involved liar he was before. This time, rather than openly lying, maligning the character of others and relying on technicalities to be set free, he decided to qualify his behaviors with more excuses.

You can read the statement here. It’s a general, run-of-the-mill public apology made because he had no other choice. Braun claimed that he was dealing with a “nagging injury” and used a “cream and a lozenge.” Then he went into the dull clichés of someone who’s been backed into a corner and can’t lie his way out of it.

If Braun wanted to be forgiven, he should have said the following:

I did it because I wanted to compete and win. I was on a team that was a championship contender, I knew other players were doing it and I was under the impression that what I took wouldn’t be detectable. I knew I was breaking the rules and did it anyway. A lot of other guys were doing it and, while that’s not a justification and not something you want to hear from your children let alone a grown man who’s supposed to be a role model, it’s the truth. The reason I’m standing here is because I got caught. Had I not gotten caught, the likelihood is that I would still be using PEDs simply because they work. After the test came back positive, I knew I was busted and found a technicality to overturn my suspension. In so doing I said some terrible things about an innocent man and lied to everyone. I was desperate and didn’t know what else to do. I’m truly embarrassed about what I’ve done and I only hope that in the future the fans, my fellow players and Major League Baseball will see fit to give me another chance to prove myself as someone worthy of respect.

This would have been a refreshing change from the feigned emotionality that is a prerequisite for a public apology. It would’ve worked. And it had zero chance of happening.

What Braun and Armstrong have in common is that they were perfectly willing to steamroll over anyone who got in their way and threatened the foundation upon which their lies were built. Armstrong had his extended middle fingers hidden behind his back while he was confessing. Braun had his fingers crossed for luck that the public would believe it. Intentionally or not, Armstrong’s way was more honest as it was cohesive with the way he was acting. Braun is still trying to trick people. In the end, they’re both liars and they found methods to justify their lies. They don’t want forgiveness, they want the public’s adoration and approval. The sad fact is that they think these “apologies” were steps toward getting that back, but still have the impenetrable fortresses of arrogance constructed around their egos to be stunned when they don’t.

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No Player Will Be Suspended In The Biogenesis Case

Does Major League Baseball really believe that the MLB Players Association is going to allow suspensions of 100 games to coincide with the dragging of names into the muck based on the head of the Biogenesis anti-aging clinic Anthony Bosch agreeing to cooperate with their investigation? Without failed drug tests, how is it going to be possible to suspend anyone? Bosch can provide records, testimony, canceled checks, credit card statements and whatever else and it’s not going to result in the players serving one day of a suspension, let alone 100. So what’s the point?

Bosch could have video evidence of Ryan Braun, Alex Rodriguez, Gio Gonzalez, Melky Cabrera and anyone else implicated sitting in an examining room and getting shot up with a substance; he could have them leaping across buildings like something out of The Matrix, deadlifting 2,000 pounds, wrestling with bears and crocodiles, and putting on bodybuilding shows that would dwarf the Mr. Olympia competition and MLB could still do absolutely nothing because there’s still not concrete proof of any wrongdoing to warrant a suspension. Circumstantial evidence is not going to beget a suspension, nor will it prevent the MLBPA from challenging any attempted suspension to the Supreme Court if they have to. All this will do is cost a lot of money and embarrass the sport even further for something that most will only pay brief attention to as a headline-grabber, then move on with their lives wishing the underperforming stars for their teams would shoot something into their body to help them hit or pitch better and help their teams win.

The only court in which this is going to hold any sway is in the court of public opinion and the court of public opinion doesn’t think much of athletes right now when it comes to believing their denials about PED use, nor should it. The media questions will be little more than an annoyance replied to with mundane denials. These factors aren’t going to be seen as punishment by anyone, so there won’t be any punishment because the only proof there is of wrongdoing is the testimony of one not-so-credible person.

A similar tactic was used when the names from the tests a decade ago were leaked out when they were supposed to have been kept private and destroyed and it was done so to embarrass the players into stopping PED use. But that won’t work either because no matter what happens with A-Rod, Braun and anyone else, they’re still going to get paid via the terms of their contracts. They got the contracts based on their performance due to apparent PED use; the teams had to know that there was a very real possibility that A-Rod, Braun and anyone else to whom they lavish these huge contracts were using PEDs; that the production they provided was bolstered by the PEDs and so were the team’s performance and the attendance accrued because of a combination of those factors. Nobody cared until it became politically correct to care. Cabrera got a two-year, $16 million deal from the Blue Jays after his PED suspension. What’s the motivation not to do it?

Now the rights of the players are being trampled on in an end-around sort of way as MLB knows no suspension is going to stick, but the players will be “shamed.” Except do you think A-Rod has any shame considering his on and off-field behaviors? Do you think Braun, who got away with a failed PED test on a technicality and then evidently turned around and did it again, really cares all that much about what people scream at him from the stands and the questions reporters repeatedly ask him to receive the same standard proclamation of innocence? Did the suspension and humiliation that Cabrera endured and brought on himself with his fake website scam send a message to Cabrera and the other players? It certainly did…when he received a guaranteed $16 million last winter.

