The Mockingbird

Having some technical difficulties here…but I thought I would shoot this rumour that Lind is being kept in the minors for economic reasons while I beat by modem into submission and look at what made Burnett click last night. A player becomes a “super two” if he is in the top 17% of all players with between two and three years of service:

http://mlbplayers.mlb.com/pa/info/faq.jsp#arbitration

…a player can be classified as a “Super Two” and be eligible for arbitration with less than three years of service. A player with at least two but less than three years of Major League service shall be eligible for salary arbitration if he has accumulated at least 86 days of service during the immediately preceding season and he ranks in the top 17 percent in total service in the class of Players who have at least two but less than three years of Major League service, however accumulated, but with at least 86 days of service accumulated during the immediately preceding season.

It doesn’t make any sense that the Jays would think that holding him back a week is going to be the difference in him being in the top 17 percentile of service time down the road. It makes a lot of sense that he is still not 100% and they don’t want to risk him pushing himself because he’s geeked up to be in the majors or losing confidence because he can’t get the bat around against big league pitching yet.

Lind missed 4 games last week, then then pinch hit on Thursday, and sat yesterday. Why would you give a guy one at bat in two games right when you desperately need him to come up and start mashing? Gibbons is almost certainly not lying when he explains the decision to hold him back like so:

“He may be here in a few days,” Gibbons said. “He has had the neck problem, but he’s getting beyond that.”

Last night, halfway during the 8th inning that shall never be spoken of again, with runners on first and second and one out, Jamie Campbell started a very promising sentence:

Well, A.J. is generally considered a fly-ball pitcher, but…

My ears perked up! Maybe Fletcher was rubbing off on him (I love Fletch. Sorry Rance. Anyone who groans on live TV as a terrible, terrible inning unfolds is my kind of announcer. And he doesn’t just make shit up, either) was rubbing off on him, and he was about to deliver the head-turning nugget of information that A.J. actually got a higher percentage of outs in play on grounders last year than sinkerballer extraordinaire Roy Halladay.

But no. As usual, general consensus trumps actual investigation, and he read meekly from his scorecard:

…on three occasions tonight he’s induced ground balls out of Butler.

But that’s nothing compared to Paul Godfrey, who thank the good lord is not a member of the BBWWA (although Rosie DiManno is and will be getting her vote in 2017 (hat tip: Cox Bloc). To see how many seconds you have to get to Cooperstown before it becomes no longer worth visiting, click here (about 274521600 seconds for all you read-no-click types. Start walking!). In a gracious nod to the best player ever to play for the Jays, he said:

“I’m at every game or watch on TV and right now Frank was not one of our best nine,” Jays president Paul Godfrey said. “He’s probably — not likely — a Hall of Famer.”

Now I know that he’s not really saying that Frank Thomas is “not likely” to make the HOF, but give me a break. No player with 500 home runs has ever not made the hall of fame. Add to that a .300 lifetime average (which voters actually care about as opposed to his much-more-impressive .420 OBP), and I would say he’s a lock for making it in on the first ballot. I guess it’s not THAT important to have a president who actually knows the first thing about the history of baseball, but isn’t he supposed to be a politician, too? The politic thing here would be to be nice and shut up even if you think Thomas might be snubbed.

Last night’s scouting report against Dustin McGowan on TV was:

• Overpowering Fastball & Curve
• Mixes in Slider
• Matured Into Consistent Starter (uhhh….thanks)

#2 is is 100% incorrect and no real scout would ever tell you that. Dustin has thrown almost twice as many sliders this year and last- they have been in the zone more often and a far more effective pitch.

I would also like to call attention to this Yahoo scouting report on A.J. Burnett for tomorrow, which is really far better than I would ever bother to do with pitch f/x.

Toronto Blue Jays starter A.J. Burnett’s curveball has not been the same this season after he broke a nail on his pitching hand while slamming it in a door during spring training. Opposing batters are hitting .313 and slugging .438 against his curve after only batting just .107 and slugging .151 against it last season. Hitters have missed Burnett’s hammer just 30 percent of the time, as opposed to missing on 52 percent of their swings last season. Burnett starts against the Royals tonight.

That pretty much wraps it up in a neat little package. I wholeheartedly encourage you to subscribe to this daily, free, scouting service, and/or send large amounts of money directly to whomever could be devoting such highly intelligent insight and endless effort to provide this sort of priceless information. I commend you, whomever you are, extremely talented and unheralded sir.

