Mexico’s Home Run King Hector Espino

I read this great article by Eric Nusbaum on http://www.sbnation.com about Mexican slugger Hector Espino today.  Most American baseball fans have heard of Espino, if at all, as the answer to the trivia question “who hit the most home runs in minor league history?”  Since the Mexican summer league is today categorized as a AAA minor league, Espino’s exploits south of the border technically set the record.

The two questions that arise in anyone familiar with Espino’s career are (1) why didn’t he ever play in the major leagues; and (2) could he have been a major league star?

The article linked above suggests that there is some mystery as to why Espino never played in the major leagues.  However, the article, which references a detailed Spanish language biography of Espino written by Horacio Ibarra Alvarez, gives plenty of legitimate-sounding reasons why Espino elected to remain in Mexico.

As background, Espino’s entire United States career consisted of 32 games played late in the season for the 1964 Jacksonville Suns, the team that won the AAA International League pennant that year.  Espino was then 25 years old and had just finished off a Mexican League season in which he had led the league with 46 HRs and a .371 batting average.

Espino didn’t hit a lot of home runs in Jacksonville, a tough home run park, and the reports indicate his defense wasn’t very good.  However, he still hit .300 with an .838 OPS for a team that as a whole batted .244 with a .677 OPS.  [1964 was a tough year for hitters throughout professional baseball.]

Espino’s Mexican League team sold his contract to the St. Louis Cardinals for $30,000 prior to the 1965 season.  However, Espino insisted that he receive a portion of the purchase price if he was going to leave his homeland to play in the U.S., where at least at first he wasn’t likely to make as much money as he was already making in Mexico.  [In 1965, as a rookie, it's unlikely he would have been payed any more than $6,000, the then minimum -- young players didn't start to make the big bucks until the players' union came in and began to bargain a year or two later.]

Espino reached an agreement with Monterrey Sultanes owner Anuar Canavati that Espino would receive 10% of the purchase price — i.e., $3,000.  However, when the time came for Espino to report to Florida for Spring Training in 1965, Canavati had not paid the promised money, and Espino returned to Mexico.  [Six years later, Mexico passed a law providing that any athlete sold to an international team had to receive 25% of the purchase price.]

In 1967, Espino reached a verbal agreement to join the California Angels, who hoped a Mexican star would appeal to Southern California’s large Chicano population, but on the eve of Spring Training, Angels manager Bill Rigney announced that he didn’t want any of the team’s Mexican players crossing the border during Spring Training (the Angels were training in Palm Springs that year).  According to Nusbaum, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported the matter in a article entitled, “Rigney Puts Check on Angel Wetbacks.”

Espino lived in Northern Mexico, and he was a proud man, so he decided not to report.  Nusbaum writes that Angels assistant general manager Marvin Milkes then wrote Espino an angry letter accusing Espino of being scared, of wasting an opportunity, and of “wanting to be a one-eyed man in the land of the blind.”  If accurate, and this kind of arrogant attitude was typical of MLB executives of this era, it’s no wonder Espino told the Angels to pound sand.  Unlike American players, Espino had options — he could stay at home in Mexico, where he was the country’s biggest baseball star and was making a good living.

Espino reportedly had later offers from other major league teams, including the Yankees in 1970, but nothing ever came of it.  Of course, after 1967, Espino was no longer young, greatly reducing his desirability to major league teams.

Could Espino have been a successful major league player if he had joined the Cardinals in 1965 or the Angels in 1967?  Very likely.

While Espino appears to have missed half of the Mexican League season in 1965, following a long hold-out that ended only with the death of Sultanes owner Canavati, who fell of his horse during a polo match in Texas, in the four years from 1966 through 1969, Espino batted .369, .379, .365 and .304 and slugged 31, 34, 27 and 37 HRs, leading his league in batting average the first three years and in HRs the last two.

After slumping in 1970 and 1971 (he still hit .311 and .319 with power those years), he returned to form in 1972 and 1973, batting .356 and .377 and hitting 37 and 22 HRs, leading his league in the latter category the first year and the former category the next.

According to my 1984 edition of SABR’s Minor League Baseball Stars, Vol. I, Espino finished his Mexican summer leagues (and brief International League) career with 484 HRs, a .337 batting average, 2,898 hits, 1,597 runs scored and 1,678 RBIs.  He led the Mexican League in batting average five times, HRs and runs scored four times each and in RBIs twice. Aside from being the all-time minor league home run leader, his RBI total is 8th best all-time.

Espino slowed down considerably as he got older, but still managed to play until he was about 45 years old.  Espino also played Mexican winter league ball every year, usually with and against a large number of American players, and, according to Nusbaum, hit nearly 300 more career HRs there.

Hector Espino will never be well known in the United States.  However, just because a player never played in the major leagues, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great player in his own right.

Contemporary Minor League Aces

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a two-part series on contemporary minor league stars, who I defined as players with at least 4,000 career plate appearances in the high minors (the AAA and AA levels).  The two parts are here and here.

I thought it would also be fun to identify any recent pitchers who have had long and successful minor league careers.  Deciding on 1,200 career innings pitched in the high minors as a cut-off (which limits the list to starters and seems to be about the equivalent of my 4,000 plate appearances cut-off for position players), I was able to find only six contemporary pitchers who have accomplished this feat.  However, I was able to find an additional half a dozen or so pitchers who have come awfully close.