They don’t have any shame and they don’t care because there’s no reason for them to have shame or care.

This is another clumsy show by MLB to put forth the pretense that they’re “doing something” about PEDs and they “care” about the integrity of the game. Except, like the players, they’re not doing anything and they really don’t care all that much to combat it.

This investigation and agreement on the part of Bosch to cooperate with MLB is meaningless and will go absolutely nowhere. There won’t be any suspensions and MLB will get what they want in playing the martyrs to the big, bad MLBPA doing nothing more than what they’re supposed to do in protecting the rights of the players.

It’s a farce and a waste of money, time and energy. It won’t do anything to stop the players from looking for ways to stickhandle their way around PED rules because as long as the suspensions are contingent on concrete proof and the players are receiving lucrative contracts, endorsements, and other benefits from the results they accumulate due to PEDs, they’ll keep doing it. It’s the same wink and nod that went on during the so-called “steroid era” only in a different context. It’s the same result too.

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The “Worst” Contracts In New York Sports History?

This New York Times article by Benjamin Hoffman has all the earmarks of the editorial edict telling him to write something and hand it in for publication without caring what it was that he actually wrote in content or accuracy. Never mind that judging the “worst” contracts in New York sports history can only be done in retrospect, it’s a completely random analysis that hinges on so many factors that it’s impossible to predict whether a contract will be deemed “good” or “bad” until years after the fact. This was designed to stoke fan anger by bringing up players who drew their ire.

The baseball names listed are Alex Rodriguez, Carl Pavano, Johan Santana, Jason Giambi, Mark Teixeira, A.J. Burnett, Kei Igawa, Bobby Bonilla, Jason Bay and Oliver Perez.

Going one by one, let’s look at the reality of these signings when they were made and the “badness” of the contracts.

A-Rod

A fall for A-Rod was predictable to a degree. That said, he’d hit 54 homers and won his second MVP with the Yankees in 2007. No one could’ve foreseen the number of embarrassing off-field episodes and injuries that have befallen A-Rod along with the continued PED admissions/allegations. Reasonably, the Yankees could’ve expected five more “big” A-Rod years with MVP contention, then three years of good production followed by a decline in the final years of the deal. The “final years” decline came early and now he’s an albatross.

Pavano

Had the Yankees not signed him to that contract, the Red Sox, Tigers or Mariners would have. They signed a pitcher who: was entering his prime at 29; had logged 200+ innings in back-to-back years; won 18 games in 2004, was an All-Star and finished sixth in the NL Cy Young Award voting; pitched brilliantly in the Marlins’ 2003 post-season run to the World Series title—especially against the Yankees; was from the metropolitan area and grew up a Yankees fan. Why wouldn’t they have signed him? Who could’ve predicted that they’d get someone who hated being a Yankee, acted like it and found reasons not to pitch?

Santana

The Mets had collapsed the year before and blown a playoff spot. They needed an ace at the top of the rotation and Santana was a two-time American League Cy Young Award winner. They gave up essentially nothing in terms of players at the time and in retrospect and were looking for the last piece in a championship puzzle. He was brilliant in 2008, good in 2009, and then the injuries started. There’s not much that can be done about that. Had they not paid him, someone else would have as a free agent after the 2008 season.

Giambi

In seven years in pinstripes, Giambi had 209 homers and a .925 OPS. This was almost identical to the numbers he’d posted in eight years with the Athletics before the Yankees signed him. Did they not get what they were expecting?

Teixeira

He’s hit 135 home runs in four seasons, won three Gold Gloves and has been an old-school professional. How his contract can be labeled as one of the “worst” with four years to go is a mystery.

Burnett

The problem with Burnett is that the Yankees overpaid for him based on desperation and his potential while ignoring that he was 31 when they signed him and he was what he was: gifted and aggravating. Blaming him for being himself is silly. This was a bad and stupid contract.

Igawa

A George Steinbrenner signing done as a “response” for the Red Sox signing of Daisuke Matsuzaka, it’s similar to any form of retaliation: it’s usually shortsighted and does more damage to the one making the move than to the one they’re retaliating against. No qualified baseball person could have looked at Igawa and thought he’d be a success against Major League hitters.

Bonilla

Find an economist to explain the Mets’ reasoning for the deferment and whether they’re actually going to wind up making money on the deal instead of giving a broad-based overview as to why it was “bad.” I would guess that the Mets probably used that money to make even more money than they’re spending for its duration.

Bay

Even if Bay had a decline in production because of the switch to Citi Field and advancing age, no one could’ve predicted that he’d be as bad as he was.