Baseball is a pretty funny game. Since most games consist of flipping a slightly-weighted coin, crazy [stuff] can happen. Wildcard teams that squeak into the playoffs win on a semi-regular basis. The 2006 Cincinnati Cardinals win the world series. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays occasionally sweep the Toronto Blue Jays. You know, that kind of [doing] [stuff]. It leads to wild swings of panic and incredible bouts of arrogance throughout the year. Remember when the Jays had just swept the Red Sox and were world series favorites?

But this is just amazing- some dude at Bugs and Cranks is giving the business to Stoeten, the rather sensible member (sorry Parkes- you’re eye candy and Bergkamp a loveable one-trick pony) of the Drunk Jays fans for dismissing Erik Hinske as “Shitske”. True, he had a great series against his old club, but this is just priceless:

Hmmm. What would we call the love child of Ruth and Mays? Baillie Rays? Baby Rays? Since his opening day home run, there has been whispers of being this year’s EGDC Pena….

I don’t even know what to say. I guess when you get lucky with a late-bloomer like Carlos Pena, you assume everyone that can hit for 20 games is that guy again. Allow me to confirm, Hinske is not that guy. Unlike Pena, no scout has ever seen the giant holes in his swing and thought for one second, after two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, laughers, screamers, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls, that he might be that guy.

Hinske gotten off to plenty off hot starts:

• His .417 average and 1.196 OPS by this point last season
• His .317 average through as many games (19) in 2006
• His .848 OPS and 17 RBI in April in 2007

I actually sort of feel for Eric, having done so terribly against the Jays so far. He was kind of like Reed Johnson- an average player that played himself into an untenable contract. But trust me, you don’t want to gloat about Erik Hinske’s success and/or get behind him as your offensive saviour while referring to two off the best pitchers in league (Roy Halladay and Dustin McGowan) as “Billie Halladay” and “Dustin “Rose” McGowan” due to their lackluster win totals. Other than the whole “you throw like a girl” political incorrectness, I promise that will make you look like an idiot when the year is done. But then that would take someone willing to immortalize this post and bring it up once Shitske does his yearly plunge down to the .257 career average he knows so well. And who would be so petty?? Hmmmm….

Well, whaddyah expect when you’re forced to field this lineup due to injuries?

Add Rolen, Lind, Rios and Overbay in there by the end of this week and you’ve got a team.

• Overbay confirms that Champion field sucks.
• The Jays could sign Bonds with the league minimum salary they get from the A’s signing Thomas (if you take his agent literally).
• Josh Banks was claimed by the Padres. Battersbox makes a good point about him probably not being the worst player that have been taken of the 40-man.
• On Wednesday’s call-in with Ricciardi, J.P. laughed off picking up Bonds as being “not that simple”, and called firing Gibbons to make the team hit “foolish”.
• He also said that the Jays could have got Nick Swisher last offseason for McGowan and Marcum (ugh).
• And confirmed that sitting Wells, Rios and Overbay the last few days was due to sickness/sickness/injury, and not Gibbons intentionally trying to sabotage the team or whatever.
• Frank Thomas signing with the A’s may have been scooped by another mystery team.

Several sources are reporting that Frank Thomas has signed with the Oakland A’s. Numbers have not been released (update: yep, they got him for a prorated league minimum) but this is probably going to look something like this:

2006: Billy Beane signs Thomas with zero risk, high reward and gets an MVP candidate.

2007: Ricciardi signs Thomas long term, big bucks, and gets a decent player with a slow start.

2008: Ricciardi pays Thomas another 8 million bucks just for the slow start this time.

2008: Billy Beane signs Thomas for the rest of the year with zero risk, and pretty much the same reward again.

Ouch. J.P, I served with Billy Beane; I knew Billy Beane; Billy Beane was a friend of mine. J.P., you’re no Billy Beane.

So after last nights debacle, Gibbons went off on Litsch. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him [expletive] before…

“You [expletive] watch it - every [expletive] night, you know,” Gibbons, the Blue Jays’ manager, said after the Tampa Bay Rays handed Toronto a 6-4 loss at Disney’s Champion Stadium and Litsch lasted a season-low 31/3 innings in the first game of a nine-game, 10-day trip.

“You watch it. [Expletive] strike zone. Hit your spots - boom, boom - that’s the kind of pitcher he is. You got to do it.”