One final note before getting on with the list — for purchases of AA and AAA performance, pitching in the Mexican League counts, but pitching in other foreign leagues (Japan’s NPB, South Korea’s KBO, Taiwan, Italy, etc.) does not.  While this is somewhat arbitrary, it makes it easier to use baseball reference to find the qualifying pitchers, and what I am interested in doing is identifying American minor league stars, rather than Americans who have starred in Asia.  Without further ado:

1.  Nelson Figueroa (1,470 AAA innings pitched, 266.2 AA, 499 MLB).  Leading the list of contemporary minor league aces, Figueroa is a smallish right-hander (listed as 6’1″ and 185 lbs), who has a career minor league of 141-95, by far the most wins and best winning percentage of any recent minor leaguer I could find.  He has a career 3.70 minor league ERA with nearly three strikeouts for every walk allowed.

Nelson was originally drafted by the Mets in the 30th round of the 1995 Draft, and he was only just released in late April of this year by the Diamondbacks after getting off to a brutally bad start for the AAA Reno Aces a month shy of his 39th birthday.

Figueroa pitched in parts of nine major league seasons for six different teams mostly as a spot starter/long reliever.  While his career major league record of 20-35 is pretty bad, his career 4.55 ERA is hardly terrible.

2.  Andrew Lorraine (1,613 AAA, 7.1 AA, 175 MLB).  Once a 4th round draft pick out of Stanford, Lorraine has thrown more innings at the AAA level than any other recent pitcher.  His minor league career record was 110-89 with a 4.15 ERA.

A left-hander, Andrew pitched in parts of seven major league seasons for seven different teams and invariably got hit hard (career MLB ERA of 6.53).  He just didn’t have the stuff to have a successful major league career, but he clearly knew enough about pitching to excel at the AAA level.  His career ended in 2009 at age 36 playing in the now-defunct independent-A Golden Baseball League.

3.  Jared Fernandez (1,293.1 AAA, 504.1 AA, 108.2 MLB).  A big right-hander, Fernandez pitched more innings in the high minors than anyone else on my list.  He finished his minor league career in 2007 at age 35 with a 105-100 record and a 4.34 ERA.

Jared didn’t break through to the majors until age 29, and even though he pitched effectively for the Reds in 2002 and the Astros in 2003, he was already past age 30 both of those seasons.  Fernandez’s career ended with the Hiroshima Carp of Japan’s NPB.

4.  Chris George (1,244.1 AAA, 97.1 AA, 237.1 MLB).  The 31st overall pick in the 1998 Draft out of high school, George got numerous opportunities while in his early 20′s between 2001 and 2004 to establish himself as a starter for the Royals.  However, he didn’t have major league command, and he was also hit hard, posting a career major league 6.48 ERA with awful numbers at every pitching category.

Chris then settled in as a journeyman AAA starter.  He finished his minor league career in 2012 with an 85-87 record and a 4.70 ERA.

5.  Shane Loux (1,143.1 and counting AAA, 157.2 AA, 144 MLB).  Still pitching effectively, but unspectacularly, for the AAA Fresno Grizzlies this season at age 33, Loux is now 106-109 with a 4.46 ERA for his minor league career. He was once a second round draft pick.

Shane pitched in the majors in 2002-2003 for the Tigers, 2008-2009 for the Angels and last season for the Giants.  Last year’s performance, in which he posted a 4.97 ERA in 19 relief appearances, was probably his best at the major league level.

6.  Andy Van Hekken (740.1 AAA, 460.2 AA, 30 MLB).  A former 3rd round draft pick, Van Hekken’s only major league experience came in 2002 at the age of 22 when he went 1-3 in five starts for the Tigers.  His 3.00 ERA looked pretty good, but his other numbers suggested he wasn’t major league ready.

Andy returned to AAA and never made it back to the Show.  His career minor league record of 122-86 and 3.94 ERA look pretty good, but he never had any big years at AAA and had to use the independent-A Atlantic League several times to keep himself in professional baseball.

Andy went to South Korea to pitch in 2012, where he has established himself as one of the KBO’s top starters.  He currently has one of the five best ERAs in the young 2013 KBO season.

7.  R. A. Dickey (1,079 AAA, 108.2 AA, 1,113.1 MLB).  Undoubtedly the best pitcher on this list, Dickey’s career story is well known.  He makes this list with more than 1,000 AAA innings pitched because he has had essentially two professional pitching careers, the first as a regular pitcher and the second as a knuckleballer.

8.  Chris Michalak (1,048.2 AAA, 78 AA, 191.1 MLB).  A lefty, Michalak finished his professional career with the AAA Las Vegas 51′s in 2009 at age 38.  He finished with a minor league career record of 93-90 and a 4.14 ERA.

Michalak pitched fairly well for the Blue Jays and Rangers in 2001 and 2002, but he was already over 30 years old in 2001.

9.  Randy Keisler (1,027.1 AAA, 116 AA, 150.2 MLB).  Another lefty, Keisler has gone 99-77 with a 3.95 ERA in his minor league career.  He pitched last year in the Atlantic League at age 36.  Keisler pitched parts of six major league seasons for five different teams and almost always got hit hard, posting a career MLB ERA of 6.63 with lots of hits, home runs and walks allowed.

10.  Brandon Duckworth (1,014 AAA, 167 AA, 511 MLB).  Other than Nelson Figueroa and R. A. Dickey, the only pitcher on this list with a substantial major league career, Duckworth pitched eight seasons in the Show, going 23-34 with a 5.28 ERA mostly as a fifth and spot starter/long reliever.  As a minor leaguer, Brandon has a career 110-74 record with a 3.80 ERA.

Duckworth went to Japan late last season and pitched well enough in six starts to return to the Rakuten Golden Eagles this year at age 37.  After seven starts this year, he is 2-3 with a 4.30 ERA, not good enough for a highly paid foreigner in pitching-dominated NPB.