Perez

This was a desperation contract like Burnett’s. Ironically, Perez is a similar pitcher to Burnett in that he was gifted, aggravating and the club signing him mistakenly expected something other than what he was.

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Go through any contract and you can find a reason to rip it. The number of Evan Longoria-type contracts where the club gets more than they bargained for at the right price or lower are so few and far between that it would be easier to list those than to list the bad contracts and it would make for a much shorter piece without the finger-wagging “I told you so.”

It’s random and to make it worse it appears to have been done because the author was instructed to do it and find case studies to “prove” a point that can’t be proven in the first place.

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The Astros and the Antiquated “Process”

In this Tyler Kepner piece in today’s New York Times, the Astros and their plan for the future is again detailed. You can insert your own joke about their early spring training activity of practicing a post-victory celebration. By the time we get to August and they’ve likely traded off the rest of the veteran players they have on the roster including Carlos Pena, Bud Norris, Jose Veras, Rick Ankiel and Wesley Wright and released Philip Humber and Erik Bedard, they’ll be so dreadful that a post-victory celebration will be so rare that the celebration should resemble clinching a post-season berth.

What’s most interesting about the piece is the clinging to the notion that the key to success is still the decade ago Moneyball strategy (first put into practice by the late 1990s Yankees) to run the starting pitchers’ pitch counts up to get them out of the game and get into the “soft underbelly” of the middle relief corps and take advantage of bad pitching in the middle innings.

Is it still an effective tactic if everyone is doing it and the opposition is better-prepared for it? There’s a case for saying no.

Back then, most teams were still functioning with a middle relief staff of journeymen, youngsters and breathing bodies. In 1998, for example, the Red Sox won 92 games in comparison to the Yankees 114, made the playoffs, and had as middle relievers Rich Garces, John Wasdin, Carlos Reyes and Jim Corsi. The Indians of 1998 were the one team that put a scare into the Yankees that season and had Paul Shuey, Eric Plunk, Jose Mesa (after he’d lost his closer’s job to Michael Jackson and before he was traded to the Giants at mid-season), and other forgettable names like Steve Karsay, Chad Ogea and Ron Villone.

These were the good teams in the American League. The bad teams starting rotations were bad enough before getting into their bullpens that it didn’t matter who a team like the Yankees were facing, they were going to hammer them.

Today, the game is different. The pitch counts are more closely monitored, but certain teams—the Rangers, Giants and Cardinals—don’t adhere to them so fanatically that it can be counted on for a pitcher to be yanked at the 100-pitch mark. Also, teams have better and more diverse middle relief today than they did back then because clubs such as the Rays are taking the job more seriously.

Waiting out a great pitcher like Felix Hernandez is putting a hitter in the position where he’s going to be behind in the count and facing a pitcher’s pitch. In that case, it makes more sense to look for something hittable earlier in the count and swing at it.

With a mediocre pitcher like Jason Vargas of the Angels, he’s more likely to make a mistake with his array of soft stuff, trying to get ahead in the count to be able to throw his changeup, so looking for something early in the count makes sense there as well. In addition, with a pitcher like Vargas (and pretty much the whole Angels’ starting rotation), you’re better off with him in the game than you are with getting into the bullpen, so the strategy of getting into the “weaker” part of the staff doesn’t fit as the middle relievers aren’t that far off in effectiveness from Vargas.

Teams use their bullpens differently today. You see clubs loading up on more specialists and carrying 13 pitchers with a righty sidearmer, a lefty sidearmer, a conventional lefty specialist, and enough decent arms to get to the late relievers. The Cardinals are an example of this with Marc Rzepczynski as their lefty specialist; Randy Choate as their sidearmer; and Trevor Rosenthal and Joe Kelly, both of whom have been starters, can provide multiple innings and throw nearly 100-mph.

I’m not suggesting hitters go to the plate behaving like Jeff Francoeur, willing to swing at the resin bag if the pitcher throws it, but swinging at a hittable fastball if it comes his way and not worrying that he’ll get yelled at for being a little more aggressive and deviating from the faulty “process.”

The Astros can use this idea of “process” all they want, but the reality is that they may hit a few homers and be drilling it into their hitters from the bottom of their minor league system up that they want patience and don’t care about batting average, but by the time they’re in the middle of their rebuild it might get through that this strategy isn’t what it once was. Waiting, waiting, waiting sometimes means the bus is going to leave without you. Other teams have adjusted enough so it won’t matter if the hitter is trying to intentionally raise the pitch count because it won’t have the same result as it did when the idea first came into vogue with Moneyball. And it’ll go out the window just as the theories in the book have too.

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Essays, predictions, player analysis, under the radar fantasy picks, breakout candidates, contract status of all relevant personnel—GMs, managers, players—and anything else you could possibly want to know is in my new book Paul Lebowitz’s 2013 Baseball Guide now available on Amazon.com, Smashwords, BN and Lulu. It’s useful all season long. Check it out and read a sample.

