So Much for Instant Replay

The big topic of conversation last night and today is the umpires completely blowing the replay review of Adam Rosales’ should-a-been home run in last night’s Indians-A’s game.  Here is the video from espn.com.

I don’t have a whole lot to add from what others have said/written.  Here’s a good article from Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated.  Still, it’s too big an issue not to say something about it.

Umpire Angel Hernandez, consistently ranked in anonymous player polls as one of the worst five or six umpires in MLB, claimed that the replays he saw on review were not conclusive.  MLB today said that the replay system in place allows the umpires on review to see all the replays from the at least two broadcasts of the game.  In other words, the umpires should have seen what everyone else in America could see — a ball that unmistakeably hit the railing well above the yellow home run line — a no-doubt-about-it (at least on replay) home run.

My gut feeling about this situation is that the umpiring crew essentially made a collective decision that they weren’t going to overturn the call on the field no matter what the replay showed, which is essentially what happens when an umpire blows a call not subject to replay.  Even if the umpire realizes he blew a ball/strike call or a safe/out call on the bases, he sticks with his initial/called decision, and at most only admits later after the game that he made a mistake. If this in fact is what happened, it completely defeats the purpose of having an instant replay system at all.

It remains to be seen what, if anything, MLB will do to compel umpires to get with the program, but one thing is obvious.  It is a huge black eye for MLB that even a call as obviously wrong as this one can’t be overturned in the very limited circumstances in which calls can be reviewed.  If umpires cannot be fully trusted that they are making their best efforts to make the right call or correct their mistakes when the rules specifically allow further review, it undermines the legitimacy of game outcomes.

Contemporary Minor League Stars, Part I

Before roughly 1955, it was possible for a fine baseball player to have a long and successful professional career even without ever playing in the major leagues or playing in the Show only very briefly.  The main reasons for this were that minor league teams had a lot more independence and thus were able to maintain loyal fan bases and hold onto star players and also the fact that the number of major league teams (16 and all east of the Mississippi River) compared to the total number of minor league teams was tiny.

In those days there were three of what we would now call AAA leagues (the Pacific Coast League (“PCL”), the American Association and the International League) and four of what we would now call AA leagues (the Texas League, the Southern League, the Eastern League and the Western League), compared to two and three such leagues today. There were also far more lower minor leagues and teams than now, with teams playing in cities with populations as small as 10,000 or 20,000.

Because the number of minor league teams relative to the number of major league teams was so much greater than today, you had to be both great and lucky to have a long-term major league career.  (You also had to be white, since black players were excluded from “organized baseball” until 1946 and instead played in their own segregated leagues).

As a result, many excellent ballplayers became minor league stars.  As a general rule, the greatest minor league stars of that era fall into these categories:

(1) spitball pitchers who weren’t in the majors in 1920 and thus were not allowed to throw one of their best pitches at the major league level (Frank “Shelly” Shellenback, Rube Robinson, Paul Wachtel and Buzz Arlett are examples — they could continue to throw the spitter in the high minor leagues in which they pitched during the 1920 season thanks to grandfathering, but could not throw it in the majors);

(2) players who hit like major leaguers but didn’t play major league defense (Ike Boone and Smead Jolley are examples — Bill James once wrote that these players had their defensive failures overstated by sportswriters of the era as a way to explain why they weren’t major league stars; however, there is enough objective evidence/stats to suggest their defense was pretty bad);

(3) players who fielded like major leagues but didn’t hit enough or hit with enough power for their positions (Joe Riggert, and Jigger Statz are examples — in fairness to Statz, his most valuable skill, on base percentage, was not as highly valued in his day as it is now; however, while Statz was fast, he was not an effective base stealer at the major league level);

(4) players who were good all-around players but a shade below major league regulars — particularly in the Pacific Coast League, these players had more value to their minor league teams playing in major league-size cities than they did to major league teams (examples are Dick Gyselman, Truck Hannah and Billy Raimondi);

(5) players who had major injuries at the wrong time in their careers (Joe Hauser and Ray Perry are great examples);

(6) players who didn’t take advantage of their major league opportunities, which were fewer than today’s minor league stars get (examples are Bunny Brief (birth name Anthony Grzeszkowski), a fantastic minor league slugger who didn’t hit in any of his three significant major league trials, Nick “Tomato Face” Cullop and Spence Harris);

(7) players who developed late, i.e., after age 27 (Ollie Carnegie and Ox Eckhardt are great examples of a common type of minor league star); and

(8) players whose careers were interrupted by World War II.