I can’t say I’m particularly impressed by this. Litsch is a very young kid who doesn’t have great stuff. Any talent evaluator or stat analyst screamed that he was going to have serious problems going forward, but Gibby even went to far as to prefer him over Janssen as a fifth starter because of what he’d “proved” in half a season last year. And now he’s a [expletive] loser?

As I pointed out last year, his pitches were totally inconsistent from one start to the next, and the changeup that catapulted him to the big leagues seems to have totally disappeared. That’s what we saw last night. He should almost certainly be ironing out the kinks in AAA if short term results and ERA were taken as seriously as they should be.

In other news, Zaun doesn’t want to talk about the most burning question that everyone would really like some insight into what the players are thinking about on his blog.

I’m sure everyone knows the Jays let Frank Thomas go. I didn’t really want to talk about it, but I suppose I should at least mention that no one ever wants to see a teammate released. The sad truth is, it happens to most of us at some point. It’s been done to me twice. It doesn’t feel good; it amounts to being fired. The organization wanted to make a change and they did. Chapter closed.

Sigh. I get that there’s not much that he could or really wants to say, but it kind of defeats the purpose of an insider blog if you’re going to fill it with things like “Catch a game and then go see Mickey Mouse.” At least Curt Schilling talks about random shit he’s interested in and what it’s like to be on the field instead of making it sound like a press release…

Just a couple eye-rollers from Griffin’s mailbag. I don’t even really care any more, but either I post them here, or email them to my friends for a chuckle. May as well share.

…Guys with great stuff that are always involved in low scoring games are going to have better Walks and Hits to Innings Pitched ratios because every inning is essential to victory. Guys on teams that score a lot of runs often pitch to the score of the game, like Jack Morris, challenging hitters with fastballs if they’re leading big. Their WHIP will naturally not be as good, while their win total is invariably better.

The idea of challenging batters with fastballs with a big lead is that it’s better to give up a solo home run than try and be too fine, walk a few guys, and give up a big inning. You’re supposed to be trading a home run or two for a lower WHIP, not the other way around- that would just be stupid.

Pitching to the score is highly questionable anyway (do you really see Roy Halladay ever giving up more runs than he had to?), but this is 100% backwards.

A: It’s an interesting idea, having Eckstein DH vs. some tough left-handers, while Johnny Mac draws a start at short.

On second thought, this would be a lot more hilarious if Robinzon Diaz hadn’t just started at DH.

First, A big UGH to the Jays main page: “Jays won’t be mousing around?” “Disney too small a world for Litsch?” Is this what I missed in journalism school?? If hurting disney puns are what bring you back to reading about the Jays, I don’t think this was going to work out anyway…

There will be no pitch f/x while the Jays play in the minor-league postage stamp of a stadium that is Champion Field, but I don’t think you need a fancy system to know that Jesse Litsch was getting rocked on floating curveballs tonight. Is anyone worried about young Jesse yet? Despite coming into the game with a record of 2-0, he has been ridiculously hittable (Hitters have an OBA of .411 against him this season.) so far this season, and isn’t even racking up the ground balls. I’m of the mind that you can only work out of so many jams (*cough* Chacin *cough*) and his extremely-fortunate numbers stretching back to last season are finally catching up to him.

The brightest spot fof the night for the Jays was Jesse Carlson continuing to impress. He struck out the side in his first inning by throwing one slider after the other (did anyone find it strange that Rance and Jamie talked about his delivery, his movement, anything but the obvious pitch selection?), before finally hanging one to Hinske, who promptly deposited it in the stands. Still, he’s not a fluke- that’s a great pitch against both right and left handed batters as long as he can continue to control it.

Hinske went on to have a huge night, falling a single short of the cycle (although who really cares about the cycle, anyway?) and raising his OPS to 1.157. Will that last? Of course it’s not going to last. (The Mildly-Buzzed-Jays-Fans are properly dismissive of his short term performance in their half at the Q&A at Drays Bay).

Of course he also made one of the worst baseball plays I have ever seen when he bobbled a potential double-play ball, and then flipped it backhand nowhere near the pitcher covering first, giving Overbay a chance to come home (that he managed to stall on long enough to be nailed as the first out of the inning at the plate if the pitcher had hung onto the ball). The infield seemed a little wonky all night- at one point the Rays runner at second called time to replace a divot, and Lyle was eaten up on bad hops all night. Add to that Inglett making a mockery of right field, and this was an ugly game to watch.