11.  Brian Cooper (877 AAA, 319.2 AA, 167.2 MLB).  A small right-hander whose professional career ended in 2006 at age 31, Cooper appeared in a total of 13 games for the 2004 and 2005 Giants.  Given that the Giants are the team I follow, I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I don’t really remember Cooper.

Cooper finished his minor league career with an 87-80 record and a 4.61 ERA.  He went 15-9 for the 2003 AAA Charlotte Knights, which is a lot for AAA — none of the players higher on this list managed to win 15 games in a single year at AAA.

12.  Adam Pettyjohn (788.1 AAA, 367.1 AA, 69 MLB).  Once a second round draft pick, Pettyjohn had a career minor league record of 85-74 with a 4.23 ERA.  He went 15-6 for the 2008 AAA Louisville Bats.

Pettyjohn pitched briefly for the 2001 Detroit Tigers and the 2008 Cincinnati Reds.  His last season was 2010 for the AAA Buffalo Bisons.

13.  Derek Lee (450.2 AAA, 732.2 AA, 0 MLB).  Last and certainly least on this list, Derek Lee is the only player on this list to pitch more innings at AA than AAA.  He never pitched in the majors, which likely also prevented him from making some real money playing in Asia.  He finished his minor league career in the Mexican League in 2008 at age 33 with a final record of 81-84 and 3.61 ERA.

Lee played twelve years of professional baseball and probably never made more than $50,000 a year, if that.  He’s also unlikely to get a pension in any amount, unlike almost all the other players on this list, who had major league careers just long enough to get some kind of a pension.  Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair.

If I’ve missed any pitchers who should be included in my list, please let me know.

What Are the Chances Johan Santana Makes the Hall of Fame?

At this moment, probably not good.  Johan Santana had shoulder surgery today and, according to espn.com, will miss the entire season for the second time in three years.  He is vowing to pitch again in the major leagues, but whether he actually does remains to be seen.

Santana’s claim to be a Hall of Famer rests on the fact that he was indisputably the best pitcher in major league baseball for the five year period from 2004 through 2008.  During that span he led his league in wins, ERA, innings pitched or strike outs eight times, won two Cy Young Awards and could have, with a little more luck, won four Cy Young Awards.  Santana was clearly a better pitcher than Bartolo Colon in 2005, and there was very little daylight between his and Tim Lincecum‘s numbers in 2008.

However, Santana’s career wins total is presently 139, and that’s awfully few for a Hall of Fame candidate.

The (relatively) recent pitcher whom Santana most closely resembles among the All-Time Greats is Sandy Koufax.  Koufax finished his career with a record of 165-87 (.655 winning percentage), not a whole lot different from Santana’s 139-78 (.641 winning percentage).  Both were left-handed strike out pitchers with excellent command.

Koufax was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1972, his first year of eligibility.  The problem for Santana, of course, is that Koufax’s last five seasons were clearly better than Santana’s best five.  Koufax led the league in wins, winning percentage, ERA, IP and Ks 13 times his last five seasons.  Using the newer metric, wins above replacement, which should take into account the facts Koufax’s days were a much better time to be a pitcher than Santana’s and the Dodgers of Koufax’s era were better than Santana’s Twins/Mets, Koufax’s last five lead Santana’s best five 40.8 t0 35.4 according to baseball reference’s formula and an even larger 43.3 to 31.6 using fangraphs’ formula.

The Dodgers won three pennants and two World Series in Koufax’s last five seasons, and Koufax also threw four no-hitters (compared to one for Santana) and a perfect game in his career and set what was at the time the single season strike out record and is still only one behind the all-time record.

Something else that will hurt Santana’s future Hall of Fame chances is that unlike Koufax, who walked away from the game at his peak, we’ve had to watch Santana battle arm problems for the last four years, which has made it easier for people to forget just how good Santana was when he was at the top of his game.

In my mind, the biggest knock on Santana as an all-time great is that he was never a pitcher who finished what he started.  In his career, he has thrown only 15 complete games.  In comparison, Koufax completed 27 games in each of his last two seasons.

The game has changed a lot, of course, since Koufax’s day, and it’s highly unlikely that any major league pitcher will ever again complete as many as 27 games over the course of two consecutive major league seasons, let alone one.  Even so, Santana hasn’t completed a lot of games even by the standards of the current era.  Santana is tied with the much younger Matt Cain for 14th place among active pitchers and is miles behind Roy Halladay (66) and CC Sabathia (35) the active leaders.

Although complete games are much rarer than they once were, they are still awfully important since bullpen fatigue is a much bigger problem now than it was in the days when starters regularly finished games and the last couple of guys in the bullpen didn’t pitch a whole lot.  Aside from the fact that Roy Halladay’s wins total is much higher than Santana’s, his record of throwing complete games is going to make him a much more attractive candidate to Hall of Fame voters even if Halladay doesn’t do anything more in his career.

A number of Hall of Fame starting pitchers failed to win 200 games in their major league careers: Dizzy Dean (150-83; famously hurt his arm while pitching with a broken toe he suffered in the 1937 All Star Game), Addie Joss (160-97; he died two days after his 31st birthday of tubercular meningitis), Lefty Gomez (189-102; pitched on six Yankees’ teams that won the World Series), Dazzy Vance (197-140; established himself as a major league pitcher at age 31), Rube Waddell (193-143; led the AL in Ks six years in a row between 1902 and 1907), Big Ed Walsh (195-126; the last pitcher to win 40 games or throw 450+ innings in a season) and Happy Jack Chesbro (198-132; his 41 wins in 1904 is the most by any pitcher since the mound was moved back to 60 feet six inches in 1893).

What I take from this list is that Johan Santana will need to come back and match Dizzy Dean’s 150 career wins to have  a serious shot at making the Hall of Fame.