In fact, a majority of the great minor league stars of this era and most of those listed above fit into more than one of the categories I’ve identified above, along with others not mentioned.  Perhaps the one all-encompassing factor for minor league stars was simply bad luck.

For example, Buzz Arlett, probably the quintessential minor league star of this era, started his career as a pitcher whose best pitch was a spitball.  He was still establishing himself as a PCL ace in 1920, the only league in which he could throw his best pitch after that season.  He converted to a full-time hitter in 1923 at age 24, and by the time he had established his bona fides as a top PCL slugger, he was no longer young.

Further, his team, the Oakland Oaks, rightfully recognized Arlett as their franchise player and wouldn’t sell him to a major league team for less than $100,000, too high a price for a hitter his age.  When the Oaks’ price finally came down, Arlett was past 30 and had put on weight, which negatively impacted his outfield defense.  Despite a great year at the plate for the 1931 Phillies in his only major league season at age 32, this Phillies team sucked eggs, and Arlett spent almost all of his remaining professional career in Baltimore and Minneapolis, big cities with major league caliber fan bases and ballparks taylor-made for left-handed sluggers like Arlett.

Since about 1978, the Society for Advanced Baseball Research (“SABR”) has done a great job of educating today’s baseball fandom of the great minor league stars who played in this bygone era.  The purpose of this article, notwithstanding my long introduction, is to identify the minor league stars, if any, playing today.

I decided that in order to qualify as a contemporary minor league star, a player had to have at least 4,000 career minor league plate appearances in AA and AAA ball, based on the premise that you can’t have been a minor league star unless you spent a long time playing in the high minors.  Bear in mind, that given the shorter playing schedules of even the top minor league teams today, it takes nearly eight full seasons at the AA and AAA levels to meet this requirement.

[A couple of notes here: organized baseball (and thus baseball-reference.com) treat the Mexican summer league as a AAA league (the quality of play is probably closer to AA ball) but do not consider Japan's NPB (a true 4-A league) and South Korea's KBO (probably between AAA and AA in terms of level of play) as AA or AAA leagues.  I have followed the OB/baseball-reference definition since I'm interested in identifying American minor league stars, neither NPB or KBO is really a "minor league" regardless of the level of play (the countries' top players play in these leagues and are not readily available to MLB the way the best Mexican League players are), and it makes it much simpler to calculate who qualifies.]

At first, I thought that there would not be a lot of players meeting this requirement, because a number of the most well-known 4-A players since 2000 don’t qualify — specifically, Dan Johnson, Dallas McPherson, Tag Bozied, Brad Eldred and Joe Borchard don’t have enough plate appearances to qualify.  I also figured that there wouldn’t be a lot of player in today’s professional game who could play for years and years at a high level without substantial major league careers cutting into their high-minors playing time.

Turns out I was wrong.  There are a great number of contemporary players who qualify as minor league stars under my definition.  In no particular order, the following are the contemporary minor league stars I was able to find.

1.  Jack Cust (3758 AAA plate appearances, 568 AA, and 2581 MLB).  Cust is clearly the best of the contemporary minor league stars, and he has had a significant major league career.  Even so, he spent years and years in the high minors before the money-ball Oakland A’s decided his OPS was too high ignore, no matter how low his batting average or how many times he struck out, and he’s now back in the high minors since his major league run ended in 2011. Cust’s career minor league OPS of .936 and major league OPS of .813 are far and away the best of any contemporary minor league batting star.

The player Cust reminds me most of in baseball history is Ripper Collins.  Collins was a slugging 1Bman for great Cardinals and Cubs teams from 1931 through 1938, playing for three pennant winners and two World Champions and leading the NL with 35 HRs and 128 RBIs in 1934.  Ripper was a great minor league star before and after his long major league career.

Collins slugged 135 HRs in the Show and 193 HRs in the minors.  Cust has hit 105 in the Show and 225 in the minors.  Collins hit for a much higher average, but Cust has a slightly higher on-base percentage at the major league level.

This type of player was much more common in the pre-1955 era than today, in part because major league careers were more precarious than today (one bad year and the team often decided to give someone else a shot, sending the veteran back to the minors for good) and also because it was easier to accumulate plate appearances in the high minors which had schedules as long or longer than the major league schedule.  See Dale Alexander, Smead Jolley, Jack Bentley and Joe Hauser as examples.

