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.

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 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.

Baseball Is a Weird Game

Despite all the games that have been played and all the games teams play is a season, baseball can still surprise.  I’m not a huge fan of Jayson Stark (Barry Bonds bad, Roger Clemens good, until, whoops!, Clemens also likely used steroids), but this article is right up my alley.

Comments:  When a team sucks ass, it is not surprising that they play better after September call-ups when they start playing young players who at least have a reasonable chance of being better than the losers who posted a sub-.333 record up to that point.

It is surprising that the Mets never threw a no-hitter in their history until 2012, given the team has always pitched in a pitchers’ park and had Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Dwight Gooden in their primes.  Not surprising that Johan Santana was the pitcher to finally get the Mets off the Schneid.

Gregor Blanco’s save of Matt Cain’s perfect game?  That and Blanco’s on-base percentage were the reasons why Blanco was playing a corner outfield position in the first place.  Did you see the World Series?

As for Adam Dunn, he is the epitome of the money-ball player.  Statistical analysis has shown that players who draw walks and hit for power can be valuable even if they hit for a low batting average and strike out a tremendous amount.  Dunn wasn’t great in 2012, but he still scored 87 runs and drove in 96 runs, even though (1) he hit .204; (2) struck out 222 times; and (3) ran like a slug.

When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards, and some of the cards I appreciated the most were those that set forth the new records set every season.  There is always something new in major league baseball, despite all the years of play.

More News from Japan’s NPB

As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, I like to write about the goings-on/comings and goings of Japan’s NPB and South Korea’s KBO, the best two baseball leagues outside of North America (with the possible exception of Venezuela’s Winter League which draws a fair number of major league players, and considering the Caribbean part of North America).  My go-to source of late for NPB news is http://yakyubaka.com.  Here are some stories I found particularly interesting.

One of NPB’s best young starting pitchers Kenta Maeda is holding off on accepting the Hiroshima Carp’s 200 million yen (approximately $2.38 million) contract offer for 2013.  While the offer represents a 50 million yen raise from 2012, Maeda believes he should receive more based on his 2012 performance, in which he led all of NPB with a 1.53 ERA and was arguably NPB’s best starting pitcher.

The Carp’s argument is apparently that Maeda doesn’t deserve more because he pitched nine or more innings in a game fewer times in 2012 than he did in 2010, his break-out season. However, Maeda was credited with pitching six complete games in 2010, compared to five in 2012, and was credited with two shutouts each season.  Hard to see a meaningful difference there.

The relevance to major league baseball fans is that if Maeda is fighting with his team, the small revenue Hiroshima Carp, over money, the Carp may be more likely to post Maeda sooner rather than later, possibly as soon as next off-season.  As I’ve written before, because of his small stature, Maeda’s potential posting value is probably as high now as it will ever be.

Also, this report tends to give you an idea why so many NPB super-stars are eager to play in MLB, even if their first MLB contracts generally aren’t any larger than what they could make in Japan, not to mention the possible loss of lucrative Japanese endorsement opportunities.

The Yomiuri Giants announced the signing of 31 year old RHP and former New York Met Manny Acosta and are also in negotiations with Casey McGehee, who played (poorly) for the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Yankees in 2012.  The Giants see McGehee as part of a possible platoon combination at 1B with John Bowker.

The Yomiuri Giants have also given their star catcher Shinnosuke Abe a 570 million yen ($6.77 million) contract for 2013, a 170 million yen raise from 2012 and the fourth largest single season salary in yen in NPB history.  Only Kazuhiro Sasaki’s 650 million yen salaries in 2004 and 2005 and Hideki Matsui’s 610 million yen salary in 2002 were larger.

Abe certainly deserves the money after leading all of NPB in batting average and OPS by large margins and helping the Giants win yet another Japan Series.  However, in a statement that only makes sense in the context of Japanese baseball, Yomiuri Giants’ manager Tatsunori Hara stated yesterday that he would like to be able to bat Abe fifth or sixth in the Giants’ line-up in 2013.

