House of David

Scott Simkus has a nice little post about the famous, but largely forgotten, House of David barnstorming team from the early 20th Century:

Their baseball team (actually, they sometimes had 2 or 3 traveling around the country at the same time), was really a big deal. Up there with any of the big name Negro League clubs in terms of traveling gate attractions, and like any barnstorming team worth its weight in salt, claimed to win upwards of 80-85% of their games.

They lied. Oh, they had a number of former minor leaguers on their roster (hired to play on behalf of the colony), and a few washed up big leaguers. They even hired Satchel Paige for a few weeks and won a tournament. They had good years, that much is true. But they didn’t win anywhere close to 85% of their games.

Click through to Simkus' post to see how they really did.

Green Red

Longtime minor leaguer Chris Dickerson may not be a long term solution in the Reds' outfield, but he's doing his part to help all the same:

This past summer, Chris Dickerson wanted to do his part for the environment by taking better care of his little corner of the world -- a Triple-A clubhouse in Louisville, Ky. He did so by starting a bottle-recycling program that was embraced by his team.

Dickerson's career moved to a higher level in August when he reached the Major Leagues with the Reds. He's hoping his efforts to help the environment can do likewise next season.

"I'm just trying to make people conscious of how much plastic we use as a team on a daily basis," Dickerson said.

Marty Brennaman is torn. On the one hand, he's a rock-ribbed Republican, so he's probably not all that impressed with an eco-friendly outfielder. On the other hand, Marty's hatred of Adam Dunn burns with the intensity of a thousand suns, so he's likely going to love Dunn's replacement no matter who he is. My guess is that he'll be happier with Dickerson around, but he may be on a short leash.

HEY YOU! More ShysterBall here!

Albert Pujols Wants to Own a Team

A Major League Soccer team, that is:

Dominican baseball slugger Albert Pujols has joined the prospective ownership group bidding to obtain a Major League Soccer expansion team starting in 2011, the group announced Tuesday.

One day after the St. Louis Cardinals star was named Major League Baseball's National League Most Valuable Player for the just-concluded season, Pujols made his case for becoming an owner in a different sport.

"This means a lot to me and my family as we all love soccer and we believe in MLS," Pujols said. "This will be great for our community, especially our youth. St. Louis is an unbelievable sports town and we'll be a great city for Major League Soccer."

This story was reported by AFP, a French news organization that thinks it's necessary to identify Pujols by his nationality for some reason.

It's Pedroia

A perfectly respectable choice in a year with no clear front runner.

Morneau came in second, besting several guys who had better cases than he -- and the fact that K-Rod finished way ahead of Cliff Lee despite finishing behind him in the Cy Young is quite odd -- but I think enough virtual ink has been spilled over the down-ballot stuff this year that we can let that go.

Overall, it seems like the writers got the winner of all of the major awards right, with "right" being defined as who I think probably should have won.

Free At Last?

Rob Neyer just announced in his chat that his blog is now free. Clicking over, it does appear to be devoid of any Insider paraphernalia and accessories. There's a chance it's just like the magazine, though, and once you go Insider you can't go back (I can't find a "logout" button). Can any non-insider click to Rob's blog and confirm this for the rest of the class?

UPDATE: Confirmed in the chat itself:

Craig (ShysterBall, Blogosphere): Wait, you're free now? On behalf of free-bloggers everywhere, I must go on record saying that I do not like this unnecessarily field-levelling development.

Rob Neyer: (12:24 PM ET ) I'm not sure exactly why, when, or how. But yes, I seem to have been freed. Eat it, Blogger Boy!

Damn, five minutes in the real, wild blogging world and Rob's already developing an attitude.

I like it!

Station Car

I grew up in West Virginia and have lived in Ohio for 14 of the past 17 years. We really don't do mass transit here, so until I read Jason's brilliant comparison of A.J. Burnett to a "station car," I had never heard of that term.

Albert Pujols: "not an embarrassing selection"

Look, I want Ken Tremendous to be back just as much as the rest of you, but we have to face facts: Ken Tremendous is not walking through that door. Junior is not walking through that door. Dak is not walking through that door. In light of this, it falls to me to point out that that there is more fail in this Phil Sheridan column than you can shake a stick at:

Ryan Howard was the most valuable player in the National League in 2008. That he was not voted MVP by the Baseball Writers' Association of America says more about the association than about Howard, Albert Pujols or America. Pujols was not an embarrassing selection, not with his excellent numbers, but was still the wrong selection. And that should embarrass the association enough to do what it should have done long ago: get out of the business of voting on baseball's postseason awards - as well as the Hall of Fame.