The Greatest Baseball Mascot Ever

The Chicago Cubs are thinking about adding a mascot in order to make the team more “kid-friendly” in connection with the team’s five-year $300 million plan to renovate Wrigley Field.  The Cubbies are currently one of only four major league teams (the others are the Angels, Dodgers and Yankees, according to wikipedia — at least three teams have multiple mascots, not counting costumed idiots who run 7th inning stretch races — the Reds apparently lead the majors with four different mascots) without a mascot.

It’s a crying shame.  Mascots are a blight on the game, at least in the mind of this hard-core baseball fan.  When I shell out the bucks to see a major league baseball game, I come to see the action on the field, not to watch some costumed jack-ass parade around in the stands.  Mascots have always struck me as bush league entertainment which no major league team should dignify.

At least the Giants’ current mascot Lou Seal (some one dressed up in a fluffy seal costume at AT&T Park) largely stays out of the stands and instead rides around in a golf cart on the outfield and foul territory grass firing souvenir T-shirts and the like into the stands using an air cannon during the half innings.  At least a few lucky fans get something out of this silliness.

It could be a lot worse.  I went to a Phillies’ game at the Vet in 1991, and I can’t tell you how irritating I found the Phanatic.  Granted, we had paid for upper deck seats and then in the second or third inning talked our way into the lower deck box seats with a facile lie about how we joining our family but had lost our ticket stubs (we were college age at the time and I still locked like a high school student).  Now that ticket prices are really high, you can’t get away with that stuff anymore.

Even so, once in the lower deck, the Phanatic briefly blocked my view of the game in progress more than once with his “antics.”  Each time, I naturally enough shouted out, “Get the f@#$ out of the way — I’m trying to watch major league baseball!”  Even then I had a rapier-like wit…

It pains me to acknowledge that in three years of this blog, I have never once mentioned the greatest of all major league mascots by a wide margin — the San Francisco Giants’ Crazy Crab.

The Crazy Crab lasted only one season — 1984 — but he was worth his weight in, well, dungeness crab meat.  He would come out during the 7th inning stretch to his theme song, “Love That Crazy Crab” and the fans would go wild.  Everyone in the stadium would boo for the duration of the time that the Crazy Crab was on the field and probably half (including me once I saw others doing it) would try to throw garbage at the Crab or at least onto the field.

You have to understand that in 1984 the Giants were terrible (they finished 66-96, the worst record in MLB), and they played in a horrible stadium (Candlestick Park was one of the first 1960′s era multi-use poured concrete stadia — they hadn’t ironed out the kinks of what was a bad idea to begin with: the fans were miles away from the foul lines in order to make space for football games, and the winds at Candlestick Point which picked up around 3:00 p.m. and continued throughout the night were brutally cold).  After Opening Day that year, only serious baseball fans came out to watch the Giants and their opponents play, and we had little use for the Crazy Crab.

Even so, as someone who turned 16 that summer, I loved the Crazy Crab if only because it was so much fun to hate something that intently.  It was the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to the “Two-Minute Hate” described in George Orwell’s 1984, except that the animosity towards the Crazy Crab was probably more sincere.  I have little doubt that if the 11,000 or so of those of us in attendance had had the opportunity to physically confront the Crazy Crab en masse, we’d have torn the poor SOB inside the crab suit to shreds.

The Giants’ website at the link above says that the Crazy Crab was always intended to be an “anti-mascot.”  I don’t remember it that way.  At first, the Giants’ organization seemed serious about the Crazy Crab as a mascot and only started playing up the Crazy Crab as a joke once the fans responded with utter ridicule.

I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports pages religiously in those days, and I don’t recall any claim that the Crab was presented as anything but legitimate at the outset.  Again, you have to remember that 1984 was the acme of the initial mascot craze.  The San Diego Chicken was introduced in 1977, was a huge hit, the Phillie Phanatic was introduced in 1978, was a huge hit, and then every team had to have a mascot.  The Giants were one of the last hold-outs, but they had to try something since the product they were putting on the field most seasons in the early 1980′s was poor.

At any rate, the Crazy Crab made the fans completely unruly, and the players on the field started getting into the act.  According to the Giants’ website, the poor SOB inside the crab suit was eventually tackled by a San Diego Padres player and later sued the Giants for an allegedly resulting back injury.  I guess that’s why the team generally keeps Lou Seal inside the golf cart today.

My Heart Bleeds for Mike Trout

With Spring Training still in the early stages, there isn’t much substantive, or at least particularly interesting, news about MLB today.  For example, the second story on both espn.com and sportsillustrated.com is Yankees’ general manager Brian Cashman breaking his leg while sky-diving — he isn’t dead or even mentally incapacitated, so who really cares?

For this reason, I suspect, there has been considerable discussion about the fact that the Angels renewed Mike Trout‘s contract for 2013 for $510,000, only $20,000 above the league minimum, in spite of the phenomenal rookie year Trout had.

Fangraphs’ Dave Cameron wrote an article about the Trout contract and the MLB salary scale in general, which contains some good points, as Cameron’s stuff usually does, but which left me feeling a need to comment.

Cameron says that Trout’s second year contract is the norm under the system in place, as set forth by the collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”) between the players’ union and the owners, and that this system is good for competitive balance because it helps the low revenue teams compete.

Cameron puts this system at the feet of “the union,” which is only half true.  It takes two to bargain a CBA, and inexperienced players’ salaries are low because the owners have fought like hell to keep them low.

In fact, the reason inexperienced players’ salaries are low is because the owners have a strong argument to keep them low: the fact that most major league players need a long minor league apprenticeship before they are ready to play in the majors.