For what it’s worth, the sixth spot in the batting order gets roughly fifty fewer plate appearances a season than the third spot.  That’s the reason why the team’s best hitter usually bats no later than fourth and why you especially want your first three hitters to have high on-base percentages.

Former major league Kosuke Fukudome has announced to the two NPB teams courting him, the Hanshin Tigers and the Yokohama DeNA Bay Stars, that he envisions a three-year deal which, including incentives, would top out at 1.5 billion yen ($17.8 million).  Meanwhile, the Tigers and Bay Stars have each reportedly offered deals that would top out at around 600 million yen ($7.12 million) for the same three-year period.

It seems pretty obvious who is going to have to give here, but Fukudome’s “aspirational” numbers certainly make you think he must be a Scott Boras client. [Fukudome's agent is actually Joe Urbon.]

The Orix Buffaloes are miffed because the Milwaukee Brewers signed away 28 year old right-hander Alfredo Figaro, who pitched for Orix the last two seasons and whom Orix wanted to hold onto.

Finally, the Saitama Seibu Lions have announced their team slogan for the 2013 season.  It translates as, “Burly! Lions-ism 2013.”  The word “honebuto” apparently translates literally as “big-boned” or “stout” and can also be used to mean “robust” or “strong”  — I like my translation better, but even so, it definitely loses something in translation.

 

 

The R. A. Dickey Trade

Here’s an article from Tyler Kepner of the New York Times which I thought was pretty good.  It struck me as written by a Mets/baseball fan, who is genuinely hurt that the Mets gave up someone who has pitched great for the team the last few seasons in exchange for as yet unproven prospects.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the article’s implicit/basic premise that the Mets should have extended R. A. Dickey for somewhat below market salaries rather than trade him for some pretty good prospects, it does raise some issues I’d like to write about.

Dickey has been pretty terrific for the Mets the last three seasons (fangraphs.com values his contributions at $43.1 million over the last three seasons).  According to espn.com, Dickey would have re-upped with the Mets for two years (2014 and 2015 — Dickey is locked in to a mere $5 million for 2013) at $26-28 million if they had made the offer.  In theory, it’s hard to understand why the Mets didn’t pull that trigger.

I suspect there’s still that age-old prejudice against junk-ball pitchers playing a role in the Mets’ thinking.  Very few pitchers can master the knuckleball, they tend to do it at an old age (for baseball players), and teams are usually more than a little suspicious about how long they can keep it up even once they’ve done it.

Phil Niekro and Hoyt Wilhelm remained at the top their games until age 46 and 47, respectively. However, there are so few truly outstanding knuckleballers in baseball history that it’s nearly impossible to project how any one knuckleballer will pitch in future years.

For example, I kept waiting for Tim Wakefield to perfect his knuckleball and enter the elite level Dickey has now apparently reached, but it never quite happened.  Some of the difference may have been the fact that Wakefield pitched half his games in an extreme hitters’ park, while Dickey reached his peak pitching half his games in an extreme pitchers’ park.  Even so, Wakefield never won more than 17 games in a season for some pretty outstanding Red Sox teams.

In short, I suspect that the Mets simply don’t trust Dickey to keep pitching even as well as he did in 2010 and 2011.  They figured that now was the time to cash in on Dickey while the getting was good.

They certainly got a return from the Blue Jays.  Travis D’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard are both grade-A prospects.

Also, even with Dickey, the 2o12 Mets were not a good team.  While Dickey went 20-6, the 2012 Mets went 74-88.  The team needs a serious talent upgrade, at least based on what we’ve seen the last few seasons.

At the end of the day, the trade comes down to whether or not Dickey has really reached the Phil Niekro/Hoyt Wilhelm level with his knuckleball.  If he has, then trading him for a catcher with knee problems (D’Arnaud) and a young pitcher who hasn’t pitched above the Class A level (Syndergaard) is a huge mistake.  If not, then the Mets went out and got talent while the getting was good.

The problem is that there just aren’t enough ace knuckleball pitchers to predict which of the two possibilities will occur until Dickey plays out his string.  In my mind, the Blue Jays got the better end of this trade (assuming they can extend Dickey at a reasonable amount — a contingency of this pendng trade), but we’ll have to wait and see what Dickey actually does the next few seasons.

