Author Archives: Jim Crikket

The Braun Legacy (in theatres soon)

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I realize I’m several days late to the party in terms of discussing the arbitrator’s ruling in favor of Brewers’ star Ryan Braun, but it took me a while to come to grips with exactly how I feel about it. I’ve now done that and I’ve concluded one thing for certain…

I want the movie rights.

Before you scoff, remember that Hollywood made a successful movie last year about Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. Sure, it helped that Brad Pitt starred in the movie, but if Aaron Sorkin can put a winning script together centered on the value of on-base percentage, imagine what he could do with the mystery surrounding Braun’s urine sample!

Most accounts of the Braun issue begin with that sample he provided last fall. But to set the stage, we need to go back much further. Let’s run the opening credits for our film over scenes of Congressional Hearing Chambers and various players, MLB executives and Players Union representatives being challenged by our duly elected representatives, intent on ridding baseball of performance enhancing drugs. Then we’ll kick off the first scene of our movie in a conference room where MLB’s Commissioner and The Executive Director of the Players Union ponder what can be done to get Congress off their collective backs.

The Commissioner is desperate to impose a drug enforcement program with teeth, but the Union insists that any program must include pesky safeguards to assure any tests performed are accurate and that players are afforded due process. There’s particular sensitivity to confidentiality issues, in light of the fact that the last time the Players Union agreed to “confidential” testing by baseball, MLB’s mishandling of the testing data resulted in test results being widely publicized.

In the end, the two sides come to an agreement. The testing program includes protocols assuring that samples will be secured from the time they’re given by the athlete up through and including the time tests are performed in the lab. Players will have the right to have an arbitration panel (consisting of one MLB representative, one Union representative and one “independent” arbitrator) hear appeals, and all of this will be confidential until the process is completed and any penalties enforced. The scene ends with everyone slapping one another on the back and telling one another how smart they all are.

Now, we fast forward a couple of years and introduce our Midwestern hero… a talented ballplayer with a sterling reputation who has just helped his team (and coincidentally, the very same team that the MLB Commissioner used to own) to a playoff run and has been voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player in the process. There’s only one problem… it seems Mr. Clean was so stupid that he had no idea he might be tested for PEDs during the playoffs and filled himself with so much juice that he tested positive for unprecedented testosterone levels right in the middle of that playoff run.

How do fans find out about this? Is it announced by MLB, along with the requisite 50-game suspension, once the appeal process had been completed? No… America finds out from a National Sports Network (we’ll use a “fictionalized” name to protect ourselves from being sued by the real network, but everyone will know exactly who we’re talking about), thanks to an anonymous source who leaks news of the positive test before the star player can have any appeal heard. Ah… intrigue!

Our hero subsequently (and loudly) proclaims his innocence. But then, don’t they all? The repercussions are swift and loud, especially from those appearing on the aforementioned National Sports Network that broke the story. How can we take back his MVP award? We can’t? Why not? Heisman Trophy winners have had their awards repossessed and the NFL has had a re-vote when a “cheater” won a similar postseason award. The good of the game requires correction of this travesty!

Though the appeal process moves forward, the assumption is that this is just a formality. After all, no player’s appeal has ever been successful… has it? Well, not that anyone knows of. But then again, if the confidentiality of the process is maintained, how would anyone know if prior appeals were successful? The player certainly won’t say anything and undermine his own reputation and MLB would have no interest in admitting a failure of the testing program they tout as being the best in professional sports. But those are just dry details, so we’ll leave them out… after all, the National Sports Network says no appeal has ever been successful, so it must be so!

Taking dramatic license, our appeal hearing takes place in a hall much like what we’d expect to see at the U.S. Supreme Court, rather than some bland conference room. In a scene reminiscent of something from “My Cousin Vinny,” the player’s counsel gets the part-timer that MLB entrusted to promptly FedEx the urine sample to the lab to admit that, instead, he took the sample home with him because FedEx isn’t open on Saturday. But did he not store the sample in a secure, cool place, as called for by the league’s protocol? Well, not exactly. He left it on his desk in a Tupperware container for the weekend. The camera focuses on the Commissioner, sitting at the table with the league’s lawyer, as he nods and whispers, “That seems reasonable to me.”

Of course, the predictable plot twist unfolds as our hero is acquitted… I mean he wins his appeal… and the half of the courtroom donning Brewers jerseys stands and cheers, while the suits on the other half loudly voice their displeasure using multi-syllabic words nobody understands.

Now, the hero stands at the courthouse steps, smiling to the cameras as he reminds everyone, “I told you I was innocent!” His supporters, across the country, rejoice and call for apologies to be made (mostly via Twitter).

The Commissioner, however, rails at the injustice. He blames the “independent” arbitrator (apparently not having expected him to behave as though he actually were independent) and loudly declares that the evil ballplayer escaped justice on a technicality.

Of course, the media falls in line behind the revered Commissioner and echoes the “escaped on a technicality” refrain. This is especially true of virtually every celebrity talking head employed by the National Sports Network.

A significant number of ballplayers rise up in vocal support of the hero (again, mostly via Twitter), but they are roundly criticized by the media for daring to support a cheater who’s “beaten the system.” Soon, even a number of players are voicing their displeasure at the “verdict.”