Minor league systems are almost always big money losers for the parent teams, even if a few minor league franchises are profitable (the old Louisville Redbirds spring to mind — the Bats have done well too playing in a smaller stadium).  As such, major teams have successfully argued that teams should be able to keep player salaries low for the first few years to recoup their investments.

Cameron notes that other unionized sports have adopted similar pay scales to MLB.  Well, there are reasons for that.  The Baseball Players’ Association was the first real union in professional sports; as such, its CBAs constituted a starting place for negotiations in other professional sports.

Hockey, like MLB, has an extensive minor league system.  The NBA does not, and salaries for second and third year players are much higher than in baseball.  The NFL has the weakest players’ union, plus the fact that because of all the injuries, many marginal players have short NFL careers — both explain why inexperienced players (with the extremely notable exception of high draft picks) have low salaries in the NFL.

Further, the idea that low early career salaries are “unfair” to rookie stars like Mike Trout doesn’t withstand a lot of scrutiny.  Most of the best and most valuable players have careers long enough to reach arbitration and then free agency, at which point they get paid and then some.  Most of the players who don’t last long enough to reach arbitration or free agency either aren’t that good or get hurt before they reach their full potential.  [Don't suggest Mark Prior, who blew out his arm before he could get the big arbitation/free agent bucks -- he signed a record-setting contract as an amateur draftee out of college.]

There are exceptions, of course, but really not that many when you consider the whole of major league playerdom.  Cameron writes, “I sympathize with players in Trout’s situation. If his career goes the way of Grady Sizemore, he may never land the massive paycheck that his talent is worth.”  This comment only proves the point that Trout will eventually get paid unless he suffers an extremely severe and extremely rare injury.

Despite all the injuries, Grady Sizemore has been paid $26.37 million over the last five seasons, according to baseball reference.  This means that, unless there has been or is in the future some serious profligacy, neither Grady nor his immediate descendants will ever go to bed hungry.

All this being said, the Angels really did renew Mike Trout’s contract for too little.  The Angels apparently didn’t want to disrupt their “salary scale” for young players, which is why they gave Trout only a $20,000 raise.  As if the Angels had a young player like Mike Trout come along every year or three.

What the Angels need to be thinking about is how they are going to keep Trout around when he becomes a free agent five years from now.  If they low-ball Trout now, he’s going to want market rates, which the Angels can well afford to pay and have indeed paid as recently as Albert Pujols and C. J. Wilson.  Or even worse, Trout will want to test the free agent market to see what’s really out there for him.

By way of comparison, the Giants are relatively generous with their franchise players.  After Buster Posey won the 2010 rookie of the year award (and the World Series), the Giants bumped his 2011 salary to $575,000, still well within the pre-arbitration “salary range”, but more than most teams would give a second year player.  The Giants recognized that Posey was worth it and that it would help the team in contract negotiations in later years.

When Posey eventually reaches free agency, he is going to remember that the Giants have always been generous with him.  Don’t think this isn’t important — Posey is from Georgia and played his college ball in North Florida, and there are a lot of wealthy East Coast teams that could pay him top dollar while allowing him to play his home games closer to home region.

Meanwhile, the Angels saved $50,000 or $75,000 they don’t really need.  When Trout, who is a South Jersey boy, approaches free agency, he’s going to be lot more receptive to the kinds of offers the Yankees, Mets and Phillies can make him because the Angels low-balled him today.

It’s no knock on Buster Posey to say that Mike Trout is worth as much or more to the Angels in 2013 than Posey was to the Giants in 2011.  Trout is that young and that good.

The Best Hitting Pitchers in MLB Baseball 2013

The most popular posts I’ve written for this blog identify the best hitting pitchers currently active in major league baseball.  Given the level of interest, I have decided to update this piece annually, starting with this 2013 update.

As I’m sure you know, modern pitchers as a group can’t hit a lick.  The rise of the designated hitter, not only in the American League, but also it’s wide-spread use in the minors and in the college game is perhaps the biggest factor for the demise of pitchers who can hit, but it’s hardly the only one.

Pitchers simply don’t get as many opportunities to hit today because of the steady trend of using more and more relievers throwing more and more innings, which means starting pitchers get fewer opportunities to hit, and there are more opportunities for professional hitters to be used as pinch hitters.

Also, no matter what the old-timers tend to say, the level of major league play has gradually and steadily improved since the professional game started in the 1870′s, which means that pitchers, who make the major leagues solely based on their ability to pitch (which has been the norm since at least the early 1880′s and probably much earlier) have undergone a slow but steady decline as hitters by virtue of the relative improvement of pitchers (as pitchers), fielders and professional hitters, even though most major league pitchers were great hitters in high school.

Nevertheless, there are always a few pitchers in any era who can hit.  This post ranks current pitchers with at least 100 career major league at-bats in order to weed out the pitchers who just haven’t had enough at-bats for their career hitting stats to mean anything one way or another.  I may have missed a couple of qualifiers, but not more than a couple.

By today’s standards, a good-hitting pitcher is any pitcher with a career batting average above .167 or a career OPS over .400.  That’s really pretty terrible as hitters go, and it shows just how hard it is even for professional athletes who have played baseball all their lives to hit major league pitching if the players have not been selected for the major leagues based their ability to hit.

A few pitchers can swing the stick a little bit, though.  Here is my non-scientific list of the best hitting pitchers currently playing as we approach the start of the 2013 season:

1.  Micah Owings.  Micah Owings remains far and away the best hitting pitcher in baseball (at least if you exclude Rick Ankiel, who hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2004).  Micah’s career numbers have slipped a bit the last two season, likely due both to the law of averages and the facts that he isn’t a starter any more and didn’t pitch much last year due to an elbow injury.  His career batting average is currently .283 with an .813 OPS in 205 career ABs.