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Schilling’s Financial Mess Has Plenty Of Blame To Go Around

In today’s Sunday Business section of the New York Times, Matt Bai writes a great article about Curt Schilling and his failed video game company. What is made clear in the piece is how blinded those who were involved in this failed entrepreneurship/business partnership were to the obvious realities behind it.

The issues that surrounded Schilling throughout his career have extended to his post-career endeavors. The main difference is, back then, it didn’t really affect anyone other than himself and it didn’t harm his teams all that much. He was a great pitcher and if he pitched, the other stuff was shrugged away.

Schilling played for five teams in his career and took a long time to establish himself. In every stop, there was eye-rolling at head-shaking at Schilling the person and his overt theatrics even as he accumulated respect for his abilities, post-season success and willingness to pitch through pain. When he played with the Diamondbacks, there was an uncomfortableness bordering on hate between Schilling and his fellow ace and Cy Young Award contender Randy Johnson. With most teams, it would be construed as jealousy, but with Schilling it wasn’t a unique phenomenon. It was obvious why Schilling would clash with Johnson when Johnson never hid who he really was: a curmudgeonly star who would be happiest if the media never came near him. Schilling, on the other hand, was almost chameleon-like in his personality.

This was a hallmark for his career.

The teammates who considered themselves “real people” like Mitch Williams, thought Schilling was a phony and relentless self-promoter doing things to garner attention. There was a “Will this be cool?” aspect to Schilling that’s indicative of a lack of definition in who he was and what he believed. Like a teenager whose brain hasn’t fully grown and is fighting through puberty, Schilling’s personality was flexible and he never appeared to have evolved into a complete person on its own merit. There’s a constant concern about perception and eventually the line becomes blurred with the cause of something a person is doing and the effect.

“Oh, not many people are willing to be open, hard-core conservatives? I’ll stump for Republican candidates and make clear my political affiliation.”

“What? Nobody pitches complete games anymore? Watch me pitch complete games.”

“Ballplayers are unable to make the transition from athlete to business without losing all their money? I’ll become Bill Gates-rich.”

Most of the quotes are designed to encapsulate my view of Schilling’s thinking except for the words, “Bill Gates-rich.” He actually said that.

It’s a window into his mind that he really believed that his video game company could achieve that level of inexplicable wealth when, for 99.9% of the world’s population, the money Schilling had accumulated as a player as well as the extras ballplayers get for endorsements, broadcasting, autograph shows and whatever would have been more than enough to support them and several generations after them. It’s an egotistical need that was being fed and, in turn, wound up devouring him, his money, and his reputation.

Was there an intentional decision on Schilling’s part to take the loans from Rhode Island and blow it all with nothing to show for it but lawsuits, contretemps and humiliation? Doubtful. But it’s disturbing and telling that he felt the state should have given him more money to prop up the business.

In a similar vein, I don’t think there was any intention on the part of former governor of Rhode Island Donald Carcieri to waste that money by giving it to Schilling. Schilling has accused the current governor, Lincoln Chafee, of intentionally sabotaging his video game business. I don’t think it was any of that. I think that each party was using what benefited himself and his vision for what would further his own interests. Schilling had absurdly ambitious plans and the belief that he’d bull his way through to achieve them without the experience and ability to do so; Carcieri wanted to create jobs to help the flagging economy in his state; Chafee jammed the spigot into the money flow before the investment grew more red than it already was.

What led to this were the mistakes made due to political calculations, desperate agendas, and a starstruck reaction to Schilling’s enthusiasm and name-recognition.

Schilling’s intentions were legitimate, but who would think it’s a good idea to hand him $75 million based on a vague business plan and grandiose statements backed up by his status as a borderline Hall of Fame baseball player? If Jimmy O’Brien from Boston showed up and tried to extract that money from the governor of Rhode Island, he wouldn’t even receive a reply. That’s how ridiculous it was. Since it was Schilling, he got the money.

Had Schilling chosen to lure a series of professionals—CEOs, CFOs, gaming executives—to assist him in allocating that money and creating a viable company, it could have worked with Schilling lending that same star power he used to get the money to selling it rather than running it. But Schilling decided to play big businessman and lost everything he had as well as a massive chunk of Rhode Island’s dwindling cash.

Because his intentions weren’t nefarious doesn’t make it much better than if he just walked in, scammed them, took the money and left because it’s the exact same result.

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Accepting the Marlins Inevitable Reality (It Was Clear from the Get-go)

In today’s New York Times, Tyler Kepner writes about the empty seats in Marlins Park; about the gutting of the franchise; and the possibly bright future the Marlins have because of all the prospects they accumulated in trades of veterans.

