Tag: baseball

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Blue Jays 2008

The consistent mediocrity of the Toronto Blue Jays is a wonder to behold. We know that Tampa Bay and Baltimore, enjoying a brief surge right now, are going to fall back and end up fifth and sixth. And we know that the Red Sox will dominate the division, and the Yankees are vulnerable. Doesn’t seem to matter: almost every year since their World Series Championship in 1993, the Blue Jays must just enough talent to finish 3rd. Given the annual disappointment with this team, I’m ready to start wishing they would finish last so they could purge themselves of this steady succession of over-rated, underperforming hitters and rebuild.

I had thought this year might be different. They have a lot of young, strong pitching arms, a very good bullpen, and what looked like a reasonably productive offense. But over the last 10 games, the Blue Jays get few men on base and then consistently fail to advance them. Their starting pitching is fine, typically going five or six competitive innings. Then it’s almost as if the failure of the offense to take advantage and produce runs begins to eat away at the pitching staff and their defense collapses.

The two biggest problems were the DH and first base– the two most important positions to the offense, and the only positions in which power numbers obviate the need for any particular defensive skills or speed. Those two positions, occupied by Frank Thomas and Lyle Overbay (until Thomas was released last week), produce virtually nothing for the Blue Jays. If your outfielders and catcher aren’t producing– and, for the Blue Jays, they aren’t– then your DH and your first base should occasionally carry the offense. They didn’t last year, until Frank Thomas got hot– too late– in August (and even then, Overbay continued to struggle), and they’re not doing it this year. Rios showed promise early last year, but his power numbers dropped off significantly, and Wells has been a disappointment since receiving a fat long-term contract. Stairs, who occasionally subs in left field, has probably been their best hitter for the past two years and the good news, I hope, is that he won’t be forced to share as much playing time with Frank Thomas any more. Shannon Stewart won’t help the offense much, but his weak arm in left field is certainly going to hurt the defense.

I’m not a fan of David Eckstein, but it has to be admitted– and this is gruesome– that he has actually been their offensive sparkplug the last week. So how do you know when your offense is in deep trouble? When David Eckstein is your offensive “sparkplug”. Personally, I’d still rather see John McDonald out there every day, and I’ll bet most of the pitching staff would as well. For the record, Eckstein is only batting .245 right now with, of course, no power numbers to speak of. He tends to weasel his way on base, and he steals occasionally, but the steal is over-rated as an offensive tool, just as the double is under-rated.

The Blue Jays get very little power from their catchers, but then, unless you’re the Yankees with Jorge Posada, nobody else does either. Still, it would be helpful if your catcher would drive just a few runs in now and then.

It sounds odd but, given all the observable deficiencies in the Blue Jays offense, I still have trouble seeing why they are so bad lately. Roy Halliday started a game in the Skydome against Texas in which he appeared to be dominant. For five or six innings, he held them off the score sheets. The Blue Jays were facing a mediocre pitcher, Vicente Padilla (WHIP 1.69, batting average against of over .300), but except for the occasional single or walk, couldn’t muster the slightest offense against him. You had Thomas, Wells, Rios, Overbay, Hill, Stewart, all parading through the batter’s box to absolutely no discernable effect. Eckstein got on base a few times– and stayed put.

The Blue Jays, even if they are playing well, are going to have games like this occasionally, in which they simply, inexplicably struggle. Even very good teams will have the odd off night against a weak pitcher. But the Blue Jays do this game in and game out for ten, twelve games in a row. It’s baffling. I resist cheap, abstract generalizations like “they lost their focus” or they don’t have enough “passion”, but if I ever saw a team on the field that no longer cared about results, it was the Blue Jays in the 8th inning on Friday night against Kansas, in which they gave up six runs and the lead after two misplayed balls and a moment of pure indifference (see sidebar). If I had been John Gibbons, I think I might have taken Wells out of the game for an inning, just to send a message. That might have been a mistake– but it would have been very tempting. Do we not have some hungry young players at Triple-AAA who would love a shot at the big leagues and who might actually get angry at themselves for making a stupid mistake, or for failing to drive in an important run?

The truth is that J.P. Ricciardi is probably quite right when he blames himself for the poor offensive production lately. That is, he chooses the players: the players he chose are not doing the job. We love to think a great inspirational club-house speech can rally a team to perform better than they would otherwise, but the truth is that no amount of emotional energy can summon talent where it does not exist. The truth is that the players on the field, Wells, Overbay, Rios, Zaun, Stewart, Hill– may just not be all that good. We hear coy allusions to injuries that some of these players “played through” last year, and the year before, and the year before that, as if these players had some kind of admirable sense of self-sacrifice which allowed the team to benefit from their mediocre performances even while they were injured– enough already. If you can’t play because you’re hurt, say so, and get off the field, and the team can at least face the facts and commit to an alternative plan.

If I were Blue Jays management right now, I might do nothing because Rogers Communications, which owns the team, won’t give me any more money. If there was money, I’d go shopping for a new catcher and first base. Listen– would the Yankees take Vernon Wells and Jeremy Accardo for Jorge Posada?