A Few More Minor Signings

The San Francisco Giants signed Chad Gaudin to a minor league contract today.  It seems like Gaudin has been around forever (he’s already a ten year major league veteran (he has a little over seven and half seasons of service time), but he’ll still be only 30 years old in 2013.

For years I thought that Gaudin would eventually put it together and become a highly valuable major league pitcher.  He’s always had good stuff, but he’s never had the command to become a star.  At age 30, it doesn’t seem likely that he’ll finally turn that corner.

Nevertheless, it’s a good move for the Giants.  Gaudin almost certainly received an invitation to Spring Training, but the odds are heavy that he’ll start the 2013 season at AAA Fresno.  I’m fairly confident he’ll pitch well there, whether as a starter or out of the bullpen, and he’ll be a good fill-in if someone gets hurt on the major league staff.

Leftie Doug Slaten is going to South Korea.  He just signed with the SK Wyverns of the Korean Baseball Organization (“KBO”).  Wikipedia says that Slaten will be used as a starter there.  That’s an interesting decision, since Slaten has exactly one career start above the A+ level in a 13 year professional career.

However, Slaten is a better pitcher than most of the pitchers who sign with KBO teams, and I expect he’ll be an effective starter there.  If not, one would have to think he’ll become a top KBO reliever, since he’s coming off a 2012 season in which he posted a 2.11 ERA at AAA Indianapolis and a 2.77 ERA in ten appearances (13 IP) for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Slaten signing is another indication of how fast KBO is growing.  Slaten is pitcher who should have drawn interest from a Japanese NPB team at a substantially higher salary.  Even so, he will likely be paid at least in the top 15 of KBO players in 2013, although I have not yet seen any reports regarding his 2013 salary.  For a KBO team to be able to sign a pitcher as good as Doug Slaten suggests that KBO team revenues are increasing by leaps and bounds.

Meanwhile former New York Mets right-handed reliever Manny Acosta just signed with the Yomiuri Giants for a guaranteed $1.65 million with an additional $500,000 in potential performance bonuses.  Acosta posted a dreadful 6.46 ERA for the Mets in 2012, but his other numbers were nearly identical to 2011 when he had a 3.45, except for the fact that he issued a lot more walks in 2012.

Acosta is a year younger than Slaten (32 compared to 33 in 2013), but I doubt that Acosta has any more value to a major league club this off-season, since left-handed short men are always in great demand in MLB.  However, their career major league numbers suggest that Acosta has better stuff, and that is likely the reason he’ll probably be making three times as much money playing for the Yomiuri Giants in 2013 than Slaten will make playing for the SK Wyverns.  No one ever said that life if fair.

San Francisco Giants Sign Andres Torres

The Giants signed Andres Torres, whom they had traded to the Mets for Angel Pagan a year ago, to a one-year $2 million contract for 2013.  It’s another sign that the Giants are going to try to win in 2013 the same way they won in 2012 — around pitching, defense and team chemistry.

Torres had his career year in 2010, when he was a big part of San Francisco’s first World Series victory.  He’s clearly not going to have a season like 2010 again, but he makes a great fourth or fifth outfielder, given his excellent defense and his ability to get on base and run.

During his first stint as a Giant, I was impressed with Torres’ professionalism.  He made few mistakes on the field, took advantage of in-game opportunities, and generally carried himself with quiet dignity.

I have no reason to believe that Torres wasn’t popular in the clubhouse, and my understanding is that the Giants traded him to the Mets simply because the Giants thought that Pagan, who is younger, would be an upgrade in center field, at least with the bat.  The fact that the Giants are bringing Torres back at the first opportunity is obviously a sign that they traded him in the first place because they wanted Pagan, not because they wanted to rid themselves of Torres.

The biggest knock on Torres is that his skill set is pretty much the same as Gregor Blanco, another player who is really a fourth outfielder.  However, unlike Blanco, who bats left, Torres is a switch hitter who hits better from the right side of the plate (career .743 OPS right-handed v. .696 OPS left-handed).