We can go into the lack of attendance and perceived wrongdoing of owner Jeffrey Loria, but what he does is in the same ballpark (pardon the dual entendre) of what the Astros are currently doing, but the Astros are receiving widespread praise for putting together a big league club that is a big league club in name only. Weeks ago, I gave Astros owner Jim Crane a written lashing for his arrogant statements that if fans want the team to spend money, they should write him a check among other, “I’m a big shot, you’re not” alpha male nonsense, but no one else did. Astros GM Jeff Luhnow is a stat guy centerfold and little criticism is heading the way of their front office in spite of their on-field atrocity.

The political machinations that got Marlins Park built, predominately at the expense of Floridians, is still being sorted out with allegations, accusations and SEC investigations. Does anyone really believe that the investigation will amount to much, if any penalties for the likes of Loria or the powerbrokers who facilitated him getting his new park and not paying for it? Loria fits every small bit of chicanery into the flexible rules under which he operates. Similar to the Astros within-the-rules stripping of their payroll to the bare minimum and putting a team on the field that on most days is non-competitive against legitimate Major League teams, there’s no rule saying Loria can’t sign free agents and trade them a year later; that he can’t fire his manager Ozzie Guillen one year into a four year contract; that he can’t take the benefits from the new park, pocket the profits and flip a chubby middle finger at anyone who dares question him.

The Marlins were a disappointment in 2012. Loria was right to fire Guillen for the poor job he did on the field and the ridiculous statement he made early in the season praising Fidel Castro. He had options rather than gutting the club (again) by retooling with a different manager and a tweak here and there to give it another shot in 2013. But it wouldn’t have made a difference with the fans if the Marlins were contending in 2013 with a manager who didn’t alienate a vast portion of the fans they hoped to attract. It wasn’t and isn’t going to work in Miami because the fans aren’t interested.

The Marlins attendance improved dramatically last season in comparison to 2011. During that year, their usual numbers were between 10,000 and 20,000. It was an annual problem. When there were higher attendance figures, it stemmed from ancillary attractions like the Mets and Dodgers fans who’ve relocated to Florida and wanted to watch their teams. One the one hand, it’s not fair to question the reasons the fans are coming—their money is just as green regardless which club they’re rooting for—but on the other, the Marlins can look at the increase in attendance and realize that it’s fleeting and say, “Yeah, but they didn’t come to see us,” and act accordingly.

In 2012, the attendance was better than it was when they played in Sun Life Stadium, a football facility. With the new park, they regularly drew crowds of nearly 30,000 and finished twelfth in the National League in attendance. That’s counting the second half after they’d conceded the season and traded Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante. Before 2012, they were annually at the bottom in attendance going back 15 years. In 1997, when they spent a ton of money and won the World Series, they were fifth in the National League in attendance, but it’s petered out and whether the team was good or not, the fans don’t have the passion. Since then, it’s gone rapidly downhill and even after they won another World Series in 2003, there wasn’t the usual accompanying attendance spike. The Marlins have stayed anchored to the bottom of the ocean of attendance.

And that’s the point. The Miami fans are not fickle, hammering home the point that the new park shouldn’t have been built in the first place. If someone stood up and told Loria to take his threats and his team and move if that’s what he had to do, none of the other stuff—the park, the investigation, the free agents, the trades, the faux anguish—would’ve happened. If he received a new park in San Antonio, Oregon, North Carolina or anywhere, the overwhelming probability is that he would’ve moved and done the exact same thing that he does in Miami—bought people’s favor, made promises and then utilized flexible statements and semantics to justify the gutting of the team and defend against accusations of ruthless profiteering. He’s a combination of a politician and a classically brutal businessman. He may want to have a team that wins, but when he sees that it’s not going to happen, all bets are off. It’s admirable in its way if you know what you’re dealing with going in.

Amid all the head shaking and abuse raining down on Loria, it all goes back to the initial mistake: giving in to his threats to move the club and Florida allowing him to get his park without paying for it. No one should be surprised, chagrined, or angry at the Marlins method of doing business. The system was rife for abuse and Loria abused it. There was no other way this could’ve ended and if the traded players Mark Buehrle, Jose Reyes, et al, didn’t see it coming; if the people who could’ve stopped the park from being built didn’t make a greater effort to do so; if MLB is allowing clubs like the Marlins and Astros to do whatever they want in their own best interests, then it’s on them for allowing it to happen. Lamenting it after the fact as if the money spent on the park would’ve been better-used for charitable causes is ludicrous. The Monday morning quarterbacking is done so in the same vein as the original decision to let the Marlins build the park. It was done for expediency and self-interest. The park wasn’t for the fans nor was it to “save” baseball in Miami because baseball in Miami can’t be saved. They don’t care whether it’s there or not.

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The Phantom Link Between Strasburg and RG III

The connection between what the Nationals did with Stephen Strasburg in shutting him down at a preplanned innings limit and what the Redskins did with Robert Griffin III only exists in the minds of those desperately searching for one.