Maybe I’ll make viewers leave the theatre without being told the end of the story, leaving them with as many questions as answers. None of those questions will be bigger than, “what happened to that sample?”

Or maybe I’ll take the “Oceans 11” approach and run quickly through a montage showing how the guy who collected the urine was actually a Cubs fan and how he and a steroid gulping bodybuilder friend of his substituted a testosterone-juiced sample for the player’s in the hope of seeing the rival star suspended.

Better yet, do you remember “Clue”? Maybe I could create an alternate montage that some movie-goers would see… where the hero turns out to be dirty as hell and promised the urine collector 100 grand if he found a way to make the sample unreliable.

The options are endless. I can make up any story line I want because nobody knows what really happened. Face it, this kind of thing is an Oliver Stone wet dream. I’ll make millions!

But seriously, folks…

Whatever happened, aren’t those strict protocols in place for a reason? And isn’t that reason to assure that tampering cannot happen? Given the stigma that goes with even being suspected of using PEDs, don’t we want to be absolutely positive no tampering took place before we brand any player a cheater? Isn’t that also why they’re supposed to protect the confidentiality of the player until the process is complete?

This case never should have come to public light, but once the circumstances did come out, Bud Selig should have stood up and said, “We established protocols for drug testing that are intended to assure that tests are accurate and that samples are secure from possible tampering. In this case, Ryan Braun’s urine sample was not secured appropriately and thus may or may not have been tampered with. In such a circumstance, we must assume he is not guilty of using PEDs.” If Selig felt compelled to rant, he could rant about whoever leaked the results to the media.

That would have been the right thing to do. But, of course, he didn’t do that.

Our film project may leave the audience wondering what happened, but unfortunately, I think most of us know what the future holds for Ryan Braun’s reputation.

Bud Selig didn’t do the right thing in this situation, but he isn’t the real villain. That dishonor goes to whoever leaked the test results and to those in the media who innitially ran the story on the basis of that anonymous source.

Think about that the next time you read someone from the “real” media pontificating about the lack of journalistic ethics and integrity of bloggers. I know I will… and, for me, that will be the Braun Legacy.

– JC

Reasons for Hope

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I’m not an idiot (most of the time). I know the Detroit Tigers are consensus favorites to win the AL Central Division title again… probably by double digit games again. I know the Twins are not widely viewed as the most likely team to challenge the Tigers if such a challenger does emerge.

But as I mentioned a few days ago, Spring Training is my Mardi Gras! I’ll deal with reality on Opening Day. For now, I’m going to enjoy the simple fact that baseball is being played a few miles south of where I live (OK, a few hundred miles, but who’s counting?). I’m not going to get dragged in to the negativism that others seem hell-bent on maintaining. I’m not judging them… I’ll even appear on their podcasts occasionally… it’s just not what I want to be feeling this time of year.

I want to find reasons for hope and if some so-called “serious fans” think that’s a bad thing, for whatever reason, I can live with that.

With that in mind, I went looking for reasons for hope this week and I found a few. No, they aren’t reasons to be confident (if you find some of those, send them my way please!), but I don’t need confidence right now… a little hope, however realistic or unrealistic it may be, is all I need.

I found some hope, too. In fact, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated (si.com, to be precise) gave me a handful of things to grasp on to. Some of them even reinforced opinions I already held, which is always convenient. Here are a few things Verducci brought up (click here for the link) that a Twins fan can grasp on to if she/he feels so inclined:

  • In 16 of the past 17 seasons (and for 6 straight seasons running), at least one team has made the postseason after having a losing record the year before. In fact, both the D’Backs and Brewers did so last season, making for 33 teams in those 17 years that have accomplished the “losers to postseason” turnaround.
  • Having an All-Star rotation is not what gets you to the playoffs. Having a HEALTHY rotation is what gets you to the playoffs. Forget about whether Mauer, Morneau and Span are healthy (good luck ignoring that), it’s all about having at least four of the Twins starters (Pavano, Liriano, Baker, Marquis and Blackburn) getting 30 starts. In the past four years, 11 teams have had four starters get 30 starts and 10 of those teams made the playoffs. Six of them ended up in the World Series. I’ve believed for a long time that the rotation is as important as (if not more important than) pretty much any other factor in getting things turned around. I just didn’t know how right I was.
  • Here’s a big one to remember… especially for those of us who are disappointed in the roster, as built by Terry Ryan during the offseason… contenders CAN be built during the season. The guys making up the 25 man roster at the beginning of the season matter less than the guys who END the season on the roster. Of the 24 players who saw action for the Cardinals in the World Series last year, five of them were not members of their organization on Opening Day.

See? Verducci came through for me! I’m not sure I really need more, but I have more anyway.

We’ve already discussed Jim Leyland’s intention to hand other AL Central managers a gift by having Miguel Cabrera play 3B regularly, but now he also likes the idea of Brandon Inge playing 2B. Despite feeling like Inge has destroyed the Twins all by himself at times over the years, I like that idea, too. Though I suspect I like it for much different reasons than Leyland.

