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.

A Young NPB Up-and-Comer

Want to impress your friends with your in-depth knowledge of Japanese professional baseball?  Probably not, but if you did, you would want to drop the name Kensuke Kondo on them.

Kondo is a 19 year old catcher playing for the Nippon Ham Fighters’ minor league team (NPB teams have only one minor league team each).  Despite being only a 4th round draft pick out of high school in 2011, Kondo played briefly for the Ham Fighters’ ichi-gun (major league) team last season (20 games, 30 plate appearances)  and was even included on the team’s post-season roster, getting a single pinch hit appearance in the final game of the Japan Series against the Yomiuri Giants.  For what it’s worth, Kondo hit .279/.367/.355 last year in the NPB minors.

This year back on the Ham Fighters’ minor league squad, Kondo is leading all Japanese minor league hitters by very wide margins with a .460 batting average and a 1.289 OPS.  Granted, Kondo has only played 20 games so far this year, but for a player this young his numbers are eye-popping.

Because NPB teams have only one minor league club each, the level of play is high, probably the equivalent of an MLB team’s AA team, at least in terms of the difference between the ichi-gun team and the minor league team.  The upshot is that the top hitters in the Japanese minors are usually much older.

In Japan, colleges and industrial leagues serve as the equivalent of the MLB low minors.  NPB teams only draft about seven to 12 players each year, and team rosters are huge, so each minor league team has a mix of older and younger players.

Meanwhile, the Ham Fighters have a couple of what appear to be good-field-no-hit catchers in Shinya Tsuruoka and Shota Ono this year, so you’d have to think the parent club would be eager to bring up a catcher who can really hit.  I have no idea what Kondo’s defense is like — at his age his defense could be terrible — but professional teams everywhere usually find a roster spot for young catchers who hit like Kondo.

The fact that Kondo was only a fourth round draft pick suggests that the NPB draft is as hit-and-miss as the MLB draft.  I couldn’t help but notice that Cincinnati Reds’ rookie hurler Tony Cingrani struck out eleven Nationals in six innings of work yesterday.

Cingrani, a tall left-hander, was a 3rd round draft pick (114th overall) out of Rice University in 2011.  He shot like a rocket through the minor leagues, reaching the majors in a year and a half, posting a career minor league ERA of 1.62 with a pitching line of 211.2 IP, 136 hits, ten HRs, 60 walks and 278 Ks.  How could more than a hundred players have been selected before him in the 2011 Draft?

Cingrani started his college career at a JC, and didn’t pitch well at Rice until his final college season when he was an old 21.  He was incredibly effective that year with a 1.74 ERA and more strike outs than innings pitched or hits and walks combined, but he pitched mostly in relief.  The upshot is that you don’t really know how a player will play in the pros until he actually plays in the pros, and there were guys with more impressive college records at the time MLB teams had to do the choosing.

At any rate, keep an eye on Kondo.  If he stays healthy, which is always tough for a catcher, he’s on a pace to become a true free agent at a young enough age to make MLB teams highly interested in his services.  If Kensuke Kondo makes it to MLB one day, you heard it here first.

Wladimir Balentien Slugging ‘Em Deep in Japan

A player who didn’t get mentioned in yesterday’s run-down of hot Nippon Professional Baseball (“NPB”) hitters because he’s missed about a dozen games this year, former Cincinnati Red and Seattle Mariner Wladimir Balentien reportedly hit three home runs today for the Yakult Swallows in a game against the Yokohama Bay Stars.  The first two blasts left the stadium, and security guards warned passersby to watch out for low-flying objects when Wladimir came up to bat in the 8th inning.

This is the fourth time in his two-plus year NPB career that Balentien has hit three HRs in a game, which puts him in a seven-way tie for third most three-homer games in NPB history.  Only Ralph Bryant (8 times) and Sadaharu Oh (5 times) have done it more. [You'll have to scroll down the link to find Bryant's NPB stats.]  Balentien also joins Cecil Fielder on August 13, 1989 and Leo Gomez on May 17, 2000 as the only players to have hit two balls entirely out of the stadium in one NPB game.

