Orlando Hudson hits for the cycle as Dodgers rout Giants 11-1

He was the first Dodger to accomplish the feat since Wes Parker(!) in 1970. From AP-

Orlando Hudson hit for the cycle, Andre Ethier drove in four runs with a pair of homers and the Los Angeles Dodgers beat Randy Johnson and the San Francisco Giants 11-1 to win their home opener on Monday.

*****

Hudson completed the majors’ first cycle this season with a sixth-inning triple off Brandon Medders. He slid into base ahead of a throw by right fielder Randy Winn, got up and pointed to the sky.

Hudson singled in the first, homered in the third and doubled in the fourth — all off Johnson — and became the first Dodger since Wes Parker on May 7, 1970, and the ninth in franchise history to complete the cycle.

Hudson is the first Dodger to do it at Dodger Stadium; Parker accomplished the feat at New York’s Shea Stadium.

Since the park was opened in 1962, Dodger Stadium has been one of the toughest hitter’s parks in baseball. I am not surprised by there never being a cycle hit there.

There was a few other things of note about this game.

Johnson lost at Dodger Stadium for the first time in his 22-year career, falling to 7-1 in just his second start in Los Angeles since 2004. He was denied his 296th career victory, although the 45-year-old left-hander earned his 4,800th strikeout in the third inning against James Loney.

That Johnson likes Dodger Stadium isn’t surprising. He’s definitely headed to Cooperstown six years throwing his last Major League pitch.

Former MLB pitcher Dave Roberts dead at 64

I remember Roberts. He and Clay Kirby were the 1-2 pitching combo for the Padres in their infant years. His 14-17 2.10 ERA year with the 71 Padres was truly outstanding. For the Padres went 61-100 that year.

Roberts was a journeyman but one able to win over 100 ML games. Which according to wikipedia, makes him the 4th winningest Jewish pitcher in baseball history. He also swung a mean bat for a pitcher as seen in .194 career batting average, 7 career homeruns, and .500 Slugging Pct in 1977 for the Chicago Cubs. RIP.

Veteran reliever Salomon Torres announces his retirement

He saved 28 games last year and was still pitching well. From AP-

Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Salomon Torres retired Tuesday after 12 major league seasons.

The 36-year-old reliever issued a statement through the team saying he wanted to spend more time with his family and faith.

Torres also told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Brewers GM Doug Melvin was very understanding of his decision.

“I had a wonderful experience in Milwaukee but he knows I am serious about it,” Torres told the newspaper.

Torres was 7-5 with a 3.49 ERA and a career-high 28 saves in 71 relief appearances last season. He had a 44-58 career record with a 4.31 ERA and 57 saves for San Francisco, Seattle, Montreal, Pittsburgh and Milwaukee.

Torres remains on the roster of the Brewers, who have until Saturday to exercise a $3.75 million option with a $300,000 buyout.

Torres took a pass on a great deal of money, there has to be a good reason. The ‘I want to spend more time with my family’ explanation probably shouldn’t be applied to athletes like it to politicians and coaches. Maybe Torres has some family issues. Good luck in retirement Salomon Torres.

Mike Hampton wins his first ML game since 2005

The veteran southpaw helped his own cause with a RBI double. From AP-

SAN FRANCISCO – Mike Hampton earned his first victory in nearly three years and hit an RBI double, leading the Atlanta Braves past the San Francisco Giants 11-4 on Tuesday night.

The 35-year-old Hampton had to feel great about this outing: He hadn’t won since Aug. 14, 2005, for the Braves against Arizona — 1,087 days earlier. And this was just his third start of 2008 after he returned July 26 following a nearly three-year absence in which the two-time All-Star underwent two major surgeries on his left elbow.

This season, he was sidelined by both a strained chest muscle and an injured groin.

Hampton (1-0) allowed four hits and two runs in seven innings and improved to 14-4 in 25 career appearances against the Giants with his first win over them since May 11, 2003, which also was his last start versus San Francisco. He lowered his ERA from 10.00 to 6.75.

