Month: January 2009

HOF ’09: Dan Plesac

PHILLLIES BLUE JAYS

Dan Plesac was a three time All Star, 87, 88, & 89. Plesac recorded his most saves (33) and his lowest ERA (2.35) in 1989. Most of Dan’s success came in his early years with the Milwaukee Brewers, 124 of his 158 saves were recorded in first five years. The highest number of saves after that was 11 in 1996 with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The 6’5″ lefthanded relief pitcher pitched 18 years in the major leagues, 1,064 games, with a 3.64 ERA. Upon his retirement Dan Plesac became a Chicago Cubs broadcaster, now he’s working for the MLB Network. I have to ask the obvious question, “Why is he even on the ballot?”

  Hall of Fame
 

Hall of Very Good

Why is he even on the Ballot?

 

While we wait for January 12 ballot results, The Baseball Zealot will be profiling those players who are on the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.  Read the rest the of the profiles.  

HOF ’09: Jesse Orosco

orosco

Jesse Orosco pitched in more games than any pitcher, ever, 1,252, over 24 years. He was an All Star in 1983 & 1984 with the New York Mets. He posted a 1.47 ERA, with a 13-7 record, & 17 saves in 1983, then followed that up the next year with 31 saves, a 10-6 mark, and a 2.59 ERA. 1984 was the only year Jesse was the number one closer on his team. As a lefthanded reliever he was able to stick around forever in the major leagues by becoming a lefty specialist.

He is one of the reasons, fathers, today, place a baseball in the left hand of their infant’s sons. The best way to make it to the big leagues and stay there, is as a lefthanded pitcher.

All this said about Jesse Orosco, I have to ask, “Why is this guy even on the ballot?”

  Hall of Fame
 

Hall of Very Good

Why is he even on the Ballot?

 

While we wait for January 12 ballot results, The Baseball Zealot will be profiling those players who are on the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.  Read the rest the of the profiles.  

HOF ’09: Mo Vaughn

mo-vaughn

“I always wanted to be like Kirby Puckett. I’d want Reggie Jackson’s power and Carlton Fisk’s attitude and love of the game. But mostly, I’d wanted to be like Kirby Puckett.” — Mo Vaughn.

Mo Vaughn was born and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut and arrived in the Major Leagues after playing college at Seton Hall.

He played for the Red Sox for 8 years, hitting 230 home runs and batting over .300  five times. He was MVP once and voted in the Top Five two other times. Mo had 40+ homers twice with another year of 39.

A free agent after the 1998 season, Mo signed a six-year, $80 million deal with the Angels, making him the highest-paid player in the game at that time

Moving west to wear the Halo, he had designs on lifting his new club to new heights in 1999, despite playing in the Big A, a more difficult hitters’ park.

“I learned a lot from Mo. He showed me some things that were very helpful in terms of driving the ball. He was a great player and a good teammate for me.” — Garret Anderson.

In the first inning of his first game at home in an Angels uniform, Vaughn slipped on the dugout steps and tumbled down in pursuit of a pop fly by the Indians’ Omar Vizquel, spraining an ankle. Playing with pain all season and limited to 139 games in 1999, Vaughn managed to produce 33 homers and 108 RBIs.

Healthy the following season, Vaughn played 161 games, matching his career high. He clouted 36 homers and 117 RBIs. Injuries forced him to miss the entire 2001 season, after which Vaughn was dealt to the Mets in exchange for starter Kevin Appier.

In 10 full Major League seasons and parts of two others, Vaughn hit .293 with 328 homers and 1,064 RBIs for the Boston Red Sox, Anaheim Angels and New York Mets.

Statistically, the five most similar career players to Mo Vaughn (among those retired long enough to be eligible for the Hall) are Ted Kluszewski, David Justice, Kent Hrbek, Hal Trosky and Joe Adcock. None are in the Hall of Fame.

My Opinion: From 1995-1998, he put up Hall of Fame numbers. There isn’t enough supporting play before or after to merit his selection.

  Hall of Fame

Hall of Very Good
  Why is he even on the Ballot?

 

While we wait for January 12 ballot results, The Baseball Zealot will be profiling those players who are on the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.  Read the rest the of the profiles.