He may be right about the writers getting out of the voting business, but if he is, it's for the wrong reasons. I mean really, after all of the bad choices over the years, voting Albert Pujols the MVP in 2008 is the last straw? Was Sheridan cool with Mo Vaughn in 1995, or is this just a rehashed column?

The arguments against the writers' participation in the voting are well-established and have been covered here before. It is ethically indefensible for the journalists who cover baseball to vote for official awards that have an impact on players' financial rewards. Imagine Howard's 2009 arbitration hearing. It will be different because he finished second in this voting as opposed to first. That alone is reason enough for the association to recuse itself from this annual charade.

I've heard this argument before -- Posnanski made a huge fuss about this in connection with the proposed Curt Schilling contract clause last year -- but I've never been that impressed with it. Yes, voting on awards can directly enrich ballplayers, but so can a lot of other things writers do. Like giving guys years of good press, which may cause a team to retain players who are perceived as good citizens and stand-up guys. Indeed, such reputations often turn on the very words written by BBWAA members alone. As a lawyer I appreciate integrity and appearance-of-impropriety arguments as much as the next guy, but I don't think a writer's single vote has done as much to enrich, say, Derek Jeter as much as the columns lauding his greatness have. Hey writers: don't want to influence people and events? Don't write about them.

It is similarly impossible to justify the association's giving thumbs up or down to players from the steroid era who become eligible for Hall of Fame voting . . . It should be much more of a concern that the same group that rewarded Barry Bonds with four consecutive MVP Awards in this decade will sit in judgment of whether his alleged cheating should keep him from the Hall.

I agree with Sheridan that we're going to run into some serious double standards and outright incoherence when more steroid-era ballplayers start coming eligible for the Hall of Fame, but I don't know that MVP votes which occurred at a time when most people weren't aware of the scope of the problem are an appropriate measure of hypocrisy.

If the MVP is the player with the best all-round statistical season, a computer could figure that out. And a computer might well have spit out Pujols' name this season. He was terrific. But Howard got hot in September, hitting 11 home runs and driving in 32 runs to carry the Phillies into the playoffs. That's the very definition of valuable.

Albert Pujols in September: .321/.427/.702 8 HR, 27 RBI
Ryan Howard in September: .352/.422/.852 11 HR, 32 RBI

Yes, Howard had a better September. But he had a worse March, April, May, June, and August, all by much greater margins than his slightly better September. They had equal OPSs in July, though Pujols' was far more OBP heavy, which is preferable.

The group-think association argument for Pujols, if I'm smart enough to get it right, is that he single-handedly kept the Cardinals in the wild-card race. That is brilliant, except it ignores the presence of Ryan Ludwick, Rick Ankiel and Troy Glaus (so much for "single-handedly"), and the fact that the National League wild-card race was a watered-down farce.

I wonder if Sheridan -- a Philly journalist, mind you -- is willing to go tell Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino, Cole Hamels, and Brad Lidge that they had nothing to do with the NL East crown. A crown, by the way, that was won with only two more victories than the winner of the "watered-down farce" that was the wild card race.

The association seamheads love to throw around stats - OPS, VORP, ASPCA - to make a case for Pujols. That's all great. Yes, he struck out less and hit for a higher average. But Howard won actual baseball games in an honest-Abe pennant race. He had 11 more home runs than Pujols, scored five more runs than Pujols, and drove in 30 more runs than Pujols.

"Stats suck and are for losers, and to show you just how deluded you nerds are, here's some stats that make my case . . ."

Notice there are no decimal points involved there, only whole numbers that made
a difference in real baseball games.

So I take it that Sheridan believes that Cole Hamels (3.09 ERA) was no more effective than Ubaldo Jimenez (3.99) was this year? In other news, if the coffee shop near Sheridan's office is looking for a cashier, I highly recommend that you Philadelphians rush to apply.

That takes care of the logic.

Wait, that was the logical part? Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

Of the 32 MVP voters (two from each chapter, which means two from each NL market), only one failed to put Howard on his ballot at all. Rich Campbell of the Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star was contacted by my astute colleague Todd Zolecki. He had no comment.

I'll grant him that leaving Howard off the ballot is ridiculous. He wouldn't be my number one pick, obviously, but if you leave Howard off entirely, you have pretty much disqualified yourself as a serious voter.