Most ML pitchers will win when their team gives them eleven runs.

Hampton was a good MLB pitcher but his career problems date back to when signed with the Colorado Rockies after the 2000 season. After leaving Colorado, he had one good year in Atlanta, and one not so good. At 36 years of age, I don’t expect Hampton to make a comeback even to the 03-04 level of his career.

Mike Hampton has always been a good hitting pitcher. He has a lifetime .243 BA and 15 career homeruns. In my Startournaments playing days, I frequently used Hampton as a pinch hitter.

Ryan Klesko retiring from MLB after 16-year career

The Left fielder/first baseman was a key member of the 1995 Atlanta Braves who won the world series. From AP-

IRVINE, Calif. — Ryan Klesko is retiring after 16 seasons in the major leagues, agent Joe Sambito said Friday.

Klesko, an All-Star in 2001 with San Diego, hit .260 last season with six homers and 44 RBIs in 362 at-bats for the San Francisco Giants. He played in only six games the previous year for the Padres because of shoulder surgery. The 36-year-old became a free agent following the World Series and didn’t sign.

For his career, Klesko batted .279 with 278 homers and 987 RBIs. His best season was 2001, when he hit .286 with 30 homers and 113 RBIs.

He spent seven seasons with San Diego after playing his first eight years in the big leagues with the Atlanta Braves.

Note- Klesko’s agent is a former MLB relief pitcher.

My main memory of Klesko is from the 2001 Star tournament season. Where I finished 4th in the National pts. standings. Most tournaments that year I had iron glove Edgar Martinez at 1b(there was no DH use). Klesko was my ‘glove man’ platoon with Edgar in two tournaments, one of which was the Worlds. That was one ugly defensive combo, but I made it to the World quarterfinals that year. So Edgar/Ryan at 1b worked.

Good luck in retirement Ryan.

Hot Stove Update: Twelve Shopping Days ’til Christmas Edition

Baseball’s hot stove season keeps crackling along with a firesale beginning in Baltimore, a strange signing in San Francisco and the effective release of a phenomenal talent with an arm that was abused.

Dead Team, Dead Team Swapping

Let’s start with the Orioles.

Andy MacPhail is the new head honcho in Baltimore and his primary job is turning around a moribund franchise. It is about time. The Orioles recently woes have resulted in poor showings, fan protests and the dreadful overreach that typifies teams just beyond terrible, but nowhere near good.

Move number one in the now ongoing firesale:

Orioles Give	Astros Give
SS Miguel Tejada	OF Luke Scott P Matt Albers P Troy Patton P Dennis Sarfate 3B Michael Costanzo

It’s an okay haul. Scott compares rather favorably with Trot Nixon at the same ages, giving the Orioles a competent outfielder, who will inexpensively complement and Nick Markakis. Costanzo may end up in the big leagues. He is on his third team this offseason, and is blocked by Melvin Mora. However if Mora is shopped, the Orioles could do worse than the 24 year old with good pop in his bat. Albers and Patton were the top pitchers in Houston’s farm system entering 2007. Neither pitched well with Houston, and both have iffy K rates. But both get groundballs and with a good infield defense have the potential to be respectable at the back of the rotation.

Houston meanwhile adds a slugging shortstop whose defense is declining and who, as an added bonus, has been linked to steroid allegations. For Baltimore, moving him prior to this afternoon’s release of the Mitchell report was an obvious priority. Even if not named, Tejada is tainted by association, possibly unfair.

Other Orioles likely to get moved before the end of this offseason: P Erik Bedard, 3B Melvin Mora, 2B Brian Roberts, OF Jay Payton, and Ramon Hernandez.

Currently, the Orioles need help at shortstop, centerfield and on the mound. Making more moves will yield more potential solutions, while opening more holes. This is the beginning of an about to be gutted franchise.