DeRosa Shipped to Tribe

mark-derosa The Chicago Cubs sent popular secondbaseman plus, Mark DeRosa to the Cleveland Indians in exchange for three minor league pitchers. DeRosa played 149 games each of the last two years on the Northside of Chicago, 90+ games at 2B, also filling in the OF & 3B, and hitting .293 & .285, with OBPs of .371 & .376, last year he hit 21 homers, and scored 103 times. While Mark was dealt to the Indians, Aaron Miles was signed to take his place at 2B. Six homers was Miles’ alltime high in Colorado in 2004 when he scored his career high of 75 in runs, his highest average was last year .317 with the Cardinals, but even then his OBP was only .355. It’s hard to believe little, 5’8″, Aaron Miles will help Cub fans forget Mark DeRosa.

So what did Chicago get for the versatile DeRosa? Jeff Stevens is a 6’2″ righthanded reliever out of Loyola Marymount, who struckout 111 batters in just under 60 innings pitched, and this 25 year old looks ready for the bigs. Chris Archer is a 6’2″ 20 year old righty out of North Carolina, who pitched in Class A, posting a 4.29 ERA, with 106 Ks in 115′ innings pitched. John Gaub is out of the University of Minnesota (2004-06), the 6’2″ (the Cubs must like 6’2″ pitchers) 23 year old lefty struckout 100 batters in 64 innings in Class A in 2008. Retooling the Cubbies bullpen may payoff big time down the line, maybe even next year with Stevens.

It’s interesting this deal doesn’t seem to be about money. What do you think about this trade? Did the Cubs get enough? Will Miles be a quality replacement for DeRosa?

MLB Network gets going

The MLB Network is now on the air.

MLB Network Launches January 1, 2009

A couple points I’d like to make:

1.  They are still pushing Silverlight technology to distribute their online video content.  This is not unexpected since I think their deal with them extends till April when MLB Advanced Media will go with Flash.  It can’t be soon enough in my opinion. 

2.  My hope is that the MLB Network does not ignore the sector of society that gets their information and news totally from the web.  I’ll be honest, I rarely get my news from TV and yes, that includes sports news.  My hope was that would be that they would be streaming MLB Network live. 

There are plenty of business models out there using streaming video out that seem to work.  MLB, let’s make it work, too. 

I’m hoping the MLB Network gets off the ground.  They seem to have realistic expectations:

Petitti has made it clear that his new network’s signature show does not need to beat “Baseball Tonight” in the ratings for the network to be declared a runaway success. It’s all in the baseball family.

“Being second for us is a good thing,” Petitti said. “If we’re the second place people turn to for baseball, we’ll be very successful.”

That tells me they know they are targeting a niche market, their core audience.  That’s a good thing. 

Now just don’t do anything to piss them off.

Hockey at Wrigley: but where were the Blackhawks?

A rather exciting day at Wrigley Field, no doubt… if you ignore the final score. 

Over 40,000 fans showed up in the freezing weather today to watch the Detroit Red Wings take on the Chicago Blackhawks at the Cubs home field.  The fans were mostly of the Blackhawk nature but otherwise it was you could say it was neutral territory. 

I watched the second and third periods on TV.  By that time, the Blackhawks had already done their damage and the Red Wings were just getting warmed up.  Detroit scored five unanswered goals to win the game 6-4. 

But from NHL’s and MLB’s point of view, it doesn’t matter who won.  They are really promoting this as some sort of historical event.  A “Winter Classic” it is.  And it looks like it won’t be the last New Year’s event at a baseball park.  They are already talking about where to hold next year’s New Year’s event. 

PS Al Yellon from Bleed Cubbie Blue has some nice photos of the event.

HOF ’09: Jack Morris

It’s a way to stay alive, a way to survive as a pitcher. If you didn’t do it, you either had phenomenal control, or you didn’t last.

Jack Morris

I admit, I didn’t know a whole lot about Jack Morris until doing research for this article.  The one thing I DID know as most baseball people do, is that Morris won more games than any pitcher in the 80’s.  Yes, wins aren’t a perfect stat but let’s keep that in mind. 

Morris Facts
  • Drafted 5th round in 1976 by the Detroit Tigers
  • Attended Brigham Young University
  • Played for Det, Min, Tor, Cle (1977-1994)
  • 5 time All-Star
  • pitched no-hitter April 7, 1984 for Detroit vs ChiA
  • led AL in WP six times

 

First and foremost, Jack Morris was a Tiger.  He was drafted by them in 1976 and played for them for 14 of his 18 years.  He was a workhorse by today’s standards, pitching over 240 innings nine times.  Not only that, he had 175 complete games (remember those?). 