Howard's next-lowest spot - 10th out of 10 - was on the ballot of Mark Zuckerman of the Washington Times. Zuckerman and Campbell both cover the Nationals. They both cast ballots utterly out of step with the norm, at least regarding Howard. If that's a coincidence, I'm Red Smith. It's easy to pick on the Nats' beat writers. They were no doubt numb after watching that team for a full season. But the point is that the association's voting is rife with personal agendas, flawed logic, favor trading, and plain old sloppiness.

Again, I agree that Howard as tenth makes no sense. But really, Mr. Sheridan, is your boosterism of Howard purely a function of that logic you claimed to be dropping, or is the fact that you cover the guy entering into this at all?

Three members of the association cast rookie of the year votes for Reds pitcher Edinson Volquez, who was not a rookie this year. If the howling ethical malfeasance weren't enough to shut this farce down, that should do the trick. Ryan Howard - who has added a World Series ring to his 2005 rookie of the year and 2006 MVP trophies - will survive this voting nicely. The process that produced it should not.

And we're back to where we started: Sheridan being right on the macro level -- that there are some serious flaws in BBWAA voting -- but deluded on the micro level -- that Ryan Howard not winning the MVP is evidence of the problem.

OK, that was both frustrating and exhausting. No wonder the FJM guys quit.

(thanks to reader Scott M for the heads up)

Everyone Has a Dream

It's good to be Aaron Gleeman:

Actually, with a new year around the corner perhaps my goal for 2009 should be to land a regular radio gig, if only because it may be the only other job that would allow me to keep shaving no more than once per week, showering sporadically, and wearing sweatpants and flip-flops to work. Unlike my wonderful day job at Rotoworld doing regular radio stuff would involve actually leaving the house and interacting with other people, but in fairness not every gig can be completely perfect.

People ask me what my ultimate goal is in writing, and Aaron pretty much nails it.

My Contribution to the Conventional Wisdom

It won't be announced until 2PM or so, but I'm thinking about the AL MVP a bit this morning. My gut feeling is that Justin Morneau is going to walk away with it because (a) he has a lot of RBIs; and (b) the Boston guys are going to split the east coast vote. If this happens, Morneau -- who I don't think is even the most deserving MVP candidate on his own team in light of Joe Mauer's season -- will win his second undeserved MVP in three years.

Which would be weird this year because, despite all of our grousing about down-ballot weirdness, the BBWAA has gotten the winners right this year, and that isn't always the case. Here's hoping they prove me wrong with the AL this afternoon.

A Capsule History of Baseball

Because -- well, just because -- Peter Bendix of Beyond the Box Score has decided to spend the increasingly cold winter months writing a cursory (his word, not mine) history of baseball, and starts today with the basic origin story of the two major leagues' founding and expansion through 1969.

It's nothing anyone who reads this blog wouldn't know already, but I found it enjoyable to read anyway. Kind of like a Wikipedia article on your favorite band or movie or something.

The Politics of Early Deals

The Players' Association is not all that happy with the long term deals young players are signing these days:

The MLB Players Association is now requiring agents to consult with the union before they negotiate contracts for arbitration-eligible players . . . The move comes as some veteran agents have complained privately that other agents have agreed to long-term, below-market deals in order to secure client fees for themselves.

Some top agents are worried about a trend of multiyear deals for arbitration-eligible and pre-arbitration players that take them through their arbitration years and, in some cases, through their first few years of free agency. Some of those deals have included multiple club options, in which the club, not the player, decides whether to extend the deal at a prearranged price.

I don't suppose there's any reason why the union can't require agents to consult with it prior to signing an early deal. What the union can actually do about it is another matter. Not much, I guess, as whether the next Evan Longoria or Ryan Braun signs an early extension is ultimately up to the next Evan Longoria or Ryan Braun.

Not that the pros and cons of these deals shouldn't be debated a bit. As I've written before, I'm a bit of a risk averse guy who has a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of saying no to an employer who wants to give me tens of millions of dollars a couple of weeks or months after I start working. I could get hit by a bus next week! I could suddenly lose my skills! Where do I sign?!

But it is exactly because I and, presumably, a lot of young players think that way that good representation is so important. Instead signing quickly because I'm worrying about getting hit by a bus, maybe I'd be better off signing a big insurance policy to cover the risk. Instead of focusing solely on that $60M my club is offering me now, maybe I need to focus on the $100M I might be worth if I wait a year or two to sign my deal. Man, that stuff is hard to know, and if this new policy provides a means for young players to get some greater insight into where they stand in the grand scheme of things, the better.

