Los Angeles Angels
The Angels were created on October 26, 1960. The expansion draft took place on December 14. So hastily was the franchise cobbled together that the team's first general manager, Fred Haney, was chosen on their way to the press conference announcing the deal. Haney ended up with a much better haul in the expansion draft than his Washington counterparts. Familiar faces included Yankees All-Star outfielder Bob Cerv, former Browns ace Ned Garver, former Cincinnati slugger Ted Kluszewski, and the "Walking Man" Eddie Yost. These veterans served to give the franchise a bit of star power, but it was the acquisition of two young prospects that would lay the groundwork for the Angels' franchise in the 1960s: righthander Dean Chance, drafted from the Orioles, and shortstop Jim Fregosi, taken from Boston.
The 1961 Angels called LA's Wrigley Field their home. It would be a challenge to call Wrigley Field a major league park; the power alleys were a cozy 345' feet from home plate. Only the Yankees (240, with Mantle and Maris leading the charge) out-homered the Angels (189). There were 248 home runs hit at Wrigley Field in 1961, an amazing total for a pitcher's era. The park made otherwise marginal hitters look like stars; a good example would be outfielder Ken Hunt, who hit 25 HR in 1961 but never hit more than 6 in any other season.
With their slugging offense being supported by solid pitching from Ken McBride and reliever Tom Morgan, the Angels were surprisingly competitive: they finished in 8th place at 70-91; still the best record ever by a modern expansion team's inaugural season. Not only that, but the 1962 squad went 86-76 coming in 3rd place, 10 games behind the Yankees. This led Autry and the front office to believe the team was better than it really was. Consequently the team tended to look for the short-term fix rather than investing in the farm system. This would be the basic problem with the franchise for the next 40 years.
1962 saw the team further subordinated to Walter O'Malley when it took up residency in Dodger Stadium. They went from one of the best hitting parks in baseball history into one of the worst; and after their surprising 1962 performance, the club sank back into 9th the following season.
The best news on the team was the development of shortstop Fregosi. Fregosi wasn't a great defender, but he was possibly the best-hitting shortstop of the 1960's. His breakout season in 1964 saw him hit .277 with 18 HR, 9 triples and 72 walks despite playing in cavernous Dodger Stadium. But the real superstar in 1964 was pitcher Dean Chance. Chance dominated the league with a 1.65 ERA, going 20-9 with 207 K in 278.1 IP. Despite playing in the same era (and same city) as Sandy Koufax, Chance walked away with the 1964 Cy Young Award. There was only one award for both leagues at the time, and Chance received 17 votes against just 1 for Koufax (2 votes went to the Cubs' Larry Jackson). Unfortunately, Chance never performed that well again, with his only other good seasons coming after being traded to Minnesota. Fregosi, too, fell short of promise. Coming off a monster season in 1970, Fregosi suffered an injury that basically ended his effectiveness as a player. It all but ended what should have been a Hall-of-Fame career, and the Angels were forced to recover.
The 1960s went on with the team barely able to compete. Despite the move into their own stadium (known as the Big "A" in Anaheim), the Angels only once finished above .500 in the decade; that being a, 84-77 5th-place finish in 1967.
The theme continued with the team unable to produce its own stars, and forced to import second-rate players from other organizations just to stay competitive. The only really good deal the team made in the early 70's was a trade with the Mets that sent Fregosi (then all but finished) to the Mets in exchange for Leroy Stanton, Frank Estrada, Don Rose . . . and Nolan Ryan. Ryan's first year in California (1972) was also his break-out year; he made 39 starts and pitched 284 innings, posting a 2.28 ERA and leading the league in both strikeouts (329) and walks (157). The best years of Ryan's Hall-of-Fame career came aas an Angel, with the highlight being the 1973 season where he set a new major league record with 383 strikeouts.
It looked like the Angels might have another fireballer on their hands when Frank Tanana came along. Tanana was the team's 1st-round pick in the 1971 draft, and proved to be one of the best pitchers to come out of the team's farm system. Tanana struck out over 200 batters in three straight years, posting ERAs around 2.50 each season. It looked like the Angels had a dynamic duo on their hands, but an arm injury sidelined Tanana's career. With the Angels dubious about his future, they traded him to Boston as part of a deal for Fred Lynn. Tanana later resurrected his career with Detroit. The Angels developed another promising pitcher around the same time in Andy Messersmith, but decided to trade him to the Dodgers for a 37-year-old Frank Robinson.
It looked like the arrival of superstar Lynn might help bolster a lackluster lineup. But although he had a couple of good years left in him, Lynn was never able to recapture his MVP glory days with the Red Sox. He would be the first of many high-profile trades and free agent signings that left the team with little more than payroll trouble.
The farm system never really lived up to that of the Dodgers, who in the 70's were churning out superstars by the truckload. Asked in 1971 what the problem was with his young team, manager Lefty Phillips replied: "Our phenoms ain't phenominating."
Managers came and went by the truckload, most of them despairing to work with a sub-par team and a front office obsessed with nothing more than out-drawing the Dodgers. But in the late 70's, the nucleus of a good team started to form. Boosted by some worthwhile free agents (Bobby Grich, Don Baylor), some smart trades netting them players such as Ryan and Brian Downing and some sure-enough homegrown talents such as Carney Lansford, Dave LaRoche, the 1978 Angels went 87-75 to finish 3rd in the AL West, a mere 5 games behind Kansas City.
With former star Jim Fregosi at the helm, the 1979 team became the first in franchise history to make the postseason; their won-lost record was a lackluster 88-74, but it was good enough for a 3-game cushion over 2nd-place Kansas City. The heart of the 1978 team returned, bolstered by the front office's nabbing of Rod Carew, obtained from the Twins in the midst of a salary dispute. Carew hit .318 and drew 73 walks as the team's first baseman. Even he wasn't enough in the ALCS, however, as the team went down to Baltimore in 4 games.
The biggest name absent from the 1979 team was outfielder Bostock. After emerging as a star in Minnesota, the Angels signed Bostock before the 1978 season. He had a fine year, hitting .296 with 59 walks and only 36 strikeouts. But on September 23 of that season, Bostock was shot to death as an innocent bystander. It was only one in a long series of tragedies that seemed to doom the franchise's up-and-comers. Ken Hunt, outfielder with the 1961 team, snapped his collarbone while stretching in the on-deck circle and never played a full season again. Pitcher Ken McBride, one of the few reliable hurlers on the team, suffered a car accident in 1964 that basically ended his career. In 1965, rookie pitcher Dick Wantz looked like a sure thing in spring training, but was dead of a brain tumor four months later. At least 3 other Angels died in car accidents during the period. The tragedies lent an air of doom and desperation to an already sick franchise.
The front office also showed a great disregard for its players. Superstar Fregosi was refused permission to undergo surgery for a foot tumor in 1971. After trying to tough it out, the shortstop finally checked himself into the hospital. The delay helped end a promising career and likely cost him a shot at Cooperstown. One pitcher was sent a letter to his house saying his raise was denied because he had contracted a venereal disease. The pitcher's wife opened the letter and sued him for divorce. Outfielder Tony Conigliaro pestered the team so much about his eye problems that they thought he was just a crybaby. They were as surprised as anyone when Conigliaro announced his retirement due to the troubles. The Angels refused to pay the rest of his salary, and were only forced to do so when the Players Association sued.
After a disappointing drop to 6th in 1980, the Angels battled back under new skipper Gene Mauch, winning the AL West in 1982 with a team-record (at the time) 93-69 campaign. It was partly the work of big-name hitters like Reggie Jackson (free agent) and Doug DeCinces (trade with Baltimore) that helped the team edge the Royals by 3 games, but moreso a mound staff of no-names like Mike Witt and Geoff Zahn along with the veteran Ken Forsch that drove the team with a 3.82 team ERA that ranked 2nd in the AL. The ALCS against Milwaukee got off to a hot start when the Halos took the first two games, but then dropped the next three. It gave the team, their manager Mauch, and the franchise as a whole a reputation as "chokers" that would last 20 years.
It was the same story in 1986. The team won the AL West with a 92-70 and took a decisive lead in the ALCS. But with reliever Donnie Moore one out away from clinching the pennant, he gave up a home run to Boston's Dave Henderson that ignited an extra-inning victory for Boston. The Red Sox took the next two games, and the Angels went home again. Moore would never recover. He committed suicide in 1989, attempting to murder his wife in the process.
The 1990s saw the team reacquainting itself with also-ran status. Despite the development of solid young pitchers such as Jim Abbott and Chuck Finley, the team was still chasing after free agent bats, such as Chili Davis and Lance Parrish. Although the team would later develop 3 fine outfielders in Garret Anderson, Tim Salmon, and Jim Edmonds. Salmon and Anderson would become cornerstones of the franchise. But Edmonds was lost in a trade to the Cardinals that netted the Angels reliever Kent Bottenfield and second baseman Adam Kennedy, not exactly fair returns.
With the death of Autry, the singer's second wife Jackie intensified the "Win one for the Singin' Cowboy" rally cries. It didn't look like the Angels would need any help in 1995. Riding the bats of Edmonds, Salmon, and Anderson, as well as hurlers Finley and Mark Langston, the Angels took an 11-game lead into early August. Then they proceeded to blow it. In what was one of the greatest collapses in history, the Angels eventually fell behind the Seattle Mariners, with free agent closer Lee Smith's struggles exemplifying the team's futility. The Angels did manage to rebound and catch the Mariners in a tie on the last day of the season. The ensuing 1-game playoff saw the team dominated by Mariner ace Randy Johnson, with the team unable to come up with the big win once again.
The Angels 2002 quest for the World Title began quietly. Added to incumbent stars Anderson and Salmon were fruits from the most productive farm system in the franchise's history. It provided center fielder Darin Erstad, whose 240 hits in 2000 electrified baseball (and set a new standard for a career year). It also provided third base slugger Troy Glaus and rock-solid backstop Bengie Molina.
But the most productive, and most surprising, aspect of the 2002 team was their pitching staff. Their 3.69 tean ERA was just a hair worse than Oakland (3.68) in the entire league. Added to incumbent closer Troy Percival were solid young starters Jarrod Washburn and John Lackey, and top-notch relief arms such as Brendan Donnelly and Scot Shields.
The entire season was a story of just being a hair worse than Oakland. The Angels set a franchise record with 99 wins -- but finished 2nd behind Oakland. The A's won 103 games, including a 20-game winning streak in mid-summer that made the baseball world forget the Angels altogether. But the Angels' strong record got them into the postseason, as they finished with a 6-game cushion over Boston and Seattle as the AL Wild Card.
The postseason would be a tale of outslugging the other guys. While baseball commentators waxed nostalgic about Anaheim's superior pitching and defense, the Angels proceeded to win in the postseason as ugly as humanly possible. They defeated the Yankees in the ALDS despite a 6.17 team ERA; they simply scored 8 runs per game and made up for it. They waltzed over Minnesota in a tame, 5-game ALCS that saw the team sport a 2.45 ERA. For the first time in franchise history, the Angels were going to the World Series.
It was downright ugly. It seemed like longer than 7 games, what with the 85 runs scored, the 21 home runs and the 10 errors. The Angels posted a 5.75 team ERA and were outscored by the Giants (44-41), but managed to emerge victorious, thanks to the well-publicized heroics of rookie Francisco (K-Rod) Rodriguez and That Damn Rally Monkey.
With the collapse of the Yankee dynasty, the Angels have become one of the best all-around franchises in the American League. It has yet to win them another World Series, but they have returned to the postseason twice: in 2004 (swept out of the ALDS by Boston) and 2005 (again defeating New York in the ALDS, but losing to Chicago in a 5-game ALCS).
With new owner Arte Moreno pulling the strings, the Angels appear to be a stable, winning franchise. They've shown a remarkable ability to not only spend money, but (for the most part) spending it wisely, bringing in 2004 AL MVP Vladimir Guerrero and 2005 AL Cy Young Bartolo Colon as free agents. Their farm system continues to bear outstanding fruit, with young shortstop Brandon Wood (20 years old) making his name as one of baseball's top prospects. They still have to compete with the A's, but they're actually a very respectable franchise for the first time in a long, long while.
They're Back in the Saddle Again.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Expansion Pt. 2
1960
The pressures forcing Major League Baseball to expand were multifold. The population of the country had shifted decidedly westward since the turn of the century, making the 16 Eastern and Midwestern teams unable to fully exploit the country's growing population. The deterioration of the major cities inhabited by the majors called for a move to new, burgeoning metropolises west of the Mississippi. Westward expansion was pioneered by teams such as the Braves and Athletics, illustrating the money to be made in new cities. The practicalities of expansion became more manageable the more teams moved out west, with the growing opportunities of air travel making westward road trips much easier. All these factors were weighing on the minds of baseball men in the early 1960's.
But the most immediate factor was the pressure being brought on baseball by Congress, threatening to look into baseball's anti-trust exemption. When Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith urged the American League to let him move his franchise, the owners faced even more backlash from influential Washington figures. Expansion now became not only likely, but necessary.
The AL's solution was to allow Griffith to move his franchise to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The league would then install an expansion franchise in Washington, D.C., still to be named the Senators. Construction on a new stadium (later named RFK Stadium) would allow the Senators to leave cavernous Griffith Stadium and find friendlier quarters.
The AL also decided to place an expansion franchise in Los Angeles. Many teams had attempted to move into the city in the past, but nothing had come of it. And since Walter O'Malley had moved his Dodgers to Chavez Ravine and seen unprecedented attendance, he was not anxious to see another team on his turf. The assigning of the Los Angeles franchise to singer Gene Autry came after a great deal of backroom finagling between league owners, with Walter O'Malley feverishly pulling strings to protect his interests. Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg (then part owner of the White Sox) put together a syndicate to secure the Angels. But the league took exception to the fact that one of Greenberg's partners in the syndicate was Bill Veeck, whose maverick nature and publicity stunts made the other owners refuse to grant Greenberg the franchise unless he dropped Veeck. Greenberg refused, and the league moved on.
Not only did Autry pay $350,000 to O'Malley as an indemnification against invading his "territory," but he also agreed to lease the Dodger-owned Wrigley Field, a minor league park, until their own stadium could be constructed. The Angels entered their first season already under a good many fiscal obligations, a state that would continue throughout the franchise's history.
So entering the 1961 American League season, the major leagues boasted new franchises for the first time since the AL's birth in 1901. It made for an interesting practical challenge that the new 10-team AL was forced to adopt a 162-game schedule, whereas the 8-team NL stuck with the traditional 154-game campaign. This would prove to be no small issue when Roger Maris entered the summer poised to challenge Babe Ruth's all-time home run record.
The (New) Washington Senators
The New Senators entered the league under a bit of a cloud. They were meant to replace Calvin Griffith's team, which claimed that the city couldn't support his franchise and left town. Few executives seemed to have asked whether the new Senators wouldn't ultimately face the same problems that forced their forebears out of town. But, not looking to alienate Congress, the owners eschewed forethought and established the franchise anyway. Ten years later, the Senators would be gone, for most of the same reasons the original franchise left.
But the 1961 team entered play with some bare optimism. In the expansion draft held in December of 1960, the Senators had selected the core of their first ballclub. Familiar faces taken in the draft included: Dick Donovan, a relatively successful pitcher with the White Sox, journeyman slugger Dale Long, veteran left fielder Gene Woodling and former Yankee MVP pitcher Bobby Shantz.
The 1961 season opened with former Washington All-Star Mickey Vernon managing. Offense was hard to come by in Griffith Stadium, and it wore on the team. Catcher Gene Green led the team with 18 HR and a .280 batting average. The veteran Woodling hit .313, but in limited duty. The fair performance by the pitching staff (6th in the AL in ERA) was largely an effect of the stadium; only the established Donovan pitched well, posting a 2.40 ERA that belied his 10-10 W-L record. The Senators finished the season 61-100, tied with the Athletics for last place in the league. It got no better for the team, as they took over sole possession of last in 1962 and 1963. Vernon was fired mid-way through the 1963 season, being ultimately replaced by Gil Hodges.
Hodges took what was essentially a nothing team and started to build a contender. The ownership realized that most of the unknowns they took in the expansion draft were unknown for a reason, with only outfielder Chuck Hinton developing into a valuable part of the team.
The team gradually rose above the cellar as the 60's wore on. They finished 9th in '64 (their first year out of the basement), 8th in 1965 and 1966, and then rose all the way to 6th place in 1967. A good part of the team's success came from a trade with the Dodgers in late 1964. The Senators gave up young pitcher Claude Osteen and John Kennedy to the Dodgers in exchange for 3B Ken McMullen, OF Frank Howard, P Phil Ortega and P Pete Richert. Osteen developed into a good pitcher in L.A., but the trade brought the Nats McMullen, a good-hitting third baseman, and Howard, who would be the franchise's biggest star in Washington.
Howard was a home run hitter in Los Angeles, but fans and management soured on his low batting averages and strikeouts. Howard came to Washington and became a hero. Nicknamed "The Capital Punisher" for his titanic blasts, Howard slugged 239 HR in 7 seasons in Washington. Many seats in the nether regions RFK Stadium are still marked as the landing place of one of Howard's big blasts.
"Hondo" (as he was more commonly known) was the only truly potent hitter on the team, and he put together a few monster seasons. In 1968, the year of the pitcher, Howard slugged 44 HR, leading both leagues by far (no one else hit 37). His .552 slugging percentage also paced the majors.