There were a few people who lamented the fact that the Indians were able to sign Jon Garland for next to nothing, supposedly further entrenching themselves as the second-favorite AL Central team among the “experts.” Well, forget that. Garland’s deal was canceled this week when he admitted he was not healthy enough to pitch. I’m still waiting to read all the stories about how it turned out to be OK that Terry Ryan didn’t go out and sign Garland. I suspect the wait will be a long one.

But enough about other teams. Here’s something tangible for a Twins fan like me to grasp on to concerning the Twins themselves: As position players begin their workouts, the entire “injury list” consists of Luke Hughes and his strained shoulder and Brian Dozier with a cut on his finger. Yes, I know we’ll all hold our breath a bit until Justin Morneau demonstrates all is well with his head (and all those other body parts he had rebuilt over the past several months). But Gardy had so many guys sitting out practices and games all through Spring Training last year that I felt inclined to take my glove with me to the Ft. Myers complex while I was down there… you know, just in case the Twins manager needed an extra body.

The point is… as much as people like to say Spring Training isn’t really important for most players, it really is. Players ideally show up in much better shape than they did in the old days, but there’s “in shape” and then there’s “in game shape.” They are not necessarily the same thing. And from all appearances, the Twins are reporting much better prepared to get down to the serious business of preparing for the season this spring.

I still have to endure over four more weeks of Iowa winter before I get to head to Ft. Myers, but I’m determined to just enjoy following Spring Training through the eyes and ears of the writers and bloggers who are down there in the mean time. If that’s not the kind of thing you’re wanting to read about, I’m sorry for disappointing you… but not very. 🙂

– JC

 

Baseball’s Mardi Gras Season

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Happy Mardi Gras!

Is that something you even say? I’m not much of a Mardi Gras-er, so I don’t really know the lingo. Here’s pretty much all I know about Mardi Gras:

  • I know what it is… kind of. (Fat Tuesday is the night before Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, but people pretty much celebrate for several weeks leading up to that date).
  • I know that, while New Orleans is known for Mardi Gras, it’s actually celebrated in a lot of other cities, too. (I still haven’t figured out what the difference is between Mardi Gras and Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival, but then I really don’t care, either.)
  • There’s something about “king cake” with a tiny plastic baby baked in to it, though I never cared enough about that to ask what it’s all about. (I do like cake, but I’m not real big on choking to death on tiny plastic toys hidden in my cake.)

That’s it, really.

Oh wait a minute…

  • Beads… I know about beads and how they are acquired. (Men have to buy them, women don’t, yet somehow by the end of the night, women are wearing almost all of them.)

One thing I’ve really never quite figured out about Mardi Gras is… well… WHY? Best I can tell, Mardi Gras is about partying without conscience right up to Ash Wednesday, when I guess you’re supposed to sober up and face the reality of your actions.

No, I really don’t “get” Mardi Gras.

Then again, I have a lot of friends who can’t quite grasp why I get all excited about Spring Training, either. They don’t understand why I would devote so much time following what really is nothing more than “baseball practice,” much less why I would use up a week’s worth of vacation from work and a fair amount of money every year to travel almost 1,000 miles to WATCH that practice and a few games that don’t count.

I try to explain…

  • It’s a stretch of several weeks when we get to watch baseball and talk about baseball without guilt or anxiety. Yes, there are games being played (a full month’s worth, actually), but we really don’t care who wins them. After all, a loss in a Spring Training game has absolutely no effect on a team’s place in the standings.
  • We’ve spent months dealing with snow and cold and Spring Training is held someplace very warm. Face it, if you told your family you wanted to go to Florida for a week in March for any reason other than Spring Training, they’d probably tell you that you’re too old for “spring break.”
  • But the best thing about Spring Training is that it allows us to celebrate the arrival of the baseball season and think about all of the “what ifs” that might allow our favorite team to be contenders. We can spend several weeks speculating about whether this veteran still can play or that young player will have a breakout season, without being proven right or wrong immediately.

But most people don’t get it. Only other “baseball people” understand… and not even all of them seem to grasp the concept.

By this time of year, I am tired. I’m tired of arguing about moves that were made and moves that weren’t. I don’t want to debate whether finishing .500 is a reasonable expectation for the Twins or whether there’s any chance they could compete for the AL Central Division if they stay healthy and I certainly don’t want to think about the possibility that they could be as bad as (or even worse than) last season. There will be time enough for that when the euphoria of spring ends and we have to face the reality of the wins and losses that count.

Right now, I just want to celebrate the arrival of Spring Training. I want to talk about what could be. I want to get drunk on stories about bullpen sessions and batting practice and fielding drills and how the Twins are going to play much better defense this season.

I’ll just keep overindulging on the possibilities, right up through the last Spring Training game of the year. Then, and only then, I’ll return to reality when the Twins take the field at Camden Yards on April 6.

Yes, Spring Training will be my Mardi Gras. Now… who wants beads?

– JC

And So It Begins

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It’s finally here… the day Twins pitchers and catchers report!

It feels like I should write something monumental to mark the occasion, but as is almost always the case, I find that there are other Twins bloggers who can speak to the occasion much more eloquently than I. So, if you haven’t done so already, go check out the blogs of the following terrific writers:

K-bro welcomes our favorite players back in to our lives with poetry and optimism with her “The Start of Something Great” post.