The Old and the Rested

The San Francisco Giants don’t seem too interested in younger talent. Their starting position players wheezed in with an average age of 36.25 last year. They will be around 34 years old on average next season, unless Giants GM Brian Sabean can find some geezer to play at either the hot or cool corner and thus spare fans the disgrace of having a 26 year old regular (Kevin Frandse) in the starting lineup.

To that mix, the Giants made a big splash yesterday inking centerfielder Aaron Rowand to a five year, $60 Million contract. Rowand will be thirty next year, which makes him the young whippersnapper of the Giant lineup. He also has the job of replacing Barry Bonds in the lineup. But Rowand is not a slugging outfielder like Bonds. Nor is he a prolific on base machine. Aaron Rowand is an outfielder who enjoyed an outstanding season in his walk year.

Let’s go to the numbers

Name	AB	BA	OBP	SLG	BABIP
Aaron Rowand ’07	612	.309	.374	.515	.348
Aaron Rowand car	2664	.286	.343	.462	.323

Not familiar with BABIP? Some folks aren’t. It is a very useful statistic to get a gauge on luck. The statistic measures Batting Average on Balls in Play. As a formula:

BABIP = Hits – Home Runs /At Bats – (Homeruns + Strikeouts)

Your league-wide BABIP is typically around .300. Rowand’s career is an exercise in better than average BABIP. It’s less than 10% over league average, but when he is closer to lerague average, as he was in 2005 with the ChiSox and 2006 with the Phillies, almost all of his offensive value vanishes.

Name	AB	BA	OBP	SLG	BABIP
Aaron Rowand ’05	578	.270	.329	.407	.318
Aaron Rowand ’06	405	.262	.321	.425	.297

See what I mean? Further, Rowand has always benefited from playing in Homerun helping Parks. Moving to San Francisco may cause his power surge to vanish, as well. But hey, it’s only five years and $12 Million per year. That’s nothing. Which unfortunately for Giants fans will describe what the Giants have for the better part of the next decade. Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum are nice young pitchers. Noah Lowry is a healthier version of better than league average Aaron Cook, and Barry Zito, is an overrated league average innings muncher. They will have the pitching, but they still will struggle to win seventy games likely for the next five or six years.

Prior Descent

Mark Prior will be 27 next season. He put up remarkable numbers as a 22 year old in 2003. His 18-6 record in 211.1 innings pitched was worthy of acclaim, and we now know a dead canary in a coal mine.

Indians Executive Keith Woolner in his previous line of work at Baseball Prospectus developed a metric for measuring the abuse a starting pitcher takes from being overpitched. This was an expansion of the original Pitcher Abuse Points system introduced by Rany Jazayerli in 1998. Keith’s expansion focused more on egregious abuse of pitchers, instead of the minor tweaking of a young arm by exceeding 100 pitches.

For perspective, Daisuke Matsuzaka led the majors in PAP^3 last season with 116,740 followed by Carlos Zambrano (114,011) and AJ Burnett (97,899).

Mark Prior’s PAP^3 scores
2002	89,046	Age 21	Including a 54,872 PAP^3 138 pitch outing
2003	230,844	Age 22
2004	36,847	Age 23	Started the season on the DL and did not pitch until June.
2005	102,159	Age 24	with a 25 day stint on the DL mid season
2006	1,000	Age 25

But PAP^3 is not the only measure of risk to a young arm. The rule of thirty is a way of measuring the damage done to a young arm year by year rather than start by start.