Balentien has now hit eight HRs in 15 games this season, but still trails Tony Blanco, who hit his 14th HR of the young season in the same game (Blanco’s 27th game of the season), for the Central League lead.  This is the reason why NPB teams pay the big bucks to bring in foreign hitters — to slug the long ball.

Who’s Hot and Who’s Not in Japan’s NPB

We are now approximately 25 games into the 2013 Nippon Professional Baseball Season, and I thought it would be fun to do a who’s-hot-who’s-not piece regarding players you might/should have heard of.  Here goes:

In Japan’s Central league, hot hitters include Hector Luna (.387 batting average, 1.048 OPS), Tony Blanco (.354, 1.245, 13 HRs in 26 games), Matt Murton (.340 BA, but only .821 OPS), Jose Lopez (.313, .926) and Shinnosuke Abe (.284, .986).   Meanwhile, cold, cold, cold are Lastings Milledge (.240, .669), Alex Ramirez (.208, .503) and Kosuke Fukudome (.160, .550).

Among the Central League’s pitchers, former MLB number one overall draft pick Brian Bullington (1.45 ERA) is hot, but Tony Barnette (7.50 ERA) is not.  Randy Messenger has a 4.80 ERA, worst among the 18 Central League qualifiers, but he’s also 3-0 and has good ratios, so he’s not in any immediate likelihood of losing his job.

The Central League’s best pitcher over the last few years and possible future major leaguer Kenta Maeda is 2-0 with an 0.39 ERA after three starts but he missed his last two starts with inflammation in his triceps brachii muscle (back of his pitching arm) but could pitch again as soon as May 1st.

In the Pacific League, sweetly swinging the stick are Casey McGehee (.400, 1.098), Dae Ho “Big Boy” Lee (.380, 1.013), Esteban German (.361, .874, including .476 OBP), Aarom Baldiris (.321, ..876), Tad Iguchi (.309, .886), Michel Abreu (.302, 1.008) and Brian Lahair (.298, .929).  Struggling mightily is Wily Mo Pena (.203, .534).

Among the Pacific League’s pitchers, top future MLB prospect Masahiro Tanaka is 3-0 with a 1.86 ERA.  However, is ERA is currently only 7th or 8th best in the six-team league (it’s tough for hitters in NPB).  Randy Williams (0.00 ERA), Dennis Sarfate (0.00 ERA) and Brian Falkenborg (0.90 ERA) have been extremely effective in relief.  Brandon Duckworth (1-3 record, 4.71 ERA) has been getting hit hard.

Meanwhile, the Yomiuri Giants and the Seibu Lions have early 3.5 game leads over all challengers in their respective leagues.  You can get more NPB stats and information here.

Contemporary Minor League Stars, Part II

Continuing on with my list of contemporary minor league stars, who I define as players with at least 4,000 plate appearances in the high minors (AA and AAA) on the theory that they had to be pretty good ballplayers to last that long.  Part I of this series can be found here.

3.  Scott McClain (5,160 AAA plate appearances, 800 AA and 88 MLB).  Before wrapping up his professional career at age 37 at the end of the 2009 season, McClain played a whopping 20 seasons of pro ball.  His 5,160 plate appearances at the AAA level was the most of any contemporary player I could find.

McClain hit 292 home runs in the minor leagues and another 89 in Japan’s NPB.  However, he only hit two HRs in the major leagues during cups of the coffee with the Rays in 1998, the Cubs in 2005 and the Giants in 2oo7 and 2008.

McClain played mostly 1B and 3B and didn’t become a great AAA hitter until he was age 26.  He was at least able to make some money in his professional career by playing five season in Japan’s NPB, where American players generally earn at least the major league minimum.

4.  Andy Tracy (4,519 AAA, 1,247 AA, 314 MLB).  Another great minor league thumper, Tracy has hit 296 minor league home runs but only 13 in the show.