As for the offence, pretty much what you might expect from a weakened lineup going against a damn good starter that has kept the Jays to a .192 batting average over his career. I’m sure Wilner is fending off people calling for Gibby’s head for not giving Rios a chance to improve on his 1-for-9, 5K numbers against Shields, but he looked worse against him than probably any other pitcher last year. Fortunately, Rolen is on his way back either this Friday or at the latest in time for the Boston series. And Lind should be called up now that he’s healthy enough to play- he went 2-4 tonight, and is now hitting .379/.431/.621 in AAA. On Buster Olney’s blog, he has the following to say about the return of his swing:

The call will eventually come because Lind seems to have moved past his lackluster 2007 showing. Lind got 290 at-bats for the Jays last year and batted .238 with a .278 on-base percentage. He never felt right the whole year and could never quite put his finger on the reason why. Lind returned to his Indiana home in the offseason, and while working out with former big leaguer Jermaine Allensworth, in a batting cage housed in a barn, Lind figured out the problem: The left-handed hitting Lind didn’t have enough weight loaded onto his back leg as he prepared to swing. “It took one swing,” said Lind. “It’s made a world of difference. Now it feels good, back to normal.”

There now- doesn’t that make you feel better? Just look at his swing- it’s a matter of time…

In his latest Sportsnet gem, Scott Carlson dismisses Frank Thomas as a “base clogger” and trots out the old baseball truism: “Games lost in the first month of the schedule are infinitely harder to make up in the last month”.

Geez, collective Toronto media. I know you deal in rhetoric. But why not just say “he’s really freaking slow”, or “a good start is important” instead of making up ridiculous shit that a four-year-old would choke on.

But it gets better- then he decides to take a shot at the callers to the Mike Wilner postgame show (who as we all know range from the hysterically insane to, well…me):

(By the way, there’s an urban legend going around — mostly on the post-game call-in show — that Thomas was a notoriously slow starter. That, in fact, is a myth. Over his 18-year career, he’s a .281 hitter in the month of April. The only three seasons where he started slow were his last three. Remove those from the equation and Frank is a .298 career hitter in the month.)

Really! Those dunces! Spreading cockamamie ideas over the airwaves based on recent history, interviews and observations instead of numbers from the 90’s. But hold on, that’s not actually where I first got that incredibly inane idea. Where was it…where was it…oh, wait, I remember. It was YOUR OWN FREAKING SEASON PREVIEW, SCOTT:

(Frank Thomas) is a big question mark. ‘The Big Hurt’ is a notoriously slow starter (.231 at the end of May last season, .303 the rest of the way) and it took him until the fourth last game this spring to finally go yard.

Especially delicious is that he actually uses the exact phrase that’s he’s now rolling his eyes at the ignorant masses for repeating. Busted! Hoisted! Boo-yeah!

Here’s the next edition of “The Season” on Jays connected, courtesy of the man, the legend, that is Zovat Andros. Enjoy!

Click here to see the Jays waffling about “rumours” (read: media speculation since Godfrey et. al have pretty quickly shot the suggestion down) that Barry Bonds could come to Toronto. Gibby doesn’t remind the press that his bosses have officially said it’s not going to happen, which is odd. Vernon seems to be on the fence though he doesn’t say as much. Zaun doesn’t give a rats ass about steroids or jerks and thinks it’s a no-brainer. And Barry bought Accardo a steak when he was a rookie or something. Sigh.

Paul Godfrey: “Barry is now 43 years old, he’s got other problems in front of him, and I don’t want his presence to be a distraction to the rest of the team.”

Griffin: “Just what the Jays need. A guy that walks every time there are runners in scoring position, leaving it up to the other guys that have been failing with runners in scoring position.” (Bonds’ average with RISP in 2007: .296; 2006: .423; 2004: .394).

Jeff Borris (Bond’s agent): “They do not appear to have any interest.”

Frank Thomas:  “I wouldn’t have had a problem with that (ripping up the vesting option) in spring training”.

It seems like Griffin has been a little muted lately (even to the point of the Toronto Star blog featuring some numbers and a graphy thing on Halladay the other day Cathal Kelly, you turncoat!). But of course he’s all over this Frank Thomas release, and calls it the “worst FA signing in Toronto history“.

