Caught Looking 1/21

Here are some links from my fellow BBA General Chapter brethren to help you make it to your lunch break on Fridays.

*I was excited for my friend Mike at The Golden Sombrero when I heard he was getting direct messages from 2010 third overall pick Manny Machado. Turns out Manny just wants him to buy Apple products. I could use an iPad with MLB.tv already loaded on it if you're buying.

*The great Larry Granillo at Wezen-Ball wonders why TV sitcoms in the 80's and 90's told us that diet or caffeine pills were bad for us but greenies were fine for ballplayers. And he provides an awesome video mash up including the famous Saved By The Bell clip. I'm so... scared.

*In a great post at The Platoon Advantage, Bill looks back and forward at Bill James' Hall of Fame predictions from 1995 through 2019. Then Bill drove me drink with his 3 Questions about the Angels.

*The Hall of Very Good has a very good post on Vinny Castilla's retirement from baseball. He apparently took the Rickey Henderson approach to retiring from baseball.

*Jason from the aptly titled Jason's Baseball Blog does a pretty thorough job reviewing prospects. In this one, he looks at the Angels Jean Segura. I plan on spending most of the 2011 Angels season obsessing over Segura and Mike Trout. And cursing Tony Reagins and Scott Downs.

*Figure Filbert takes a look at how ridiculously consistent Jason Hammel was over the past two seasons except for ERA.

*Flagrant Fan makes a case for Jose Bautista having an even better 2011 season if he can just muster a few more multi-hit games. Toronto might want to get this linked blocked in Canada during the arbitration process.

*Rational Pastime has some interesting data on construction trends of stadiums between the NFL and MLB.

*Aaron make a case for Andy Pettitte's HOF candidacy using the always fun Player A through Player F comparison game. I thought I was going to get more right in that game. For more BBA General Chapter links, check in with Blogging From The Bleachers.

*Finally, our own Derwood's dad played in the Cubs' minor league system back in the day (or has a crazy imagination). Sometimes he shares some stories with us. You don't won't to miss the one about the onion picker girl.

Eric Chavez Worked Out, DL Stint Upcoming

Once-upon-a-time third baseman Eric Chavez worked out for the Dodgers in Arizona Thursday. He has also reportedly worked out for the Yankees, Blue Jays and Mariners. I'd suggest he takes the first offer he gets because another work out will surely send him in for more back surgery.

Chavez came up with the A's in 1998 and won six consecutive Gold Gloves from 2001-2006 but his baseball expiration date came in 2007. In '07, Chavez managed to play in 90 games and saw his OBP fall to .306. Watermarks he would never reach again. Chavez played in 23 games in 2008, eight in 2009 and 33 in 2010. Last season, Chavez admitted his career might be over because swinging a bat was uncomfortable and he had numbness in his shoulders.

Yet, he's attempting another comeback. The AL teams are looking at him as a DH possibility. Sure, why not? The 33-year-old hit 18 home runs and a .233/.290/.399 line over the past four seasons. The Dodgers make even less sense considering Chavez has the mobility of a traffic cone.

I have nothing against Chavez as long as he doesn't end up as the Angels 2011 third baseman. Besides, he's an easy joke. I give you exhibit A...


Well, they can't all be winners.

Angels At The Hot Corner

The Angels off-season was filled with ups and downs and as a fan masochist, I wanted to take a look at just how bad their third base situation is. After losing out on Adrian Beltre, the Halos are left with Maicer Izturis, Brandon Wood and Alberto Callaspo to man the hot corner. It may look bad on paper but it's even worse when you say it out loud and people give you the stink eye. Here are the aforementioned players' WAR Graph by age (via Fangraphs). Click to enlarge.



Ruh-roh. Izturis is the proud owner of a career high 3.0 WAR (in 2009) between the three of them and Wood has yet to crack a 0.0 WAR in the majors. Just roughly looking at the 2010 seasons of this trio of trepidation, it doesn't look like the Angels can plan on getting more than a combined 1.5 WAR from this rotation.

I've been known to be delusional at times so allow me to put on my optimism hat for a minute before I have a panic attack. If the winds all blow the right way, they could at least be league average at third. All three have the potential to be a tick better than average at defense. Izturis and Callaspo could get their OBPs back into the .330-.340 range. And if Wood was granted a wish during the off-season, he might be able to reach a .300 OBP.