Low point of the season so far: Friday, April 26. With a 4-2 lead in the 7th inning, A. J. Burnett began to struggle with his control and gave up a single and walk. Scott Downs then came in and elicited a perfect double-play ball which Eckstein booted. Downs failed to get anyone out and the Royals– on a seven game losing skid– scored six runs, high-lighted by the infield defense practically ignoring a playable ground ball between first and second and Wells booting another ball in centre, and Gibbons intentionally walking Pena (.143) to load the bases to get to DeJesus, who is currently hitting .414! (DeJesus, of course, drove in two more runs with a single.) At this point in the game, it honestly looked like the Blue Jays really didn’t care anymore. They fell back to 10-14 on the season, 4.5 games out of first, in last place, after less than a month, while the Yankees are struggling.

Added April 30: The Blue Jays just lost two games in a row to Boston in which their starting pitcher went 8 plus innings without giving up more than a run. Yes, that’s brilliant pitching… and sustained offensive mediocrity. In the 8th inning, the Blue Jays had runners on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out. They got one run out of the deal, to tie the game.

 

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Roger Clemens

It is ironic that Roger Clemens would have faired better, pr-wise, had he fessed up, whether he had actually used steroids or not. Instead, his devout, insistent, righteous denials have convinced more and more people that not only did he cheat, but he continues to baldly lie about cheating.

And after all the hand-wringing denunciations and moralistic meditations on the state of the national sport, the question of whether or not steroids actually help pitchers remains somewhat murky. There is good reason to believe that steroids don’t actually provide much of an advantage. And now I’m bored and I’ll leave the topic.

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Joe Torre Leaves

Before everyone gets their thongs tied in a knot over the departure of Joe Torre from the Yankees, we all should take a bit of a sober look at his real accomplishments. The number 1 fact to consider when assessing his skills as a manager is this: The New York Yankees have had the highest payroll in baseball every year for the 12 years Torre managed them. In that period of time, Torre won four world series.

From one point of view, that might be considered a fair accomplishment. You had the best players money could buy and you won the championship 33% of the time. From another point of view, Torre’s “success” is unremarkable. A small lump of coal, given charge of the highest paid team in baseball, might have done the same.

Given that, Torre was a decent manager for the Yankees. The role of a player is to actually do things: throw, bat, pitch, steal bases. The role of the manager is to put the right players on the field at the right time and let them do their jobs.

The most important skill of a manager is his judgment of a player’s performance and endurance at specific stages of the game and the season. Grady Little is infamous for leaving Pedro Martinez in too long in game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. Torre rarely makes a mistake like that, though I thought he should have given the start in game 4 this year to Mussina..

Nor, however, has Torre been able to get the Yankees out of the first round of the playoffs for the past four years. That is partly– maybe largely– due to the fact that he is stuck with a group of aging, over-rated veterans like Damon and Giambi and Clemens and Sheffield. It may be partly due to the fact that Derek Jeter is a great hitter but a merely average shortstop, and Alex Rodriguez can’t seem to rise to the occasion in the playoffs.

It also may be partly due to the fact that Torre is not quite the genius many baseball writers think he is.

It is absolutely disgraceful to check out the ESPN website the day after the critical game 6 in the Cleveland-Boston ALCS only to find more than half of the articles are about Joe Torre. Just how Yankee-centric is the baseball universe? Well, consider these facts that the average fan could be forgiven for being unaware of: Derek Jeter is not the best shortstop in the league. He is a good hitter, but, defensively, he is, at best, sixth or seventh.

Roger Clemens has been washed up for about a year now.

Johnny Damon is just about the worst centre-fielder in baseball today. Torre’s not dumb- by the end of the season, Damon was in left field.

It takes more than just a few hot months before anyone knows if any other young pitcher is going to have a great career. It takes a Yankee rookie– apparently— about one inning.

I just read that Torre is now expected to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Good luck– we may now get the opportunity to see how well managerial “genius” actually translates into success on the field.

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Baseball Statistics

Major League Baseball Advanced Media is not making a copyright claim to the statistics themselves; a 1997 decision in the United States Court of Appeals involving the National Basketball Association ruled sports statistics to be public-domain facts that do not belong to the leagues. Ny Times, May 15, 2006

This is very interesting.

I didn’t know this, but several sports websites, including CBS Sports and ESPN, pay Major League Baseball millions of dollars for permission— permission!!– to promote their product. Okay– baseball, sees them as exploiting baseball’s already fabulously valuable product for their own purposes. I see it as asking the customer to pay for the advertising.

The NY Times article wasn’t completely clear about it, but I think it’s reasonable to assume that the payments are for use of the images and names in rotisserie leagues run by those websites, wherein fans can choose a roster of players who then “perform” as they do in real life for the virtual team.

I’ve got an idea for CBS and ABC and FOX and ESPN: go to Major League Baseball and announce to them that you can’t afford to pay them to advertise their game so, from now on, they will not pay and simply never again mention Major League Baseball or Barry Bonds or Ken Griffey or anything else about their product at all.

It would be very helpful if all the sports media outlets did this at the same time.

Does Sports Illustrated pay to write an article about the World Series? Do they pay to interview Barry Bonds?

This is nuts. Just say no. No more publicity for baseball. Promote something else– go to FIFA and ask if they would like it if they devoted all of that space to them instead.

What do you think?