Perhaps as a consequence of his new-found BabeRuthness, Howard began drawing more walks. Combined with the league's efforts to shrink the strike zone to favor the hitter, Howard nearly doubled his previous career high in walks (60) by drawing 102 in 1969, and then 132 in 1970. He posted an OBP of over .400 each year, the only two times he would top the mark. Howard's 1968 heroics earned him 8th place in the AL MVP voting. He would top that with a 4th-place finish in 1969 and a 5th-place finish in 1970. Howard stayed with the team after Washington, getting traded to Detroit and retiring after the 1973 season.
Pitching-wise, the Nats didn't have as much to be happy about. Ortega, obtained in the Osteen trade, combined with Dick Bosman, Joe Coleman, and former Senator Camilo Pascual as the only strong hurlers on the staff.
Despite the lack of any evident stars beyond Howard, Hodges was still able to bring the team back to respectability. His reputation as a manager grew a little too much, though, and the New York Mets convinced him to take over their squad in 1968. The Hodges-less Nats plummeted back to last place, while their former skipper took the Amazin's to the 1969 World Championship.
After a year under Jim Lemon, the Nats introduced a new manager in 1969: none other than legendary slugger Ted Williams. Partly as an attempt to shake up the team, give the hitters a first-rate tutor, and simply nab a gate attraction, Williams was given his first managing job just 9 years after retiring. Worries that Williams would serve to piss of the hitters more than help them dissipated when the team won 86 games in 1969, shooting up to 4th place in the newly-formed AL East and giving it the best record for a Washington baseball team in nearly 25 years. The good news was 1B prospect Mike Epstein (30 HR, .278 AVG), a solid left side of the infield in McMullen and defensive whiz Ed Brinkman at short, and a respectable 1-2-3 of Coleman, Bosman, and Jim Hannan in the starting rotation. Ownership was even more impressed by the clicking of over 900,000 fans at the turnstiles, a relative achievement (they were still 5th in the league), but certainly the sign of great things to come.
But Williams made the mistake of making his first season his best. Fans kept waiting for the good news as the team sank back under .500, bottoming out at 96 losses in 1971. With an attendance of 655,156 just edging Cleveland for second-worst in the AL, all the old Washington problems were back at the fore. With owner Bob Short claiming poverty, he said that unless someone in Washington could pony up some cash, he was selling the team off to Texas. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn made it his personal mission to keep baseball in Washington (with fears of Congressional investigations still dancing in his head), and he . . . well, failed. Short took off for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Kuhn made an effort to attract other franchises to the nation's capital, but all the efforts failed, illustrating Kuhn's loss of influence and subsequent loss of the Commissioner's job. Baseball wouldn't return to Washington until 2005.
Texas Rangers
About all the Rangers had was manager Williams and slugger Howard. And all that got them was 100 losses and a last-place finish. Williams lost his job after the season, being replaced in 1973 by Whitey Herzog. Herzog didn't last long, eventually being replaced by a manager with an equally titanic (and surly) reputation: Billy Martin.
But in 1974 Martin, warts and all, helped pull the team all the way up to 2nd place in the AL West. The biggest star was MVP Jeff Burroughs, who hit .301 and slugged 25 HR. But the biggest story on the team might have been the work done by Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins (25-12, 2.82 ERA). The Rangers got Jenkins from the Cubs in a trade for Bill Madlock and Vic Harris. Oh, those Cubs . . .
But the biggest story of the 1974 season was David Clyde. Clyde was a big star in Texas high school baseball, and the Rangers took him with the #1 pick in the 1973 draft. Failing to heed the warnings of the "baseball people," Clyde was sent right to the major leagues as a much-needed gate attraction. The ploy worked for a while, as Clyde started out well and the fans came to see him, but Clyde ultimately just wasn't good enough for the majors yet. Subsequent arm injuries limited him to just 56 games after the 1973 season, finishing off what should have been a promising career prematurely.
With most of the same players returning, the team dropped to 3rd place in 1975, with a 79-83 record. Martin was fired, partly because of the decline and partly because he's . . . well, Billy Martin. The presence of four separate managers didn't stop the Rangers from going 94-68 in 1977, posting a .580 winning percentage that stood as the franchise record for over 20 years. Unfortunately, they still finished 8 games back of the Royals, who won 102 games.
There was a whole new cast of characters representing the 1977 Rangers, many of whom would become closely associated with the franchise over the coming years. One was 1B Mike Hargrove, known as the Human Rain Delay for his exhaustive pre-at bat rituals. SS/3B Toby Harrah was a fine hitter, but some kind of dreadful defensively, so the Rangers traded him for glove wizard Buddy Bell, who would become a fixture at the hot corner.
Catcher Jim Sundberg was another fan favorite. A 3-time All-Star and 6-time Gold Glove winner, Sundberg was given a good deal of credit for fashioning contenders out of some pretty lean pitching staffs. The Rangers basically failed to produce their own pitchers, forcing them to sign free agents or secure established pitchers in trades. Jenkins, Bert Blyleven, Dock Ellis, and Gaylord Perry were among the established stars who somehow managed to (for the most part) leave their best years outside the Lone Star State.
After another 2nd-place finish in 1978, the Rangers retreated back into mediocrity. Managers come and went under owner Eddie Chiles, a Texas oil man with his own ideas about running a baseball team, which included giving players "performance reviews" where the manager would go over a player's strengths and weaknesses. This, combined with the franchise's inability to sign or develop quality players, made the franchise a perennial also-ran in the 1980's. Although new manager Bobby Valentine did drive the club to a 2nd-place finish in 1986 (87-75), the team never produced a consistent and reliable star. With the exception of reliable knuckleballer Charlie Hough, the franchise's stars tended to be of the "flameout" variety (see Pete Incaviglia).
The Rangers' re-emergence in the 1990's was largely due to two main reasons: 1) their move into the hitter-friendly Ballpark at Arlington and 2) using the money from the increased revenue to sign free-agent hitters. Through trades and big free agent contracts, the club secured the services of very useful players such as Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark, as well as some less-than-successful bats (Jose Canseco).
But the two main reasons the club vaulted back into contention in the mid-90's were 1) they had two bonafide homegrown All-Stars in Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez and 2) they played in a 4-team division, the AL West. The odds that all four teams would suck one year were pretty high, but hey -- somebody's gotta win the division. This was almost illustrated in the strike-shortened season of 1994. When the season ended, the Rangers were 52-62 . . . and in 1st place, ahead of 3 teams that were even worse.
The 1996 Rangers combined their offensive juggernauts (Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Palmeiro, Clark, and Dean Palmer) with solid pitching from Ken Hill to secure the AL West title. After 35 years, the Rangers were about the become the last American League franchise to reach the postseason.
The Rangers lost the ALDS to the Yankees in 4 games. This was to be the pattern in the late 90's: great slugging, (barely) adequate pitching, losing to the Yankees in October. The Rangers returned to the ALDS by winning the division again in 1998 and 1999. The Rangers were swept both years, only managing to score one run in each 3-game series.
The all-offense Rangers started caving in on themselves. The signing of Alex Rodriguez to a historic contract in the 2000 offseason gave the Rangers a great player, yes, but the other 24 guys weren't so hot. The difficulty in convincing free agent pitchers to come to Arlington was best expressed when the Rangers doled out a 5-year, $75 million deal to Chan Ho Park. Park wasn't such a superstar pitcher to begin with, and he pitched terribly in Texas, posting ERAs of 5.75, 7.58, 5.46, and 5.66 during his injury-plagued reign of a mere 380.2 IP.
The Rangers are still well behind the A's and Angels as the 2006 season opens. Despite fighting back to 89-73 in 2004 under new manager Buck Showalter and pitching coach Orel Hershiser, the Rangers retreated to 79-83 last year.
The lesson to be learned in Texas is the same one that the Senators never learned: Develop your own players, and make sure some of them can pitch.
Tomorrow, the Angels (and I promise to make it shorter).
References:
Total Baseball Encyclopedia 2004 Ed.
Total Ballclubs by Donald Dewey & Nicholas Acocella
and www.baseball-reference.com.
The pressures forcing Major League Baseball to expand were multifold. The population of the country had shifted decidedly westward since the turn of the century, making the 16 Eastern and Midwestern teams unable to fully exploit the country's growing population. The deterioration of the major cities inhabited by the majors called for a move to new, burgeoning metropolises west of the Mississippi. Westward expansion was pioneered by teams such as the Braves and Athletics, illustrating the money to be made in new cities. The practicalities of expansion became more manageable the more teams moved out west, with the growing opportunities of air travel making westward road trips much easier. All these factors were weighing on the minds of baseball men in the early 1960's.
But the most immediate factor was the pressure being brought on baseball by Congress, threatening to look into baseball's anti-trust exemption. When Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith urged the American League to let him move his franchise, the owners faced even more backlash from influential Washington figures. Expansion now became not only likely, but necessary.
The AL's solution was to allow Griffith to move his franchise to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The league would then install an expansion franchise in Washington, D.C., still to be named the Senators. Construction on a new stadium (later named RFK Stadium) would allow the Senators to leave cavernous Griffith Stadium and find friendlier quarters.
The AL also decided to place an expansion franchise in Los Angeles. Many teams had attempted to move into the city in the past, but nothing had come of it. And since Walter O'Malley had moved his Dodgers to Chavez Ravine and seen unprecedented attendance, he was not anxious to see another team on his turf. The assigning of the Los Angeles franchise to singer Gene Autry came after a great deal of backroom finagling between league owners, with Walter O'Malley feverishly pulling strings to protect his interests. Hall-of-Famer Hank Greenberg (then part owner of the White Sox) put together a syndicate to secure the Angels. But the league took exception to the fact that one of Greenberg's partners in the syndicate was Bill Veeck, whose maverick nature and publicity stunts made the other owners refuse to grant Greenberg the franchise unless he dropped Veeck. Greenberg refused, and the league moved on.
Not only did Autry pay $350,000 to O'Malley as an indemnification against invading his "territory," but he also agreed to lease the Dodger-owned Wrigley Field, a minor league park, until their own stadium could be constructed. The Angels entered their first season already under a good many fiscal obligations, a state that would continue throughout the franchise's history.
So entering the 1961 American League season, the major leagues boasted new franchises for the first time since the AL's birth in 1901. It made for an interesting practical challenge that the new 10-team AL was forced to adopt a 162-game schedule, whereas the 8-team NL stuck with the traditional 154-game campaign. This would prove to be no small issue when Roger Maris entered the summer poised to challenge Babe Ruth's all-time home run record.
The (New) Washington Senators
The New Senators entered the league under a bit of a cloud. They were meant to replace Calvin Griffith's team, which claimed that the city couldn't support his franchise and left town. Few executives seemed to have asked whether the new Senators wouldn't ultimately face the same problems that forced their forebears out of town. But, not looking to alienate Congress, the owners eschewed forethought and established the franchise anyway. Ten years later, the Senators would be gone, for most of the same reasons the original franchise left.
But the 1961 team entered play with some bare optimism. In the expansion draft held in December of 1960, the Senators had selected the core of their first ballclub. Familiar faces taken in the draft included: Dick Donovan, a relatively successful pitcher with the White Sox, journeyman slugger Dale Long, veteran left fielder Gene Woodling and former Yankee MVP pitcher Bobby Shantz.
The 1961 season opened with former Washington All-Star Mickey Vernon managing. Offense was hard to come by in Griffith Stadium, and it wore on the team. Catcher Gene Green led the team with 18 HR and a .280 batting average. The veteran Woodling hit .313, but in limited duty. The fair performance by the pitching staff (6th in the AL in ERA) was largely an effect of the stadium; only the established Donovan pitched well, posting a 2.40 ERA that belied his 10-10 W-L record. The Senators finished the season 61-100, tied with the Athletics for last place in the league. It got no better for the team, as they took over sole possession of last in 1962 and 1963. Vernon was fired mid-way through the 1963 season, being ultimately replaced by Gil Hodges.
Hodges took what was essentially a nothing team and started to build a contender. The ownership realized that most of the unknowns they took in the expansion draft were unknown for a reason, with only outfielder Chuck Hinton developing into a valuable part of the team.
The team gradually rose above the cellar as the 60's wore on. They finished 9th in '64 (their first year out of the basement), 8th in 1965 and 1966, and then rose all the way to 6th place in 1967. A good part of the team's success came from a trade with the Dodgers in late 1964. The Senators gave up young pitcher Claude Osteen and John Kennedy to the Dodgers in exchange for 3B Ken McMullen, OF Frank Howard, P Phil Ortega and P Pete Richert. Osteen developed into a good pitcher in L.A., but the trade brought the Nats McMullen, a good-hitting third baseman, and Howard, who would be the franchise's biggest star in Washington.
Howard was a home run hitter in Los Angeles, but fans and management soured on his low batting averages and strikeouts. Howard came to Washington and became a hero. Nicknamed "The Capital Punisher" for his titanic blasts, Howard slugged 239 HR in 7 seasons in Washington. Many seats in the nether regions RFK Stadium are still marked as the landing place of one of Howard's big blasts.
"Hondo" (as he was more commonly known) was the only truly potent hitter on the team, and he put together a few monster seasons. In 1968, the year of the pitcher, Howard slugged 44 HR, leading both leagues by far (no one else hit 37). His .552 slugging percentage also paced the majors.
Perhaps as a consequence of his new-found BabeRuthness, Howard began drawing more walks. Combined with the league's efforts to shrink the strike zone to favor the hitter, Howard nearly doubled his previous career high in walks (60) by drawing 102 in 1969, and then 132 in 1970. He posted an OBP of over .400 each year, the only two times he would top the mark. Howard's 1968 heroics earned him 8th place in the AL MVP voting. He would top that with a 4th-place finish in 1969 and a 5th-place finish in 1970. Howard stayed with the team after Washington, getting traded to Detroit and retiring after the 1973 season.
Pitching-wise, the Nats didn't have as much to be happy about. Ortega, obtained in the Osteen trade, combined with Dick Bosman, Joe Coleman, and former Senator Camilo Pascual as the only strong hurlers on the staff.
Despite the lack of any evident stars beyond Howard, Hodges was still able to bring the team back to respectability. His reputation as a manager grew a little too much, though, and the New York Mets convinced him to take over their squad in 1968. The Hodges-less Nats plummeted back to last place, while their former skipper took the Amazin's to the 1969 World Championship.
After a year under Jim Lemon, the Nats introduced a new manager in 1969: none other than legendary slugger Ted Williams. Partly as an attempt to shake up the team, give the hitters a first-rate tutor, and simply nab a gate attraction, Williams was given his first managing job just 9 years after retiring. Worries that Williams would serve to piss of the hitters more than help them dissipated when the team won 86 games in 1969, shooting up to 4th place in the newly-formed AL East and giving it the best record for a Washington baseball team in nearly 25 years. The good news was 1B prospect Mike Epstein (30 HR, .278 AVG), a solid left side of the infield in McMullen and defensive whiz Ed Brinkman at short, and a respectable 1-2-3 of Coleman, Bosman, and Jim Hannan in the starting rotation. Ownership was even more impressed by the clicking of over 900,000 fans at the turnstiles, a relative achievement (they were still 5th in the league), but certainly the sign of great things to come.
But Williams made the mistake of making his first season his best. Fans kept waiting for the good news as the team sank back under .500, bottoming out at 96 losses in 1971. With an attendance of 655,156 just edging Cleveland for second-worst in the AL, all the old Washington problems were back at the fore. With owner Bob Short claiming poverty, he said that unless someone in Washington could pony up some cash, he was selling the team off to Texas. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn made it his personal mission to keep baseball in Washington (with fears of Congressional investigations still dancing in his head), and he . . . well, failed. Short took off for the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Kuhn made an effort to attract other franchises to the nation's capital, but all the efforts failed, illustrating Kuhn's loss of influence and subsequent loss of the Commissioner's job. Baseball wouldn't return to Washington until 2005.
Texas Rangers
About all the Rangers had was manager Williams and slugger Howard. And all that got them was 100 losses and a last-place finish. Williams lost his job after the season, being replaced in 1973 by Whitey Herzog. Herzog didn't last long, eventually being replaced by a manager with an equally titanic (and surly) reputation: Billy Martin.
But in 1974 Martin, warts and all, helped pull the team all the way up to 2nd place in the AL West. The biggest star was MVP Jeff Burroughs, who hit .301 and slugged 25 HR. But the biggest story on the team might have been the work done by Hall of Fame pitcher Ferguson Jenkins (25-12, 2.82 ERA). The Rangers got Jenkins from the Cubs in a trade for Bill Madlock and Vic Harris. Oh, those Cubs . . .
But the biggest story of the 1974 season was David Clyde. Clyde was a big star in Texas high school baseball, and the Rangers took him with the #1 pick in the 1973 draft. Failing to heed the warnings of the "baseball people," Clyde was sent right to the major leagues as a much-needed gate attraction. The ploy worked for a while, as Clyde started out well and the fans came to see him, but Clyde ultimately just wasn't good enough for the majors yet. Subsequent arm injuries limited him to just 56 games after the 1973 season, finishing off what should have been a promising career prematurely.
With most of the same players returning, the team dropped to 3rd place in 1975, with a 79-83 record. Martin was fired, partly because of the decline and partly because he's . . . well, Billy Martin. The presence of four separate managers didn't stop the Rangers from going 94-68 in 1977, posting a .580 winning percentage that stood as the franchise record for over 20 years. Unfortunately, they still finished 8 games back of the Royals, who won 102 games.