TwinsGeek adds his own twist to Franklin Pierce Adams’ famous poem, with his “Baseball’s Happy Lexicon – 2012.”

Seth Stohs isn’t as poetic as the Geek and K-bro, but his prose is no less enthusiastic in his joy at the uttering of “Four Words that Make Me Smile: Pitchers and Catchers Report!”

They said it right.

– JC

It’s “Pitchers & Catchers Report” Holiday Weekend!

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There’s a rumor going around that Monday is a holiday of some kind. I’ve always felt that Opening Day should be a holiday, but since someone apparently decided instead to make the Monday after “pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training” a holiday, I’m not going to complain about it. Those of us with Monday off really should try to come up with something appropriately baseball-related to help us celebrate.

Pitchers and catchers report this weekend!

The Twins’ pitchers and catchers officially report to Spring Training Saturday, with first official workouts, I believe, scheduled for Sunday. When that happens, it’s officially “baseball season.” I guess we’ll have to come up with some kind of new “countdown” widget to put up over on the right side of the page. Maybe a countdown to Opening Day? Ah, a blogger’s work is never done.

Speaking of which, with the season quasi-officially underway, our work here is about to get more serious, too. Sure, it’s been fun ranting about Bud Selig and the Twins’ moves (or lack thereof) and how things are shaping up for other teams, but if we’re being perfectly honest, most of us ran out of really interesting topics to talk about a long time ago. But with baseball players actually getting on the field this weekend, that’s about to change.

We’ve already been getting a few reports from Ft. Myers from both paid professional media like the Strib’s LaVelle E. Neal III (who’s been getting his blog warmed up with occasional reports) as well as bloggers fortunate enough to be on the scene like John Swol of TwinsTrivia.com (who’s posted about several pre-camp visits he’s made to the complex, along with links to a whole bunch of pictures).

Pretty soon (though not soon enough), it will be our turn. I’ll be making my way down to Ft. Myers toward the end of Spring Training for my annual trip and I will be posting pretty much daily while I’m there.

Babs: Now you've seen Ft Myers Beach... so you can just go watch baseball

But this season, I won’t be the only Knuckleball reporting from the Lee County Sports Complex. CapitalBabs will be embarking on her first-ever Spring Training adventure early in March. She has promised to post her impressions and we can pretty much count on seeing a whole bunch of pictures, though she did mention that she and her hubby also have plans to spend time on non-baseball related activities while they are in Ft. Myers. She mentioned something about golf and beaches. Heck, I didn’t even know there was anything going on in Florida besides baseball that time of year.

Anyway, I really enjoy seeing and hearing about the Spring Training experience through different eyes and especially from the perspective of fans who haven’t been down there before, so I’m looking forward to reading Babs’ reports.

Of course, we won’t be the only bloggers to make the journey. I haven’t heard or read about everyone who’s announced plans to make the trip but I did read that Thrylos, from Tenth Inning Stretch, is planning on reporting from Ft. Myers at some point. If you know of other bloggers going down there, do us a favor and mention something about it in the comments section. Likewise, if any of our readers are going to be down there, let us know that, too. We’d love to hear from you and maybe even share your favorite pictures from your trip, if you’re willing.

If you feel inclined, you can also click here… and here… and here… to go back and read the Spring Training Guide tips I posted about this time a year ago. Or just wing it and discover things on your own!

Podcast Appearance

I also want to mention that I participated in “The Phil Naessens Show” podcast Thursday night. You can give it a listen over at The Baseball Page site (www.thebaseballpage.com). If you haven’t added The Baseball Page to your regular list of sites to check out, you should. The folks there cover a wide variety of MLB issues. Phil is interviewing bloggers representing all of the Major League teams. I encourage you to overlook his questionable judgement in choosing me to be his Minnesota Twins blogger representative and check it out anyway.

Condolences

Finally, we send our condolences out to the family, friends and fans of Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter, who passed away Thursday, less than a year after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Carter was never one of my favorite players, probably because he never played for a team I felt any particular affinity toward, but I do remember the enthusiasm he brought to the game. I remember watching him and thinking, “that guy really enjoys playing baseball.” He obviously also played the game very well. Carter was just 57 years old at his passing and I have to admit that hits just a bit too close to home for me. Rest in Peace, Gary.

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Once again, if any of you have Spring Training plans, by all means leave a comment or at least email us and let us know about your plans!

– JC

Terry Ryan: “Maybe We’ll Get Lucky”

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Ever since the Twins handed the reins of the organization back to Terry Ryan, fans have been asking what he was going to do about the pitching staff. We wanted him to tell us how he intended to fortify a rotation that was undeniably one of the worst in Major League Baseball in 2011.

We asked what the plan was for rebuilding a bullpen that arguably made the rotation look good, by comparison, and that was losing the guy who’d been anchoring said bullpen for most of the past decade, in Joe Nathan. Some of us (OK, maybe it was mostly me) hoped that he’d upgrade the rotation to the point where the team would get more than five innings out of starts by pitchers not named Pavano, which would almost certainly make the bullpen look better. But whatever the plan was, we mostly just wanted to know that there WAS a plan.