It was again mentioned in today’s New York Times in this piece by Harvey Araton. To Araton’s credit, he references that an “a-ha moment” was a “surface comparison” with the unsaid inference that RG III and Strasburg were in no way connected except as a lukewarm defense to what Nats’ GM Mike Rizzo did in shutting Strasburg down and as an indictment for what Redskins’ coach Mike Shanahan didn’t do in leaving Griffin in the team’s playoff game against the Seahawks only to see Griffin severely injure his knee, possibly costing him the entire 2013 season and a portion of the running ability that made him so special.

The equating of Griffin and Strasburg is ludicrous. Because the Nats chose to end Strasburg’s season, the old-school types considered it heresy. Bolstered by the Nats’ loss in the NLDS to the Cardinals, the ill-informed and agenda-driven arguments suggest that had Strasburg been available, the Nats would have blown past the Cardinals and possibly gone on to win the World Series; that Rizzo’s overprotectiveness cost the Nationals that rare opportunity to win a championship—one that is not guaranteed in the future regardless of teamwide talent levels.

The truth is that the Nationals should have won the series against the Cardinals and only blew it because of a mistake they made during the season and it wasn’t shutting Strasburg down. The mistake they made was reinstalling Drew Storen as the closer as if he was a veteran along the lines of Mariano Rivera who deserved to return to his job by status after having missed the majority of the season with an elbow problem. Tyler Clippard had done an admirable job in the role and should have been left alone at least for the remainder of the season. Manager Davey Johnson, however, chose to be his iconoclastic self and hand the ninth inning back to Storen. Storen blew the fifth game of the NLDS after being within a strike of ending the game and the series three separate times with what began as a 2-run, ninth inning lead. Storen was not a veteran who had earned his stripes and had the right to walk off the disabled list and right back into the ninth inning, especially with a team that was streaking toward the playoffs. In fact, Storen didn’t regain the closer’s role until the playoffs, making the choice all the more questionable. (Notice I said “regain” and not “reclaim.” The job was just handed back to Storen based on nothing other than him having been the closer before.)

To make matters worse, this off-season the Nats decided that Storen wasn’t even going to be their closer for the next two and probably three years by signing Rafael Soriano to take the job. So what was the purpose of naming Storen closer for the playoffs if: A) he hadn’t re-earned the role; and B) he’s not their long-term solution?

The Strasburg shutdown was based on paranoia and out-of-context “guidelines” that gave Rizzo the impetus to do what he wanted to do all along: protect himself rather than protect his pitcher. Innings limits and pitch counts are tantamount to the architect of the parameters saying, “If he gets hurt, don’t blame me.” It’s selfishness, not protecting an investment.

Strasburg had already blown out his elbow once while functioning within the constraints of innings limits and pitch counts that went all the way back to his days under Tony Gwynn at San Diego State. The object of this style protectiveness is to keep the player healthy, but nothing is said when the player gets hurt anyway. Compounding matters, they continued down the road of self-interested and random limits based on whatever advice and statistics supported their decision.

If Strasburg gets hurt again, the shutdown will be seen as useless; if he stays healthy, it will be seen as the “why” when it had just as much chance of having nothing to do with it as it did in him needing Tommy John surgery in the first place.

As for the RG III-Strasburg link, no common bond exists other than that Shanahan made a mistake in leaving RG III in the game to get hurt and the Nats yanked Strasburg from the rotation in the interest of “saving” him.

In retrospect, as a guardian of his young, star-level quarterback, Shanahan should have taken RG III from the game, but he didn’t. That’s separate from what the Nats did with Strasburg because retrospect hasn’t come yet and if it does, there won’t be the aforementioned “a-ha” moment in either direction. Both players play for teams based in Washington; both are once-a-decade talents; and both had injuries. Apart from that, there’s nothing that places them in the same category except for those looking for a reason to justify or malign, and that’s not the basis for a viable argument.

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The Implausible Image Reconstruction of Joe Paterno

The Joe Paterno image reconstruction has entered the last vestiges of rebuilding a myth that was undone months before Paterno’s death. For a man who dedicated his life and put forth the pretense of doing things differently—and “right”—while crafting an unassailable persona of delineating between what he did and what the likes of Barry Switzer did at the University of Oklahoma, the memory of decency and adhering to principles is all that’s left and the family is taking great pains and presumably undertaking significant expense to salvage whatever’s left of that crumbled persona.

Paterno took pride in not recruiting the type of player who wouldn’t go to class; who couldn’t read; who was passed through because of his skills on the football field and the money he could bring in by helping the team win; who would commit crimes and get away with them. He did all of this while allowing a pedophile, Jerry Sandusky, to work as his defensive coordinator and stalk his campus even after he was no longer the defensive coordinator. Which is worse?