2.  Mike Hessman (4530 and counting AAA plate appearances, 1008 AA, 250 MLB).  Mike Hessman is a great minor league slugger who has been identified as the real life “Crash” Davis because he is the active minor league home run leader by a wide margin.  Hessman has hit 369 minor league home runs (plus six in Japan and 14 in the Show) in his professional career, which likely places him in the bottom of the top ten all-time (I haven’t been able to find any information on the top Mexican League sluggers other than Hector Espino, who at 484 career HRs, is the all-time minor league HR leader).

However, Hessman has also struck out a whopping 2,168 times in his professional career.  His chronic inability to make contact has limited him to a career minor league batting average and OPS of .230 and .773 (.188 and .694 in the Show).  His ability to slug the long ball has kept him around in the high minors for years, but he’s clearly not a major league player unless a bunch of guys on the parent club get hurt.

Stay tuned for part two of this series.

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.

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.

Alex Rodriguez in Another Steroids Scandal

Those of you have been readers of my blog for some time know that I am not a big fan of Alex Rodriguez as a human being.  For example, about two and a half years ago, I wrote a particularly intemperate piece about him after his run-in with Oakland A’s pitcher Dallas Braden, a piece for which a number of Yankees fans criticized me at the time.

Once again, Rodriguez has been linked to use of performance enhancing drugs (“PEDs”), and the allegations and evidence in support thereof look pretty damning.  Here is a link to the Miami New Times article which details all the references to ARod and his cousin Yuri Sucart, who was directly involved in the former’s steroid use in the early 2000′s, in the notes of Tony Bosch, the head of Biogenesis, the Miami “anti-aging” clinic that allegedly supplied steroids, human growth hormone (“HGH”) and other banned PEDs to numerous professional athletes.

The alleged athlete clients include baseball players Manny Ramirez, Bartolo Colon, Melky Cabrera and Yasmani Grandal and tennis player Wayne Odesnik, all of whom have been suspended in recent years for PED use.  Washington Nationals’ ace Gio Gonzalez and Texas Rangers slugger Nelson Cruz have also been linked to Biogenesis.

In 2010 Rodriguez was also alleged to have made made visits in 2009 to Canadian sports doctor Anthony Galea who was then being investigated for providing HGH to professional athletes.  Galea subsequently pleaded guilty to bringing mislabeled drugs including HGH into the U.S. to treat professional athletes.  At the time, ARod of course denied that Galea had given him PEDs.

Both Rodriguez and Gio Gonzalez have issued statements denying any use of PEDs or any connection to Bosch or Biogenesis.  Gonzalez, as a player who has never tested positive for PEDs and against whom the evidence appears more unclear, deserves the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

ARod does not.  Rodriguez is a known liar when it comes to steroids use.  He lied about his prior use of steroids in 2007; and when the evidence forced him to admit his prior use, he lied about his prior lies (“At the time, I wasn’t even being honest with myself. How am I going to be truthful with Katie [Couric] or CBS?” — what nonsense!)

Let’s hope the authorities seriously investigate this matter and force Tony Bosch to spill the beans about exactly who his clients were and what he gave them.

When all is said and done, MLB’s testing program seems to be at least somewhat successful.  Of the seven baseball players named in connection with Biogenesis, four have tested positive for steroids and been suspended.  Earlier this month, MLB and the players’ association agreed to begin testing for HGH during the playing season and to monitor players’ testosterone levels for spikes, which may explain why some players who were using have not tested positive to date.

Some players are always going to cheat with PEDs and try to find ways to get around the new drug testing regime.  That’s the entire reason why the testing program exists in the first place.  So long as at least some of the players are getting caught and suffering serious consequences in the form of increasingly long unpaid suspensions, it should have a deterrent effect on other players considering whether or not to use PEDs in the first place.

As a final thought, even though I am no fan of Alex Rodriguez and I hope he’s punished if it is proven that he has continued to use PEDs in recent years, he still deserves election to the Hall of Fame eventually.  He has been simply too good a player to leave out of the Hall of Fame entirely.  That said, I would feel no sorrow if he were made to wait until his last year of eligibility to be elected.

More International Comings and Goings

Nyjer Morgan, who most recently played with the Brewers, is going to Japan.  The Yokohama DeNA Bay Stars signed him to a deal worth roughly $1.66 million plus performance incentives.