Can Rick Anderson get lucky and give Glen Perkins some help in the bullpen? (Photo: Reuters/Steve Nesius)

Now… finally… thanks to Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson, as reported in this article posted Sunday by the Pioneer-Press’ Tom Powers, we have our answer. “It’s like Terry Ryan said to me the other day, ‘Maybe we’ll get lucky,'” Anderson said.

I don’t know about you, but I feel better already. Here we were concerned that maybe Ryan and the Twins didn’t really have a plan for improving their pitching in 2012.

My biggest concern was that the Twins were going to repeat Bill Smith’s ill-fated attempt to restock their bullpen a year ago, after losing Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier, and others. Smith, you may recall, brought in about a dozen guys to compete for the honor of filling in the empty bullpen spots behind Nathan, Matt Capps and Jose Mijares. The field consisted of both new faces (Jim Hoey, Dusty Hughes, Scott Diamond) and old faces (Pat Neshek, Anthony Slama, Kyle Waldrop, Glen Perkins, Alex Burnett). In the end, only Perkins made significant positive contributions on the mound.

It didn’t seem like a totally unreasonable plan, at the time. After all, most effective middle relievers are “discovered” when they stand out given similar opportunities. But it certainly didn’t work for Smith and the Twins, so many of us hoped for a somewhat different approach in 2012.

Thankfully, Terry Ryan does indeed have a different plan. He’s bringing in THIRTY-THREE pitchers.

Yes, I know, some of those guys are going to be in the rotation and a couple others are pretty much locks for bullpen roles, so they aren’t all competing for bullpen spots. But the rotation is pretty much set and only Capps, Perkins and Duensing can be considered virtual sure-things to be members of the Opening Day bullpen corps.

That leaves 25 pitchers competing for the remaining 4-5 bullpen spots. How in the world will Anderson and manager Ron Gardenhire possibly sort through all of those guys to determine which should claim a Big League roster spot?

Again, thanks to Mr. Powers and Coach Anderson, we have a few clues:

“We’ve got 33 pitchers coming in,” Anderson said Sunday from Florida. “I’ve already talked to just about every one of them. We have 13 days to get ready to play. We have the time to get ready.”

There’s clue number one. If you’re a pitcher with an invitation to the Twins’ Big League camp, but Anderson hasn’t spoken to you yet, it’s probably premature to lease an apartment in the Twin Cities.

But there’s more:

“We’ve got ‘B’ games and split squads,” Anderson said. “With 33 pitchers, we need to find innings to see what they’ve got. I was thinking about this just this morning: In the past, maybe we’ve had a couple of spots open, and we didn’t have a whole lot of options. This year, we’ve got nine or 10 guys with a legitimate shot. Maybe more.”

Hmmmm… nine or 10 guys… maybe more… with a legitimate shot. But which nine or 10 guys?

“T.K. [former Twins manager Tom Kelly] always says, ‘Don’t let spring training fool you,’ ” Anderson added with a laugh. “But this year it’s going to be go, go, go. If you don’t have a good spring, we’ll send you down to Triple-A and say, ‘Maybe we’ll see you again.’ This year, guys are pitching for jobs and not just to get in shape.”

Well, I still don’t know exactly who the nine or 10 guys are with a legitimate shot at making the ballclub, but it sounds to me like we’ll all discover pretty quickly who ISN’T in that group. That would be anyone who’s first inning or two of work in Ft. Myers sucks.

So that’s the plan, fans. Invite a crapload of maybes, wannabes, usedtabes, and almostweres to Spring Training, put them on the mound and see if any of them can get anyone out… and, “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

And here we were worried they didn’t have a plan.

– JC

One More Decision Bud Selig Won’t Make

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Admit it… as soon as you read yesterday’s post about Bud Selig and the decisions he is incapable of making, you knew this was coming, didn’t you?

Yes, I’m going to rant… again… about broadcast blackouts and how MLB doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about fans throughout Iowa and parts of Nevada (and a few other states) where fans are literally prevented from watching just about any team they care at all about play baseball on cable television or the internet.

I won’t rehash the issue in its entirety. You can click here to read all about it or just type “blackouts” in the search window at the top of our site to bring up any number of my previous rants on the topic. Here, I’ll just provide a little updated rant.

At a Hot Stove banquet the week of Twinsfest, I had the pleasure of listening in on a Q&A session with a panel that included Twins President Dave St. Peter. With encouragement from a fellow Twins fan and blogger who shall remain nameless (other than to say he has a view from Section 219 of Target Field for several Twins games a year) and emboldened by the beer or five I had during dinner and the following couple of hours, I asked Mr. St. Peter whether the Twins would ever address the crazy “blackout” issue that prevents me and my fellow Iowans from seeing Twins games either on cable television or via the internet.

St. Peter admitted that Iowa was in the middle of a “Bermuda Triangle” (his words) and that he and the Twins would like to see the situation changed, but the matter is dictated by MLB’s broadcast rights policy and any changes would have to come from league headquarters. He also suggested I write to Iowa’s Congressional delegation.