In this New York Times piece discussing the report commissioned by the family to defend Paterno, it’s noted that Paterno and Sandusky didn’t have a personal relationship; that Paterno didn’t like Sandusky. If that’s the case, why didn’t he fire Sandusky? I don’t mean for the child abuse allegations, but years before just because he felt like it? Even if Sandusky wasn’t accused of these heinous crimes, Paterno was under no obligation to keep Sandusky around if he didn’t want him. Was Penn State’s on-field dominance and recruiting going to suffer without Sandusky? Highly unlikely. Was Sandusky an irreplaceable defensive wizard? The consensus is that Sandusky was a good defensive coordinator, but this isn’t the NFL where there has to be a scheme to suit the players and the head coach’s job was dependent on the performance of his assistants. They could’ve found someone else to install as the defensive coordinator and there wouldn’t have been a noticeable difference on the field.

Did Sandusky have something on Paterno that necessitated keeping him around and letting him run free with his nefarious activities? It’s a viable question. Paterno was so powerful at Penn State that he was able to control the entire campus if not the entire state of Pennsylvania. His power was so vast that could’ve named his wife as defensive coordinator and gotten away with it and, given the talent levels they had, the team would’ve won anyway. In fact, he could’ve put a headset on a monkey and stuck him in the booth with a hat that said, “defensive coordinator” and there wouldn’t have been a marked difference between Sandusky or Sue Paterno doing the job.

This was not a professional sports situation in which a coach has to accept certain mandates in hiring his assistants because of owner desires or other factors. Paterno was basically the “owner.” He could do what he wanted. There are circumstances in professional sports where a manager is told which coaches he’s going to have. We saw it last year to disastrous results with the Red Sox and Bobby Valentine not speaking to his bench coach Tim Bogar, who he saw as an undermining spy (and was right), and not having a relationship with his pitching coach Bob McClure, who was fired during the season.

Veteran managers like Jim Leyland and Joe Torre have had coaches thrust upon them in the past. In all of Leyland’s jobs, there have been “his” guys Milt May, Gene Lamont, Lloyd McClendon and Rich Donnelly. He trusts them and they’re his aides-de-camp. With the Pirates, though, he had Ray Miller as his pitching coach. Leyland and Miller weren’t buddies, but Miller was a fine pitching coach and Leyland had little choice in the matter because Miller was hired by the front office.

In the end, Leyland was going to do what he wanted with the pitchers no matter what the pitching coach said so it didn’t matter who was sitting next to him on the bench and the same was true with Paterno. It was his show. When the aforementioned Switzer took over the Dallas Cowboys from Jimmy Johnson, he essentially inherited an entire coaching staff, many of whom wanted his job and were still loyal to Johnson. Switzer wanted to be Cowboys coach and that was a concession he was forced to accept to make it happen.

This is not unusual. Front offices don’t want managers hiring their buddies and managers don’t want people they don’t trust in their clubhouse. The front office always wins out. Paterno was not in the position where he had to be agreeable about anything. He was the front office and he made the final call.

Much like the saying that there’s nothing more useless than an unloaded gun, what purpose did Paterno’s accumulated power serve if he was more concerned about his legacy and pretentiously ensuring that the image surpassed the reality than with dealing with what Sandusky was doing? I get the impression that Paterno was told about Sandusky and didn’t truly understand what it was he was being told. Whether that was due to old age; a compartmentalized wall he’d built in his mind not to acknowledge that people—especially someone with whom he’d worked for decades—would do terrible things to children; a desire to protect himself, his legend and Penn State; or all of the above was known only to Paterno.

On both sides of a legal argument, anyone can find an “expert” to say whatever needs to be said to bolster the viewpoint of the person who requested the testimony and investigation. They’ll have “proof” regardless of how ludicrous and farfetched it sounds. The family collected credible names in former United States Attorney General Dick Thornburgh and attorney Wick Sollers to provide the defense. These men have lots of credentials, impressive resumes and letters after their names. Not to impugn their impartiality, but since they were paid by the Paterno family, what were the odds they would find fault in what Joe Paterno did? That they would agree with Louis Freeh’s conclusions? You don’t have to come up with a number because I can tell you what it is: zero.

Freeh, the former FBI Director and lead investigator hired by Penn State’s board of trustees in the Sandusky case, had no obvious vested interests. Agree with him or not, it made little difference to him whether Paterno was complicit in any part of the case. If he was innocent, what difference would it have made for Freeh to say so?

In such a public pronouncement and presentation as that of the Paterno family, there are no parameters for the defense. Paterno’s dead and the only dissection and finders of fact will be done and made by the public. Their judgment is not legally binding nor does it have worse consequences than what the Paterno family is currently fending off. They’re saving a monument, not keeping someone out of jail.

Some will be searching for justification of Paterno’s innocence; others seeking confirmation of his ignorance and/or guilt. Each side has their own versions of the facts and individual desires to have them seen as the “truth.” We’ll never know the answer. But if the Paterno family thinks that this report will rebuild “Paterno” as the totem and not the man, they’re as ignorant as Paterno himself was when Sandusky operated with impunity with Paterno the man, wittingly or not, contributing mightily to Paterno the totem’s downfall.