Morgan looks like the kind of player who would do well in Japan’s NPB.  While he hit only .239 last year, he has a career MLB batting average of .280, a career .341 on-base percentage, he runs well, and he has provided above-average major league defense in center fielder.  He should also add power playing in NPB’s smaller ball parks.

What remains to be seen is how “Tony Plush” adapts to playing and living in Japan and how Japan adapts to him.  You don’t hear many complaints about Morgan when he is playing well, but when he’s struggling at the plate he tends to get into trouble.  He’s definitely a character and how that plays in Japan remains to be seen.

I also learned something about Morgan today that I never would have guessed, given the fact that he’s from the San Francisco Bay Area.  He is an accomplished hockey player, who at age 19 played briefly for the Regina Pats of the Western Hockey League, the highest level of amateur junior hockey.  He developed an interest in the game watching the 1988 Olympics.

In other international news, the Oakland A’s are interested in shortstop Aledmis Diaz, a purportedly 23 year old Cuban defector.  I say “purportedly” because MLB is reportedly investigating whether Diaz is actually only 21 or 22 years old and is claiming to be older because Cubans who are at least 23 and have three or more years of professional experience in Cuba are exempt from the capped bonus pools each team may spend on young Caribbean prospects.  If Diaz is claiming that he is older than he actually is, it would be a first among baseball prospects.

At any rate, Diaz reportedly hit .315 with 12 home runs in the 90 game Cuban Serie National in 2011-2012, his last season before defecting during a trip to Holland by the Cuban National Team.  Diaz began his career in the Serie National late during the 2007-2008 season, which means he would have been playing in Cuba’s top league before he turned 18 if he is, in fact, younger than he is currently claiming.

The Arbitration Process

Here’s a terrific short blurb about the salary arbitration process in baseball from mlbtraderumors.com.  It talks about how baseball’s salary arbitrators tend to value back-of-the-baseball-card stats like wins, ERA, batting average, RBI’s, saves and holds, rather than more recently developed metrics such as Wins Above Replacement which more accurately value a player’s total contribution toward winning major league baseball games.  As a result, arbitrators may value a player’s contributions higher or lower than his own team does.

This is not terribly surprising.  Many institutional factors in the arbitration process contribute to this over- or under-valuing.  The main reason is that arbitration is a legalistic process which relies very, very heavily on precedent — i.e., what other players with similar levels of experience and performance have been paid prior to the salary arbitration case to be decided.

The Major League Baseball Players’ Association negotiated the right to binding salary arbitration for players with two years of major league service time in the early 1970′s (most likely starting after the 1973 season, according to Marvin Miller’s book A Whole Different Ball Game – his book is a little unclear on this point).  At that time, none of the new-fangled statistics existed, teams thought that .300 hitters who didn’t have power or walk much were a lot more valuable than we now know they are, and RBIs were seen as the be-all and end-all of offensive production.

As such, the old-line stats became the basis for all salary arbitration awards and got locked in for the future through precedent.  Further, I suspect that most of baseball’s salary arbitrators are older and very experienced, making them both loath to deviate from precedent and suspicious of the new, more accurate statistical analysis.

Very quickly after the players negotiated the right to binding salary arbitration, which prevented tight-wad teams like Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s and Calvin Griffith’s Minnesota Twins from wildly underpaying their stars, owners discovered that binding salary arbitration guaranteed huge raises for most players eligible for arbitration even if their cases were litigated and lost by the players.  As a result, one of the big bones of contention between owners and players  has been the owners’ desire for give-backs on, if not complete elimination of, salary arbitration.

In the early 1980′s, the Players Association agreed to raise the service time requirement for arbitration eligibility from two years of service to three years of service. Despite much hard bargaining subsequently, the players have only been able to negotiate a reduction to include the 17% of players with the most major league service between two and three seasons.

Today, it appears that the owners have finally come to terms with binding salary arbitration, both because it has now been around for almost 40 years and also because in the last ten years, teams have begun to non-tender large numbers of arbitration-eligible players who would otherwise be virtually guaranteed substantial raises through the arbitration process.

At the time that the Players’ Association won the right to free agency through grievance arbitration in 1976, A’s owner Charlie Finley was the only owner with the foresight to see that if arbitrator Peter Seitz’s decision was actually carried out (all players could become free agents after roughly two years of major league service), there would be a huge glut of players on the open market every off-season, which would push down salaries for all but the best few players at each position.