Tracy wasn’t highly regarded as a prospect out of college (Bowling Green in Ohio) and thus played four years in college before signing with a major league franchise.  He had a huge year in the Eastern League at age 25, which got him substantial playing time the next year for the 2000 Montreal Expos.  He got into 83 games that year and hit .260 with 11 HRs and an .824 OPS, excellent for a rookie.

However, Tracy got off to a dreadful start in 2001, hitting only .109 with a .427 OPS in 38 games before being sent down the minors, except for the briefest cups of coffee in 2004, 2008 and 2009 (a total of only 33 plate appearances), for good.  Like McClain, Tracy played mostly 1B and 3B, and was a great AAA hitter for years.

Tracy’s last season was 2011, when he hit .288 with a .987 OPS in 85 games for the Reno Aces of the AAA Pacific Coast League.  Reno is a great place to hit, but Tracy’s numbers are so impressive that I have to think that it was accumulated injuries (Tracy was 37 that year) that ended his professional career.  For what it’s worth, I saw Tracy take Carlos Marmol deep in a game in New Orleans between the Zephyrs and the Iowa Cubs in May 2007.

5.  Mike Cervenak.  (3,785 AAA, 2,091 AA, 13 MLB).  One of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, I’ve written about Cervenak before here and here.  He’s playing in Taiwan this year, most likely finishing out his pro career at 36.  He’s hit 192 minor league home runs.

6.  Cody Ransom (4,455 AAA, 554 AA, 687+ MLB).  Another one of my favorite contemporary minor league stars, almost certainly because, like Cervenak, Ransom’s a former Giants prospect.  However, unlike Cervenak, who never really got a fair shot with the Gints, Ransom was once a highly regarded prospect even though he was 9th round draft pick.  The Giants like toolsy prospects, and Cody had tools.

As I’ve written before a number of times, Cody is one of those rare players who developed significantly as a professional hitter after age 27, and he got his first significant major league playing time last year at the ripe old age of 37 (282 plate appearances for the Brewers and Diamondbacks after never getting more than 86 in any of his nine prior major league part-seasons).

Cody, or “Babe” as I like to call him, started the 2013 campaign with the San Diego Padres, but they designated him for assignment after he started the year 0-for-11.  The Cubs claimed him off waivers and in three games he’s off to a 4-for-9 start with home run, two doubles and a walk.  Given his red hot start as a Cubbie, and the fact that Wrigley Field is a great place for a guy with power like Ransom, there’s a good chance he’ll stick around in Chicago for a while.  It doesn’t hurt that the 2013 Cubs look to be a bad team in need of players who can hit a little.

7.  Kevin Barker (5,140 AAA, 1,320 AA, 323 MLB).  Another minor league bomber, Barker hit 271 minor league home runs (but only six in the Show), finishing his professional career in 2011 for the Oaxaco Guerreros (“Warriors”) of the Mexican League.

Barker got into 78 games for the Brewers in 1999 and 2000 at ages 23 and 24, but he didn’t hit the second year, and got only a few cups of coffee after that.  His best minor league season was probably 2009 when he hit 22 HRs and had a .927 OPS in 101 games for the AAA Louisville Bats.

8.  Michael Restovich (3,503 AAA, 565 AA, 297 MLB).  A former Twins prospect, Restovich hit 214 minor league home runs, but only six in the majors.  He was a fine minor league hitter who just didn’t hit in the limited major league opportunities he got.  His professional career ended in 2011.

9.  Chris Richard (3,192 AAA, 1,065 AA, 1,006).  Originally drafted by the Cardinals, at age 27 Richard played 136 games for the 2001 Orioles in which he hit .265 with 15 HRs and a .770 OPS, while playing RF, CF, 1B and DH (a very unusual combination).  He didn’t hit well in 2002, however, and that was the end of his major league career except for cups of coffee with the 2003 Rockies and the 2009 Rays.  Richard slugged 198 minor league HRs in addition to his 34 major league jacks.  His professional career ended in 2010.

10.  Jeff Bailey (2,995 AAA, 1,826 AA, 159 MLB).  Yet another minor league slugger, he hit 191 minor league dingers but only six in the Show.  Bailey spent parts of six seasons with the Pawtucket Red Sox from 2004 through 2009 and got three cups of coffee from the true Red Sox the last three of those seasons.  He finished his professional career with the Rochester Red Wings in 2011.