Beginning with his Age 19 season at USC Prior pitched the following innings.
2000 129
2001 138
2002 167.2
2003 211.1
2004 118.2
2005 172.2
2006 62.2

Prior’s buildup with the Cubs went from a reasonable 140 or so college innings to an equally reasonable 170 professional innings from one season to the next. At the young age of 21, that is a little excessive, but, it was also consistent with advancing by 30 innings or less from year to year. The Cubs exceeded that rule of thirty by 15 or so innings in 2003, the year where as a 22 year old, he took almost twice as much abuse as any pitcher in 2007 did. In 2003, however, he
was fourth on in the majors behind Javier Vasquez, teammate Kerry Wood and Livan Hernandez. Another Cub starter (Carlos Zambrano) checked in at 11 on that list. The manager of that team got a new job recently to manage the Cincinnati Reds. Homer Bailey, Bronson Arroyo, Aaron Harang, consider yourselves warned!

I am of the mindset that pitcher abuse disproportionately impacts arms outside of the 26-34 age range. Keeping young arms on a strict pitch and inning count is an investment in the future, by giving a young arm time to develop properly. As pitcher’s age, they are less reliable because they push themselves to the extremes that their bodies no longer are capable of achieving. The job of a good manager is to recognize when his older pitchers need a month’s vacation and sending
them off to rest and keep their arm fresh for the stretch drive. This essentially is what the Red Sox did with Curt Schilling this past season.

In addition to maximizing the effectiveness of an older arm, it also creates an opportunity for game level mentoring of young arms, removed from the stretch drive. Would giving a younger pitcher with some upside a showcase against major league teams, again strictly monitoring his pitch and inning counts, both groom him for an eventual job and give him the exposure that could potentially lead to a trade for a spare part? Certainly. It also provides an opportunity for
reclamation projects to get a full speed test int he fires of major league competition.

Speaking of salvage jobs, all this is prologue for the question out there, how many clubs will be pursuing Prior? The answer is all fo them. Prior represents the wonderful confluence of high upside and minimal risk. It’s a long shot, on par with the reclamation project called Kerry Wood but with longer odds and more upside. But it is worth investigating, offering and developing a program to ensure the soundness of his arm and the realization of his tremendous potential.

Now the more fact based (will it work) question has no answer. Probably not is the most I will venture. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Barry Bonds won’t be playing for the San Francisco Giants in 2008

The announcement was made at a news conference yesterday.

SAN FRANCISCO – Barry Bonds is finished in San Francisco. The Giants told Bonds they will not bring him back next season, ending a 15-year run in which he set the single-season and all-time home run records and became a lightning rod for the steroids debate in baseball.

“It’s always difficult to say goodbye,” Giants owner Peter Magowan said Friday. “It’s an emotional time for me. We’ve been through a lot together these 15 years. A lot of good things have happened. Unfortunately a lot of bad things have happened. But there comes a time when you have to go in a different direction.”

On his Web site, Bonds said he wasn’t done.

“There is more baseball in me and I plan on continuing my career. My quest for a World Series ring continues,” he said.

The 43-year-old Bonds did not join Magowan and general manager Brian Sabean at the news conference. Asked whether he had anything to add, Bonds said, “I already made my statement.”

Putting aside whether you think Bonds homerun records are legit or not,(I personally believe Bonds used Steroids and other drugs) he is still a productive hitter. There has to be an American League team that can use Bonds services as a Designated hitter.

In all honesty, I wish Barry would retire. Though this will not silence the debate over his career and records.

Umpires vs. technology

As I’ve said before, umpires need help. And I refer you to a piece I wrote over a year ago on this very same subject. Baseball (and sports in general) is far behind the times in utilizing modern technology where it can, specifically to improve officiating.

I’ve thought about this topic for a long time. I think Questec is a good thing. (For those who dont know, it’s a computerized system that measures ball & strikes, and compares it to what the umpire actually called.)

One of the biggest and most frustrating problems in pro sports are bad calls by umps/refs. What I’d like to see is the steady removal of the so-called ‘human error’ from sports; I’ll talk specifically about baseball:

When umps are unsure when a ball is fair or foul down the line, why can’t a system be installed like they use in tennis? They could use technology to determine whether balls are just that, fair or foul.

Also, on disputed HRs, they must use instant replay. There’s no other fair way. An ump should be stationed in the park somewhere near a TV, like in the NHL. He should have the final word, since he’ll have access to the replay.