While the other owners didn’t see this because they were too locked in to their collective mind set of controlling players totally for their entire careers, Players’ Association director Marvin Miller did.  He agreed to a six-year service requirement for free agency, because he saw that this would mean relatively few free agents each off-season and those players who reached free agency at all would generally be star players.  As a result, free agent contract amounts would go through the roof based on simple supply and demand principles.  Once that happened, players with less experience but sufficiently high past performance could boot-strap on the huge free agent contracts through binding salary arbitration.  Modern player salaries are the consequence of this system and the Players’ Association’s foresight.

Now that all of the teams are non-tendering significant numbers of arbitration-eligible players, it has created a glut of middle relievers and utility players on the open market, which has held salaries down for these players.  If a solid but unspectacular middle reliever stands to get a huge raise through salary arbitration, his team can non-tender him and find a similar player on the open market for substantially less money.

The upshot is that binding salary arbitration has matured to point where players will never, ever agree to its elimination and owners at least live with its consequences given their ability to non-tender players they consider undeserving of huge raises.  At this point, all I can see is minor tweeks to this system — for example, raising salary arbitration eligibility back to three full years of major league service in exchange for eliminating any deterrents to signing free agents (i.e., signing teams would no longer lose a draft pick when signing a top free agent).

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.

San Francisco Giants Stock Their AAA Club

The Giants made a bunch of minor league signings the past week which deserve a mention in this blog.  The Giants recently signed Cole Gillespie, Scott Proctor and Ryan Sadowski and claimed Sandy Rosario off waivers.

Cole Gillespie is a corner outfielder who turns 29 next June.  He’s a good, but not great, AAA hitter, having hit .300 or better the last two seasons at Reno with matching .885 OPS numbers.  Reno in the Pacific Coast League is a terrific place to hit, so Gillespie’s fine seasons there don’t suggest he’s anything more than a back-up at the major league level.

Gillespie has hit .236 with a .683 OPS in 120 major league plate appearances, again suggesting he’s nothing more than a back-up at the top level.  I expect he’ll play most of 2013 at AAA Fresno, unless somebody in San Francisco gets hurt.

In fact, looking at his numbers, I’m surprised that Gillespie didn’t sign with a Japanese NPB team this off-season.  Players with Gillespie’s skill set (hits for average, has alley power but not enough home run power for the positions he can play at the major level, runs well) often blossom in Japan.  Lastings Milledge in 2012 is a good example.

Scott Proctor last pitched in the majors in 2011 and was ineffective.  However, he pitched well at AAA that year and was a top closer in South Korea’s KBO in 2012, where he posted a 1.79 ERA, saved 35 games and struck out 7.5 batters and walked 3.4 batters per nine innings.

Proctor might be able to help the Giants in 2013, but he’ll be 36 years old, and there’s still a question whether he has major league command.  He’d have probably been wiser to stay in the KBO or, if there was any interest, move up Japan’s NPB.

The Giants are also bringing back Ryan Sadowski, who made six starts for the Giants in 2009.  However, after two winning starts in which he allowed no runs in 13 innings pitched, he then proved he wasn’t really major league material.

Sadowski wisely went to the KBO in 2010 and pitched three seasons there.  He was an adequate starter in South Korea, going 29-24 over the three years, with ERAs of 3.87, 3.91 and 4.32, but also with pretty poor ratios the last two seasons.  At age 30, he doesn’t look like a pitcher who will last more than another two seasons at the AAA level, but you never know.

Sandy Rosario pitched fantastically well last year for the Miami Marlins’ AAA team, the New Orleans Zephyrs, posting a 1.04 ERA in 26 innings pitched.  He saved 16 games and had an incredible K/BB ratio of 12.  However, in 7.2 major league innings pitched over the last three seasons, Rosario has a sky-high 15.26 ERA on 22 hits allowed.  Ouch!

The biggest problem with the 27 year old is that Rosario can’t be sent to the minors without passing him through waivers, where another team will almost certainly claim him.  At least that’s been the case this off-season.

The Red Sox claimed him from the Marlins on waivers, then traded Rosario to the Oakland A’s.  The A’s designated Rosario for assignment when they needed space on the 40-man roster, and the Red Sox reclaimed him.  Then the Red Sox did the same, and the Cubs claimed him.  Finally, the Cubs placed him on waivers, and the Giants claimed him.  Teams definitely want Rosario, at least until something better comes along.

Assuming the Giants are done with off-season signings and trades, they can bring Rosario to Spring Training and see if he shows enough there to make the major league club.  If not, the odds are at least better the Giants can pass him through waivers without a claim and send him to the minors.