There was a whole new cast of characters representing the 1977 Rangers, many of whom would become closely associated with the franchise over the coming years. One was 1B Mike Hargrove, known as the Human Rain Delay for his exhaustive pre-at bat rituals. SS/3B Toby Harrah was a fine hitter, but some kind of dreadful defensively, so the Rangers traded him for glove wizard Buddy Bell, who would become a fixture at the hot corner.
Catcher Jim Sundberg was another fan favorite. A 3-time All-Star and 6-time Gold Glove winner, Sundberg was given a good deal of credit for fashioning contenders out of some pretty lean pitching staffs. The Rangers basically failed to produce their own pitchers, forcing them to sign free agents or secure established pitchers in trades. Jenkins, Bert Blyleven, Dock Ellis, and Gaylord Perry were among the established stars who somehow managed to (for the most part) leave their best years outside the Lone Star State.
After another 2nd-place finish in 1978, the Rangers retreated back into mediocrity. Managers come and went under owner Eddie Chiles, a Texas oil man with his own ideas about running a baseball team, which included giving players "performance reviews" where the manager would go over a player's strengths and weaknesses. This, combined with the franchise's inability to sign or develop quality players, made the franchise a perennial also-ran in the 1980's. Although new manager Bobby Valentine did drive the club to a 2nd-place finish in 1986 (87-75), the team never produced a consistent and reliable star. With the exception of reliable knuckleballer Charlie Hough, the franchise's stars tended to be of the "flameout" variety (see Pete Incaviglia).
The Rangers' re-emergence in the 1990's was largely due to two main reasons: 1) their move into the hitter-friendly Ballpark at Arlington and 2) using the money from the increased revenue to sign free-agent hitters. Through trades and big free agent contracts, the club secured the services of very useful players such as Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark, as well as some less-than-successful bats (Jose Canseco).
But the two main reasons the club vaulted back into contention in the mid-90's were 1) they had two bonafide homegrown All-Stars in Juan Gonzalez and Ivan Rodriguez and 2) they played in a 4-team division, the AL West. The odds that all four teams would suck one year were pretty high, but hey -- somebody's gotta win the division. This was almost illustrated in the strike-shortened season of 1994. When the season ended, the Rangers were 52-62 . . . and in 1st place, ahead of 3 teams that were even worse.
The 1996 Rangers combined their offensive juggernauts (Rodriguez, Gonzalez, Palmeiro, Clark, and Dean Palmer) with solid pitching from Ken Hill to secure the AL West title. After 35 years, the Rangers were about the become the last American League franchise to reach the postseason.
The Rangers lost the ALDS to the Yankees in 4 games. This was to be the pattern in the late 90's: great slugging, (barely) adequate pitching, losing to the Yankees in October. The Rangers returned to the ALDS by winning the division again in 1998 and 1999. The Rangers were swept both years, only managing to score one run in each 3-game series.
The all-offense Rangers started caving in on themselves. The signing of Alex Rodriguez to a historic contract in the 2000 offseason gave the Rangers a great player, yes, but the other 24 guys weren't so hot. The difficulty in convincing free agent pitchers to come to Arlington was best expressed when the Rangers doled out a 5-year, $75 million deal to Chan Ho Park. Park wasn't such a superstar pitcher to begin with, and he pitched terribly in Texas, posting ERAs of 5.75, 7.58, 5.46, and 5.66 during his injury-plagued reign of a mere 380.2 IP.
The Rangers are still well behind the A's and Angels as the 2006 season opens. Despite fighting back to 89-73 in 2004 under new manager Buck Showalter and pitching coach Orel Hershiser, the Rangers retreated to 79-83 last year.
The lesson to be learned in Texas is the same one that the Senators never learned: Develop your own players, and make sure some of them can pitch.
Tomorrow, the Angels (and I promise to make it shorter).
References:
Total Baseball Encyclopedia 2004 Ed.
Total Ballclubs by Donald Dewey & Nicholas Acocella
and www.baseball-reference.com.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
An expansion pre-history
Before I start dealing with specific expansi0n teams, I thought it would be best to begin with a look at how the AL and the NL arrived at the point in time where they decided to expand. Books have been written about the period from 1901-1960, the modern-day pre-expansion era. But I'll try my best to summarize and deal with the necessary background before we deal with the expansions of 1961 (AL) and 1962 (NL).
The 19th Century
Dealing with teams and franchises is especially problematic in the 19th century, as teams came and went on a yearly basis. Franchises were amazingly unstable, being born, moving, and dying in a matter of years. The common undercurrent was the National League, as well as a couple of other major leagues. The National League was established in 1876 with 8 franchises: Chicago, St. Louis, Hartford, Boston, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. Most record books begin with the 1876 season, as statistics are much more available and complete than in the NL's forerunner, the National Association. The Chicago Cubs won the first NL pennant, thanks to players and moguls Cap Anson and Al Spalding. If any one team dominated the 19th-century NL, though, it was the Boston Braves. Built from the remnants of the old Cincinnati Red Stockings, the Braves won 8 NL pennants between 1877 and 1898.
The NL co-existed with the American Association from 1882 to 1891. The two leagues even met in a postseason exhibition series similar to the modern World Series. Although the AA began as a rival to the older NL, the two leagues made peace with each other in 1884 in time for the emergence of the Union Association. The UA was an attempt to establish a third major league, but was by and large a failure. Very few name players were attracted, and the league folded after one year. The inclusion of the UA as a major league in baseball encyclopedias is a rather odd one. The league was really no more competitive or respected than many minor leagues of the era, and allowing UA statistics to stand beside AA and NL marks is a dubious decision.
In 1890, a third major league, the Players League, was established. It was championed by John Montgomery Ward, an early unionist and activist for players' rights. The new league proved a sufficient challenge to the other two leagues, extracting some measures to favor the players before the PL folded in 1891. The Players League was one of the chief factors bringing about the downfall of the AA, which was not as successful as the NL in surviving the labor war and subsequent rise in salaries. The AA folded after the 1891 season, leaving the NL as the only major league until 1901.
Ban Johnson stepped into the void and worked feverishly to turn his Western League into a new major league. His opportunity emerged when the NL contracted from 12 teams to 8 after the 1899 season. Johnson used the leverage, along with his tireless personal energies, to redub his league the American League and challenge the NL as a rival major league in 1901.
The Early Modern Era
The AL was successful in stealing away some of the NL's biggest stars, most notably pitcher Cy Young and star 2B Nap Lajoie. The two leagues fought through the 1901 and 1902 season, and the AL appeared to be winning. The far-flung NL was having difficult competing with Johnson's operation, as the AL's power was concentrated almost solely in his hands. Johnson billed his league as the more family-oriented league. The NL in the 1890's became increasingly adult-oriented, with nasty brawls and obscene language a fact of life. Johnson succeeded in poising his league as a practical alternative.
The NL in 1901 drew 3,423 fans per game. The AL averaged 3,067. In 1902 the AL drew 3,990/game, while the NL dropped to 2,995. The NL owners saw which way this was going and made peace. The National Agreement, baseball's unofficial constitution, was signed between the leagues after the 1902 season. The last straw seems to have been Johnson's desire to field a team in New York, challenging the NL's two franchises and giving the AL access to the country's largest city. The terms of the agreement recognized the contracts of both leagues, with player "jumping" curtailed. Many players were forced to return to their old teams as part of the peace agreement. The Agreement also provided for a 3-man board of governors to function as the ultimate power between the leagues. The 3 men sitting on the board were AL president Johnson, NL president Harry Pulliam, and Cincinnati owner Garry Herrmann. The board would function as the chief executive of major league baseball until supplanted by the office of the Commissioner in 1920.
These would be the only two major leagues forevermore, with the exception of 1914-1915. 1914 saw the emergence of the Federal League, an attempt to create a third major league. The FL succeeded in attracting a few major league stars (Mordecai Brown, Joe Tinker), but was staffed for the most part by career minor leaguers and washed-up veterans. The biggest consequence of the FL was the ability of players to extract huge salary increases from the owners in order to ensure their loyalty. Few big leaguers actually jumped, but everyone threatened to in order to get a sizable raise from the otherwise tight-fisted owners.
The collapse of the FL after the 1915 season removed the players' bargaining chip. Owners ruthlessly hacked salaries down to their pre-FL levels, leaving ballplayers once again helpless in their fight against the owners. It was in this context that the Chicago Black Sox rebelled against the especially stingy Charles Comiskey in throwing the 1919 World Series.
The Teams
The NL entered the 1901 season (the first season of more-or-less "modern" baseball) with 8 teams. Five of those teams, the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, and St. Louis Cardinals, still exist today in the same cities. The other three franchises were the Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Giants.
The Braves, after dominating the NL during the 1890's, dropped to 5th place in 1901. They rose back to 3rd in 1902, then fell again to 6th place in 1903. The Braves wouldn't finish in the 1st division again until 1914, the year the team known as the "Miracle Braves" stormed from the league's basement to take the NL pennant and win the World Series in surprising fashion over Connie Mack's dynastic Athletics. They just missed doing the same thing in 1915 (finishing 2nd), and after a 3rd-place finish in 1915, never made it above 4th place again until 1947. The team (led by Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain) won the 1948 NL pennant, losing the World Series to Cleveland.
The fiscal realities of sharing a city with the Red Sox wore on the weak sister Braves. Construction magnate Lou Perini, who had owned the team since 1941, looked into the prospects of moving the club to Milwaukee. The move of the Braves from Boston to Milwaukee would be one of the most significant moves toward paving the way for future expansion. Perini took a gamble that many of the more staid owners wouldn't have considered, uprooting his franchise after the 1952 season and having it in place in Milwaukee in time to begin the 1953 campaign. The 8.822 fans who saw the Boston Braves on September 21, 1952 didn't even know they were seeing the end of the NL in Boston.
But the real thing that got the attention of the other NL owners was how well the Braves did in Milwaukee. After a franchise-record 1,455,439 million in attendance in 1948, the Braves saw those numbers drop more than 80% before they left town (sporting a bare 281,278 in 1952). Other NL owners started to dread going to Boston, knowing they weren't going to leave town with much in the way of gate receipts.
But the city of Milwaukee was very, very happy to see the Braves. The long-time home of the AA Milwaukee Brewers, the city was anxious to see the first big-league baseball west of the Mississippi. The result was an attendance of 1,826,397, a new major league record. In 1953, the 2nd-place Braves (92-62) not only outdrew the NL Champion Dodgers (105 wins and an attendance of barely 1.1 million) but also outdrew the World Champion New York Yankees (who drew a little over 1.5 million).
With the Braves franchise awash in cash, the league became much more open to the possibilities of seeing baseball move to new cities. It also planted the seeds of expansion. But more importantly, the Braves' success in Milwaukee got a few other men thinking about moving their teams ...
Which brings me to the other two 1901 NL franchises: the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Giants were the best team in the NL by far pre-World War II. This was due mainly to the tireless efforts of Hall of Fame manager John McGraw. The Dodgers, on the other hand, posted a couple of NL pennants (1916 and 1920), but were never able to match their Manhattan rivals in either quality or revenues.
This all changed in the years immediately preceding World War II. This was mainly due to the retirement of McGraw and the subsequent fall of the Giants to also-ran status, and the emergence of the Dodgers as the best NL team of the 1940's and 50's. It was mainly the work of executives Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey that brought Brooklyn some of the best NL teams ever in the last two decades of its existence. Finally, in the early 1950's, New York fans finally had two NL teams to be proud of. The Dodgers and Giants won every NL pennant between 1951 and 1959. (The only two exceptions were back-to-back pennants by the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and 1958).
But as everyone knows, Brooklyn owner Walter O'Malley was determined to move his team west. O'Malley's heartlessness is still legendary in Brooklyn, but the truth is that O'Malley was no more or less money-grubbing than anyone else that ran a baseball team in the first half of the 20th century. Although the Dodgers were doing well in attendance, O'Malley saw the neighborhood around his ballpark degenerating quickly. He knew that the middle-class was fleeing to the suburbs, so he pressured the city of Brooklyn into building a new ballpark (the more things change, huh?). The city may have thought O'Malley was just bluffing when he threatened to move the team, but he certainly wasn't. While it's true that O'Malley may have been using the new stadium as a blind and was planning to move regardless, it was just a matter of time before some team ended up in the metropolis of Los Angeles, anyway.
Due to travel concerns, the NL rules stated that two teams would have to move to California for the shift to be feasible. O'Malley (one of the greatest backroom powers in baseball) persuaded Giants owner Horace Stoneham to foresake Manhattan for San Francisco. Stoneham, much moreso than O'Malley, had reason to leave town. Whereas the Dodgers still ranked 5th in the league in attendance before they moved to LA (drawing 1.02 million in 1957, their last year in Brooklyn), the Giants ranked dead last. Even perennial losers like Pittsburgh and Chicago were outdrawing the Giants, who won the 1954 World Series and had in Willie Mays one of the most exciting players in baseball history. Not only that, but the Polo Grounds (the Giants' home ballpark) was located in northern Manhattan on the Harlem River. It hadn't been a garden spot in years, but the realities of the neighborhood became more and more clear when a spectator was shot and killed in 1956 by a stray bullet fired from the street. Stoneham, a free spender, was feeling the bite of the dollar as he was finding it more and more difficult to get upper-middle class white people to come to Harlem and watch a ballgame. It's interesting that O'Malley was the driving force behind the shift, when Stoneham had much more pressing reasons to move.
Both teams moved west for the 1958 season. The Giants took up temporary residence in Seals Stadium, former home of the famous Pacific Coast League franchise, while Candlestick Park was built. The Dodgers moved into the Los Angles Memorial Coliseum, a facility built for the Olympics. It's hard to imagine a building less suited for baseball. The field was shaped in such a way that the left-field foul line was a cozy 250 feet away, whereas the power alley zoomed back to a distant 440 feet.
One thing the building was perfect for, though, was holding lots and lots of people. The Dodgers drew 1.8 million in their new facility (an increase of 800,000), setting a major league record when 93,103 fans attended an exhibition game against the Yankees to benefit paralyzed catcher Roy Campanella. Although Seals Stadium wasn't nearly as spacious, the Giants still managed to nearly double their New York attendance, drawing 1.27 million fans (after drawing barely 650,000 their last year at the Polo Grounds).
While the Dodgers and Giants still reside on the West Coast, the Braves took a further move. For a variety of reasons, initial enthusiasm in Milwaukee soon dulled down over a number of disputes between locals and owner Perini. Even after Perini sold the Braves to Milwaukee-based interests, it wasn't clear whether they would still remain in Milwaukee. The city of Atlanta started to look like a very attractive option. Atlanta would open up the Braves to the television revenue (a new factor in baseball business) of the entire Deep South, whereas Milwaukee was particularly lacking in this potential.
After seeing attendance drift back below the 1 million mark (it had peaked at 2.2 million in the World Championship season of 1957), ownership announced the Braves would be moving to Atlanta for the 1965 season. A series of local lawsuits halted the move temporarily. The Braves weren't able to work out a solution in time for the season to start, so they were forced to remain one more year in Milwaukee. It was a lame-duck season in every sense of the word, as a sense of doom followed around the still-potent team (86-76) and a bare 555, 584 fans dropped the Braves to last in the NL in attendance (only the KC Athletics drew worse in the AL). The move finally happened in time for the 1966 season. The entire affair left a distaste in Milwaukee for the MLB. Local interest still pursued a major league team, and finally succeeded in 1970, when local car dealer Bud Selig bought the dying Seattle Pilots and moved them to Milwaukee as the Brewers.
The AL
The American League's first season as a major league (1901) saw 8 franchises take the field. Four of those teams, the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, and Detroit Tigers, are still where they were 104 years ago. The other four teams were the Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Athletics, and Washington Senators.
The Baltimore Orioles were Johnson's attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the old Baltimore Orioles, managed by John McGraw. The Orioles were the most famous team of the 19th century, a team whose exciting, aggressive style is remembered nearly as much as their fights and brawls. Johnson got McGraw to manage the team and even returned some stars from the old Orioles, such as McGraw protege Wilbert Robinson. But the Orioles and the AL were doomed from the start. Johnson was billing his league as the family alternative to the NL, while McGraw and his Orioles went out every day and fought as dirty as any team in history. Johnson tried disciplining McGraw, but it became clear that these two titanic egos just could not co-exist. When Johnson expressed his desire to field an AL team in New York, he targeted the Orioles, who had finished last in the league in attendance in 1902, as perfect candidates. McGraw had other ideas. He jumped to the NL to manage the New York Giants, and even took some of his best players, such as Roger Bresnahan, Joe McGinnity, Mike Donlin and Robinson along with him. The McGraw-less Orioles moved to New York and were re-named the Highlanders (their home park was on a hill in uptown Manhattan).
Johnson sought to shore up the New York club by moving players around from the other teams. It wasn't anyone's idea of fair play, but it did bring new meaning to the term "competitive balance." Catcher Deacon McGuire and SS Kid Elberfeld (Detroit), OF Patsy Dougherty (Red Sox) OF Willie Keeler (Brooklyn in the NL), P Jack Chesbro (NL Pittsburgh) and P-Manager Clark Griffith (White Sox) were brought in to shore up the team. They succeeded, contending for the 1904 AL pennant to the final day of the season, when Chesbro wild-pitched in the pennant-losing run. The Highlanders would later be re-named the Yankees and developed into the greatest sports franchise of all time.