Morris hit the 20 mark in wins three times in his career all pretty much spaced out over his career… 1983, 1986 and 1992.  It’s actually pretty amazing that he holds that 80s record but you can attribute to consistent play throughout the decade (aside from 1989 when he only garnered 6 wins). 

jmorris Due to his high inning totals, you’ll see Morris up there in the all-time leader boards.  He’s 14th in home runs allowed (389), 36th in GS (527), 8th in wild pitches (206) and 19th in walks (1390). 

But he also has 254 wins (to 186 losses) to which kinda surprised me when I looked it up.  Not only that, he had a tasty 7-4 record in the postseason.  Morris helped the Tigers win the World Series against the San Diego Padres in ’84.  His experience was helpful for Minnesota in 1991 when they went all the way and the next year, Toronto rented his services and won another crown.  

Morris’ career 3.90 ERA is a bit high.  It’s actually higher than the league average when he was playing.  But no doubt about it, he was a winner. 

    

  Hall of Fame

Hall of Very Good
  Why is he even on the Ballot?

 

While we wait for January 12 ballot results, The Baseball Zealot will be profiling those players who are on the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.  Read the rest the of the profiles.

HOF ’09: Mark McGwire

 

“Any time a guy that big steps up to the plate – they’re very few and far between, thank God – it’s kind of hard not to notice him standing there. The sun just disappears for a while.”

Kevin Brown on Mark McGwire

 

Oh what to do with Mark McGwire and the Hall of Fame!  He was denied entry the past two years, some say because of allegations of use of performance enhancers, others might just just say because of his one-sided talent.  But just how one-sided was it?  And if so, does it really matter?

markmcgwire Let’s get the big stats out of the way.  Sixteen seasons, 583 homeruns, 1414 rbis, 1167 runs… and six triples. 

His 1596 strikeouts was accompanied by 1317 walks.  Not a bad ratio by any means… he knew how to take a walk or maybe more accurately, the opposing pitchers knew when to pitch around him. 

McGwire played for the Oakland Athletics from 1986-1997 when for most of the time, he was paired up with Jose Canseco to form the famed “Bash Brothers”.  Ironically, if you look at the Similar Batters list in Baseball Reference, Canseco heads the list. 

When firstbasemen get old, they tend to head to the AL.  Not McGwire… he did it in reverse.  In 1997 at the age of 33, he was traded to the St Louis Cardinals for three players.  Now in this era of free agency and with most players heading toward this time in their career, most players are considering this as a career move but I honestly think Mark McGwire loved playing in St Louis. 

At the time, the year of 1998 did much for baseball.  Living in downstate Illinois put me smack dab in the middle of the two men who made it so mcgwiretestimonyexciting, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  McGwire of course, broke the home record that year with his 70 homeruns but Sosa won the MVP award.

In retrospect, many feel it is tainted because of allegations of use of performance enhancing drugs.  He didn’t help his cause when he avoided the question in 2005 at a congressional hearing. 

Why Mark McGwire will make the Hall of Fame

There’s no question in my mind that if you drop the PED issue, McGwire would make the Hall.  There are people who will tell you differently but I think their judgement is still being clouded.  Look at his qualifications:

  • Four time home run champ
  • 12-time All-Star
  • 8th all-time in homeruns (583)
  • 9th all-time slugging (.588)
  • all-time leader in at-bats per home run (10.6)

McGwire was the best at what he did for his era.  Hitting homeruns. 

Also, the writers have had two years to settle down about the PED thing.  By now, they will have had a chance to look at what he did for baseball.

Why Mark McGwire will NOT make the Hall of Fame

1.  Timing.  Some writers have not forgotten about the andro or the PED allegations.  My honest opinion is that if the Mitchell Report had never come out, McGwire would have a plaque in the Hall right now. 

2.  Some writers do believe that McGwire is a one-talent hitter and/or believe that his one talent (slugging) wasn’t enough to compensate for his weaknesses.  Check out The Hardball Times’ more objective look at McGwire. 

3.  Demonization.  Ok, that’s a strong word but once a train starts leaving a station, everybody wants to jump onboard. 

When it comes down to it, I would vote for McGwire and I think the writers will eventually.  Maybe not this year or the next. 

But eventually.

 

Hall of Fame
 

Hall of Very Good
  Why is he even on the Ballot?

 

While we wait for January 12 ballot results, The Baseball Zealot will be profiling those players who are on the 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot.  Read the rest the of the profiles.