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Baseballs Smothering Inertia

Have you noticed? The Yankees finished first in the American League East, Boston finished second, and the Toronto Blue Jays finished third. And Cleveland is making run at the Central division. And Atlanta owns the National League East.

Quick– now tell me what year this is?

1994? 1995? 1996? 1997 1998? 1999? 2000? 2001? 2002? 2003? 2004? All of the above?

Pretty well all of the above, with a few minor exceptions. The American League East has been fossilized for about 10 years, from the last labour disruption in 1994 to now. In almost every season, it’s been Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Orioles, Devil Rays.

You would think the fans would be catching on by now. Oh no. They jam the stadiums every week, paying $35 or more per ticket, to see what they have been led to believe is a contest between competitive baseball clubs for an attainable prize, the playoffs, and baseball glory.

Except– wait a minute– fans are not showing up in the same numbers in Cleveland or Baltimore, and they haven’t been showing up in great numbers in Toronto for the past few years either, and Tampa Bay, of course, is a lost cause.

If, in 1995, you would have told these fans that their team was going to finish in the same position for the next ten years, every single year, without fail, I doubt most of them would have bothered.

So what’s happened? Why is the season fixed? And it is fixed, without a doubt. Unless you really want to argue that the same five teams finishing in the same sequence ten years in a row is a cosmic coincidence. It isn’t. The game is now fixed because owners are smarter than they used to be and money is now the only factor. Owners used to squander a lot of money on washed-up over-the-hill over-rated low-average high-strikeout sluggers. But owners have gotten smarter. They trust their baseball men and scouts more and their own sentiments less.

Admittedly, the World Series itself is still up for grabs, at least, by one of the teams pre-selected for the playoffs. You can buy a regular season championship, but nobody has enough money to guarantee that your ringers will provide an optimum performance during a seven-game series. Ask Atlanta or the Yankees. The team that puts together the best confluence of talent and opportunity and determination over a five or seven game stretch will win each series. But money does determine whether, over 160 games, you finish with enough wins to play in the post season, with very rare exceptions.

I am telling you, Blue Jays fans, that the Blue Jays, for all their improvements this year, are going to finish 3rd or even 4th next year. Baltimore will finish 4th or 3rd. The Yankees will probably finish in first again, and Boston in second. And Cleveland will probably take the Central with Chicago a close second. Oakland and Anaheim will battle over the West.

In the National League East, Atlanta will finish in first, and Philadelphia and Florida will argue over second. St. Louis will contend again in the Central and Houston will again finish in second.

Does the league think there is any problems with this? Does it think fans will lose interest in a league in which the final standings are determined, generally, by team revenues, and where those revenues are a relatively fixed amount?

Not as long as you and I keep buying tickets.

Like any other Blue Jays fan, I can easily convince myself that next year will be better. They will have Halliday for the full season– we hope. Rios will hit more home runs. Hudson will not get injured. Koskie won’t strike out as often. Wells will pick it up a bit in April and May.

Dream on– a rational person can only draw one conclusion from the last 10 years of statistics: another 3rd place finish.

Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2006:
Third.

Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2007:
Third.

Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2008:
Third.

Where the Blue Jays will finish in 2009:
Third.

2022-05:  Where they actually finished:

2005: 3rd

2006: 2nd

2007: 3rd

2008: 4th

2009: 4th

As you can see, I was never off by more than one position.

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The 2003 Blue Jays

Here’s the starting lineup for the Toronto Blue Jays as of June 24, and their batting averages (from a game against the Expos– hence Halladay):

jays2003.jpg (53276 bytes)

I’ve been following the Blue Jays since about 1983 and I doubt they have ever had as formidable a hitting line-up as they do now. Five batters over .300, six, if you include Shannon Stewart, who is currently on the DL. Average, of course, is not the most important number. Wells and Delgado lead the league in RBI; Delgado leads in homers, and Wells is fourth or fifth. The Blue Jays hit for average and power and they take a lot of pitches. They lead in almost all offensive categories: average, on-base percentage, hits, runs, etc., except home runs. They are third, currently, with 97, about ten behind the leaders, the Yankees and Texas.

Baseball is game of streaks, so it pays to be careful before making judgments about how good a team is. The Jays have periodically shown flashes of inspiration in the past decade, but seem to always end up in third place, behind Boston and New York.

Are the 2003 Jays the real thing? Do they have the horses to make the wild card, or perhaps even over take the Yankees?

The most obvious weakness of this team is the pitching. For the first month, Jays pitchers were as horrible as any Blue Jays staff has ever been going back to 1982. The fact that they are still near the bottom of the league in pitching stats, however, is more indicative of that horrible month, during which they went 8-18, than of the quality of their current staff.  Roy Halladay, Kelvim Escobar, and Mark Hendrickson have pitched very well in the past week or so, and Corey Lidle pitches well enough to win, usually. But the bullpen is unusually week, and Cliff Politte has not yet shown that he has solved their closer problem. I watched Politte today, one day after he gave up a home-run to lose a game the Jays should have won to the Expos. His off-speed stuff was well off the plate and his fast balls were high in the strike-zone and didn’t fool anybody. He gave up a single, and two fly ball outs within inches of the outfield wall. The Jays won, but it was a white-knuckle victory, especially after Halladay had given them 8 innings of two-hit ball.