The Milwaukee Brewers were one of the original AL franchises, but were also the only one not to last past the inaugural season. They finished dead last in the AL in attendance, and Ban Johnson decided to shift the team to St. Louis to directly challenge the Cardinals. The team was re-dubbed the Browns, and it proved to be one of the saddest franchises in major league history.
There are really only two seasons worth remembering from the Browns' 52-season history. One is 1922, when the Browns fought a very close pennant race against the Yankees, finishing the season a bare 1 game back, with a 94-60 record (their .604 winning percentage was a Browns franchise record). The other season to remember is 1944, when the Browns made their only postseason appearance. It was only appropriate that the Browns won the pennant during the World War II era, when other freak occurences such as one-armed ballplayers were relatively common. The Browns beat out the Hank Greenberg-less Tigers by 1 game, but lost the World Series to the crosstown rival St. Louis Cardinals.
There weren't many famous faces on the Browns, but some of the more notable players to appear for the team were Hall of Famers George Sisler and Goose Goslin, as well as All-Stars Urban Shocker, Vern Stephens, and Bobo Newsom. The most memorable character on the Browns wasn't a player; it was owner Bill Veeck. Veeck's reign as owner of the team saw some of the more memorable stunts in baseball history including, but not limited to: the appearance of Eddie Gaedel as the only midget to play major league baseball, Millie the Queen of the Air sliding down a tightrope from right field to third base, and Grandstand Managers Day, where Browns manager Zack Taylor relaxed in a rocking chair while the fans in attendance coached the team. Using large placards such as "hit and run," and "steal," the fans managed the team. League officials were not pleased, although the Browns won, defeating the Athletics 5-3.
Veeck was not, however, able to field a competitive team, nor was he able to reverse the team's dire economic condition. He ended up selling the team to a group that moved the franchise to Baltimore. The team was re-named the Orioles, after the legendary minor league team. And from 1966-1983, the Orioles put together one of the greatest teams in American League history.
The Philadelphia Athletics became as identified with one man as any other team, perhaps, in history: Cornelius MacGillicuddy, known to friends as "Connie Mack" and to players as "Mr. Mack." Perhaps it's because he won 10 pennants and 5 World Series. But it's probably because the Philadelphia A's existed from 1901-1954, and Connie Mack was their manager from 1901-1950.
The Philadelphia A's were a great example of an up-and-down team. Mack showed the managerial brilliance that got him elected to Cooperstown in 1937 by building two separate dynasties: the 1910-1914 A's, who won 4 pennants and 3 World Series, and the 1929-1931 A's, who won 3 straight pennants and 2 World Series. The unfortunate fact is that, with the exception of these two oases of winning, the A's generally sucked for the majority of the time they existed. Mack won 3,582 games as manager of the A's, a feat that will never be equalled. But neither will his 3,814 losses with the team. Any man who watches his team lose 3,948 baseball games (he also managed in Pittsburgh from 1894-1896) and still lives to be 94 years old is some kind of amazing.
The A's were actually the first of the original 8 AL franchises to shift since the Orioles moved to New York in 1903. It was 1953, and the Philadelphia team hadn't finished higher than 4th in 20 years. The attendance reflected this: a 362, 113 mark that was lower than any other big-league team by 200,000. It started becoming clear that Philadelphia wasn't big enough to support two major league franchises. But there were lots of opportunities out west. The Mack family (Connie's sons ran the franchise) got only one solid offer for the team. It came from Arnold Johnson, a Chicago millionaire with strong connections with the Yankees who showed interest in moving the team to Kansas City. In a complex wrangle that must have made for some interesting discussions around the Mack family dinner table, the team ended up getting sold to Johnson, who kept his word and moved the team to Kansas City.
The Kansas City A's were never good; they were never even really remotely good. The club actually has one of the more shameful records of any modern franchise, which comes only in part from what happened on the field. Johnson's connections to the Yankees made some wonder if the A's wouldn't just end up as a big-league farm team for the New York powerhouse. As it turned out, that's exactly what happened, as the Athletics gave up hot young prospects such as Roger Maris, Clete Boyer, and Ryne Duren to the Yankees in exchange for a pittance; the Kansas City team was left with washed-up former Yankees such as Ewell Blackwell, Johnny Sain, and Don Larsen.
Hope emerged when the team was sold to Indiana insurance executive Charlie Finley, who had courted major league franchises for years without success. Finley is one of the most interesting characters in the history of baseball; words do not do justice to a man who was simultaneously a progressive-thinking maverick and an insufferable horse's ass with more harebrained schemes than Ralph Kramden. Ideas such as the designated hitter originated with Finley, making him one of the few baseball executives to seek creative solutions to problems. Finley was also responsible for offering a bonus to any A's player who grew facial hair; he felt it would give the team personality. It gave them all that and more, as the Moustache Gang became the best team ever that absolutely hated each other.
The Kansas City version of the team was perhaps doomed from the start, and Finley hounded the other owners to let him move the franchise. With the litigation-happy Finley threatening to sue, the AL owners backed down and permitted him to move the club to Oakland for the 1968 season. The ensuing brouhaha raised by Kansas City officials and Missouri politicians led baseball to promise the city an expansion franchise sometime before 1971. When this failed to appease the itinerant Missourians (Missourites?), the AL was forced to rush through plans for expansion for the 1969 season, providing for a franchise in Kansas City.
But we'll get to that later. The A's moved west, won 4 World Series, appeared in the postseason 14 times, and then reinvented themselves as a sabermetric baseball organization at the turn of the century.
The last club we come to is the Washington Senators. The Senators were famous for being losers, but they were, for most of their existence, a fairly competitive team. They won 3 pennants and one World Series and while they were often in the second division, they weren't as bad as the Browns. It wasn't until the late 1930's that the Senators became the cellar-dwellers everyone remembers. This helped prompt them to move the team.
Owner Calvin Griffith (nephew of franchise patriarch Clark Griffith) was, by the late 1950's, constantly pressuring the league to allow him to shift the franchise. The arrival of the Orioles in Baltimore in 1954 had further depleted an already bare fanbase, and Griffith had his eyes on the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Behind-the-scenes politicking occurred that even Richard Nixon would be proud of. Former Commissioner Happy Chandler promised the club a 50,000-seat stadium if they would move to Louisville. Talks opened up with Los Angeles mayor Norris Poulson (with Chief Justice Earl Warren reportedly offering behind-the-scenes encouragement), but Walter O'Malley stepped in and took LA for himself. The Twin Cities gradually emerged as the most likely location of the Senators in the future.
There were, however, worries among baseball higher-ups that it would be rather unseemly to shift so many teams in such a short span of time. With the A's, Braves, Browns, Dodgers, and Giants jacking up their teams and heading off for the highest bidder, baseball officials were worried about their public appearance as monopolistic puppeteers with no loyalties to cities nor their fans. It was especially problematic, as the Washington, D.C. fanbase was somewhat more influential than most.
The solution was that the league would expand from 8 teams to 10. Griffith would be allowed to shift his team to Minnesota (re-dubbed the Twins), and the AL would place a new expansion franchise in Washington. So although the 1960 Senators and 1961 Senators would be two entirely different franchises, baseball would remain in Washington for the foreseeable future. The other expansion franchise was to be located in Los Angeles. They were to be known as the Angels.
And that takes us to the end of part 1. Part 2 will pick up with the 1961 AL expansion that added the New Washington Senators and the Los Angeles Angels.
Until then ...
This essay was produced thanks to generous assistance from these references:
Total Baseball Encyclopedia, 2004 ed.
Total Ballclubs by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James
and of course www.baseball-reference.com.
The 19th Century
Dealing with teams and franchises is especially problematic in the 19th century, as teams came and went on a yearly basis. Franchises were amazingly unstable, being born, moving, and dying in a matter of years. The common undercurrent was the National League, as well as a couple of other major leagues. The National League was established in 1876 with 8 franchises: Chicago, St. Louis, Hartford, Boston, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. Most record books begin with the 1876 season, as statistics are much more available and complete than in the NL's forerunner, the National Association. The Chicago Cubs won the first NL pennant, thanks to players and moguls Cap Anson and Al Spalding. If any one team dominated the 19th-century NL, though, it was the Boston Braves. Built from the remnants of the old Cincinnati Red Stockings, the Braves won 8 NL pennants between 1877 and 1898.
The NL co-existed with the American Association from 1882 to 1891. The two leagues even met in a postseason exhibition series similar to the modern World Series. Although the AA began as a rival to the older NL, the two leagues made peace with each other in 1884 in time for the emergence of the Union Association. The UA was an attempt to establish a third major league, but was by and large a failure. Very few name players were attracted, and the league folded after one year. The inclusion of the UA as a major league in baseball encyclopedias is a rather odd one. The league was really no more competitive or respected than many minor leagues of the era, and allowing UA statistics to stand beside AA and NL marks is a dubious decision.
In 1890, a third major league, the Players League, was established. It was championed by John Montgomery Ward, an early unionist and activist for players' rights. The new league proved a sufficient challenge to the other two leagues, extracting some measures to favor the players before the PL folded in 1891. The Players League was one of the chief factors bringing about the downfall of the AA, which was not as successful as the NL in surviving the labor war and subsequent rise in salaries. The AA folded after the 1891 season, leaving the NL as the only major league until 1901.
Ban Johnson stepped into the void and worked feverishly to turn his Western League into a new major league. His opportunity emerged when the NL contracted from 12 teams to 8 after the 1899 season. Johnson used the leverage, along with his tireless personal energies, to redub his league the American League and challenge the NL as a rival major league in 1901.
The Early Modern Era
The AL was successful in stealing away some of the NL's biggest stars, most notably pitcher Cy Young and star 2B Nap Lajoie. The two leagues fought through the 1901 and 1902 season, and the AL appeared to be winning. The far-flung NL was having difficult competing with Johnson's operation, as the AL's power was concentrated almost solely in his hands. Johnson billed his league as the more family-oriented league. The NL in the 1890's became increasingly adult-oriented, with nasty brawls and obscene language a fact of life. Johnson succeeded in poising his league as a practical alternative.
The NL in 1901 drew 3,423 fans per game. The AL averaged 3,067. In 1902 the AL drew 3,990/game, while the NL dropped to 2,995. The NL owners saw which way this was going and made peace. The National Agreement, baseball's unofficial constitution, was signed between the leagues after the 1902 season. The last straw seems to have been Johnson's desire to field a team in New York, challenging the NL's two franchises and giving the AL access to the country's largest city. The terms of the agreement recognized the contracts of both leagues, with player "jumping" curtailed. Many players were forced to return to their old teams as part of the peace agreement. The Agreement also provided for a 3-man board of governors to function as the ultimate power between the leagues. The 3 men sitting on the board were AL president Johnson, NL president Harry Pulliam, and Cincinnati owner Garry Herrmann. The board would function as the chief executive of major league baseball until supplanted by the office of the Commissioner in 1920.
These would be the only two major leagues forevermore, with the exception of 1914-1915. 1914 saw the emergence of the Federal League, an attempt to create a third major league. The FL succeeded in attracting a few major league stars (Mordecai Brown, Joe Tinker), but was staffed for the most part by career minor leaguers and washed-up veterans. The biggest consequence of the FL was the ability of players to extract huge salary increases from the owners in order to ensure their loyalty. Few big leaguers actually jumped, but everyone threatened to in order to get a sizable raise from the otherwise tight-fisted owners.
The collapse of the FL after the 1915 season removed the players' bargaining chip. Owners ruthlessly hacked salaries down to their pre-FL levels, leaving ballplayers once again helpless in their fight against the owners. It was in this context that the Chicago Black Sox rebelled against the especially stingy Charles Comiskey in throwing the 1919 World Series.
The Teams
The NL entered the 1901 season (the first season of more-or-less "modern" baseball) with 8 teams. Five of those teams, the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, and St. Louis Cardinals, still exist today in the same cities. The other three franchises were the Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Giants.
The Braves, after dominating the NL during the 1890's, dropped to 5th place in 1901. They rose back to 3rd in 1902, then fell again to 6th place in 1903. The Braves wouldn't finish in the 1st division again until 1914, the year the team known as the "Miracle Braves" stormed from the league's basement to take the NL pennant and win the World Series in surprising fashion over Connie Mack's dynastic Athletics. They just missed doing the same thing in 1915 (finishing 2nd), and after a 3rd-place finish in 1915, never made it above 4th place again until 1947. The team (led by Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain) won the 1948 NL pennant, losing the World Series to Cleveland.
The fiscal realities of sharing a city with the Red Sox wore on the weak sister Braves. Construction magnate Lou Perini, who had owned the team since 1941, looked into the prospects of moving the club to Milwaukee. The move of the Braves from Boston to Milwaukee would be one of the most significant moves toward paving the way for future expansion. Perini took a gamble that many of the more staid owners wouldn't have considered, uprooting his franchise after the 1952 season and having it in place in Milwaukee in time to begin the 1953 campaign. The 8.822 fans who saw the Boston Braves on September 21, 1952 didn't even know they were seeing the end of the NL in Boston.
But the real thing that got the attention of the other NL owners was how well the Braves did in Milwaukee. After a franchise-record 1,455,439 million in attendance in 1948, the Braves saw those numbers drop more than 80% before they left town (sporting a bare 281,278 in 1952). Other NL owners started to dread going to Boston, knowing they weren't going to leave town with much in the way of gate receipts.
But the city of Milwaukee was very, very happy to see the Braves. The long-time home of the AA Milwaukee Brewers, the city was anxious to see the first big-league baseball west of the Mississippi. The result was an attendance of 1,826,397, a new major league record. In 1953, the 2nd-place Braves (92-62) not only outdrew the NL Champion Dodgers (105 wins and an attendance of barely 1.1 million) but also outdrew the World Champion New York Yankees (who drew a little over 1.5 million).
With the Braves franchise awash in cash, the league became much more open to the possibilities of seeing baseball move to new cities. It also planted the seeds of expansion. But more importantly, the Braves' success in Milwaukee got a few other men thinking about moving their teams ...
Which brings me to the other two 1901 NL franchises: the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Giants were the best team in the NL by far pre-World War II. This was due mainly to the tireless efforts of Hall of Fame manager John McGraw. The Dodgers, on the other hand, posted a couple of NL pennants (1916 and 1920), but were never able to match their Manhattan rivals in either quality or revenues.
This all changed in the years immediately preceding World War II. This was mainly due to the retirement of McGraw and the subsequent fall of the Giants to also-ran status, and the emergence of the Dodgers as the best NL team of the 1940's and 50's. It was mainly the work of executives Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey that brought Brooklyn some of the best NL teams ever in the last two decades of its existence. Finally, in the early 1950's, New York fans finally had two NL teams to be proud of. The Dodgers and Giants won every NL pennant between 1951 and 1959. (The only two exceptions were back-to-back pennants by the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 and 1958).
But as everyone knows, Brooklyn owner Walter O'Malley was determined to move his team west. O'Malley's heartlessness is still legendary in Brooklyn, but the truth is that O'Malley was no more or less money-grubbing than anyone else that ran a baseball team in the first half of the 20th century. Although the Dodgers were doing well in attendance, O'Malley saw the neighborhood around his ballpark degenerating quickly. He knew that the middle-class was fleeing to the suburbs, so he pressured the city of Brooklyn into building a new ballpark (the more things change, huh?). The city may have thought O'Malley was just bluffing when he threatened to move the team, but he certainly wasn't. While it's true that O'Malley may have been using the new stadium as a blind and was planning to move regardless, it was just a matter of time before some team ended up in the metropolis of Los Angeles, anyway.
Due to travel concerns, the NL rules stated that two teams would have to move to California for the shift to be feasible. O'Malley (one of the greatest backroom powers in baseball) persuaded Giants owner Horace Stoneham to foresake Manhattan for San Francisco. Stoneham, much moreso than O'Malley, had reason to leave town. Whereas the Dodgers still ranked 5th in the league in attendance before they moved to LA (drawing 1.02 million in 1957, their last year in Brooklyn), the Giants ranked dead last. Even perennial losers like Pittsburgh and Chicago were outdrawing the Giants, who won the 1954 World Series and had in Willie Mays one of the most exciting players in baseball history. Not only that, but the Polo Grounds (the Giants' home ballpark) was located in northern Manhattan on the Harlem River. It hadn't been a garden spot in years, but the realities of the neighborhood became more and more clear when a spectator was shot and killed in 1956 by a stray bullet fired from the street. Stoneham, a free spender, was feeling the bite of the dollar as he was finding it more and more difficult to get upper-middle class white people to come to Harlem and watch a ballgame. It's interesting that O'Malley was the driving force behind the shift, when Stoneham had much more pressing reasons to move.
Both teams moved west for the 1958 season. The Giants took up temporary residence in Seals Stadium, former home of the famous Pacific Coast League franchise, while Candlestick Park was built. The Dodgers moved into the Los Angles Memorial Coliseum, a facility built for the Olympics. It's hard to imagine a building less suited for baseball. The field was shaped in such a way that the left-field foul line was a cozy 250 feet away, whereas the power alley zoomed back to a distant 440 feet.
One thing the building was perfect for, though, was holding lots and lots of people. The Dodgers drew 1.8 million in their new facility (an increase of 800,000), setting a major league record when 93,103 fans attended an exhibition game against the Yankees to benefit paralyzed catcher Roy Campanella. Although Seals Stadium wasn't nearly as spacious, the Giants still managed to nearly double their New York attendance, drawing 1.27 million fans (after drawing barely 650,000 their last year at the Polo Grounds).