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Rules Of Denial For PED Suspects

For athletes accused of using performance enhancing drugs, we’ve seen the list of don’ts in action. They’re repeated over and over again with denials, accusations, shifting of the blame, finger pointing (literally and figuratively), shouting and adamant insistence of innocence that, by and large, turn out to be lies.

Maybe it’s time for some new tactics and advice that, naturally, no one will listen to.

Short and sweet

Did your English teacher ever use this phrase when teaching writing? Did you listen? Probably not. There’s a perception that the longer the response, the more complete it is and with that, the believability rises.

It doesn’t. The more you say, the more traps you set for yourself and the larger number of statements can be fact-checked.

Ryan Braun is the latest example of an accused PED user who’s either the unluckiest guy in baseball or is consorting with the wrong people who keep getting him into trouble. When his name came up in connection with Anthony Bosch’s Miami clinic, he released a written statement that was quoted by the New York Times in this piece. A clip relevant to Braun is below:

Braun issued his own denial on Tuesday night, saying in a written statement that during the course of preparing for the appeal of his positive test last year, “my attorneys, who were previously familiar with Tony Bosch, used him as a consultant.” He said Bosch answered questions for his lawyers about testosterone levels and the possibilities of tampering with urine samples.

“There was a dispute over compensation for Bosch’s work, which is why my lawyer and I are listed under ‘moneys owed’ and not on any other list,” Braun said. “I have nothing to hide and have never had any other relationship with Bosch. I will fully cooperate with any inquiry into this matter.”

Braun has a lot to say when he’s accused. When he tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone in 2011, Braun wasn’t proven “innocent.” He got off on technicality due to the supposedly fractured chain of custody for his urine sample and because the since-fired MLB arbitrator ruled in his favor. Then he held a press conference doubling down on the outrage.

Now his name came up again.

I don’t know what he did or didn’t do, but I do know he needs to refer to his attorneys when something like this crops up and stop yapping so much. The longer the explanation; the more extensive the litany of excuses; the greater number of people you reference as having done X, Y, and Z, the guiltier you probably are.

The more you whine the worse you sound

See Lance Armstrong’s decades of denial and how ridiculous his head shaking, shrugging, feigned disbelief that anyone dare mention him as a PED case and how foolish he looks now to understand why moaning and groaning at the injustice is a waste of time and energy—especially if you’re guilty.

Armstrong, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez have all provided flimsy excuses of one degree or another. All got caught. All continued to lie. Palmeiro was the previously alluded to finger-pointer. It still stuns me that people believed that these individuals were clean. Looking at the bulked up bodies and numbers and realizing that there are certain things that the human body simply cannot do naturally is the first signal that something was amiss. But when a person has been catered to for his entire life because of his athletic prowess, his “heroism,” his skills, and winked and nodded at by his bosses, what’s he supposed to do? He’ll lie, make a mess and wait for someone else to clean it up because that’s what’s gone on from the day they were discovered as “different” than the other kids.

If there’s a quirk of statistical performance, you’re going to get accused

The case study of a player whose recent performance was called into question not as an accusation but as a legitimate curiosity as to how it was happening was Raul Ibanez in 2009 during his MVP-caliber first half with the Phillies. Ibanez was enraged that he was mentioned as a possible PED user, but he wasn’t accused. It was reasonable to wonder to how Ibanez could suddenly develop into an upper echelon star at age 37. He never tested positive and his performance took a nosedive after the first half with the Phillies.

Did the National League spent the first four months of the season figuring out his weaknesses and challenging him? Did they latch onto his holes until he became the same good but not great player he always was? Or did he stop using something for fear of getting busted? He never got caught so his record is clean, but given the era and the numbers, was it a wrong to ask? Fellow players think the same things if another player who’d never exhibited certain attributes for his entire career is suddenly hitting 400 ft. home runs with an alarming and unbelievable frequency. Many times they’re right.

Lawyering up doesn’t make one guilty

There’s a common belief that asking for an attorney or referring all questions to legal representation and refusing to comment is a tacit admission of guilt. That’s a myth. If an individual is innocent, there’s no reason to talk and say things that might be perceived as incriminating. If an individual is guilty, the worst thing he can do is what Braun did and yap, yap, yap as if he’s trying to convince everyone that in spite of the frosting dripping down his shirt, he didn’t eat the cake.

Perhaps it quiets the storm down to a certain extent when publicly pronouncing oneself innocent and playing stupid, but if there’s proof of guilt, it’s going to come out eventually and not only will the player be branded a cheat, but he’ll be a liar as well.

“Not me” didn’t work for Jeffy and it won’t work for you

This speaks for itself.

Two words are the simplest and “not me” ain’t them. They’re easy to remember but difficult to follow. Even so, players would be wise to heed them:

SHUT……UP!!!!!!!!

It’s for your own good.

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