Frankly, I was surprised someone in baseball would actually encourage a fan to complain to my Senators and Congressman about MLB (because certainly he must be aware that such a complaint would naturally include a suggestion that baseball’s anti-trust exemption be considered for review), but I let the matter drop at the time.

I didn’t bother to let him know that I had already written a polite letter (really… I CAN be polite when I want to be… and when I think it might be more productive than being brutally honest) to Commissioner Selig a couple of years ago about the blackout policy and got exactly the kind of response I expected. That is to say, no response whatsoever.

I also didn’t point out ot Mr. St. Peter that this issue has been raised by far more influential people than I, such as former MLB president Bob DuPuy, who lobbied for an end to the blackouts… in 2008… with no effect whatsoever.

Of course, I don’t really expect Bud Selig to step in and make a decision regarding the broadcast blackouts. After all, we’re talking about a guy who is seemingly paralyzed by inaction regarding any decision at all that might not be 100% okie-dokie with all of the owners and all of the Networks, so it’s not logical to think he’d make a decision on this matter either.

Then again, considering the decision he did make on the whole All-Star Game/World Series home field thing, maybe we’re all just better off waiting for the next Commissioner anyway. After all, Selig will retire when the latest “last” extension is up in two years, right?

Yeah… right.

– JC

~You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant~

Bud Selig: The Peter Principle Inaction

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You might think the headline was a typo… that it was meant to say, “Bud Selig: The Peter Principle In Action.” Nope. I meant it exactly as I typed it.

You’re all familiar with “the Peter Principle,” right? It’s the organizational principle that states, “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Here’s the Wiki synopsis:

The principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Eventually they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Peter’s Corollary states that “in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out their duties” and adds that “work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.” “Managing upward” is the concept of a subordinate finding ways to subtly “manage” superiors in order to limit the damage that they end up doing. (emphasis is mine)

There’s a very strong example of the “managing upward” corollary sitting atop Major League Baseball.

I wasn’t at all surprised last month when MLB announced that Bud Selig’s contract had been extended two years. Disappointed? Yes… but far from surprised. In fact, I’ll only be surprised if the MLB team owners eventually do kick Selig out of his office while he’s still breathing. 

Why should they? The owners with the most clout (read: owners of teams with the greatest revenue streams) have been successfully “managing upward” for years. If they hired a new Commissioner of Baseball, there’s a pretty good chance that he or she would come in and expect to be able to make decisions in the best interests of baseball. The big market owners sure don’t want that.

Sure, paying a guy $23 million a year to make no decisions might sound like a lot of money, but each team’s share of his salary is less than the price of a below-Replacement Level Player. That’s chump change (an appropriate turn of a phrase in this case) to the bazillionaires who own MLB teams.

But wait, didn’t Bud Selig lead baseball through an unprecedented era of labor peace and didn’t he implement the toughest drug testing program in professional sports? Yes… of course he did. If you actually believe he “decided” any of that, rather than those decisions all being made as part of collective bargaining sessions. I’m sure there was not a lot of unilateral decision making by the Commissioner in those sessions, folks.

Bud Selig

Then again, Selig’s fingerprints did seem to be all over the Mitchell Report. You remember the Mitchell Report, right? It was Bud’s response to being called in on the carpet by Congress for providing impotent leadership on PEDs. Imagine that… perhaps the most impotent body of “decision makers” in the country criticized Selig for his lack of leadership. That ought to tell you something. The Mitchell Report itself was the kind of work product you would expect from a group with no subpoena power and which leaked almost as many names that ultimately did NOT show up in the report as those who did. (I’m betting Jeff Bagwell still would like to know who he should see about that little matter, since so many HOFvoters seem to think he was “named” in the Mitchell Report.)

Still, maybe we’re being a bit unfair. After all, drug testing and labor negotiations are huge and complicated matters. No one person could have stepped up and unilaterally made the kinds of decisions necessary to work through those issues. Commissioners’ decisions are more geared toward the less complicated, “keep the trains running on time” issues that pop up occasionally, like… well… like how to determine home team in the World Series, I guess. After all, he stepped up and made a great call on that matter, right?

In that vein, here are a few more decisions that you would think the Commissioner should be able to take a swing at:

Playoffs:

The big news in the off-season was that the Astros will be moving to the American League in 2013, as part of a realignment geared toward bringing consistency to the number of teams in each league/division and in scheduling. As part of the reorganization, we’ll have two wild card teams in each league that will play one game against one another to determine which of the wild cards will move in to the Divisional Series. Personally, while it’s been widely criticized, I’m on board with that. But we’ve been waiting for months to find out whether the new playoff format will be implemented this year or not.

Selig apparently wants it implemented now. But there are scheduling challenges and clearly the Networks and the people who would have to address those challenges would have easier lives if MLB waited until 2013 to implement the new format. So, the only way the format will be changed this season is if Bud Selig stands up and says, “just frigging get it done!” Yeah… THAT’S not gonna happen.

So we’ll just continue to sit around and wait without a resolution until it just becomes too late to make any changes and Bud will shrug and say, “I tried.”