While the Dodgers and Giants still reside on the West Coast, the Braves took a further move. For a variety of reasons, initial enthusiasm in Milwaukee soon dulled down over a number of disputes between locals and owner Perini. Even after Perini sold the Braves to Milwaukee-based interests, it wasn't clear whether they would still remain in Milwaukee. The city of Atlanta started to look like a very attractive option. Atlanta would open up the Braves to the television revenue (a new factor in baseball business) of the entire Deep South, whereas Milwaukee was particularly lacking in this potential.
After seeing attendance drift back below the 1 million mark (it had peaked at 2.2 million in the World Championship season of 1957), ownership announced the Braves would be moving to Atlanta for the 1965 season. A series of local lawsuits halted the move temporarily. The Braves weren't able to work out a solution in time for the season to start, so they were forced to remain one more year in Milwaukee. It was a lame-duck season in every sense of the word, as a sense of doom followed around the still-potent team (86-76) and a bare 555, 584 fans dropped the Braves to last in the NL in attendance (only the KC Athletics drew worse in the AL). The move finally happened in time for the 1966 season. The entire affair left a distaste in Milwaukee for the MLB. Local interest still pursued a major league team, and finally succeeded in 1970, when local car dealer Bud Selig bought the dying Seattle Pilots and moved them to Milwaukee as the Brewers.
The AL
The American League's first season as a major league (1901) saw 8 franchises take the field. Four of those teams, the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, and Detroit Tigers, are still where they were 104 years ago. The other four teams were the Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Athletics, and Washington Senators.
The Baltimore Orioles were Johnson's attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the old Baltimore Orioles, managed by John McGraw. The Orioles were the most famous team of the 19th century, a team whose exciting, aggressive style is remembered nearly as much as their fights and brawls. Johnson got McGraw to manage the team and even returned some stars from the old Orioles, such as McGraw protege Wilbert Robinson. But the Orioles and the AL were doomed from the start. Johnson was billing his league as the family alternative to the NL, while McGraw and his Orioles went out every day and fought as dirty as any team in history. Johnson tried disciplining McGraw, but it became clear that these two titanic egos just could not co-exist. When Johnson expressed his desire to field an AL team in New York, he targeted the Orioles, who had finished last in the league in attendance in 1902, as perfect candidates. McGraw had other ideas. He jumped to the NL to manage the New York Giants, and even took some of his best players, such as Roger Bresnahan, Joe McGinnity, Mike Donlin and Robinson along with him. The McGraw-less Orioles moved to New York and were re-named the Highlanders (their home park was on a hill in uptown Manhattan).
Johnson sought to shore up the New York club by moving players around from the other teams. It wasn't anyone's idea of fair play, but it did bring new meaning to the term "competitive balance." Catcher Deacon McGuire and SS Kid Elberfeld (Detroit), OF Patsy Dougherty (Red Sox) OF Willie Keeler (Brooklyn in the NL), P Jack Chesbro (NL Pittsburgh) and P-Manager Clark Griffith (White Sox) were brought in to shore up the team. They succeeded, contending for the 1904 AL pennant to the final day of the season, when Chesbro wild-pitched in the pennant-losing run. The Highlanders would later be re-named the Yankees and developed into the greatest sports franchise of all time.
The Milwaukee Brewers were one of the original AL franchises, but were also the only one not to last past the inaugural season. They finished dead last in the AL in attendance, and Ban Johnson decided to shift the team to St. Louis to directly challenge the Cardinals. The team was re-dubbed the Browns, and it proved to be one of the saddest franchises in major league history.
There are really only two seasons worth remembering from the Browns' 52-season history. One is 1922, when the Browns fought a very close pennant race against the Yankees, finishing the season a bare 1 game back, with a 94-60 record (their .604 winning percentage was a Browns franchise record). The other season to remember is 1944, when the Browns made their only postseason appearance. It was only appropriate that the Browns won the pennant during the World War II era, when other freak occurences such as one-armed ballplayers were relatively common. The Browns beat out the Hank Greenberg-less Tigers by 1 game, but lost the World Series to the crosstown rival St. Louis Cardinals.
There weren't many famous faces on the Browns, but some of the more notable players to appear for the team were Hall of Famers George Sisler and Goose Goslin, as well as All-Stars Urban Shocker, Vern Stephens, and Bobo Newsom. The most memorable character on the Browns wasn't a player; it was owner Bill Veeck. Veeck's reign as owner of the team saw some of the more memorable stunts in baseball history including, but not limited to: the appearance of Eddie Gaedel as the only midget to play major league baseball, Millie the Queen of the Air sliding down a tightrope from right field to third base, and Grandstand Managers Day, where Browns manager Zack Taylor relaxed in a rocking chair while the fans in attendance coached the team. Using large placards such as "hit and run," and "steal," the fans managed the team. League officials were not pleased, although the Browns won, defeating the Athletics 5-3.
Veeck was not, however, able to field a competitive team, nor was he able to reverse the team's dire economic condition. He ended up selling the team to a group that moved the franchise to Baltimore. The team was re-named the Orioles, after the legendary minor league team. And from 1966-1983, the Orioles put together one of the greatest teams in American League history.
The Philadelphia Athletics became as identified with one man as any other team, perhaps, in history: Cornelius MacGillicuddy, known to friends as "Connie Mack" and to players as "Mr. Mack." Perhaps it's because he won 10 pennants and 5 World Series. But it's probably because the Philadelphia A's existed from 1901-1954, and Connie Mack was their manager from 1901-1950.
The Philadelphia A's were a great example of an up-and-down team. Mack showed the managerial brilliance that got him elected to Cooperstown in 1937 by building two separate dynasties: the 1910-1914 A's, who won 4 pennants and 3 World Series, and the 1929-1931 A's, who won 3 straight pennants and 2 World Series. The unfortunate fact is that, with the exception of these two oases of winning, the A's generally sucked for the majority of the time they existed. Mack won 3,582 games as manager of the A's, a feat that will never be equalled. But neither will his 3,814 losses with the team. Any man who watches his team lose 3,948 baseball games (he also managed in Pittsburgh from 1894-1896) and still lives to be 94 years old is some kind of amazing.
The A's were actually the first of the original 8 AL franchises to shift since the Orioles moved to New York in 1903. It was 1953, and the Philadelphia team hadn't finished higher than 4th in 20 years. The attendance reflected this: a 362, 113 mark that was lower than any other big-league team by 200,000. It started becoming clear that Philadelphia wasn't big enough to support two major league franchises. But there were lots of opportunities out west. The Mack family (Connie's sons ran the franchise) got only one solid offer for the team. It came from Arnold Johnson, a Chicago millionaire with strong connections with the Yankees who showed interest in moving the team to Kansas City. In a complex wrangle that must have made for some interesting discussions around the Mack family dinner table, the team ended up getting sold to Johnson, who kept his word and moved the team to Kansas City.
The Kansas City A's were never good; they were never even really remotely good. The club actually has one of the more shameful records of any modern franchise, which comes only in part from what happened on the field. Johnson's connections to the Yankees made some wonder if the A's wouldn't just end up as a big-league farm team for the New York powerhouse. As it turned out, that's exactly what happened, as the Athletics gave up hot young prospects such as Roger Maris, Clete Boyer, and Ryne Duren to the Yankees in exchange for a pittance; the Kansas City team was left with washed-up former Yankees such as Ewell Blackwell, Johnny Sain, and Don Larsen.
Hope emerged when the team was sold to Indiana insurance executive Charlie Finley, who had courted major league franchises for years without success. Finley is one of the most interesting characters in the history of baseball; words do not do justice to a man who was simultaneously a progressive-thinking maverick and an insufferable horse's ass with more harebrained schemes than Ralph Kramden. Ideas such as the designated hitter originated with Finley, making him one of the few baseball executives to seek creative solutions to problems. Finley was also responsible for offering a bonus to any A's player who grew facial hair; he felt it would give the team personality. It gave them all that and more, as the Moustache Gang became the best team ever that absolutely hated each other.
The Kansas City version of the team was perhaps doomed from the start, and Finley hounded the other owners to let him move the franchise. With the litigation-happy Finley threatening to sue, the AL owners backed down and permitted him to move the club to Oakland for the 1968 season. The ensuing brouhaha raised by Kansas City officials and Missouri politicians led baseball to promise the city an expansion franchise sometime before 1971. When this failed to appease the itinerant Missourians (Missourites?), the AL was forced to rush through plans for expansion for the 1969 season, providing for a franchise in Kansas City.
But we'll get to that later. The A's moved west, won 4 World Series, appeared in the postseason 14 times, and then reinvented themselves as a sabermetric baseball organization at the turn of the century.
The last club we come to is the Washington Senators. The Senators were famous for being losers, but they were, for most of their existence, a fairly competitive team. They won 3 pennants and one World Series and while they were often in the second division, they weren't as bad as the Browns. It wasn't until the late 1930's that the Senators became the cellar-dwellers everyone remembers. This helped prompt them to move the team.
Owner Calvin Griffith (nephew of franchise patriarch Clark Griffith) was, by the late 1950's, constantly pressuring the league to allow him to shift the franchise. The arrival of the Orioles in Baltimore in 1954 had further depleted an already bare fanbase, and Griffith had his eyes on the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul. Behind-the-scenes politicking occurred that even Richard Nixon would be proud of. Former Commissioner Happy Chandler promised the club a 50,000-seat stadium if they would move to Louisville. Talks opened up with Los Angeles mayor Norris Poulson (with Chief Justice Earl Warren reportedly offering behind-the-scenes encouragement), but Walter O'Malley stepped in and took LA for himself. The Twin Cities gradually emerged as the most likely location of the Senators in the future.
There were, however, worries among baseball higher-ups that it would be rather unseemly to shift so many teams in such a short span of time. With the A's, Braves, Browns, Dodgers, and Giants jacking up their teams and heading off for the highest bidder, baseball officials were worried about their public appearance as monopolistic puppeteers with no loyalties to cities nor their fans. It was especially problematic, as the Washington, D.C. fanbase was somewhat more influential than most.
The solution was that the league would expand from 8 teams to 10. Griffith would be allowed to shift his team to Minnesota (re-dubbed the Twins), and the AL would place a new expansion franchise in Washington. So although the 1960 Senators and 1961 Senators would be two entirely different franchises, baseball would remain in Washington for the foreseeable future. The other expansion franchise was to be located in Los Angeles. They were to be known as the Angels.
And that takes us to the end of part 1. Part 2 will pick up with the 1961 AL expansion that added the New Washington Senators and the Los Angeles Angels.
Until then ...
This essay was produced thanks to generous assistance from these references:
Total Baseball Encyclopedia, 2004 ed.
Total Ballclubs by Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella
The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James
and of course www.baseball-reference.com.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
NL West Offseason
San Diego Padres
Key losses: Mark Loretta, Ramon Hernandez, Pedro Astacio, Joe Randa, Mark Sweeney, Rudy Seanez, Chris Hammond, Robert Fick
Needs: 2B, starting pitching, maybe C and relief help
The Padres won 83 games last year and have struggled a lot this offseason just to end up pretty much back where they started. The good news is, I guess, that nobody in the NL West looks significantly better. The Padres are, at this point, rough favorites to repeat in my view.
The big losses are Loretta (who is basically irreplaceable). I haven't a clue why he was traded, as I said before. His 2006 salary was $3 million. He was traded for backup catcher Doug Mirabelli, who will make $1.6 million. So in order to save a paltry $1.4 million, the Padres traded away one of the best second baseman in the league, knowing that there are no good second basemen readily available (with Grudzielanek out of their price range), and certainly not available for $3 million. Loretta earned 15 Win Shares last year in just 404 ABs. Mirabelli earned 5 WS. In 2004, Loretta earned 33 Win Shares, good enough for 8th in the entire NL. Mirabelli earned 7 WS. Whatthehell?
The Padres also re-signed Trevor Hoffman, which is good for the newspapers, but leaves them with a 38-year-old closer who threw 57.2 innings last year. If the Padres do repeat as NL West Champions in 2006, it will likely be by default.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Key losses: Royce Clayton, Shawn Estes, Quinton McCracken
Needs: Starting pitcher, maybe SS or CF and relief help
The Diamondbacks are at least returning most of their squad from 2005, when they won 77 games and finished 2nd. The bad news is that their Pythagorean W-L record shows just 66 wins, making them the luckiest team in all of baseball last year and, incidentally, the worst team in the NL. There's no reason to think that the Pythagorean record is incorrect, which means that the D-Backs are headed for what the statisticians might call a "correction" in 2006.
But can they improve this essentially 66-win team? They traded for Johnny Estrada to catch, which doesn't do much for the offense, but at least fills what was a gaping hole last season with a capable defender. The D-Backs offense is full of aging hitters (Luis Gonzalez, Shawn Green, Troy Glaus, Tony Clark) who just can't be counted on for significant production. The pitching staff is little better, with Brandon Webb the only really good news. If Javier Vazquez gets traded (as he has requested), the D-Backs may be able to get back some pitching help, or a CF/SS solution. But even then, they're still one of the worst teams in the league, and I'll be surprised if they finish as high as 3rd.
San Francisco Giants
Key losses: J.T. Snow, Brett Tomko, Scott Eyre, Marquis Grissom, Kirk Rueter
Needs: 2 or 3 starters, an infield bat, and a couple wheelchairs
Last year, Giants GM Brian Sabean took a strong dose of fukitol and signed a lot of old players to long-term deals, hoping to make the team contenders. You can infer from my tone what I feel about such a strategy, which ultimately resulted in a 75-87 record. Now he's stuck with a fleet of old players, some of which are still good, but most of whom can be expected to get worse from here on out. As good as Moises Alou (39 years old), Omar Vizquel (39 in April), Mike Matheny (35) and Ray Durham (34) were in 2005, it's likely that at least 3 of 4 will be worse in 2006, perhaps significantly so (especially on defense). And if the team lost 87 games with these guys playing well, imagine what 2006 will be like.
Is it possible the Giants can recoup these losses in other ways? Barry Bonds should be back. But don't expect an MVP, for 4 big reasons: 1) Bonds is coming off extensive surgery, which should take a chunk out of his productivity, 2) Bonds is 41 (turns 42 in July) and is beyond due for a drop in quality, 3) Bonds will play at most 120, but more likely less than that given his injury history, and 4) there may be some chemical substances absent from his bloodstream. Put all that together, and you get a guy who is on the outside simply a good player -- just maybe a very good player. What you don't have is someone who can boost his team by 20 wins just by showing up.
There's also the fact that the Giants' pitching staff sucks. Armando Benitez (33) is the closer, an already inconsistent performer coming off injuries. Their ace, Jason Schmidt, is coming off a poor year (4.40 ERA, 85 BB in 172 IP) where he was plagued by injuries. The only other even moderately average pitcher the Giants have is Noah Lowry, who pitched pretty well in 2005 (3.78 ERA, 172 K in 204.2 IP). But the cupboard is completely bare after that, and I'm not even sure the Giants have 5 pitchers to stick in the rotation. There has been talk about signing a free agent pitcher (such as Matt Morris). That would help, but it still wouldn't put the team over the top. The only hope for the Giants is that the rest of the division sucks like it did last year and they can stumble off with the division title.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Key Losses: Jeff Weaver, Elmer Dessens, Giovanni Carrara, Jose Valentin
Needs: 3B, OF, C, 1 or 2 starters
The Dodgers actually stand the best chance of dethroning the Padres. As bad as they were last year (91 losses), they were ravaged by injuries. If they can add to the potent roster they already possess, they could be considered favorites in the West. But they'll have to get through the trials and tribulations of a new GM and brand new manager in Grady Little (known to Red Sox fans as Grady F'n Little).
The Dodgers (should) have J.D. Drew, Eric Gagne, Brad Penny, and Odalis Perez returning from injuries. This alone will be a big boost to their pitching staff and give them a potent cleanup hitter in Drew. Whether all 4 really will be healthy all season is certainly questionable (Drew especially), but having these 4 return from injuries that all be erased them from the 2005 roster gives the Dodgers an automatic boost. The signing of Rafael Furcal gives them a solid defender at shortstop who can actually hit and run as well (sorry, Cesar Izturis). Jeff Kent is still a potent bat, and the platoon of Hee Seop Choi and Olmedo Saenz at first may not be great, but it's cheap and fairly effective. The Dodgers will probably be trading Milton Bradley, which (depending on what they get in return) could leave them with 3 big holes in the lineup (catcher, 3B, and CF). They have some free agents to pursue and could certainly use someone else to support the solid if unexceptional starting rotation of Derek Lowe, Penny, and Perez. If they can solve these problems (and keep everybody healthy), I would go so far as to call the Dodgers the favorites in the NL West, despite the presence of Grady Little in the dugout.
Colorado Rockies
Key losses: Byung-Hyun Kim, Dan Miceli, Dustan Mohr, Todd Greene, Jamey Wrightt
Needs: 2B, corner outfielder, C, starting pitching
The Rockies really have nothing to lose. They have some promising youngsters (Clint Barmes, Matt Holliday, Garret Atkins), but they don't look so promising outside of Coors. I don't expect to see the Rockies pursue major free agents, so look for them to sign stopgaps and look for prospects.
The Rockies need pitching. This might be the most blatantly obvious thing I've ever said before. Rookie Jeff Francis didn't take to well to Coors Field (5.68 ERA), and he's really the only great hope they've got. Byung-Hyun Kim would be a nice, risky free agent signee, since he did pitch well last season (4.86, good for Colorado).
There's nothing to see here, move on.