On balls and strikes, why not use Questec or ESPN’s ‘K-Zone’ (for example) to actually call the strikes? The only problem is that strike zone height is different for every hitter, but width is exactly the same, 17 inches (the width of homeplate). Rickey Henderson had a smaller up/down zone because he was short and crouched, and Richie Sexson’s up/down zone is bigger because he’s 6’8″. But their side-to-side zone is exactly the same. Therefore, computers/technology should be used to tell an umpire when a ball hits the plate or just misses. For the time being, umps will still need to call the up/down pitches (because every hitter is different), but will know for sure when a pitch crosses the corner or not. Or an ump could be assigned to determine the upper limit of each hitter’s strike zone dependent on his stance.

It also sucks when a pitcher throws a strike, but it’s not where he meant to throw it, the catcher has to reach for it, so the ump automatically calls it a ball. It doesn’t matter where the pitcher MEANT to throw the ball, it only matters whether it’s a strike or a ball.

For out/safe calls, when the closest ump feels the play is too close to call, he could send it to the ‘booth ump.’ TV technology is such today that it could be done in 30-60 seconds. Or (ala the NFL) managers should have two replays to use per game.

These steps would help legitimize the officiating and would make for fewer arguments from players and managers. You can’t argue with Questec strikes – it’s 100% consistent and 0% prejudiced (for veterans, or against rookies). Instant replay would also ensure the right call, and isn’t that worth waiting (at most) 60 seconds for – especially in close and/or playoff games?

Former MLB pitcher Bill Henry dead at 83 alive at 79

From Sports Illustrated-

LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) — Bill Henry, who pitched in the majors for more than 15 seasons, has died. He was 83.

Henry died Aug. 27 at Lakeland Regional Medical Center, two days after he suffered a heart attack, his stepdaughter Debbie Lee said.

Born William Rodman Henry in Alice, Texas, the left-hander made his major-league debut in 1952 with the Boston Red Sox. Henry later pitched for the Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants before ending his career in 1969 with the Houston Astros.

Henry had a career record of 46-50 and pitched in two 1961 World Series games with the Reds.

Since I was born in 1961, my memories of Henry come from playing past seasons with the baseball games made by Strat-O-Matic. Bill Henry, a left-handed relief pitcher, wasn’t really one of those one out lefty relief specialists we see today. In Henry’s most productive years, from 59-62 he averaged over an inning per relief appearance. Even two innings per game in 1959. For 1961, he was the Reds number two man coming out of the bullpen when they went to the World Series. Henry and Jim Brosnan saving the same amount of games(16), but with Brosnan having the heavier inning work load of the two.

What did Mark Twain once say, the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. That applies to Bill Henry. From today’s Miami Herald.

They lived 961 miles apart and never met.

One was a retired salesman living in Central Florida. The other, a big-league ballplayer who pitched in the 1961 World Series before settling down outside Houston.

All they shared was a common name, a square jawline and an affection for baseball.

But for 20 years, Bill C. Henry the salesman purported to be Bill R. Henry the baseball player. His wife and friends believed him — they had no reason not to — and the guy he pretended to be was none the wiser.

Until last week, when the 83-year-old former salesman died of a heart attack in Lakeland. Newspapers across the country ran obituaries announcing the death of the left-handed pitcher, recounting highlights of his 16-season career.

But that Bill Henry is still very much alive.

”I’ve been right here this whole time,” Henry, 79, said Thursday night from his home in Deer Park, Texas. “It was kind of a shock to hear people say they thought I was dead.”

A baseball historian read an obituary for the Lakeland man and noticed the birth dates and hometowns listed were different than what was on his Bill Henry memorabilia. The historian called Henry in Texas, who confirmed he was still living.

I’m glad you’re still alive Bill. People impersonating former major league relief pitchers. Welcome to Florida! The rules are certainly different here.