For all the deficiencies of their bullpen, the Blue Jays have been playing terrific ball for the past month and a half. Only the Mariners have been equal to them over that period. That’s long enough to justify the opinion that the 2003 Jays will be competitive. They have closed steadily on the Yankees and Boston and currently sit 2 games back of New York, .5 games up on Boston. It is fair to say that almost no baseball pundits picked them to play this well. Of course, we’re not half way through the season yet.

The Blue Jays virtually never sacrifice bunt or steal. If you believe in the sacrifice bunt and the steal as offensive weapons, it’s hard to explain why the Jays lead the league in almost all offensive categories.

It also appears that baseball writers, while noting the spectacular offense, haven’t generally noticed that the starting pitching has improved dramatically. Halladay has 11 consecutive wins, and the rest of the staff — except for the bullpen– has pitched well enough to win most nights.

The Up Side: This team can score runs! Look at the averages above. The Blue Jays lead the league in most offensive categories, including batting average with runners in scoring position, and in scoring position with two outs.

Both Hinske and Stewart are due to return from the disabled list soon and Hinske, last year’s rookie of the year, at least, will be an improvement at third over Mike Bordick (.260, 2 hrs.). The Blue Jays lead all of baseball in runs scored, and Delgado and Wells lead both leagues in RBI. Delgado theoretically could drive in 160 runs this year, though it’s not altogether likely he’ll maintain this pace through the second half. Delgado should be a shoe-in for first base on the all-star team and Wells should be starting centre field, but he is not well-known outside of Toronto and the baseball writers association. Greg Myers is having a career year at 38 years old. Catalanotto had an off year last year with injuries, but his performance this year is not a fluke. Even the subs, Howie Clark and Reed Johnson, have hit remarkably well. In fact, the Jays would obviously like to find a way to keep Reed Johnson in the line-up after Stewart returns, but this is now a tough line-up to crack.

Pitching has been up and down, but has improved significantly since May 1. Halladay, Escobar, and Hedrickson have pitched very well in the past four weeks. Escobar has always had dominating stuff, but the story was that he occasionally lost focus and was prone to giving up the big inning. Hedrickson pitched poorly for a while but improved when manager Tosca made it clear his job was on the line.

The best indicator of all is the relative youth of the Blue Jays line-up. Young players are cheap, and they tend to improve. That may sound like common sense, but it’s surprising how many baseball teams (like the New York Mets) ignore that simple axiom. Vernon Wells, Orlando Hudson, Eric Hinske, Josh Phelps, Chris Woodward, Howie Clark, and Reed Johnson are already performing well and will likely get better in the next few years. In fact, their performances this year, so far, are somewhat extraordinary, which raises the suspicion that some of them will cool off later in the season. Is Hudson really a .300 hitter? Can Josh Phelps handle the slop pitchers will start to throw at him once they realize what he can do to a fast ball up in the strike zone? Will Hinske continue to improve defensively at 3rd base? If Catalanotto slumps, will Wells start to see more junk pitches?

Josh Phelps is the only hitter in the current line-up who still swings at bad pitches. It’s a scary thought– what if he gets some plate discipline? What if Hinske comes back and hits .300 with power?

The Blue Jays don’t seem to be intimidated by strong, power pitchers. They hammered a finesse pitcher, like Andy Pettite, and they hammered Vasquez in Montreal and scored five runs against Wood in Chicago. The only team that has given them trouble in the last month has been St. Louis.

The Blue Jays swept both Boston and New York in 3 and 4 game sets, the last time they played their divisional rivals.

The Down Side: relief pitching remains a major problem. Politte has given up far too many home runs, and Sturtze and Tam have been ineffective. This is the one area of the line-up Ricciardi might be thinking of improving. Any teams out there with a good strong, durable reliever to trade for a premiere lead-off hitter? Shannon Stewart is a terrific player, but the Jays are awash in good hitters and outfielders right now. Stewart becomes a free agent next year. It would not be a dumb idea to trade him now for a good relief arm or two.

The question of depth is often raised with young, over-achieving teams like the Blue Jays. Often they ride career years by a few key players, disguising their weaknesses with astute management and a bit of good luck. Delgado and Wells are indeed having outstanding years, but when Delgado recently drove in only one run in six games, the Blue Jays still went 5-1. The two bench players called up to replace Stewart and Hinske are batting .325 and .450, with power. Woodward and Hudson, shortstop and second base, are batting a respectable .265 and .298. In their last two starts, Hendrickson, Halladay, and Escobar have each allowed two runs or less each.

The Blue Jays are not a fluke.

This is a remarkable team. It is unknown, except for Delgado and maybe Halladay, but likely to overtake the Yankees within the next two weeks.

Fistfull of Dollars: Blue Jays Payroll is about $80 million, solidly in the middle of the pack, and well below the Yankees’ $175 million.  Below is what the Yankees get for their $175 million:

yanks_ba.jpg (97679 bytes)

Blue Jays Pitchers –

Starters:

Roy Halladay
Mark Hendrickson
Cory Lidle
Doug Davis
Kelvim Escobar

Relievers:

Cliff Politte
Tanyon Sturtze
Pete Walker
Jeff Tam
Aurilio Lopez
Doug Creek

In their 25 year history, the Blue Jays have had three great offensive line-ups.