My next project is to take a look at a short history of expansion and expansion franchises. As we look at what it takes to put a team together and win, it's instrucutive to look at the teams that started from scratch over the past 45 years, and how they handled the problems. We can look at the winners and losers, who did what right and who just blew it. Keep your eyes open for it. I'll post soon.
Key losses: Mark Loretta, Ramon Hernandez, Pedro Astacio, Joe Randa, Mark Sweeney, Rudy Seanez, Chris Hammond, Robert Fick
Needs: 2B, starting pitching, maybe C and relief help
The Padres won 83 games last year and have struggled a lot this offseason just to end up pretty much back where they started. The good news is, I guess, that nobody in the NL West looks significantly better. The Padres are, at this point, rough favorites to repeat in my view.
The big losses are Loretta (who is basically irreplaceable). I haven't a clue why he was traded, as I said before. His 2006 salary was $3 million. He was traded for backup catcher Doug Mirabelli, who will make $1.6 million. So in order to save a paltry $1.4 million, the Padres traded away one of the best second baseman in the league, knowing that there are no good second basemen readily available (with Grudzielanek out of their price range), and certainly not available for $3 million. Loretta earned 15 Win Shares last year in just 404 ABs. Mirabelli earned 5 WS. In 2004, Loretta earned 33 Win Shares, good enough for 8th in the entire NL. Mirabelli earned 7 WS. Whatthehell?
The Padres also re-signed Trevor Hoffman, which is good for the newspapers, but leaves them with a 38-year-old closer who threw 57.2 innings last year. If the Padres do repeat as NL West Champions in 2006, it will likely be by default.
Arizona Diamondbacks
Key losses: Royce Clayton, Shawn Estes, Quinton McCracken
Needs: Starting pitcher, maybe SS or CF and relief help
The Diamondbacks are at least returning most of their squad from 2005, when they won 77 games and finished 2nd. The bad news is that their Pythagorean W-L record shows just 66 wins, making them the luckiest team in all of baseball last year and, incidentally, the worst team in the NL. There's no reason to think that the Pythagorean record is incorrect, which means that the D-Backs are headed for what the statisticians might call a "correction" in 2006.
But can they improve this essentially 66-win team? They traded for Johnny Estrada to catch, which doesn't do much for the offense, but at least fills what was a gaping hole last season with a capable defender. The D-Backs offense is full of aging hitters (Luis Gonzalez, Shawn Green, Troy Glaus, Tony Clark) who just can't be counted on for significant production. The pitching staff is little better, with Brandon Webb the only really good news. If Javier Vazquez gets traded (as he has requested), the D-Backs may be able to get back some pitching help, or a CF/SS solution. But even then, they're still one of the worst teams in the league, and I'll be surprised if they finish as high as 3rd.
San Francisco Giants
Key losses: J.T. Snow, Brett Tomko, Scott Eyre, Marquis Grissom, Kirk Rueter
Needs: 2 or 3 starters, an infield bat, and a couple wheelchairs
Last year, Giants GM Brian Sabean took a strong dose of fukitol and signed a lot of old players to long-term deals, hoping to make the team contenders. You can infer from my tone what I feel about such a strategy, which ultimately resulted in a 75-87 record. Now he's stuck with a fleet of old players, some of which are still good, but most of whom can be expected to get worse from here on out. As good as Moises Alou (39 years old), Omar Vizquel (39 in April), Mike Matheny (35) and Ray Durham (34) were in 2005, it's likely that at least 3 of 4 will be worse in 2006, perhaps significantly so (especially on defense). And if the team lost 87 games with these guys playing well, imagine what 2006 will be like.
Is it possible the Giants can recoup these losses in other ways? Barry Bonds should be back. But don't expect an MVP, for 4 big reasons: 1) Bonds is coming off extensive surgery, which should take a chunk out of his productivity, 2) Bonds is 41 (turns 42 in July) and is beyond due for a drop in quality, 3) Bonds will play at most 120, but more likely less than that given his injury history, and 4) there may be some chemical substances absent from his bloodstream. Put all that together, and you get a guy who is on the outside simply a good player -- just maybe a very good player. What you don't have is someone who can boost his team by 20 wins just by showing up.
There's also the fact that the Giants' pitching staff sucks. Armando Benitez (33) is the closer, an already inconsistent performer coming off injuries. Their ace, Jason Schmidt, is coming off a poor year (4.40 ERA, 85 BB in 172 IP) where he was plagued by injuries. The only other even moderately average pitcher the Giants have is Noah Lowry, who pitched pretty well in 2005 (3.78 ERA, 172 K in 204.2 IP). But the cupboard is completely bare after that, and I'm not even sure the Giants have 5 pitchers to stick in the rotation. There has been talk about signing a free agent pitcher (such as Matt Morris). That would help, but it still wouldn't put the team over the top. The only hope for the Giants is that the rest of the division sucks like it did last year and they can stumble off with the division title.
Los Angeles Dodgers
Key Losses: Jeff Weaver, Elmer Dessens, Giovanni Carrara, Jose Valentin
Needs: 3B, OF, C, 1 or 2 starters
The Dodgers actually stand the best chance of dethroning the Padres. As bad as they were last year (91 losses), they were ravaged by injuries. If they can add to the potent roster they already possess, they could be considered favorites in the West. But they'll have to get through the trials and tribulations of a new GM and brand new manager in Grady Little (known to Red Sox fans as Grady F'n Little).
The Dodgers (should) have J.D. Drew, Eric Gagne, Brad Penny, and Odalis Perez returning from injuries. This alone will be a big boost to their pitching staff and give them a potent cleanup hitter in Drew. Whether all 4 really will be healthy all season is certainly questionable (Drew especially), but having these 4 return from injuries that all be erased them from the 2005 roster gives the Dodgers an automatic boost. The signing of Rafael Furcal gives them a solid defender at shortstop who can actually hit and run as well (sorry, Cesar Izturis). Jeff Kent is still a potent bat, and the platoon of Hee Seop Choi and Olmedo Saenz at first may not be great, but it's cheap and fairly effective. The Dodgers will probably be trading Milton Bradley, which (depending on what they get in return) could leave them with 3 big holes in the lineup (catcher, 3B, and CF). They have some free agents to pursue and could certainly use someone else to support the solid if unexceptional starting rotation of Derek Lowe, Penny, and Perez. If they can solve these problems (and keep everybody healthy), I would go so far as to call the Dodgers the favorites in the NL West, despite the presence of Grady Little in the dugout.
Colorado Rockies
Key losses: Byung-Hyun Kim, Dan Miceli, Dustan Mohr, Todd Greene, Jamey Wrightt
Needs: 2B, corner outfielder, C, starting pitching
The Rockies really have nothing to lose. They have some promising youngsters (Clint Barmes, Matt Holliday, Garret Atkins), but they don't look so promising outside of Coors. I don't expect to see the Rockies pursue major free agents, so look for them to sign stopgaps and look for prospects.
The Rockies need pitching. This might be the most blatantly obvious thing I've ever said before. Rookie Jeff Francis didn't take to well to Coors Field (5.68 ERA), and he's really the only great hope they've got. Byung-Hyun Kim would be a nice, risky free agent signee, since he did pitch well last season (4.86, good for Colorado).
There's nothing to see here, move on.
My next project is to take a look at a short history of expansion and expansion franchises. As we look at what it takes to put a team together and win, it's instrucutive to look at the teams that started from scratch over the past 45 years, and how they handled the problems. We can look at the winners and losers, who did what right and who just blew it. Keep your eyes open for it. I'll post soon.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
More action
- The Braves traded 3B prospect Andy Marte to Boston for SS Edgar Renteria. It's tough for the Braves to lose out on Marte, who looks to be a fine player, but this does fill their SS need. Renteria is amazingly overrated and pretty well overpaid. But if the Red Sox pay part of his contract, it should come out pretty well for Atlanta.
- The White Sox just traded reliever Damaso Marte to the Pirates for Rob Mackowiak. Marte is a good arm and may end up as the closer in Pittsburgh. But the White Sox were dealing from a position of strength in their bullpen and now have a valuable utility hitter who can play third, first, or in the outfield. He'll be great insurance in case somebody (Thome) gets injured. Kudos to Kenny Williams, who's not letting the grass grow under his feet this off-season.
- The Tigers signed Kenny Rogers to a 2-year deal. The Tigers really needed somebody else in that starting rotation, and Rogers does fill that need. He should enjoy spacious Comerica Park. Although again, I must remind the Tigers that Rogers is 41 years old and coming off a season where he struck out a mere 87 hitters in 195.1 IP against 53 walks. It doesn't bode well, and he won't get any help from the Tigers defense. Detroit also signed Todd Jones -- I guess as their closer. See my earlier comments about Jones, when I thought he was going to the Braves. The Tigers are just obsessed with old closers and won't learn their lesson.
- The Orioles signed free agent catcher Ramon Hernandez to a 4-year deal for $27.5 million. Hernandez is not as good as everyone says he is, and he's also had injury problems. The Orioles are now left with Javier Lopez, who could be traded if he doesn't like the idea of being a sometime catcher/DH.
- The Cubs are rumored to be close to a deal for troubled Dodger Milton Bradley. Bradley would be a great addition to Chicago's lineup, but will the Cubs be able to deal with his difficult nature? Time will tell, but I guarantee you he will hit.
- The Yankees traded Tony Womack to the Reds for some prospects. Womack just plain sucks, and this is a moronic deal. Welcome to BoneheadVille, capital city: Cincinnati.
Echoing my own opinions, Rob Neyer had this to say about the Soriano deal in today's ESPN.com chat:
Soriano's going from the best hitter's park in the American League to the worst in the National, and people are going to be shocked by what happens to his numbers. If Wilkerson's healthy, this is a terrible inbalance in talent exchanged.
Thank you, Rob. More to come later, I'm sure.
Clemens done?
It's been a very busy day. Since my last post, the followins transactions occurred:
- The Astros declined to offer arbitration to Roger Clemens. This means that Clemens cannot re-sign with Houston until May 1. He is free to pursue other clubs. My personal feeling is that Clemens will retire, but we just don't know for sure. Peter Gammons offered 3 possibilities for Roger's future: 1) he retires, 2) another team overwhelms him with an offer to come back for another year (a bit unlikely, but not impossible, as the Rangers and Yankees would just loooove to get him) and 3) Clemens pitches in the World Baseball Classic (as he is planning to) and comes back to the Astros on May 1. He takes a shorter season, which would be much easier on his aging arm. We'll have to wait and see, as Clemens has intimated he won't make a final decision until at least January.
- The Padres re-signed closer Trevor Hoffman. It looked last year like Hoffman and the Padres were done, as both sides became publicly frustrated when the talks to extend his contract fell apart. But I guess they were able to get past all that, because Hoffman turned down a possible deal with Cleveland to go back to the Padres (so the Indians re-signed Bob Wickman to return as their closer). It's nice to see Hoffman with San Diego (he's never been with any other team), probably for the rest of his career (it's a 2-year deal, and Hoffman is 38). But I'm afraid I must point out that signing 38-year-old closers to multi-year contracts doesn't usually end happily.
- The trade sending Lyle Overbay to Toronto went through, with Milwaukee getting pitcher Dave Bush and some minor leaguers. I'm surprised the Brewers didn't ask for an infielder in return; I wonder what made the Jays decide to keep Hillenbrand.
- The biggest trade of the day sends Rangers 2B Alfonso Soriano to the Washington Nationals for Brad Wilkerson, Terrmel Sledge, and a PTBNL. I really don't know what the Nationals see in Soriano to give up Wilkerson. One-for-one, it's hard to give Soriano much of an edge. Soriano will be 30 on Opening Day; Wilkerson will be 28. Soriano is a career 320/500/280 hitter; Wilkerson 365/452/256. Soriano is a better slugger, but he's spent his career in the AL (and the past two years in homer-happy Texas), whereas Wilkerson has spent his career in the NL (and last year in the Death Valley of Homers known as RFK Stadium). And Wilkerson's huge edge in OBP makes him the more valuable player. And his edge in defense makes him the more valuable player by far. Wilkerson is a fine outfielder; Soriano is a terrible 2B whom the Nationals will probably turn into a mediocre left fieder. And the fact that Wilkerson gets paid half as much as Soriano. This, friends, is why Nationals GM Jim Bowden is a complete doofus. He goes on Soriano's huge reputation (he's basically a base-stealing Dave Kingman with a higher batting average) and gives up far too much to get him. The Rangers, on the other hand, are rid of their dreadful 2B and resident attitude problem, and have a versatile, cheap, and valuable 28-year-old outfielder in Wilkerson and some spare parts to boot. Bowden, you are a doofus!
- Also, the Cubs signed backup outfielder John Mabry, and the Braves traded P Dan Kolb back to the Brewers (um, why?). There's more action still to come, so don't go away . . . well, far away.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
I. Fleecum
The winter meetings have turned into a trade extravaganza. Some of the craziness ...
- The Reds traded 1B Sean Casey to the Pirates for pitcher Dave Williams. My first reaction to this deal is that the Reds got fleeced by the Pirates. Then I stopped and thought about it. I looked up Williams' major and minor league stats. And I changed my mind. The Reds really got fleeced by the Pirates. I understand the Reds wanted to get Casey's $8 million salary off the books, but they could have gotten something in exchange for him. In case you don't know Dave Williams, he's basically a 5th-starter, minor-league replacement-level type of pitcher. His major league totals include a 4.25 ERA (with only one season above-average in ERA), an unimpressive 211 K in 334.2 IP against 140 BB, and nothing else to suggest that he's even a league-average guy. He's never thrown more than 138.2 IP in a major league season, that coming last year. He will be 27 years old on Opening Day, meaning he's likely not going to develop into anything more than he is. It's really rare for the Pirates to be the ones doing the fleecing, but then we're talking about the Reds here. There are two bad developments that go along with this deal: 1) The Reds will likely move either Adam Dunn or Austin Kearns to first base, solving their outfield problem and meaning that they won't be making any more trades to get pitching and 2) Sean Casey was probably the most popular player on the Reds, even moreso than Griffey. This is not just with his fellow players, but especially with the fans. Casey is more involved in the Cincinnati community than most other players combined. Now you're not about to hear me step in and defend the idea of team chemistry, but I do think that if you're going to trade your most popular player, further pissing off an already disgruntled clubhouse and fan base, you'd better get something really good in return. The Reds did not. And with the Bengals better than the Reds for the first time in years, they shouldn't be surprised if the Great American Ballpark is a bit empty next season.
- I'm running out of funny ways to talk about the Marlins' fire sale, but that doesn't mean the sale itself is stopping. Florida shipped catcher Paul Lo Duca to the Mets in exchange for spare parts. Lo Duca really isn't that good, hitting 338/421/286 and 334/380/283 in 2004 and 2005, respectively. He's not a bad defensive catcher, but he doesn't really make up for his hitting. He's not an awful solution, don't get me wrong. And he probably comes cheaper than a free agent like Bengie Molina, but people still think of him as the guy who had a career year in 2001, not as the guy who hasn't hit nearly as well since.
- The Marlins also traded center fielder Juan Pierre to the Cubs for some more spare parts. Pierre isn't anybody's idea of an MVP, but he's a pretty cheap and efficient solution to the Cubs' CF problem. He's also a good leadoff hitter (if he can hit .300) who steals bases. He's an exciting guy who should sell some T-shirts. The Cubs do have a big CF prospect in Felix Pie, but my understanding is that Pie isn't quite major-league ready. And with the Chicago outfield a work in progress, they can easily shift Pierre to left when Pie arrives at the big-league level.
- The Red Sox are reported to have traded backup catcher Doug Mirabelli to the Padres for second baseman Mark Loretta. It's a day for fleecings, truly. Loretta is in the last year of his contract, for which he makes $3 million. Loretta is easily the best $3 million player in baseball. He missed good parts of 2005 due to injury, but he was one of the best all-around players in the NL in 2003 (372/441/314) and 2004 (391/495/335). Those were probably career years for the 34-year-old, but consider that Loretta is a career 365/408/301 hitter. He was playing in the greatest pitcher's park in baseball, and now he's moving to the American League to play in Fenway Park. This will be one of the biggest steals of this offseason, with the Sox losing a solid backup catcher in Mirabelli, but nothing else. I really don't have a clue why the Padres would trade one of their best players for nothing when it looks like they're trying to contend in 2006. Maybe Boston should just keep the "GM by Committee" it has going right now.
- The Braves traded catcher Johnny Estrada to the Diamondbacks for two relief pitchers (Lance Cormier and Oscar Villarreal). It's tough, as a Braves fan, to see Estrada go, but the Braves have a younger, cheaper backup in Brian McCann who really isn't any worse than Estrada. McCann is still young and doesn't project to be any great hitter, but then Estrada wasn't such a great hitter, either. The Braves got two solid, young (neither pitcher is 26 yet) relief arms, which they really needed. Neither pitcher looks like a possible closer, as they have fairly low strikeout rates and high walk rates for the job. But the Braves come out on the better end of this deal. The D-Backs don't do so bad, either, since they've finally got a warm body to fill their hole at catcher, and they had a pretty good bullpen to begin with.