Assuming the Giants plan to carry a fifth outfielder in 2013, what they need now is a right-handed hitter with some power.  This could mean the Giants will look to bring back Xavier Nady as a low cost option, or perhaps they’d be willing to spend more money and try to sign someone like Scott Hairston.

4-A Players Japanese Teams Should Consider

Here are a few hitters who, it seems to me, would be an ideal fit for a Japanese NPB team:

1.  Freddie Lewis.  The former Giant and Blue Jay looks like a player who would be perfectly suited to Japanese baseball.  He will be 32 in 2013, which is getting up there for a professional baseball player, but he still runs well, stealing 25 bases in 33 attempts and hitting seven triples in 2012 for the Buffalo Bisons of the International League.  Players who run well age better than players who don’t.

Lewis had only 20 major league at-bats in 2012, and his future MLB prospects look slim.  However, his .862 OPS was the fifth best in the AAA International League this past season, so he’s still got some professional baseball left in him.

Lewis has substantial major league experience and has shown command of the major league strike zone (career MLB on-base percentage of .344), and enough MLB power that he could be a slugger in Japan.

2.  Dan Johnson.  His .880 OPS was third best in the International League in 2012, and he deserves another shot in NPB, although Japanese teams will probably be reluctant to give him the money it would take to get him to leave the U.S.

Dan Johnson hit a feeble .215 for the Yokohama Bay Stars in 2009, but he posted a .791 OPS due to his power and ability to draw walks.  The problem was that the Bay Stars paid Johnson nearly a million dollars for that performance, which is a lot for one of NPB’s second division teams, and he wasn’t invited back in 2010.

The problem with Johnson returning to Japan is that he is probably the best paid minor league player in North America.  He’s a major league veteran who is perennially one of the best hitters in AAA and gets at least a major league cup of coffee every year.  In other words, an NPB team would have to pony up to get him to leave the U.S.

3. Jeff Clement.  Clement will be 29 in 2013, has substantial major league experience (over 400 MLB plate appearances) (MLB experience is a prerequisite for a Japanese team to take a 4-A player seriously).  His .825 OPS was 9th best in the International League (“IL”), and he can play catcher in a pinch, which adds to his value.

4.  Matt LaPorta.  Matt LaPorta will be 28 in 2013, and it seems apparent that he will not have a successful major league career.  He is a 1B/LF with a career .694 OPS in more than 1,000  MLB plate appearances.  He has a career .916 minor league OPS (.891 at the AAA level).  His .825 OPS was the 10th best in the IL in 2012.

LaPorta’s career numbers virtually scream that he should give Japan a try.

5.  Andrew Brown.  The Rockies just outrighted Brown to AAA Colorado Springs, and he should consider taking off to Japan.  Brown will be 28 in 2013, and his .961 OPS was 5th best in the AAA Pacific Coast League (“PCL”) in 2012.

Brown got over 100 plate appearances for the Rockies in 2012 and hit reasonably well (.730 OPS).  However, he’s a corner outfielder, and his age will definitely work against him in terms of an MLB career.  He’s hit well at the AA and AAA level the last four seasons, and he’s definitely worth a shot by an NPB team.

6.  Brendan Harris.  The 32 year old jack-of-all-trades had a .914 OPS for Colorado Springs in 2012, 9th best in the PCL.

Harris didn’t hit a lick in the International League in 2011, but he has a career .701 OPS in more than 1,700 MLB plate appearances, and his ability to play every infield position could make him extremely valuable to a Japanese team.

7.  Cole Gillespie.  A  28 year old corner outfielder (turns 29 next June) with more than 100 major league plate appearances and extremely high on-base percentages at AAA Reno (between .390 and .405) the last three seasons.

8. Josh Fields.  Soon to be 30 years old, Fields failed miserably for the Yomiuri Giants in 2011 (.553 OPS in 40 games), but deserves another shot, possibly with a second division NPB team, in 2013.  He hit .322 with an .880 OPS for the Albuquerque Isotopes in 2012.

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.