The first, roughly 1983-1987, featured George Bell, Lloyd Moseby, Jesse Barfield, Tony Fernandez, Damaso Garcia, Rance Mulliniks, and Ernie Whitt. Willie Upshaw holds the team record for longest period of coming out of his slump. In fact, he’s still coming out of his slump.

The second, roughly 1992-1994, featured Roberto Alomar, Devon White, Kelly Gruber, Ed Sprague, Pat Borders, John Olerud, and Joe Carter with trade-deadline guests, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, and Rickey Henderson. I suspect both Winfield’s and Henderson’s contributions were minimal, but Molitor joined Olerud and Alomar as three of the best hitters in the league in 1993. The Blue Jays won two World Series with this team, including the infamous 15-14 victory over Philadelphia in game 5, and, of course, Joe Carter’s walk-off series-winning home-run off Mitch Williams..

Joe Carter and George Bell were dominating for brief periods. Olerud was an outstanding hitter at times, and extremely consistent, if unspectacular. He’ll have a 3,000 hit career but won’t make the Hall of Fame. Delgado is probably the greatest offensive threat to ever wear a Blue Jays uniform.

But of the entire pack of them, Roberto Alomar was, in his prime, the best all-round player the Blue Jays ever had, and the most likely to be the first Blue Jay to go into the Hall of Fame (as a Blue Jay)..

 

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Yankee Aura: $$$

Please spare me all the rhapsodic prose about the Yankee Mystique, and the “aura”, and “knowing how to win” and coming up big for the games that count, and so on and so and so on.

There is nothing mysterious about it. The Yankees win because they have the biggest payroll in baseball.

Now you may look at their line-up and say, well, who the heck is getting all that money? Paul O’Neil? Scott Brosius? Chuck Knoblach?

Not exactly. Big money looks like Mo Vaughn. It looks like Alex Rodriguez. It looks like Juan Gonzalez. It looks like Cal Everitt. It looks like all those “star players” that you hear about all the time, who set records for largest salaries, and biggest egos. The Yankees used to be the prime offender.

But that’s from the old days when George Steinbrenner called the shots and micromanaged the team into mediocrity, before he got smart and left baseball to the baseball men, and before Pat Gillick, the smartest manager in baseball, left the Blue Jays to try his luck in Baltimore, and then Seattle, and before Oakland decided to concentrate on young, talented pitchers.

The new big money talks more eloquently. Steinbrenner now lets his baseball people call the shots. The money is still big, but instead of being squandered on a couple of big, bloated Cadillac’s, it is wisely distributed among a dozen or so Accords. Fine cars. Reliable. Solid. Durable. Instead of Mo Vaughn or Carlos Delgado, and a cast of nobodies, the Yankees feature Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada. None of these with the exception of Rivera are the very best, or the very biggest. But no other team can afford such an all-round stellar cast.

Baseball loves to believe that he money doesn’t make a difference. In the case of teams like Boston and Baltimore, it’s true. But Baseball acts as if any team can come along and assemble a durable winner, and take on any other team for the championship. The truth is, that the Yankees, spending their huge cable dollars wisely, are almost invincible. They have won four of the last five World Series, and show every sign of winning four of the next five. It may not be with O’Neill, Clemens, and Martinez, but they have some talented rookies coming up, young players like Soriano, and the money to bring in superb free-agents like Mussina to round out the line-up.

So what we have is that the richest team is going to be favored to win almost every year. And what needs to happen is for the Yankees to recognize that their huge payroll is financed by the game of baseball– not by the Yankees playing themselves– and that some kind of revenue-sharing is necessary to preserve a competitive league.

This year, Oakland and Seattle made credible runs at the World Series. Neither team could really match up to the Yankees. It’s deceptive because you think the teams are similar, but the extra money that the Yankees spent wisely– on a Mike Mussina instead of an Alex Rodriguez– made all the difference. Oakland will probably have to give up Giambi as a free agent this year. Seattle will probably never have so many players having career years all at once again.

 

If you made a list of the best players by position in baseball, surprise, surprise, there aren’t many Yankees on the list. Forget the hype about Jeter’s allegedly brilliant defense in the playoffs– Rodriguez is better. Giambi is a better first baseman, and Roberto Alomar is the best 2nd baseman. Ivan Rodriguez is the best catcher, and there is no best 3rd base. Shannon Stewart is a better lead-off hitter than Knoblach.

Where the Yankees do have the best is obvious: Mariano Rivera has no peer as a closer.

The trouble is, no other team has as many second or third best players.

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Mike Piazza Pie: Sports Economics

Mike Piazza now makes $91 million for playing baseball, for seven years. How on earth can they do it? Only 30 years ago, the entire New York Yankees baseball club was valued at only $12,000,000.

Well, it’s a free country. If a baseball owner wants to pay an athlete $17 million a year to play a game, why shouldn’t he?

They can pay Mike Piazza $91 million because fans continue to flock to the stadiums and plop themselves in front of their television sets to watch Mike Piazza play baseball. From that money, the New York Mets pays its players. And like every other business, they pay all their other expenses, like administrative staff, office space, scouts, managers, and rent or mortgage for the stadium… and taxes.