- Rumors about A's pitcher Barry Zito swirl. The speculation now, though, is that since the signing of A.J. Burnett to a silly-ass deal by Toronto (5-years, $55 million), that Zito's asking price just shot up big-time. And no team is going to pay through the nose to get Zit0 only to find that they can't afford him and have to let him walk after the season as a free agent. Unless a team feels sure they could sign him to a contract extension, they won't trade for him. With a lot of teams now thinking twice about him, it looks like Oakland GM Billy Beane might just keep him. Beane is in a position of strength, as he can wait for the right deal to come along, and even if it doesn't, he can just keep Zito and lose him as a free agent after the season. If he does keep him, it gives the A's a dynamite rotation (Zito, Rich Harden, Danny Haren, Joe Blanton, Esteban Loaiza) that is likely the best in baseball.
- Rumors are that the Phillies are anxious to trade high-price RF Bobby Abreu for a front-line pitcher. It looks now like they won't be able to get the ace that they want in return, as Abreu is a very expensive player who's also going to be 32 next season. It's possible they may still trade him for a #2-level starter, but the Phils need to make sure they know what they're doing in trading one of the best players in the NL.
- With Prince Fielder arriving in Milwaukee, it's possible that GM Doug Melvin will trade away resident 1B Lyle Overbay. This gives Melvin a high-impact 1B bat in a market starved for such players. Overbay (who turns 29 in January) is a career 367/449/276 hitter. The Blue Jays are working on a deal that would send Shea Hillenbrand and Dave Bush, filling Milwaukee's hole at 3B and at the back of the rotation. The Blue Jays are really going to regret throwing all this money around. And if (when) they don't make the playoffs this year (or next) many jobs will be lost.
- Rumors are running hot about a 3-way trade between the Braves, Devil Rays, and Red Sox. The Braves would get Edgar Renteria, the Red Sox would get Julio Lugo, and the Rays would get Braves 3B uber-prospect Andy Marte. I really don't know why the Braves wouldn't just trade straight-up for Lugo. He's not quite as good as Renteria, but he's significantly cheaper.
There are many more rumors, but these seem to be the most substantial. Get baseball people in one hotel, and the deal start a-flyin'. More to come later.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
NL Central Offseason
St. Louis Cardinals
Key losses: Mark Grudzielanek, Reggie Sanders, Larry Walker, Matt Morris, Julian Tavarez, Abraham Nunez, John Mabry, Cal Eldred, AL Reyes
Needs: 2B, LF, RF, relief help, starting pitcher
The Cardinals' 100-win 2005 is starting to look like a distant memory. But the good news at least is that no one in the NL Central looks poised to pass them by.
The Cards are losing a pretty good chunk of offense in Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker, and it will be pretty darn difficult to replace them. The only big bat/outfielder types left on the free agent market are those such as Jacque Jones, Jeromy Burnitz, and Carl Everett, that come with strings attached. Barring a trade, the Cards will be unable to field potent bats in the corner outfield spots, and this will be a big change from 2005. They're also losing capable 2B Mark Grudzielanek. Grudzielanek's big 2005 was a bit of a career year, yes, but there's no one else out there that can really offer much at 2B. If they can't re-sign the free agent, they may be forced to go to someone like Rich Aurilia or Tony Graffanino.
The Cards are also losing a solid arm in Matt Morris. Now that A.J. Burnett has signed with Toronto, the Cards are left scrambling in their attempt to find another solid starter. Their starting rotation isn't their chief worry, but it could use an upgrade.
The bullpen is another story. With the semi-reliable Jason Isringhausen as closer, the Cards don't have much in the bullpen to back him up, with the departure of Tavarez, Reyes, and Eldred. Unless one of these can be re-signed (Eldred has retired), the Cards will have to come up with some middle-relief help somewhere else.
It'll be a tough road in 2005, and it doesn't look like the Cardinals will dominate anything. But unless the Cubs can wake up to some new talent or the Astros can find some offense, the NL Central is theirs to lose.
Houston Astros
Key Losses: Roger Clemens, Brad Ausmus, Jose Vizcaino, Orlando Palmeiro
Needs: C, 2 starters
The good news is that the Astros are returning (with the exception of Clemens) all the big players instrumental in winning them their first-ever pennant in 2005. The bad news is that those guys weren't so hot to begin with, and most of them are on the wrong side of 30.
The main thing the Astros will do this off-season is wait on Clemens. Clemens said recently that if he had to decide now, he would retire. But he said that last year and the year before, too, so take it for what it's worth. If the Astros don't get Clemens, their starting rotation takes a big step down, as the big guy was irreplaceable. But even if they do get him, how many age-defying miracles can Clemens perform? He won't be as good as he was in 2005, and it's anybody's guess just how much this 43-year-old has left.
Unless Jeff Bagwell decides to retire (unlikely) the Astros will be on the hook for his monster salary in 2006, which would basically preclude them from signing any big free agents (especially if they have to pony up for Clemens). That leaves a hole at first base to go with the (offensive) hole at shortstop. There's also a hole at catcher, as the Astros just can't afford to sign any front-line free agent catchers. They have a less-than-potent outfield as well (with the exception of Lance Berkman) that, all together, leaves a whole lot of pressure on the pitching staff to be brilliant. They were brilliant in 2005, but the odds of repeating that performance are remote, leaving the Astros most likely as observers in the 2006 postseason.
Chicago Cubs
Key Losses: Jeromy Burnitz, Nomar Garciaparra, Ben Grieve
Needs: SS, RF, maybe CF and a starting pitcher
The Cub offense is basically in a shambles. They've got rock-solid players at the infield corners (Aramis Ramirez at 3B and Derrek Lee -- due to decline after a career year -- at 1B) and a good all-around catcher in Michael Barrett . . . but that's it. They might get decent production out of 2B Todd Walker, but that's almost nullified by his sub-par defense and injury history. Shortstop right now is being manned by Neifi Perez, which is basically a joke. The outfield, as of today, consists of Jerry Hairston, Jr., Corey Patterson, and nobody in right. It's true that the Cubs do have some money to spend and should come away with a decent bat (Jacque Jones?), but there's no way they can upgrade all 4 spots in the lineup currently manned by offensive non-entities.
Is it possible that the pitching staff will pick up the slack? It's possible, but very unlikely. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are amazingly unreliable when it comes to innings and starts, and manager Dusty Baker should think long and hard about why "ace" Prior has so much injury trouble. There is the excellent Carlos Zambrano, but Zambrano showed up 2nd in the majors in Pitcher Abuse Points, a measure which shows roughly how much stress a pitcher endures. With Zambrano only a bare 24 years old, he's due for a big, BIG injury sooner rather than later, and Baker will be almost chiefly responsible. After these three good but injury-laden starters, we have a no-longer-above-average Greg Maddux and Glendon Rusch.
Wait till' next year, Cub fans.
Milwaukee Brewers
Key Losses: Wes Helms
Needs: Starting pitcher, 3B, maybe relief help
I'm here to tell you that the Milwaukee Brewers just might finish 2nd in the NL Central next year. They have the foundations laid for a fine, fine offense and a pitching staff that isn't too shabby either. They're returning all the same players that made it to .500 last year (for the first time since 1992), and they're a year older and wiser.
The starting pitching is the biggest worry here. Although the Brewers have numerous hitting prospects (Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy), they don't have any young pitchers ready for the majors. This means that the pressure will be on Ben Sheets (coming off a season-ending arm injury in 2005) and the fleet of unreliables behind him. It's possible that Chris Capuano, Doug Davis, and Tomo Ohka will round out a surprisingly decent rotation, but equally possible that the three will take a step back from 2005 with their high walk rates proving fatal. As the pitching goes, so go the Brewers.
Cincinnati Reds
Key losses: Rich Aurilia, Jacob Cruz
Needs: Pitching, Pitching, Pitching, Pitching, Pitching
Cincinnati is caught in the nether-world between owners. They're in the process of transferring the controlling interest in the franchise, which basically means that nothing will get done this offseason. The Reds really need to trade an outfielder (preferably Pena) for pitching, but even that may get blocked by an ownership not ready to make any big moves. The Reds will return the NL's most prolific offense in 2005. But unless they do something to help their pitching staff, they could challenge the Pirates for last place.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Key losses: Jose Mesa, Daryle Ward, Brian Meadows
Needs: A poke in the eye with a sharp stick
I'm really convinced that no one cares about the Pirates. For all Bud Selig says about teams needing a new ballpark to contend, beautiful PNC Park hasn't helped the Pirates do anything but majorly suck, nor has it prevented them from finishing last in the league in attendance (below even the Marlins, whom Selig thinks will get heavenly blessings with a new stadium). The front office is just putting up the pretense of effort, not bothering to make any significant trades or free agent signings, nor putting any serious effort into mimicking other small-market success stories (Minnesota, Oakland) with a prosperous farm system. Would you believe that the Pirates were the only non-expansion team in the majors never to win a Rookie of the Year award? That changed last year with Jason Bay -- but Bay came out of the San Diego system, and the Pirates got him in the Brian Giles deal. No one really needs to bother with them anymore until the front office wakes from their selfish slumber. You'd think they would be the object Selig's wrath, but of course they have a new stadium. And when faced with the question of what an awful team that already has a new stadium should do (hello, Tampa Bay), Selig doesn't have an answer, except to blame the small market, like the knee-jerk con man he is.
Key losses: Mark Grudzielanek, Reggie Sanders, Larry Walker, Matt Morris, Julian Tavarez, Abraham Nunez, John Mabry, Cal Eldred, AL Reyes
Needs: 2B, LF, RF, relief help, starting pitcher
The Cardinals' 100-win 2005 is starting to look like a distant memory. But the good news at least is that no one in the NL Central looks poised to pass them by.
The Cards are losing a pretty good chunk of offense in Reggie Sanders and Larry Walker, and it will be pretty darn difficult to replace them. The only big bat/outfielder types left on the free agent market are those such as Jacque Jones, Jeromy Burnitz, and Carl Everett, that come with strings attached. Barring a trade, the Cards will be unable to field potent bats in the corner outfield spots, and this will be a big change from 2005. They're also losing capable 2B Mark Grudzielanek. Grudzielanek's big 2005 was a bit of a career year, yes, but there's no one else out there that can really offer much at 2B. If they can't re-sign the free agent, they may be forced to go to someone like Rich Aurilia or Tony Graffanino.
The Cards are also losing a solid arm in Matt Morris. Now that A.J. Burnett has signed with Toronto, the Cards are left scrambling in their attempt to find another solid starter. Their starting rotation isn't their chief worry, but it could use an upgrade.
The bullpen is another story. With the semi-reliable Jason Isringhausen as closer, the Cards don't have much in the bullpen to back him up, with the departure of Tavarez, Reyes, and Eldred. Unless one of these can be re-signed (Eldred has retired), the Cards will have to come up with some middle-relief help somewhere else.
It'll be a tough road in 2005, and it doesn't look like the Cardinals will dominate anything. But unless the Cubs can wake up to some new talent or the Astros can find some offense, the NL Central is theirs to lose.
Houston Astros
Key Losses: Roger Clemens, Brad Ausmus, Jose Vizcaino, Orlando Palmeiro
Needs: C, 2 starters
The good news is that the Astros are returning (with the exception of Clemens) all the big players instrumental in winning them their first-ever pennant in 2005. The bad news is that those guys weren't so hot to begin with, and most of them are on the wrong side of 30.
The main thing the Astros will do this off-season is wait on Clemens. Clemens said recently that if he had to decide now, he would retire. But he said that last year and the year before, too, so take it for what it's worth. If the Astros don't get Clemens, their starting rotation takes a big step down, as the big guy was irreplaceable. But even if they do get him, how many age-defying miracles can Clemens perform? He won't be as good as he was in 2005, and it's anybody's guess just how much this 43-year-old has left.
Unless Jeff Bagwell decides to retire (unlikely) the Astros will be on the hook for his monster salary in 2006, which would basically preclude them from signing any big free agents (especially if they have to pony up for Clemens). That leaves a hole at first base to go with the (offensive) hole at shortstop. There's also a hole at catcher, as the Astros just can't afford to sign any front-line free agent catchers. They have a less-than-potent outfield as well (with the exception of Lance Berkman) that, all together, leaves a whole lot of pressure on the pitching staff to be brilliant. They were brilliant in 2005, but the odds of repeating that performance are remote, leaving the Astros most likely as observers in the 2006 postseason.
Chicago Cubs
Key Losses: Jeromy Burnitz, Nomar Garciaparra, Ben Grieve
Needs: SS, RF, maybe CF and a starting pitcher
The Cub offense is basically in a shambles. They've got rock-solid players at the infield corners (Aramis Ramirez at 3B and Derrek Lee -- due to decline after a career year -- at 1B) and a good all-around catcher in Michael Barrett . . . but that's it. They might get decent production out of 2B Todd Walker, but that's almost nullified by his sub-par defense and injury history. Shortstop right now is being manned by Neifi Perez, which is basically a joke. The outfield, as of today, consists of Jerry Hairston, Jr., Corey Patterson, and nobody in right. It's true that the Cubs do have some money to spend and should come away with a decent bat (Jacque Jones?), but there's no way they can upgrade all 4 spots in the lineup currently manned by offensive non-entities.
Is it possible that the pitching staff will pick up the slack? It's possible, but very unlikely. Kerry Wood and Mark Prior are amazingly unreliable when it comes to innings and starts, and manager Dusty Baker should think long and hard about why "ace" Prior has so much injury trouble. There is the excellent Carlos Zambrano, but Zambrano showed up 2nd in the majors in Pitcher Abuse Points, a measure which shows roughly how much stress a pitcher endures. With Zambrano only a bare 24 years old, he's due for a big, BIG injury sooner rather than later, and Baker will be almost chiefly responsible. After these three good but injury-laden starters, we have a no-longer-above-average Greg Maddux and Glendon Rusch.
Wait till' next year, Cub fans.
Milwaukee Brewers
Key Losses: Wes Helms
Needs: Starting pitcher, 3B, maybe relief help
I'm here to tell you that the Milwaukee Brewers just might finish 2nd in the NL Central next year. They have the foundations laid for a fine, fine offense and a pitching staff that isn't too shabby either. They're returning all the same players that made it to .500 last year (for the first time since 1992), and they're a year older and wiser.
The starting pitching is the biggest worry here. Although the Brewers have numerous hitting prospects (Rickie Weeks, Prince Fielder, J.J. Hardy), they don't have any young pitchers ready for the majors. This means that the pressure will be on Ben Sheets (coming off a season-ending arm injury in 2005) and the fleet of unreliables behind him. It's possible that Chris Capuano, Doug Davis, and Tomo Ohka will round out a surprisingly decent rotation, but equally possible that the three will take a step back from 2005 with their high walk rates proving fatal. As the pitching goes, so go the Brewers.
Cincinnati Reds
Key losses: Rich Aurilia, Jacob Cruz
Needs: Pitching, Pitching, Pitching, Pitching, Pitching
Cincinnati is caught in the nether-world between owners. They're in the process of transferring the controlling interest in the franchise, which basically means that nothing will get done this offseason. The Reds really need to trade an outfielder (preferably Pena) for pitching, but even that may get blocked by an ownership not ready to make any big moves. The Reds will return the NL's most prolific offense in 2005. But unless they do something to help their pitching staff, they could challenge the Pirates for last place.
Pittsburgh Pirates
Key losses: Jose Mesa, Daryle Ward, Brian Meadows
Needs: A poke in the eye with a sharp stick
I'm really convinced that no one cares about the Pirates. For all Bud Selig says about teams needing a new ballpark to contend, beautiful PNC Park hasn't helped the Pirates do anything but majorly suck, nor has it prevented them from finishing last in the league in attendance (below even the Marlins, whom Selig thinks will get heavenly blessings with a new stadium). The front office is just putting up the pretense of effort, not bothering to make any significant trades or free agent signings, nor putting any serious effort into mimicking other small-market success stories (Minnesota, Oakland) with a prosperous farm system. Would you believe that the Pirates were the only non-expansion team in the majors never to win a Rookie of the Year award? That changed last year with Jason Bay -- but Bay came out of the San Diego system, and the Pirates got him in the Brian Giles deal. No one really needs to bother with them anymore until the front office wakes from their selfish slumber. You'd think they would be the object Selig's wrath, but of course they have a new stadium. And when faced with the question of what an awful team that already has a new stadium should do (hello, Tampa Bay), Selig doesn't have an answer, except to blame the small market, like the knee-jerk con man he is.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
NL East Offseason
Atlanta Braves
Key losses: Rafael Furcal, Kyle Farnsworth, Julio Franco, Brian Jordan
Needs: SS, closer, relief help
Atlanta's top priority is getting a shortstop. Word is that free agent Furcal has it narrowed down to Los Angeles, Chicago, and a return to Atlanta. The Dodgers and Cubs can probably offer more money than Atlanta, but Furcal apparently has a great deal of respect for Bobby Cox. Although since Chipper Jones renegotiated his contract (a pretty generous move that he undertook voluntarily to free up cash), the Braves have a little money to spend. The good news is that other than the shortstop position and the bullpen, the Braves are very well set for the future. Even if they do fail to re-sign Furcal, young Wilson Betemit could step in as a short-term solution. I've also heard it suggested that the Braves trade to get the underrated Julio Lugo from Tampa Bay; this would give them a solid short-term solution until their young shortstop prospects mature.