11.  Tike Redman (3,549 AAA, 724 AA, 1,461 MLB).  Just in case you were thinking all contemporary minor league stars were sluggers, Redman was a center fielder who just wasn’t quite good enough on either side of the ball to have a long major league career.  However, the Pirates certainly gave him opportunities, as his 1,461 career major league plate appearances attest.

12.  Luis Figueroa (4,682 AAA, 1,602 AA, 16 MLB).  A shortstop who apparently hit just well enough to be a AAA starter for years and whose glove, I presume, wasn’t quite good enough to make him a major league late inning defensive replacement, Figueroa’s North American career appears to have ended last year with the Oaxaca Guerreros.  He got three major league cups of coffee in 2001, 2006, 2007, but appeared in a total of only 18 major league games.

13-16.  Joe Thurston (4,868 AAA, 633 AA, 384 MLB), Esteban German (3,720, 511, 1,170), Ray Olmedo (3,381, 734, 484) and Bobby Scales (3,342, 708, 158).  A quartet of middle infielders/jacks-of-all-trades.

Thurston got into 124 games for the 2009 Cardinals but didn’t hit.  German was a briefly hot prospect who played semi-regularly for the Royals from 2006 through 2008 but hit worse each successive year — he’s now playing in Japan.  Olmedo looks like a classic glove-tree shortstop who didn’t hit much even at AAA, but stuck around because of his defensive acrobatics.

Bobby Scales was a fine minor league hitter who played a lot of different positions but probably not well enough at 2B or 3B to keep him in the majors.  He had a .373 on-base percentage last year for Japan’s Orix Buffaloes, but the team didn’t bring him back in 2013, probably because he didn’t hit for power and his defense wasn’t very good.

I strongly suspect there are other contemporary minor league stars I have failed to identify, and I invite you to send in comments identifying them.  However, I think I’ve made a point: there are still a large number of minor league stars in today’s game playing great ball at the AAA level, who either through bad luck, late development or by virtue of being just a hair below the talent level of major leaguers have spent most of their long professional careers in the minor leagues.

Mike Cervenak Slugging It Out in Taiwan

I recently learned that one of my favorite 4-A players (and former San Francisco Giants prospect) Mike Cervenak is playing in Taiwan this year for the 7-Eleven Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (“CPBL”).

I wrote a post about Mike Cervenak three years ago in which I bemoaned the fact that he never got a significant shot at playing in the majors despite being a fine high minors hitter for roughly a decade.  Not much has changed in the last three seasons.

After a cup of coffee with the Phillies in 2008 (Mike went 2 for 13, which doesn’t prove much of anything), Cervenak hasn’t played in the major leagues again.  He had a poor season (.249 batting average, .638 OPS) with the Buffalo Bisons of the AAA International League in 2010 and a much better season (.298 BA, .828 OPS) for the New Orleans Zephyrs in the AAA Pacific Coast League.

Back with the Zephyrs last year at age 35, Mike had a terrific season, batting .340 with a .912 OPS in 101 games split between 1B, 3B, LF and DH.  His batting average was fifth best in the hit-happy PCL and his OPS was 10th best.  He now has more than 6,500 minor league plate appearances, 90% of which are at the AA and AAA levels, with a career batting average of .297 and OPS of .811.

However, Mike’s fine 2013 performance didn’t get him even a second cup of coffee from the Miami Marlins, and this year there was apparently little interest in having him return to the PCL for anyone, almost certainly because of his age.

I haven’t been able to find anything on how Mike is performing for the Lions in the young 2013 season.  However, Taiwan is likely the last stop on his professional baseball career, at least as a player.  He’s too old to return to a AAA job in the U.S., and the logical step up from Taiwan to South Korea’s KBO is unlikely to happen, since KBO generally only sign American pitchers and not position players.