Well, wait a minute.

Yes, yes, the Blue Jays pay $11 million dollars a year in taxes on the Skydome. But who built the Skydome? You did. With your tax money. We paid $321 million to build the Skydome and then we rented it to the Jays for considerably less than it costs to operate it.

That is why the Skydome Corporation is now bankrupt.

This year, Hartford, Conn. is donating $350 million to the New England Patriots. And Maryland is donating $220 million to the Baltimore Ravens NFL team, and kicked in an extra $80 just to make owner Art Modell happy.

At least the Blue Jays paid their taxes last year. And so did the Expos. But the Cardinals and the White Sox, and the Red Sox, and the Reds, and the Dodgers, and the Rockies, and the Mets, and all the other teams? Not a penny.

How can that be? This is a multi-million dollar business! These owners are filthy rich. They pay their players absurdly extravagant sums of money to do what most of us would gladly do for nothing. And they don’t pay taxes?!

No, they don’t. They don’t pay taxes, because foolish citizens and even more foolish politicians have decided to use tax payer money to subsidize professional sports teams.

You see, Mike Piazza doesn’t care who he plays for. You do. You are a fan. You want your team to win. You are loyal to your team even if they lose. Loyalty is a good quality.  But baseball players have the loyalty of rats. If the New York Mets didn’t offer to pay Mike Piazza more money, he was going to go play for someone else!

But the New York Mets didn’t have enough money for Mike Piazza. How would the owners of the Mets make a profit if they had to pay Mike Piazza more money?

Well, they can cut other expenses, like those horrific stadium costs. But if the team cuts those costs from its budget, who is going to pay for it? Why the city, of course! But where does the city get its money? From property taxes. And where do property taxes come from?

Right– you. You with your $45,000 a year. You are going to give tax money to the New York Mets (if you are citizen of New York) so that they can give Mike Piazza an additional $4 million per year.

But the tax payer would think that is a dumb idea. So instead of the city giving a check to the Mets, it gives them a deduction on their taxes. And then it chips in for a stadium. And then it provides police and traffic services for free.

This is all no secret, by the way, though you would think it would be almost unimaginable that voters would be so stupid as to approve these arrangements. Sports Illustrated has been ranting about this devious little scam for years. A few smart politicians and journalists have caught on as well. And the voters in Minnesota caught on, and recently turned down a proposal to make a gift of a $100 million stadium to the billionaire owner of the Twins, who then threatened to move the Twins to some town with more idiots in it.

It is one of the biggest scandals in modern history: taxpayers subsidizing multi-million dollar contracts for spoiled athletes! And you just know that some of these same owners and athletes and sports journalists and politicians who approve of these arrangements would be among the first to complain bitterly about their hard-earned tax dollars going to a single mother on welfare. Freeloader! Parasite! Give us back your $500 a month and go find a job! Maybe you can park Mike Piazza’s spare Rolls Royce for him, if you’re good.

The problem is that too many cities give in to owner blackmail: build me a stadium or I move to a different city. And the city fathers weep and wail– “Alas, we cannot be without our sports team!” and issue a bond or debenture and build a stadium and forgive them their annual property taxes. Cities without sports teams plead with the Expos or the Twins: move here and we will give you millions of dollars. Millions of YOUR dollars.

And you voters stand for this??? You re-elect these guys? Are you insane?

The Baltimore Orioles, thank you, paid for their own stadium. Hurray for Baltimore! But they still don’t pay any taxes. [According to the Toronto Star of Nov. 29, 1998, the taxpayers paid $254 million for Baltimore’s stadium. When I find out who’s telling the truth, I’ll update this.]

Now, you will hear many supporters of these professional sport teams argue that the teams generate a great deal of revenue, including tax revenue, and attract jobs, and therefore, more than “pay for themselves”. Right. You can apply this argument to absolutely any business you like: banks, car makers, theatre companies, insurance companies, computer makers, anybody. They all generate revenue and taxes. Big deal. Pay your taxes and shut up.

And the issue has been studied: the economic benefits are grossly exaggerated, especially, as I say, compared to other possible investments.

The only solution is for all the cities to get together and agree that none of them will subsidize major league professional sports in any shape or form whatsoever. No subsidized stadiums. No tax concessions. No free police guards. Not even a parade (a long civic advertisement for the team). Tell the major leagues to conduct their businesses like everyone else: you balance out your income vs. your expenditures, and if you can’t afford to pay Mike Piazza $91 million, you offer him less.

Even better, the federal governments in both Canada and the U.S. should outlaw civic funding of sports stadiums.

 

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Small is Beautiful and Other Momentary Lapses in Justice

Twenty-five years after E.F. Schumacher published “Small is Beautiful” the Ontario government still doesn’t get it.

It is about to close hundreds of small schools across Ontario because they are “inefficient”. The Ontario Public Schools Association predicts that 600 small schools will have to be closed to meet the demands of the Harris government. In Toronto alone, 128 schools are slated to be shutdown. In response to the public outcry, Harris tells the boards to cut their own “bloated bureaucracy”. He tells them, to give up some of their administrative space, though he must know that even if they gave up all of their administrative space, it would still be less than 20% of what is required.