Closer is the other big issue for Atlanta. Their 2005 man, Kyle Farnsworth, just signed with the Yankees for mucho bucks as their setup man. The Braves can't compete with the money being tossed around in the closer's market, especially if they commit to Furcal. I've heard Todd Jones floated as a possible free agent solution, but that would be a really bad idea. Jones had an excellent 2005, but it was a monster career year for him. He posted a 2.10 ERA in 2005, whereas his previous career high was a 2.72 ERA in 1994, 11 years ago. He turns 38 in April, and he's the very essence of a bad investment. The Braves would be lucky if Jones were merely average; odds are he would be much less so. Since 2000, when he posted a 3.52 ERA in Detroit, Jones' ERAs look like this:
2001: 4.46
2002: 4.70
2003: 7.08
2004: 4.15
2005: 2.10
You couldn't find a better example listed under "career year" in the dictionary. A year after landing the notorious Danny Kolb, the Braves will be making a huge mistake if they trust Todd Jones as their closer. And the really bad news is that there's nobody in the bullpen to cover for him, or to possibly take over as closer in lieu of a free agent. That, combined with the growing pains ahead for the rookies, makes the Braves a tough choice to repeat as NL East Champs in 2006.
Philadelphia Phillies
Key losses: Billy Wagner, Jim Thome, Ugueth Urbina, Kenny Lofton, Michael Tucker
Needs: 1 or 2 starters, relief help
The Phillies had a lot of good pieces in place last year, where they fell one game short of the Wild Card. They're returning most of the same faces in 2006, with Jim Thome replaced at first full-time by Rookie of the Year Ryan Howard, and Aaron Rowand taking over in center field. Although it's not the most reliable of bunches (Mike Lieberthal and David Bell, especially), the Phillies could have the strongest lineup in the division, with offensive monsters like Bobby Abreu (if they don't trade him), Pat Burrell, Chase Utley and Howard.
The trouble is with pitching. The acquisition of Tom Gordon solves their closer problems (taking into account he hasn't been a closer in 3 years), although the rest of the bullpen is a bit shaky. But the real issues lie in the starting rotation. Brett Myers broke through as a reliable ace in 2005, although it must be taken with a grain of salt, since he's never had a season remotely as good. After that, it's pretty ugly. Randy Wolf is good, but can't be relied upon for more than 50 innings due to his injury troubles. Jon Lieber is league-average, but not too reliable. And Cory Lidle is just a serviceable arm. There is help in the persona of rookies like Gavin Floyd, but how much help? And will the Phillies end up with just 1 starter even above-average? As the rotation goes, so go the Phillies.
Florida Marlins
Key losses: Carlos Delgado, Josh Beckett, Luis Castillo, A.J. Burnett, Todd Jones, Juan Encarnacion, Alex Gonzalez, Antonio Alfonseca, Jeff Conine, Jim Mecir, Brian Moehler, Paul Quantrill, Ismael Valdez
Needs: A gun
The Marlins were looking at a contending year in 2005, right up there with the Mets, Braves, and possibly the Phillies. Then they detonated their team; they killed it in order to kill baseball in south Florida and make it easier to move the team or extort a new stadium. All the excuses given about the fire sale are just that: excuses. The Marlins have won 2 World Series in the past 10 years; they're the only team other than the Yankees who can say that. They have been a good team and a relatively cheap team. But upper management wasn't content to just trade off the most expensive parts (i.e. Delgado), which could be understandable. No, they're going to blow up the whole damn thing, except for franchise players Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. The good news is that people just aren't buying into their scheme, and they may not get away with it. If Jeffrey Loria has any shame, it's swirling down the toilet next to his sense of decency.
That said, the Marlins have traded away their best hitter, first baseman Carlos Delgado, and their second-best pitcher, Josh Beckett. They've traded away their handy second baseman (to the Twins) and appear to be looking to deal center fielder Juan Pierre as well. In their stead, they have some good young prospects (Hermida), but no sign that they will field a contender anytime soon. The NL East was looking like a strong and competitive division. But with the Nationals stuck in limbo and the Marlins eviscerating themselves in the quest for the almighty dollar, it looks like it was just a pipe dream.
New York Mets
Key losses: Mike Piazza, Braden Looper, Roberto Hernandez, Shingo Takatsu, Doug Mientkiewicz
Needs: C, RF, 1 or 2 starters
The Mets have made a huge splash in the off-season market. They traded for Carlos Delgado, one of the best-hitting 1B in the league, and they signed closer Billy Wagner to a big free agent deal. The Mets seem to have gotten the better of these deals, but it's unclear whether they may have overpaid, both in prospects and dollars. Although Minaya is at least acquiring generally good players, there is some reason to fear that the Mets may just be going back to the big-money free agent blunders of the past.
All that aside, the team that will be taking the field in 2006 is arguably the favorite to win the NL East. They're solid at the infield corners, with Delgado at first and rookie phenom David Wright at third. But the Mets may look for another solution at second base, with Kaz Matsui an utter disappointment in 2005. And for that matter, Jose Reyes actually wasn't very good in 2005. The Mets need him to be something besides Mr. At-Bats if they want to contend.
The Mets need a catcher (and will probably get one off the free agent market, someone like Bengie Molina). They could use a right fielder, although they may just see what they can get from Victor Diaz and Xavier Nady. But the trouble is with pitching. Just as the Phillies have a strong lineup and a suspect pitching staff, the Mets will need some prayer on their side if they want to actually get people out in '06. The only sure thing in the rotation is Pedro Martinez, a true ace. Their #2 is probably Kris Benson, who is actually popping up in trade rumors. I can't think why the Mets would trade Benson. He's a bit overpaid, yes, but he's also a league-average pitcher with some potential to improve. And the Mets aren't going to get anybody else to replace him at any less money. They will likely need him, with old-timers Tom Glavine and Steve Trachsel not any kind of a sure thing. Both will probably do fine, but at their age (Glavine turns 40 in March, Trachsel is 35) a sudden decline is all too possible, especially with injuries holding Trachsel to 37 IP in 2005.
The Mets are paying far too much for it, but they are looking like contenders again. And unless the Phillies have another move up their sleeve, the Amazin's are the best bet to end the Braves' reign at the top of the NL East.
Washington Nationals
Key losses: Preston Wilson, Esteban Loaiza, Tony Armas, Hector Carrasco, , John Halama
Needs: Nothing pressing, but a new SS and solid starting pitcher would be nice
The Nationals are a mediocre team and not likely to get much better. That's the bad news. The good news is that they're competitive and, hey, MLB should name a new owner sometime before they have to start worrying about the Y3K bug.
Until they have an owner, the Nats are just treading water. They won 81 games last year, and the 75-85 win range is where they will, barring a miracle or catastrophe, end up.
Key losses: Rafael Furcal, Kyle Farnsworth, Julio Franco, Brian Jordan
Needs: SS, closer, relief help
Atlanta's top priority is getting a shortstop. Word is that free agent Furcal has it narrowed down to Los Angeles, Chicago, and a return to Atlanta. The Dodgers and Cubs can probably offer more money than Atlanta, but Furcal apparently has a great deal of respect for Bobby Cox. Although since Chipper Jones renegotiated his contract (a pretty generous move that he undertook voluntarily to free up cash), the Braves have a little money to spend. The good news is that other than the shortstop position and the bullpen, the Braves are very well set for the future. Even if they do fail to re-sign Furcal, young Wilson Betemit could step in as a short-term solution. I've also heard it suggested that the Braves trade to get the underrated Julio Lugo from Tampa Bay; this would give them a solid short-term solution until their young shortstop prospects mature.
Closer is the other big issue for Atlanta. Their 2005 man, Kyle Farnsworth, just signed with the Yankees for mucho bucks as their setup man. The Braves can't compete with the money being tossed around in the closer's market, especially if they commit to Furcal. I've heard Todd Jones floated as a possible free agent solution, but that would be a really bad idea. Jones had an excellent 2005, but it was a monster career year for him. He posted a 2.10 ERA in 2005, whereas his previous career high was a 2.72 ERA in 1994, 11 years ago. He turns 38 in April, and he's the very essence of a bad investment. The Braves would be lucky if Jones were merely average; odds are he would be much less so. Since 2000, when he posted a 3.52 ERA in Detroit, Jones' ERAs look like this:
2001: 4.46
2002: 4.70
2003: 7.08
2004: 4.15
2005: 2.10
You couldn't find a better example listed under "career year" in the dictionary. A year after landing the notorious Danny Kolb, the Braves will be making a huge mistake if they trust Todd Jones as their closer. And the really bad news is that there's nobody in the bullpen to cover for him, or to possibly take over as closer in lieu of a free agent. That, combined with the growing pains ahead for the rookies, makes the Braves a tough choice to repeat as NL East Champs in 2006.
Philadelphia Phillies
Key losses: Billy Wagner, Jim Thome, Ugueth Urbina, Kenny Lofton, Michael Tucker
Needs: 1 or 2 starters, relief help
The Phillies had a lot of good pieces in place last year, where they fell one game short of the Wild Card. They're returning most of the same faces in 2006, with Jim Thome replaced at first full-time by Rookie of the Year Ryan Howard, and Aaron Rowand taking over in center field. Although it's not the most reliable of bunches (Mike Lieberthal and David Bell, especially), the Phillies could have the strongest lineup in the division, with offensive monsters like Bobby Abreu (if they don't trade him), Pat Burrell, Chase Utley and Howard.
The trouble is with pitching. The acquisition of Tom Gordon solves their closer problems (taking into account he hasn't been a closer in 3 years), although the rest of the bullpen is a bit shaky. But the real issues lie in the starting rotation. Brett Myers broke through as a reliable ace in 2005, although it must be taken with a grain of salt, since he's never had a season remotely as good. After that, it's pretty ugly. Randy Wolf is good, but can't be relied upon for more than 50 innings due to his injury troubles. Jon Lieber is league-average, but not too reliable. And Cory Lidle is just a serviceable arm. There is help in the persona of rookies like Gavin Floyd, but how much help? And will the Phillies end up with just 1 starter even above-average? As the rotation goes, so go the Phillies.
Florida Marlins
Key losses: Carlos Delgado, Josh Beckett, Luis Castillo, A.J. Burnett, Todd Jones, Juan Encarnacion, Alex Gonzalez, Antonio Alfonseca, Jeff Conine, Jim Mecir, Brian Moehler, Paul Quantrill, Ismael Valdez
Needs: A gun
The Marlins were looking at a contending year in 2005, right up there with the Mets, Braves, and possibly the Phillies. Then they detonated their team; they killed it in order to kill baseball in south Florida and make it easier to move the team or extort a new stadium. All the excuses given about the fire sale are just that: excuses. The Marlins have won 2 World Series in the past 10 years; they're the only team other than the Yankees who can say that. They have been a good team and a relatively cheap team. But upper management wasn't content to just trade off the most expensive parts (i.e. Delgado), which could be understandable. No, they're going to blow up the whole damn thing, except for franchise players Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis. The good news is that people just aren't buying into their scheme, and they may not get away with it. If Jeffrey Loria has any shame, it's swirling down the toilet next to his sense of decency.
That said, the Marlins have traded away their best hitter, first baseman Carlos Delgado, and their second-best pitcher, Josh Beckett. They've traded away their handy second baseman (to the Twins) and appear to be looking to deal center fielder Juan Pierre as well. In their stead, they have some good young prospects (Hermida), but no sign that they will field a contender anytime soon. The NL East was looking like a strong and competitive division. But with the Nationals stuck in limbo and the Marlins eviscerating themselves in the quest for the almighty dollar, it looks like it was just a pipe dream.
New York Mets
Key losses: Mike Piazza, Braden Looper, Roberto Hernandez, Shingo Takatsu, Doug Mientkiewicz
Needs: C, RF, 1 or 2 starters
The Mets have made a huge splash in the off-season market. They traded for Carlos Delgado, one of the best-hitting 1B in the league, and they signed closer Billy Wagner to a big free agent deal. The Mets seem to have gotten the better of these deals, but it's unclear whether they may have overpaid, both in prospects and dollars. Although Minaya is at least acquiring generally good players, there is some reason to fear that the Mets may just be going back to the big-money free agent blunders of the past.
All that aside, the team that will be taking the field in 2006 is arguably the favorite to win the NL East. They're solid at the infield corners, with Delgado at first and rookie phenom David Wright at third. But the Mets may look for another solution at second base, with Kaz Matsui an utter disappointment in 2005. And for that matter, Jose Reyes actually wasn't very good in 2005. The Mets need him to be something besides Mr. At-Bats if they want to contend.
The Mets need a catcher (and will probably get one off the free agent market, someone like Bengie Molina). They could use a right fielder, although they may just see what they can get from Victor Diaz and Xavier Nady. But the trouble is with pitching. Just as the Phillies have a strong lineup and a suspect pitching staff, the Mets will need some prayer on their side if they want to actually get people out in '06. The only sure thing in the rotation is Pedro Martinez, a true ace. Their #2 is probably Kris Benson, who is actually popping up in trade rumors. I can't think why the Mets would trade Benson. He's a bit overpaid, yes, but he's also a league-average pitcher with some potential to improve. And the Mets aren't going to get anybody else to replace him at any less money. They will likely need him, with old-timers Tom Glavine and Steve Trachsel not any kind of a sure thing. Both will probably do fine, but at their age (Glavine turns 40 in March, Trachsel is 35) a sudden decline is all too possible, especially with injuries holding Trachsel to 37 IP in 2005.
The Mets are paying far too much for it, but they are looking like contenders again. And unless the Phillies have another move up their sleeve, the Amazin's are the best bet to end the Braves' reign at the top of the NL East.
Washington Nationals
Key losses: Preston Wilson, Esteban Loaiza, Tony Armas, Hector Carrasco, , John Halama
Needs: Nothing pressing, but a new SS and solid starting pitcher would be nice
The Nationals are a mediocre team and not likely to get much better. That's the bad news. The good news is that they're competitive and, hey, MLB should name a new owner sometime before they have to start worrying about the Y3K bug.
Until they have an owner, the Nats are just treading water. They won 81 games last year, and the 75-85 win range is where they will, barring a miracle or catastrophe, end up.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Bits and pieces
Lots of free agent news and trade happenings:
- The Blue Jays won the B.J. Ryan derby by throwing a 5-year, $47 million contract. Ryan is about as good a bet as anyone to be a productive pitcher for five years. But that's not saying much, because closers are a notoriously volatile investment. The odds that Ryan will actually be a productive enough closer over 5 years to make back this money are astronomical. One thing I've noticed while charting baseball seasons is how even good closers have big ups and downs. The exception is someone like Mariano Rivera, who is actually a reliably good closer, year in and year out. Everyone else you could mention, from Trevor Hoffman to Troy Percival, Robb Nen, Roberto Hernandez and other big closers from the past 10 years, are rarely reliable enough to pay big money. Most closers have a short peak of one or two years, and then maybe four of five solid years, interspersed with big injuries and just flat-out sucking. Look at Keith Foulke, who looked like such a great investment for Boston last year. Now he just had an awful, injury-plagued year, and the Sox are actually looking for another closer. So it's nothing against Ryan to say that he's not worth the money. He's had three straight good years and strikes out a whole lot of batters. But most closers after the age of 30 are just trying to recapture their good years. The Jays will be lucky if they get 2 or 3 years of the B.J. Ryan they want. And Toronto simply doesn't have enough money to waste. But that's nothing -- would you believe that the Jays might end up landing A.J. Burnett as well? At least Ryan is actually good and vaguely reliable. Burnett is 29 and still hasn't had an $11-million season. Which is funny, because he's probably going to get paid $11 million (or more) for the next five years.
- The Oakland A's signed Esteban Loaiza to a 3-year contract for about $21 million. This is a huge head-scratcher, as Loaiza is barely a league-average pitcher. I don't know what tea leaves Billy Beane has been studying, but the odds that Loaiza will make back this money are pretty slim. And again, the A's aren't a team that can afford to give big money to the wrong people. I can only guess that Beane knows something I don't, unless he's just gone goofy. With this signing, the A's starting rotation gets even more crowded, increasing speculation that they will trade ace Barry Zito.
- The Cubs signed relief pitcher Bobby Howry to a 3-year contract. I don't know if someone dared the Cubs to sign a lot of unreliable relief pitchers to big contracts, or if the Relief Pitchers' Association has compromising photos of GM Jim Hendry, or what. But this is an absolutely bone-headed contract. Why in the world would you sign a marginal relief pitcher for three bloomin' years?
- The Mets signed Billy Wagner as their closer. They're overpaying him, but I guess they can afford to. Everything I said about Ryan applies to Wagner as well. Wagner has the advantage of being a more proven commodity than Ryan, but has the big disadvantage of being 5 years older.
- The White Sox re-signed Paul Konerko. It was, again, overpaying, but Konerko was the only big-offense option left out there. This gives the Sox a good offensive boost toward repeating as AL Central Champs, but I'm still putting my money on Cleveland.
- The Padres signed Brian Giles to a 3-year deal, which is good news for them, since Giles' departure would have ravaged their offense.
- The Phillies signed Tom Gordon as their closer. Gordon was the Yankees' setup man last season, but New York has now replaced him with Kyle Farnsworth. I really don't know why the Yankees prefer Farnsworth, who is an amazingly unreliable pitcher. It's possible that Farnsworth will be an ace setup man, but it's more likely that he'll take another wild sojourn into mediocrity, leaving him an albatross around their necks. Gordon is older, yes, but much more reliable. He hasn't been a closer for a while, but he was baseball's best setup man from 2003-2004.
- A half-dead, decomposing animal was found on the Interstate just outside Miami, Florida. Police determined that it was the decaying carcass of the Florida Marlins and put the poor devil out of its misery. Charges haven't been filed, although rumors swirl that Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria has stolen the deed to the orphanage and tied Pauline to the railroad tracks.
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