As I’ve written previously, it’s clear the Arizona Diamondbacks made a terrible mistake when, after drafting Owings in the 3rd Round of the 2005 Draft, they decided to develop him solely as a pitcher.

Owings is now 30 years old, and it’s doubtful he’ll ever develop into a good major league pitcher.  In fact, Owings just signed a minor league contract with the Washington Nationals with an invitation to 2013 Spring Training — the Nats signed Owings as a 1Bman, which strongly suggests they will try to develop him as a hitter.

Owings is getting old to switch positions, and it isn’t clear if he could still pitch if he and the Nats wanted him to.  He had arthroscopic elbow surgery last July and hasn’t pitched since last April.  Nonetheless, I still have a hope he’ll become the next Brooks Kieschnick, pitching, pinch-hitting and occasionally playing the field, depending on his team’s needs at the moment.

2.  Dontrelle Willis.  One of the things I always loved about Dontrelle was his ability to hit.  While he hasn’t played in the majors since 2011, he recently signed a minor league deal with the Cubs with an invitation to 2013 Spring Training.  In 2011 his last year of play, Willis batted .387 (12 for 31) with a 1.032 OPS to bring his career numbers up to .244 with a .665 OPS, respectively.

Dontrelle is now 31 years old, so it’s probably too late for him to make the switch to a position.  Too bad — as a 6’4″ lefty, he probably could have been major league 1Bman or corner outfielder if he’d been developed as a hitter.

3.  Mike Leake.  Leake remains the top young hitting pitcher in MLB.  He hit .295 with a .749 OPS last year, and despite his 2011 sophomore slump year, he still has a career batting average of .274 with a .656 OPS in 164 major league at-bats.  Leake walked only once last season, dropping his career on-base percentage to .308, but he hit for power for the first time in his career with two taters and five extra base hits.

I wonder what is more discouraging to a pitcher: walking the opposing pitcher or giving up an extra base hit.  Even though the latter would seem to have more value, the pitcher on the hill can better rationalize it: the batter got lucky, he’s a good-hitting pitcher, etc.  Everyone on defense slumps their shoulders when the pitcher walks his doppelganger.

4.  Carlos Zambrano.  In 2012 Big Z had his worst season swinging the ash since his 2002 rookie season, hitting only .176 with a .441 OPS.  Even so, he still has a career .238 batting average with a .636 OPS.

Carlos is an all-or-nothing hitter.  He has only ten walks to go with 240 strikeouts in 693 major league at-bats, but he has hit an impressive 24 HRs and 53 extra base hits.  He’s scored 75 runs and driven in another 71 in his career.  That’s better than a lot of middle infielders given the same number of at-bats.

5.  C. C. Sabathia.  He’s one of the most interesting players on this list.  Unlike all the other pitchers on this list, he’s only played one-half of one season in the National League.  As an American League hurler, he only gets to hit about two games a year, yet hit he does.  Despite going 0 for 5 at the plate in 2012, he’s still hitting .238 with a .598 OPS in 105 career at-bats.

Sabathia is tall and heavy set, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for a good-hitting pitcher, but obviously he’s just a baseball player pure and simple.  One wonders what kind of numbers he would put up playing three or four full seasons in a row in the NL.

6.  Yovani Gallardo.  The still young Brewers ace is another pitcher with pop at the plate.  Despite his worst season with the bat as a regular starting pitcher, Yovani still has a career batting average of .2o7 with a .599 OPS, thanks to ten HRs and 27 extra base hits in 305 career at-bats.

7.  Daniel Hudson.  After a break-out season in 2011 at age 24, Hudson blew out his elbow tendon after ten starts (nine for Arizona, one for AAA Reno) before having Tommy John surgery in early July.  Presumably, he won’t be back in action until after the 2013 All-Star Break.  At any rate, Hudson has a .229 batting average and a .573 OPS in 105 major league at-bats to date.

8.  Dan Haren.   Haren has a .223 lifetime batting average and .572 OPS.  In 2010, his last season in the NL, he hit .364 (20 for 55) with a .902 OPS. He signed with the Washington Nationals this off-season, so he’ll get the opportunity to hit regularly again in 2013.

Haren and Sabathia are the best arguments against the designated hitter.

9.  Adam Wainwright.  Wainwright’s hitting has dropped off his last two seasons (2010 and 2012), but he still has a career .204 batting average and .545 OPS in 367 major league at-bats.

Honorable Mention.  Livan Hernandez (career .221 batting average, .526 OPS, but his career might be over — he’d still like to pitch, but hasn’t been offered even a minor league contract as of early February 2013); Darren Oliver (.221, .545 — the latest word is he’ll be back with the Blue Jays in 2013, but he hasn’t had a plate appearance since 2006); Chris Narveson (.227, .522 — he missed most of 2012 to rotator cuff surgery, but the Brewers have signed him to a major league contract for 2013); Jason Marquis (.202, .508 — he hit well last year and he’s returning to the Padres for 2013); Manny Parra (.183, .500 — he signed with the Reds for 2013); Javier Vasquez (.204, .478 — rumor has it he’s interested in resuming his major league pitching career after a strong season in the Puerto Rican Winter League); Jordan Zimmerman (.190, .463); and Edwin Jackson (.200, .462).  As you can see, the best hitting pitchers get bad pretty fast.

Young Hitting Pitcher to Watch.  Stephen Strasburg.  He hit .277 (13 for 47) in 2012 with a .759 OPS, highest of any pitcher with at least 50 plate appearances, just beating out Mike Leake.  Strasburg’s career numbers are only .192 and .521, so it has yet to be determined whether he’s closer to 2012′s best hitting pitcher or the guy who started his career a pathetic-even-for-a-pitcher 1 for 26.