The Toronto Board has already implemented the following:

  • School superintendents (making $100,000 a year) cut from 92 to 47.
  • Trustees cut from 74 to 22.
  • Trustees’ salaries cut from up to $50,000 to $5,000.
  • Administrative staff of 2,000 to be cut in half over three years.

Well, hey, we all hate bureaucracies, so way to go Toronto School Board! I’m too stupid to figure out what 2,000 administrative staff do in a city the size of Toronto, so let’s turf them.

Well, what do they do? The truth is, I have a feeling that a lot of what they do is administrative masturbation. You need a clerical worker to do the filing for an administrator who organizes training seminars for other administrators who run the human resources department which administers the pension plans and benefits packages for the secretaries and the administrators. Other administrators spend a lot of time doing “the vision thing”, going on retreats, and making strategic plans.

Anyway, speaking of Napoleon, I’ve had enough the Harris sniveling about “improving” education. He thinks we are stupid enough to believe that reducing the money spent on education will result in smarter, better students and teachers. Just as you know that if you reduce the amount of money you spend on a car, you will end up with a better car, right? And if you spend less on plumbing, you get better pipes, right? And if you hire the cheapest computer programmer, you get the best software, right? Riiiiight.

Now, obviously, spending more money does not guarantee a better educational system, just as it doesn’t guarantee better software. But you certainly can’t have a good educational system without spending the money necessary to do the job well, attracted good people, and provide adequate resources.

I attended small schools all my life. My children attend a large high school. The larger high school has some advantages, but the biggest difference between the two, by far, is that it is relatively easy to coast unnoticed through four years of education without learning anything in a big school. And it is hard for parents to get to know your kids’ teachers. You see them once for the one semester your child is in their class, and then you never meet the same teacher again. You never develop a strong enough relationship to feel that wonderful sense of accountability that teachers in small schools feel.

Small schools are often an important social and cultural force in the communities they are located in. They are where everyone goes for Halloween parties and the Christmas pageant and graduation. Parents volunteer to help in the classroom and to improve facilities. Everyone meets there at 3:15 to bring their children home. Everyone cares about their safety.

Harris wants to put them all on a bus, demolish or sell the schools, and convince the parents to place all their trust in an institution he has been slamming ever since he came into office.

Does Harris really care at all about education? It’s hard to believe that anybody could be so stupid as to not care. But all of the policies and directives and initiatives he has taken seem far more concerned with reducing costs than actually improving anything. The truth is, improvements do cost money. The truth is, even though we know schools and school boards waste a lot of money, they do still accomplish things. Students need good lab equipment, computers, books, field trips, art supplies, film, paint, desks, and so on. Having all those things doesn’t guarantee a good education, but you can’t have a good education without them.

* * *

The government has stacked a committee that was supposed to hold hearings, listen to varying viewpoints, think about the information gathered, then come to a rational and fair conclusion about how 46 million hectares of publicly owned land in Northern and Central Ontario should be used. This committee heard from loggers, industrialists, commercialists, environmentalists, cottage-owners, and the general public. They then adopted a very thoughtful expression and said, “hell, let’s turn everything over to the loggers.”

The Committee’s official conclusion is that 7.6% of public land should be set aside for preservation. “Hell, let’s give everything to the loggers.”

Now, this is a government that says no one gets a free ride. No more welfare bums. No more government handouts for people who don’t contribute. This government wants to charge user fees for fresh air. This is a government that wants schools of 10,000 students, taught by video camera from a windowless cell in Port Elgin. This is a government that wants MacDonald’s to operate our prison system. But then they turnaround and offer all the trees in Ontario to the logging companies for practically nothing.

If you’re poor. If you’re destitute, and living on the streets of the Toronto– this government says, tough luck, fella. I can’t help yah. But give that bum a chain saw, and the government says, hey, you want some trees? We don’t need them.

* * *

Hey, I’ve been saying this all along! You know those late penalties they charge you on your utilities bill (in Canada)? Like, about $20.00 if you’re one day late on a $200.00 bill? The real interest rate on those charges is, according to actuarial experts, about 5,000,000,000%. That’s right, five billion. In Canada, it is illegal to charge interest rates higher than 60% per annum (which is pretty ridiculous anyway). Well the Supreme Court just ruled that these interest rates, contrary to previous rulings, and with the complicity of the Minister of Energy for Ontario in the 1970’s (under Premier Comatose, Bill Davis), may well be subject to Federal law after all.

This was just another example of the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. Now it looks like there’s a chance that the law might be applied equally once again.

The court case is based on a challenge of the penalty filed by Gordon Garland against Consumer’s Gas, on behalf of the 30% of customers who pay late.

* * *

The Blue Jays are demanding a “better deal” from the Skydome or, so they say, they will play at the “mistake on the lake”, Exhibition Place, next season.

Watch your pockets. A “better deal” means the Blue Jays want the taxpayers of Ontario to subsidize the cost of playing baseball in the Skydome so they can pay Jose Canseco $28 million over four years to bat .234.

Why don’t they just pay Jose Canseco less? Because the New York Mets just agreed to pay Mike Piazza $91 million over seven years to play catcher for them. How can they pay this guy so much money? Well, they can’t. Buy we can. You and I will gladly hand over our money for stadiums and police and road construction so Mike can have an extra limo, three or four extra houses, body guards, and a $25,000 stereo system.