The Oakland/San Jose Athletics:

The A’s play in a really bad excuse for a ballpark in a community not inclined to do much to change the situation. Several years ago, their owner decided he wanted to move his team down the road to San Jose, where a new stadium could be built and a “genius” GM like Billy Beane could finally compete on a level playing field with the rest of the league.

The problem is, San Jose is considered part of the “home market” of the San Francisco Giants and the Giants aren’t crazy about letting the A’s move in to “their” market. The Giants gloss over a few things, of course, such as the fact that the reason San Jose is part of their home market is that they asked the Athletics to relinquish THEIR rights to San Jose years ago when the Giants were contemplating moving there, themselves. Then they got a new downtown stadium in San Francisco and their plans (or was it a threat?) to move ended. So now that the Athletics want to move there, instead, the Giants won’t give back the rights to the area.

Sounds like a call that a Commissioner should make, right? After all, we’re talking about deciding a matter in the best interests of baseball.

But Selig couldn’t bring himself to make a decision like this without knowing all the facts, so he established a group to study the matter… THREE YEARS AGO.

Today, there’s still no word from Selig on the issue and, by God, A’s owner Lew Wolff is pissed off and tired of waiting. Word from the Commissioner’s office in December was that a decision was coming by February (no word on whether or not Selig has allowed his staff to flip the calendar pages past January 31 at MLB headquarters).

Still, how important is this to Wolff, compared to the prospect of having a Commissioner who might actually WANT to make decisions? All you need to know is that Wolff voted with his peers to extend Selig’s contract two more years. Maybe you’ll have that decision sometime in 2015, Lew.

Compensation for Theo Epstein:

Last fall, Red Sox GM Theo Epstein was hired by the Cubs to run their team, despite having time remaining on his contract with Boston. The clubs apparently agreed that they would work out compensation later and that, in the unlikely event that they couldn’t work out a deal, the Commissioner would decide.

That was in October. This is February and, surprise, they can’t reach agreement on fair compensation. Boston wants every player in the Cubs organization who’s got a chance of ever being good (yes, both of them) and the Cubs think two old catchers masks should be sufficient.

Of course, what Selig SHOULD have done at the time was is say, “BS! Come to an agreement now or forget about it.” But he didn’t. So now he’s faced with making a decision that will certainly upset one team owner or the other.

So, in true Bud Selig fashion, he’s dragging the process out as long as possible in the apparent hope that people will forget about it. And he may be right… the other 28 owners would like him to forget about it. The last thing they want is for a precedent to be set giving the Commissioner the authority to settle such things.

There is one more little decision that I’d like to see the Commissioner step up and make, but this post has run on long enough for today, so I’ll save the last point for tomorrow. Those of you who’ve been reading my stuff here for a while can probably already guess the issue I’d like Mr. Selig to address, but I’ll leave you with a little hint:

~You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant~

– JC

 

Twins Prospects: What a Difference a Week Makes

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UPDATE (2/13/2012): We have yet another prospect list to include in the discussion… Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus has released his “Top 101” list and while he apparently thinks more of Miguel Sano (#12) than either Mayo or Law do, he has only one other Twin, Rosario (#87) on his list. Twins that dropped off his list since last year include Hicks (#51 in 2011), Gibson (#55 in 2011) and Revere (#62 in 2011… perhaps Revere no longer meets his criteria for “prospect” status). – JC

It almost goes without saying, but if you need more evidence that judging an organization’s minor leaguers is an inexact science, at best, all you need to do is compare prospect rankings of even the most reputable sources.

A couple of weeks ago, Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com released his “Top 100” prospects list and it wasn’t good news for the Minnesota Twins. Only two players in their organization, consensus top Twins prospect Miguel Sano (#23) and Aaron Hicks (#72) made the list. Since there are 30 MLB teams, logic would tell you that to be considered as having an “average” number of highly ranked prospects an organization should have at least three players among any “Top 100” list.

Predictably, there were a few articles popping up within both mainstream media and social media that discussed the sad state of the Twins minor league talent levels.

Fast forward to yesterday morning and we had a new “Top 100” list from ESPN’s Keith Law (Insider subcription required). Surprise! The Twins post FOUR players on Law’s list, with Eddie Rosario (#50) and Oswaldo Arcia (#85) joining Sano (#28) and Hicks (#80). Placing four in Law’s “Top 100” might indicate the Twins organization is a bit above average. Funny how an organization can improve so much over the course of a couple of winter weeks without playing a single game, isn’t it?

So which is it? Is the Twins organization straggling behind the competition when it comes to developing high end prospects or are they a bit above the norm? I suppose we could await Baseball America’s “Top 100” list to break the tie, but that’s really not necessary. The answer is “yes.”

Aaron Hicks

What’s that you say… that wasn’t a “yes or no” question? I know that. After all I posed the question. But the answer really is that the Twins organization is both a bit below and a bit above the competition.

Why below? Because three of the four players Law thinks highly of are at least two years (and more likely at least three years) away from being Big Leaguers, and the fourth (Hicks) fell like a rock in Law’s rankings from 10th in 2011 to 80th in 2012. Not exactly cause to be optimistic that he’ll be leading the Twins to the playoffs any time real soon.