Carlos Zambrano started his career 1 for 32, before developing into a good-hitting pitcher, so I tend to think Strasburg will continue to hit well for a pitcher in future years.  One thing is for certain, however: with Strasburg, Haren, Zimmerman and possibly Micah Owings, the Nationals should have the best hitting pitching in MLB in 2013.

Angels Sign Japanese Right-Hander Hiroyuki Kobayashi

The Angels today announced the signing of Japanese right-hander Hiroyuki Kobayashi to a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training.  Kobayashi flew under my radar and that of most other commentators as a possible major league signing out of Japan because Kobayashi didn’t pitch in NPB’s top league last year.

Instead, he pitched for the Hanshin Tigers’ farm club, mostly out of the bullpen and apparently spot starting.  He wasn’t bad there, but with a 3.44 ERA in a minor league, he wasn’t impressive either.

Kobayashi was a good pitcher as recently as 2010, when he recorded 29 saves and a 2.21 ERA as the Lotte Marine’s closer.  His 2011 numbers look good (3.00 ERA and more Ks than innings pitched), but given that new baseballs were introduced that year which killed hitting in NPB and that Kobayashi was pitching in relief, he was a big disappointment to the Hanshin Tigers, who has signed him to a big free agent contract.

Kobayashi turns 35 in June, and he’s obviously well past his prime.  However, he knows how to pitch and he throws strikes, so there’s at least a possibility he’ll pitch well in 2013, since no one in MLB is familiar with his stuff.  Still, it will be a surprise if he helps the Angels much.

The Best and Worst Hitters’ Parks in MLB 2013

Last summer I discovered that espn.com provides stats for what it calls “park factor”, which for purposes of this post means the ratio between the number of runs scored at a ballpark in any given season divided by the number of runs scored by said ballpark’s occupant (and its opponents) in away games that same season.  I wrote a post last June which evaluates each park’s park factor for the five years ending with the 2011 season.

As we approach the 2013 season (and the 2012 stats have long been in), it seems like a good time to update my earlier post incorporating the 2012 season.  Without further ado, here are the average park factors for all major league ballparks over the last six season (or less for the five ball parks that have opened more recently).

1.  Coors Field (Rockies) 1.301

2.  The Ballpark at Arlington (Rangers) 1.148

3.  Chase Field (Diamondbacks) 1.134

4.  Fenway Park (Red Sox) 1.131

5.  U.S. Cellular Field (White Sox) 1.111

6.  Wrigley Field (Cubs) 1.086

7.  Camden Yards (Orioles) 1.080

8.  New Yankee Stadium (2009-2012) 1.066 [Old Yankee Stadium, 2004-2008, 1.002]

9.  Great American Ball Park (Reds) 1.057.

10.  Comerica Park (Tigers) 1.044.

11.  Kauffman Stadium (Royals) 1.018

12.  Rogers Center (Blue Jays) 1.010

12.  Miller Park (Brewers) 1.010

14.  Citizens Bank Ballpark (Phillies) 1.008

15.  Marlins Park (2012) 1.005  [Sun Life Stadium, 2007-2011, 1.038]

16.  Nationals Park (2008-2012) 0.998 [RFK Stadium, 2005-2007, 0.892]

17.  Minute Maid Park (Astros) 0.986

18.  Target Field (Twins, 2010-2012) 0.983 [Mall of America Field (the Metrodome), 2005-2009, 0.966]

19.  Turner Field (Braves) 0.978

20.  Progressive Field (Indians) 0.960

21.  Angels Stadium 0.939

22.  PNC Park (Pirates) 0.936

22.  Busch Stadium (Cardinals) 0.936

24.  Oakland Coliseum (A’s) 0.919

25.  AT&T Park (Giants) 0.917

26.  Dodger Stadium 0.915

27.  Citi Field (Mets, 2009-2012) 0.904 [Shea Stadium, 2004-2008, 0.886]

28.  Tropicana Field (Rays) 0.889

29.  Safeco Field (Mariners) 0.864

30.  Petco Park (Padres) 0.808

The rankings didn’t change much from last year.  Among last year’s ten best hitters’ parks, U.S. Cellular Park, where the White Sox play, was apparently a great place to hit in 2012, moving it up two slots.  New Yankee Stadium was apparently not a great place to hit, moving it down two slots. Coors Field improved on its status as far and away the best hitters’ park in MLB.

The Marlins’ new park, which looked like a great place to hit in late June of last year, turned out to be only a little better than average for the full season — we’ll have to see how it plays over the next few seasons.

The Royals’ Kauffman Stadium moved up two slots, and the Phillies’ Citizens’ Bank Park fell two slots.  The Astros’ Minute Maid Park also fell two slots.  The Twins’ Target Field was a hitters’ park for the first time in its three year history, jumping it up four slots.  The Pirates and Giants and their respective opponents scored a lot more runs on the road in 2012, causing both PNC Park and AT&T Park to drop three slots.

With another year in the books, the Mets’ Citi Field is developing into as much of a pitchers’ park as the old Shea Stadium.  San Diego’s Petco Park remains the worst place to ply one’s trade as a major league hitter, but Seattle’s Safeco Field narrowed the gap considerably.

Center Fielders Angel Pagan and Shane Victorino to Sign Contracts

The San Francisco Giants reached agreement with Angel Pagan yesterday on a four-year deal for $40 million, and today the Boston Red Sox reached agreement with Shane Victorino for three years and $39 million.