If we don’t pay, undoubtedly, they will move the Blue Jays to Sarasota or someplace that has more suckers per capita than we do.
* * *

How many wars are there in the world this year? How many conflicts between two or more nations in which people are shooting or bombing or shelling each other?

None. Nada. Not a single one.

Yes, there are conflicts. But every conflict in the world this year, involving military action, is a civil conflict, between two factions within a single nation.

It’s true– you can check it out. Is humanity making progress? I think so. Eeyore says, “oh, there’s sure to be another war soon.” Pooh says that’s dumb.

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Blue Jays in 1998

Well, Cal Ripken finally sat down. He notified his manager 30 minutes before game time that, in his infinite grace and wisdom, he would sit out one game. Half of baseball was frantic. I even heard some sadly misguided fans talk about what a great, unselfish player Cal has been.

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Unselfish! What’s wrong with this picture: Cal Ripken tells his coach when he will and when he won’t play! For the record, aside from Ed Sprague and some no-name, Cal Ripken has the worst offensive stats of any third baseman in the league. I wonder if his manager thanked him for sitting out a game.

Anyway, we saw the “great” Cal Ripken live, in person, at the Skydome on Monday. There was some announcement on the PA and then everybody was supposed to stand up and cheer him. I stayed in my seat.

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We had decent seats, 15 rows back along the first base line, just beyond the infield. For four of us, that came to $117.00, including tax. Unlike most major league teams in the U.S., the Blue Jays pay their share of property taxes, $7 million for 1998.

We bought hot dogs and coke on the way, knowing we weren’t allowed to take cans of pop into the stadium. When I popped in one of the entrances to ask where we pick up our tickets, a nice man, a Jays official, offered to get us a cup for the coke. Very decent of him. You sometimes think professional sports organizations are rather tactless and ruthless about getting your money. They are, but at least the Blue Jays have the good sense to show a little decency here and there.

Most people spent the first twenty minutes in the dome looking at the jumbotron to see if the camera is zooming in on them. Fans in the nose-bleed sections will put on a show, take off the shirts, and dance. They have their reward. As soon as the game started, a steady stream of people began leaving their seats for the bathrooms or concessions. I estimate that I saw half of the first 30 pitches. A little boy to the right of us left his seat for the aisle, requiring us to stand up, 13 times. If I was his father, I’d tell him he could leave twice during the game, whenever he chose.

Shawn Green has an amazing ball-player’s body. If Norman Rockwell drew us a ball-player, and wasn’t joking about it, he’d come up with someone who looked like Shawn Green: tall, lanky, angular, with a whip for an arm and an easy, efficient gait. His cap sits low on his forehead just like a ball cap should. I love watching him.

Roberto Alomar, on the other hand, looks like a ballet dancer. Nothing wrong with that– he moves like a ballet dancer too. He’s probably the best all-round player in the game, when he’s not spitting at umpires. The home-plate umpire in this game, by the way, was the very same John Hirschbeck, and his strike zone is still pretty wide. Roger Clemens had 15 strike-outs on the night, not a few of them due to Hirschbeck’s generous zone. At one point, after a called strike that looked pretty low, Alomar turned to him and glared, but didn’t spit.

The Blue Jays are probably not going to make the wild card. At this stage, they would have to win all their remaining games and Boston lose all of theirs. Still, they have made a terrific race out of it after being more than 12 games behind at the end of July. The Jays have the major’s best record since July 31st, right after they dumped Randy Myers, Ed Sprague, Mike Stanley, and Juan Guzman. They were, supposedly, throwing in the towel, but something wonderful happened. Their “fall-back” outfielders, Stewart, Cruz, and Green did what many of us thought they would do two years ago: they ran down balls in the gap, hit the cut-off man, and brought some excitement into the field. They also began to hit up a storm, steal bases, and run up the pitch counts. Tony Fernandez, moved to third base where his defensive lapses don’t hurt as much, batted over .400 in September. Carlos Delgado is establishing himself as reliable RBI man. And Blue Jays pitching, including the young and untested Escobar and Carpenter, as well as the best pitcher in the League in Roger Clemens, began to smother opposition bats.

Everyone thinks the Blue Jays will do it next year. Well, hope springs eternal, but it is a known phenomenon that teams that improve dramatically one season often fall back the next. They would need to re-sign Canseco, but I doubt he will produce another 44 home runs, or survive the full season without injuries. Toronto’s pitching is solid, but I’m not sure that Person is going to be a great closer, and I wonder if Plesac and Quantrill can continue to work miracles out of the bullpen. Roberto Alomar has made it known he would love to play for Toronto next season. Alomar’s a cypher. What does he care about, other than baseball? Who knows? But he is, without a doubt, the best second baseman in baseball. If the Blue Jays were to sign him (he is a free agent at the end of the season), I would bet they will do very well in ’99. Alex Gonzalez is solid defensively, perhaps one of the two or three best shortstops, but he needs to cut down on his strikeouts. Behind the plate, the Jays are solid, if unspectacular. Santiago could have a great season. Then again, he could bat .240.

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Jays in ’99? Possibly. Jays in ’00? Given the same line-up with two more years of maturity– almost certainly.