Wood was the future of the Angels power hitters but that ship has sailed and was probably sunk by pirates. But if the crew can combine for 18-20 home runs, the Angels' perfect storm would be Michael Young's 2010 season with better defense.

An Evening With Pops Derwood

Pops Derwood is practically a celebrity in his living room, so we've asked him to bring that fame and a .205 career batting average to Offbase and share a story or two about his illustrious career in the Chicago Cubs organization. His book, I Didn't See That Fast Ball, But I Heard It, is not scheduled for release until January, 2012, but here is an excerpt.


More Tales from the Low-and I mean Low-Minor Leagues

Sorry to use an old-timers term, but all I could say was ‘yowza yowza yowza.’ The woman that walked into our trailer with Pete LaCock’s summer girlfriend was a knockout. Blond, busty...oh, and smelly.

The smelly part was that she was picking onions in this small, South Dakota town for a summer job (the summer job should have been the first hint of trouble to come). So, she smelled like an onion.

I had no intention of doing anything that would cause me trouble. I was practically engaged and though I was also lonely as hell sitting in rookie ball in the Pioneer League, this was strictly a ‘look at the menu but don’t taste’ situation. Of course, she and her friend weren’t thinking that way at all. Way before Susan Sarandon and that other girl were following the minor league team in Bull Durham, groupies were following team buses in the bushes of Idaho, too. And these girls actually followed the bus. When we had 13-hour bus rides to places like Ogden, Utah, some of our players would actually find their girlfriends following the bus and sleeping god knows where (we knew where), and showing up at the ballpark at night.

I must say I was intrigued that this very pretty, onion picker was following the bus and kept talking to me. But I was a good boy from start to finish. Not only didn’t I touch her, I didn’t encourage her and didn’t invite her to follow me anywhere, which is going to be real important to this story as you will find out in a minute.

As for Pete? Well, Pete was the No. 1 draft choice, which made him different (I found out just how different when I slept on the floor of his apartment after getting shipped to Caldwell, rolled over in the morning and saw his bats with his freakin’ name on them in a box. My bats said K55 and didn’t have anybody’s name on them, especially not mine). Pete was different because he was from California, and the son of Peter Marshall of Hollywood Squares fame. He was going to the big leagues and he was going to break whatever rule he wanted to break and though our manager, the great Sparky Davis, fined him so much he was borrowing money from me to buy his chew, Pete was less concerned than me about rules.

So what’s the importance of my not having been a bad boy? Well at the team's season-ending party at the palatial and beautifully-appointed Holiday Inn, a guy with cowboy boots, chew in his mouth and a shirt that looked like he had just shat in it and put it back on, sidled up to me.

“So you been hanging out with ____ huh?” (the onion picker).

“Nope I ain’t been hanging out with anyone. She just follows the damn bus.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Why’s that?”

Drum roll....

”'Cause she’s 14.”

I didn’t even say ‘how old?’ or anything like that. I just ran away as fast as I could and headed to my room to hide under my bed to wait for the school bus that was driving us to the airport the next day.

Looking back, the school bus was quite fitting.

We'll Always Have June 2nd, Armando

On June 2, 2010, Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce became famous. It was probably the seventh post I had written here when Joyce famously blew a call preventing Galarraga from a perfect game. For Galarraga, it appears it was all down hill from there. He was very forgiving of Joyce and took the blown call like a champ. Soon after, he was sent down for a minor league stint and finished the season with a 4.49 ERA and a 5.09 FIP (fielding independent pitching) in 144.1 innings.

2011 is has started out just as turbulent for the freshly turned 29-year-old Tiger pitcher. From MLB Trade Rumors...

One day after agreeing to terms with him on a $2.3MM contract for 2011, the Tigers have designated Armando Galarraga for assignment. The team announced the move on Twitter, while making its deal with Brad Penny official.

Galarraga's contract is non-guaranteed, though the Tigers would owe him termination pay if they were to release him.

That's a pretty severe two-day rollercoaster of emotion. I hope Galarraga didn't spend that money opening a Five Guys franchise in Detroit yesterday.

Galarraga is a fringy starter anyway posting career bests in 2008 with 178.2 innings and a 3.73 ERA. But you still have to feel for the guy. He might have millions of dollars snatched away from him in just a day or, even worse, get sent to Toledo.

What Is A Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton?