There’s always the independent-A Atlantic League, but it’s pretty hard for a player Cervenak’s age to live on a salary of $3,000 a month for a six month season.  Given the extent of his professional experience, Mike may well get hired on a bench coach or hitting instructor somewhere when his playing career ends.

In other CPBL news, Manny Ramirez hit his first home run for the EDA Rhinos.  He golfed a low pitch to straightaway center field, and the ball traveled over the wall just to the right of the 400 foot sign.  It was also the 7,000 home run in CPBL history.

In part due to the Manny Ramirez signing (the CPBL is currently a four team league, so Manny plays in literally half of the league’s games), the CPBL set a new attendance record with more than 215,000 fans attending the league’s first 21 games of the 2013 season.  The league record for average attendance in a season was set way back in 1992 (the League began operations in 1989) with 6,878 fans attending each game.

However, last year, thanks to numerous gambling and game fixing scandals, CPBL attendance was at an all-time low with an average of only 2,433 fans per game.  That’s considerably lower than the Atlantic League, which has average over 4,000 fans per game over the last four seasons.  Even so, the CPBL is planning to add a fifth team in the next year.

Asia Ball

Those of you who read this blog with any regularity know that I like to report on the goings-on in Asian baseball.  Here are a few recent items of interest to me.

A 17 year old high school senior named Lee Su-min (family name first) struck out 26 batters on April 7th setting a new Korean high school record.  He did it in 10 innings pitched and allowed a run on three hits and three walks allowed, but won the game when his team scored its second run in the 10th.

Lee threw 162 pitches to set his record.  He’s 4-0 this season and threw 128 and 126 in two of this other starts this year.  Last year, Lee went 8-2 and had two starts in which he made 154 and 130 pitches respectively.  He struck out 17 in the 154 pitch effort and 13, 11, and 10 in the other three efforts in which he threw more than 125 pitches.

Needless to say, young Su-min looks very promising, at least until his arm gives out from the heavy workloads.

We are already about 16 to 18 games into the Nippon Professional Baseball (“NPB”) season.  Dae-Ho “Big Boy” Lee, Tony Blanco and John Bowker are off to hot starts; Brooks Conrad, Nyjer Morgan and Kosuke Fukudome are struggling mightily.

Please note, however, that NPB’s English-language website is about eight or nine games behind on the stats for the players listed above.  Come on, guys — give us those Japanese stats in a timely fashion!

As I’m sure you know, Hyun-Jin Ryu won his first game for the Dodgers yesterday.  His only major mistake in 6.1 innings of work was giving up a two-run bomb to Andrew McCutchen.  Well, that could happen to anyone.

I read an interesting article today about the fact the Ryu does not throw in the off-season or throw bullpen sessions between starts.  This runs counter to what is the norm in MLB, where starters usually throw a bullpen session about half-way between each start in order to keep their pitching sharp and to work with the pitching coach.

Apparently, Ryu did not throw between starts in South Korea’s KBO because KBO starters generally throw more pitches per start than MLB starters.

The Dodgers position for the time being is to let Ryu do what he is comfortable with, at least until they perceive a need for him to throw between starts.  In my mind, that means that Ryu will get to do it his way until he has three poor starts in a row.

As always, a shout-out to MyKBO.net where I get my Korean baseball news.

More Players Head Far East

The Oakland A’s gave left-hander Garrett Olson his release so he could sign with the Doosan Bears of South Korea’s KBO, and it now looks like Manny Ramirez is really going to start the 2013 season playing in Taiwan for the EDA Rhinos of the China Professional Baseball League.

Olson is 29 years old and appears to be a player whose brightest professional future lies in South Korea or Japan.  He has a major league career 6.26 ERA in just over 287 innings pitched, and he spent almost all of 2012 at AAA where he was an average starter.  He should help the Doosan Bears though.

Manny’s signing with a Taiwanese team is old news now, but I’ve held off writing anything about it because I still have my doubts that Manny will actually play in Taiwan for more than 20 or 30 games, if at all.  Everyone knows that Manny really wants to get back to the majors, and how long he is willing to live and play in Taiwan, since he had quite a reputation as a prima donna when he was a major league star, remains to be seen.