There isn’t a whole of difference between the two players.  They both play an above-average center field, both have alley power and both are good but not exceptional base stealers.  Victorino might play slightly better defense and have a little more power, but Pagan is seven months younger.

In short, it’s not surprising they signed for about the same amount of money.  Pagan got a extra year because he’s a little younger, and Victorino got more per year because he’s had a better career to date.

I like the Pagan signing a little better because the Giants get an extra year for only an additional $1 million.  Also, when you factor into the equation that Pagan is re-signing with the team he helped propel to a World Series win this past season, the fact that he and Victorino are getting roughly the same money seems like a relative bargain.

While the Giants didn’t want to give Pagan a fourth year (and I’m sure the Red Sox didn’t want to give Victorino a third year), the deals seem fair for the signing teams.  Fangraphs estimates Pagan’s value in 2012 at $21.6 million, and Pagan did not have a career year, in that fangraphs’ estimates for Pagan’s 2010 was $21.8 million and his 2009 was $13.2 million even though Pagan only played 88 games that year.  Absent a major injury, it seems likely Pagan will provide the Giants with $40 million in value over the next four seasons, even though his performance will likely decline by years three and four of the deal.

As for Victorino, he’s coming off his worst season since 2007, but fangraphs still estimated his 2012 contributions at $14.7 million.  In 2011, his estimated value was $26.8 million (his career year) and his average over the four previous seasons was $16.5 million per year.

In other words, Victorino is likely to bounce back toward his mean in 2013.  Also, because Pagan and Victorino both still run well, the odds are fairly good that they’ll remain productive players through age 34, their ages in the last season of each contract.

As a final note, I love the Nationals’ purported signing of Dan Haren for one year at $13 million.  Haren didn’t get more years because of ongoing concerns about his back problems.  Even so he managed to pitch 176.2 innings in 2012.  Although his ERA was up, his K’s and BB’s ratios were in line with his career norms.

Presumably Haren’s signing means the Nationals will part ways with Edwin Jackson, who after another solid season in 2012 and still only age 29, is probably in line for a multi-year deal.  Signing Haren for only a single season gives the Nats a lot of flexibility in the relatively near future.

When Will MLB Finally Allow the A’s to Move to San Jose?

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post in which, as an aside, I complained about what a turd Bud Selig is for not having worked out a deal to allow the now Oakland A’s to move to a new stadium in downtown San Jose.  Ten months later, there has been no reported progress whatsoever.

In fact, when commissioner Bud “Turd” Selig was asked about the status of a possible A’s move about a week ago, he responded with profanity.

How utterly disgusting!

[For purposes of full disclosure, I have lived in Berkeley, just north of Oakland, since 1997, but I grew up in San Francisco, and I root for the Giants.]

The A’s proposed move to San Jose makes too much sense not to happen eventually.  San Jose is the largest city in the Bay Area at nearly a million residents, is far more willing than any other locality in the San Francisco Bay Area to provide public money for a major league baseball stadium (San Jose wants desperately to get out from underneath San Francisco’s shadow), San Jose has idea summer baseball weather (warm and dry — far better than either San Francisco or Oakland) and has great opportunities for corporate sponsorship/luxury boxes purchases since it’s in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Yes, San Jose is the Giants’ “territory,” but there simply isn’t any good reason why some kind of deal could not be reached to pay the Giants off with cold hard cash (some now, some later) to surrender a location 45 miles away from where the Giants currently play and will continue to play for the foreseeable future.  In fact, a new stadium in San Jose will be much further away than the Oakland Coliseum is from AT&T Park (nearly three times as far, in fact).

The upshot is that for every South Bay fan the Giants lose, they will surely pick up an East Bay or North Bay fan to take his or her place.  The BART trains from Alameda and Contra Costa counties are already full of Giants fans every time the Giants play at home, simply because the Giants have been the better Bay Area team in recent years.

Frankly, there would no good reason for Oakland fans to abandon their team, simply for moving 35 miles south to a location where the A’s could be much more successful.  It’s certainly much better than other possible outcomes, such as the A’s moving to another market, such as Sacramento, Portland or San Antonio.  Nevertheless, if a move to San Jose happens, some fans would likely feel abandoned, and many of those fans would switch their allegiance to the Giants.

The greater (nine county) San Francisco Bay Area is now the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States, and it is unmistakeably a two-team market, at least if the A’s can move to a new stadium where the paying customers are.  While the Giants may not see it this way, having two teams in the Bay Area is good for both teams and good for MLB as a whole, because it keeps fan interest here high.  Two teams means twice as many opportunities to field a contender.

The fact that Commissioner Selig hasn’t been able to work out a deal to get the A’s out of a cold and lousy stadium where they are consistently one of the lowest revenue teams in baseball into what is obviously a perfect fit in San Jose is pathetic and shows that Selig couldn’t care less about the “best interests of the game.”  Instead, he is merely a shill for the most powerful franchises, which hold on to their territorial rights like grim death.

Specifically, I think MLB’s failure act on the A’s move to San Jose is about a lot more than just the Giants’ resistance. Some of the wealthiest clubs in MLB, namely the New York Yankees and Mets and the Los Angeles Dodgers and Angels, are opposed to any weakening of the Giants’ territorial rights whatsoever, for fear that if the A’s were allowed to move to San Jose, there may one day be additional teams located in Northern New Jersey and the Inland Empire, two obvious places for future MLB expansion/re-location based on the demographics.

In the meantime, if MLB continues to refuse to take action, the A’s should turn up the pressure by seeing what opportunities exist in other markets, such as the afore-mentioned Sacramento, Portland and San Antonio.  To the extent that the A’s haven’t done this so far, it’s only because moving to San Jose is clearly the best possible option.