I’m not going to get into the completely-subjective rankings, except to say that it’s hard to call the Burnett contract one of the worst in team history when he is 100% guaranteed to opt out of it at the end of the season because he’s not being paid enough. (And in fact, The Hardball Times salary calculator says that by putting up pretty good numbers for 150 innings on average the Jays have already ended up 542,464 ahead of the free agent game by signing him. But then they’re looking at all those stupid stats about how many hitters a pitcher gets out instead of wins, wins, WINS!!)

But Griffin has broken new ground here by repeatedly using one of Dusty Baker’s favorite phrases, “clogging the bases”, to explain why the one year we got out of Hurt wasn’t even very good even though he made fewer outs than anyone else on the team. It’s the sort of thing that isn’t just dumb but actually makes people who believe that numbers might have something to do with scoring runs go into convulsions. No question that Frank Thomas has less value as a baserunner than your average player, but “clogging” implies that it’s actually a bad thing to have him on base, yes? Let’s think about how that could happen:

Thomas is on First Base

• Someone hits a double and Thomas does not make it to third, stopping the batter at first. This has never happened.
• Someone hits what could be stretched into a triple but Thomas stops at third. Slightly more plausible. (That had better be a burner behind him though, because he still chugs around from first on a double occasionally).

Thomas is on Second Base

• With a runner on first, Thomas does not score on a single, thus stopping the runner from going first to third. If only it wasn’t for all this clogging, the team could have a runner on third instead of runners on second and third! The pain of it all!
• Thomas stops someone from stealing second by being there already. The team is not able to risk a 30% chance of being thrown out to get a runner in scoring position because there is already one there. Again, simply a terrible result.

Thomas is on Third Base

• With nobody out, Thomas does not score on a middle-range sac fly/fielder’s choice that would have allowed the runner on second to advance to third, which would have set up another sac/fly fielder’s choice that again doesn’t advance Thomas but would have scored the other guy. This is known as the “planets aligning” theory of how you score runs. Personally, I’ll take the runners on second and third with nobody out since on average teams score AN EXTRA RUN in that situation.

So how often does “clogging” really happen in a season? 2? 3? And how much better would the team be exactly if he had just made an out about 40 more times like your average hitter instead? Baserunners suck. I hate baserunners. Let’s just keep everything open so the team can just whizzzzz around the bases one at a time. Take that, you clunky, 3-run home run hitting Yankees!

I was just watching some of the game on Tivo and wow, Burnett struck out the side and looked unbelievable in the inning I missed on my way to the park! So much so that Mulliniks (the real one, not the ginger imposter around these parts) started to go on about how Burnett doesn’t even need his curve if he is commanding his fastball so well.

Yeah, RIGHT. The man is a case study on why a pitcher can’t survive on one pitch. When his curve is working, he’s unhittable. When it’s not, his entire game falls apart. And as A-Rod mentioned earlier in the season, the word is out around the league that Burnett can’t throw his curveball for strikes. Despite all the walks, A.J. was ahead of hitters all the time tonight, he just couldn’t finish them off because they weren’t biting on his curveball.

Anyway, what’s interesting is that his Curveball keeps flipping back and forth. His first start of the season, it was dropping and not curving. Then it started curving but not dropping. Now we’re back to it dropping:

Changeup still looks really good, and at least they’re consistent. But the real problem was location- and Burnett was actually getting seriously squeezed on his fastball:

8/21 of his curveballs were for strikes- and two of them came on a really nice sequence against Magglio Ordonez late in his outing. But A.J. was right to be confused a few times, because he wasn’t getting any help on the only pitch he could throw for strikes.

Eventually I’m going to look into what in god’s name was wrong with A.J’s curveball THIS time, despite his claim that he found in as he was throwing the game-losing wild pitch in extra innings against Texas. But I’m wondering if anyone was sitting down the first base line today.

In about the fourth inning, Clete Thomas (the Tigers rookie CF) was throwing the ball to the ballboy after warming up in the outfield and airmailed it about five feet over his head on a line and drilled a young woman (notice I didn’t even mention she was a rather fit young blonde? Oops.) in the face hard. She was attended to by the first aid staff and eventually left for x-rays.

Come to think of it, I don’t know why I really want to hear from anyone who was sitting there. It was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen at the park. Me and Mulliniks heckled the hell out of Clete on her behalf and he practically rolled it in for the rest of the game.