In addition, in an era when top-end starting pitching has become obscenely expensive on the open market, making “growing your own” an absolute necessity, the Twins have zero pitchers in any “Top 100” list released to date this year. Sure, they had a bit of bad luck with Kyle Gibson’s injury a year ago, but you don’t get extra points for bad luck.

On the other hand, the Twins obviously intended for this imbalance to occur. While you never can be 100% sure how any 16-21 year old will mature, mentally or physically, there’s usually a reason top draft picks and international signees get big bucks… they are the most likely to become top prospects and, ideally, star players. And the Twins have been focusing on position players above pitchers in the high rounds of the draft and in their international scouting.

So now four of those players appear to be among the top prospects in baseball, which should indicate that the organization’s plans are working out roughly the way they hoped. How comfortable fans should feel about that conclusion is, I suppose, another topic for reasonable debate.

The Twins had some bad luck and some bad drafts a few years back (as the Strib’s LaVelle E. Neal III has done a good job of reviewing on his blog). So unless you count Gibson, there simply isn’t a “big impact” player in the organization that’s going to be stepping in to a leadership role with the Twins this year or even in 2013… maybe not even by 2014 unless Hicks gets things turned around.

The bottom line is that there is reason for some optimism that help is on the way, but it’s tempered by the fact that such help is likely on the distant horizon, rather than anything imminent. There’s a solid group of young players with the potential to be productive Major League ballplayers making their way up in the organizational ranks and that includes a lot of players over and above the guys you see on any “top prospect” list.

For now, and likely for the next couple of seasons, the Twins will need to continue filling out their Major League roster with mid-level free agents and other teams’ cast-offs. But if Twins fans can be patient, there is the potential for the next wave of stars to be very good.

I know… Twins fans being patient? Not likely.

– JC

P.S. If you want to know more about the Twins prospects mentioned above and about 150 others in the organization, it’s not too late to order your Minnesota Twins 2012 Prospect Handbook. Head on over to SethSpeaks.net for the link and order your copy. I’ve got four copies myself, so what are YOU waiting for?

AL Central Preview: Kansas City Royals

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Here’s the final installment in this series of previews of the Twins’ AL Central Division rivals. Today, we talk about the Landed Gentry down yonder in Kansas City.

How many years now have we been hearing about how great the Kansas City Royals’ prospects are? Seems like forever.  Last season, we finally got to see some of that talent on the field at the Big League level. And what did we see? I guess you have to give the Royals credit for crawling out of the AL Central Division cellar, but that may have been due more to just how bad the Twins were than any improvement by the Royals.

Still, the Royals are getting better and you have to hope baseball fans in Kansas City recognize it and start showing up at the remodeled Kauffman Stadium in greater numbers. As it stands, at least there should be one guaranteed sell-out in KC this season, with the 2012 All-Star Game being hosted there. Kauffman has always been one of my favorite MLB stadiums so I’m glad they’re getting this opportunity to showcase the great job they did of fixing the place up.

And who knows, maybe this is the season a few of their young stars emerge to the point where the Royals get more than just token representation on the AL squad.

Last Year:

Record: 71-91

Standings: 4th place AL Central by 24 games behind Tigers

Playoffs: None. Their last playoff appearance was in 1985 (Ouch)

Players of Note Lost: OF Melky Cabrera

Players of Note Added: P Jonathan Sanchez, P Jonathan Broxton, SS Yuniesky Betancourt, P Jose Mijares

M*A*S*H unit: Unless you count the potential for Jose Mijares to eat one or two of his team mates, the Royals appear to be entering Spring Training in remarkably good shape health-wise. (Actually, if there’s one place where one probably should not poke fun at food-related injuries, it is almost certainly Kansas City… not after the close call their mascot Sluggerrr had with the justice system following a nasty hotdog incident last year.)

Outlook: If I were a Royals fan, I’d have really liked to see the club go out and get Roy Oswalt or Edwin Jackson. That would have been a great way for ownership to tell the fan base, “we’re not just BSing about this any more, we think we can be good!”

I guess they figured bringing in Jonathan Sanchez should be enough to convince fans that they’re serious. The other new Jonathan (Broxton) should prove helpful out of the bullpen, as well. On the other hand, they also added Jose Mijares. While I’m tempted to say Mijares will offset any improvement Broxton might bring, the truth is that Mijares probably could prove to be a major contributor as a LOOGY out of their pen.

At some point, all of these hitters that the “experts” have been raving about as they worked their way up through the Royals organization are going to start scoring more runs, right? Maybe, in a season that’s shaping up to be a pretty mediocre year for most of the other AL Central teams, this will be the year that Billy Butler, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Alex Gordon, and Alcides Escobar score runs in bunches. If so, and if they get some pitching, maybe those runs will translate in to wins.

That’s a lot of “maybe,” but I think it may just happen.

I’m obviously hoping the Twins’ fortunes turn this year and they mount a serious challenge to the Tigers. But if they don’t, I think the Royals may be the AL Central team most likely to do so. I’ll predict KC wins at least half their games this season and with a little luck, a few games more than that. Anything above .500 could be good enough for runner-up status in this Division.

– JC