However, I don’t see how playing in Taiwan is going to get major league teams interested again unless Manny hits at least .375 with an OPS over 1.200 for the better part of a season.  The China Professional Baseball League (“CPBL”) is probably a long way from even an American AAA team in terms of quality of play.

I read somewhere that American baseball players playing in the CPBL typically make about $150,000 a season.  Assuming that as a major star, Manny is getting a bit more ($200K or $250K), he’d make more playing baseball in Taiwan than doing just about anything else right now.  Salaries in the Atlantic League, the highest paying of the Independent A leagues, probably now peak at $5,000 a month for a five month season.

Manny made a tremendous amount of money in his major league career, but who knows how well he’s held on to his money?  He can’t begin to collect his pension until he’s 50, which is still more than nine years away.  If he’s been profligate, whatever money he makes in Taiwan might come in handy.

World Baseball Classic Not Doing It for Me

I love the idea of the World Baseball Classic (“WBC”), particularly now that baseball is no longer an Olympic sport.  However, in practice the WBC leaves me completely cold.

Today’s big brawl between Canada and Mexico is a great example.  The WBC is amateur sport, where only national pride (and only for some countries — more on that below) is on the line, and it should represent the ideals of amateur baseball competition.

In major league baseball, a ninth inning bunt for a base hit by a team leading 9-3 is a no-no, and some one is usually going to get plunked.  But the WBC is not MLB.  Because the teams play so few games in each round (usually one game between countries), runs scored for and against come into play when deciding who advances in the case of tied won-loss records.  That’s why Canada was trying to tack on 9th inning runs.

Also, this brawl was a lot more violent than the average MLB scrum.  Multiple haymakers were thrown, and the fans got into the act with fights in the stands and a full water bottle hitting Canadian coach Denis Boucher in the face.

Seven players were tossed by the umpires before the game was resumed.  If review of television footage shows that the umps got the right seven, they should all be banned for the duration of this year’s WBC and their respective teams barred from replacing them on their rosters.  There’s no place for this kind of nonsense in amateur sports, and punishments should be steep to prevent further similar episodes.

Other elements of the WBC also leave me cold.  A goodly number of the best players on many of the national teams were not born in nor are they citizens of the teams for which they are playing.  Pride in one’s ethnic heritage is all well and good, but it kind of defeats the idea of national teams playing against one another.

Further, the WBC is heavily compromised by the fact that some countries take the WBC extremely seriously (for example, South Korea, Japan, and Cuba) usually because of irrational inferiority complexes or for political purposes having little to do with baseball as such.

For example, South Korea, at least as reflected by the South Korean English-language media reports I saw, was extremely disappointed that its team was eliminated in the first round. The South Korean team actually went 2-1 in the first round and was eliminated only because Taiwan and Netherlands scored a few more runs than they gave up with the same 2-1 records.

What does that prove?  Not bloody much.  Everyone who follows baseball knows that one-game series don’t prove anything except that one team’s pitcher had a better day than the other team’s pitcher or the bounces went for one team instead of the other.

Everyone also knows that the U.S. would dominate the WBC like the U.S. dominates Olympic basketball if the best U.S. born major league players played on the U.S. team.  But they don’t, and everyone understands why — major league teams don’t want their big stars risking injury in games that don’t really matter when they could be getting ready for the games that actually have money and more significant honors on the line.

The fact that many Dominican, Puerto Rican and Venezuelan major league superstars don’t play for their national teams for the same reasons means that the WBC is really nothing more than an interesting diversion and exhibition while everyone in North America and the Caribbean waits for the real baseball season to get under way.

I could go on about the WBC’s silly mercy rule under which, if a team is down by 10 or more runs after seven turns at bat, the game ends prematurely — so much for the game is never over until the last man is out — but what’s the point?  The only thing to be said for the WBC is that it’s a little more interesting than Spring Training games and we get glimpses at just how good the best Cuban players are (for example, 26 year old outfielder Alfredo Despaigne, who could well be a better player than Yoenis Cespedis) who we rarely get to see play against the rest of the world’s best.