And how did this get by me? I know this isn't exactly breaking news but I'm bored. Apparently, young Marlins slugger Mike Stanton has a whole front half of his name that I didn't know about. The full, and much awesomer, name of the outfielder is Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton. Here's the origin story behind the full name which will be what I call him on this site henceforth...

The Jacksonville Suns [published on 4/28/10 - Ed.] right fielder’s name is listed on his birth certificate as “Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton,” a long name for a long-ball hitter. The first half was given to him by his mother of Puerto Rican and African-American descent, and the second half is the same name as his Irish father.

By 5th grade, Stanton's name had been abused so much by teachers that he just went by Mike. I like to think that he was so hurt by the mispronunciations that he took his frustrations out on baseballs.

Legend (that I made up) has it that he used to come home so upset that his mom would toss him batting practice to cheer him up. This was where he developed the crushing power he now displays with the Marlins. As a 9-year-old, he routinely belted his mom's 15-mph pitches 400 feet into Panorama City's neighboring town of Rustic Gardens.

When he was 10-years-old he hit a ball so far it landed in a crabby old-man's backyard where he kept a giant, angry dog that chewed up baseballs. Little Mikey Stanton had no idea that that ball was his dad's prized possession and signed by Babe Ruth. Hijinx would ensue but I can't tell you the rest of the story due to copyright laws.

In Giancarlo's first 396 plate appearances with the Marlins, he hit 22 homers and a .259/.326/.507 line. The power is legit and 40 home runs are in his future. Bill James has him pegged for 38 homers and .268/.355/.556 for 2011. I thought I owed you guys some actual facts after wasting your time with the rest of that nonsense.

Best. Wiffle Ball Pitcher. Ever.

*sigh* I used to be proud of my Wiffle Ball pitching prowess in the early 90s. Then Hardball Talk alerted me to the greatest Wiffle Ball pitcher in the history of everything. It made me happy and sad quicker than when I saw Bambi when I was five. Let's go to the tape...



I struck out seven times watching that.

I'm also inclined to believe my grandma was just placating my ego back during my playing days. She struck out a lot but blamed it on not being able to see and being old. Now I have to question my ability.

This turn of events has shaken my baseball knowledge to its core. Does Jack Morris belong in the Hall of Fame now? I'm so confused.

Brady Anderson Teaching Mark Reynolds To Not Strikeout

Well, well. It looks like former Orioles star outfielder Brady Anderson has found a nice secondary career as a trainer/hitting instructor in Southern California. Working out in the sun all day sounds like a nightmare to me but I'm Irish and the most extensive lifting I do is moving a laptop around. I do some solid reps with six ounce adult beverages but that's just for tone not bulk.

Anyway, Anderson recently had a little Q&A with The Arizona Republic's Nick Piecoro and he spoke specifically about one of my favorite players...

Q: What have you been working on with Reynolds?

A: He gets himself in a situation where he's late, he waits until the last second and swings as hard as he can. That's a mechanical flaw - not him being stubborn. When you're late and you don't have proper rhythm and timing, you chase high fastballs with two strikes, you check swing and strike out on sliders in the dirt. ... It doesn't really matter that he strikes out. Sure, you'd like to eliminate them. You don't have to take them from 200 down to 100. Ideally with him, the difference in a tiny little incremental improvement, if he went from 215 (strikeouts) to 185 ... then the whole season changes.

I love Mark Reynolds but this is scary news for me. I spend way too much time during the season watching Reynolds' box scores awaiting just one more strikeout to crown him with another Golden Sombrero. He even won our first annual Golden Sombrero of the Year Award but, for some reason, still has not contacted me for his Off Base t-shirt prize.

Now, Reynolds is taking his Ks to Baltimore and has turned to Anderson for help. This is very disconcerting for me as I was fully expecting a 437 strikeout season against the power arms in the AL East. I'm no scout but in the 30 seconds that I took to skim this interview, it sounds like Anderson knows what he's talking about. Rhythm, timing and not striking out all sound like keys to not striking out.

I'm sure I've thrown around some perfectly unfounded opinions on Anderson's silly (steroidy?) 50 home run season but he only struck out over 100 times in just five seasons and his watermark was 111. Anderson was a 18.3% strikeout rate guy compared to Reynolds' fantastic (for me) 38.7% rate.

I'm not happy about this and will be monitoring the situation closely.