Of course, even with this level of insight, a young player is going to have a lot to figure out. Like, is my current agent -- the guy I've known since I was 18 -- trying to secure my future, or his? Or, is that slick, high profile agent honest when he tells me I'll make $50M more going with him and holding out until year-6, or is he just trying to steal me away from the only representation I've ever known? Those are some tough determinations for anyone to make, let alone a kid in his early 20s and, in all likelihood, nothing more than a high school education.

Obviously whether Evan Longoria or whoever leaves tens of millions on the table after making tens of millions is not the sort of problem we should lose a lot of sleep over. But it is an issue all of the young stars we spend so much time obsessing over, well, obsess over, and to that end it's something I think about a lot.

(thanks to Pete Toms for the link)

Meet the Man Who Voted Pujols Seventh

Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is the guy who voted Pujols seventh. His reasoning:

With the Cardinals finishing fourth, I voted Pujols seventh on my ballot. I don't consider MVP to be "the most outstanding player" award and therefore don't just go by who had the best stats. I like to credit players for lifting their teams to the post-season or at least keeping them in the race until the very end.

I understand that the Cardinals would not have been even close to the wild-card berth without Pujols, but I still like players who elevate their game in crunch time and lift their teams to new heights. And I thought Ryan Ludwick had just as much to do with keeping the Cards in the hunt as Pujols did. St. Louis did stay in the wild card race until mid-September, but mainly because the Brewers and Mets were gagging at the time.

So, Pujols had the best offensive season since Barry Bonds in 2004, but since his team fell out of the race with two weeks to go in the season, he didn't "keep his team in the race until the very end."

OK, Tom. Whatever works for you.

(thanks to reader Lar for the link)

What Should Manny Do?

I'll be honest: I have no idea where Manny Ramirez is going to end up. It's hard to figure out who really has the money, it's hard to figure out who really has the desire to sign him, and it's hard to figure out who really needs him so badly to make it all worthwhile. Most significantly, it's hard to put yourself in Manny's shoes and figure out what he's going to do.

Until now, anyway.

I played out the "walk the Earth" line, and found it strangely satisfying.

Albert Pujols is the MVP

As he should be. But, in keeping with the theme of the season, there's something stupid, and that's someone voting Pujols seventh.

Seventh!

My view: it's far more defensible to leave Pujols off the ballot entirely out of some misguided contenders-only policy than it is to vote him seventh. Voting him seventh means that you don't disqualify for non-contenders and that you think there were six players better than Albert. If you exercised that kind of logic in any other area, you'd be subject to becoming a ward of the state.

OK, I'll chill out now. We'll have forgotten about that tomorrow. For now, let's be happy that the right guy won.

The 2009 Hardball Times Annual

It ships next week, and based on Dave Studeman's description of it, it sounds really sweet:

• We boosted the amount of writing in the book, from 32 to 40 awesome
articles. That's a 25 percent increase!

• We recruited even more of the best baseball writers we know. Guys like
Rob Neyer, John Dewan, Joe Posnanski, legendary sabermetrician Craig Wright, Don
Malcolm (the editor of the Big, Bad Baseball Annual) and many other fine writers
all agreed to come on board.

• We revamped the format of our season review, putting more information
into graphs and tables and allowing our writers more freedom to comment on each
division.

• We better focused our statistics section, dropping the leaderboards and
one of the Appendices (though you can still download all the data we've provided
in the past). This freed up pages for the extra commentary and made the
statistics more manageable.

Less thrilling than all of that, but perhaps of interest to some of you seeing as though you're reading this blog, is that I have an article in that bad boy as well. It's about the Mitchell Report. But don't worry, because (a) there is only one use of the term "buttocks" in the whole article; and (b) I broke the whole thing up with quotes from Oscar Wilde and Ben Franklin and stuff, so you can even feel like you're getting a little culture along with it.

She's Crafty

A team in an independent league in Japan has drafted a 16 year-old girl:

A 16-year-old schoolgirl is making a unique pitch to become the first woman to play professional baseball in Japan.

High school student Eri Yoshida was drafted by the Kobe 9 Cruise, a professional team in a new independent Japanese league that will start its first season in April.

"I always dreamed of becoming a professional," Yoshida, who is 5-feet (152-centimeters) tall and weighs 114 pounds (52 kilograms), told a news conference Monday. "I have only just been picked by the team and haven't achieved anything yet."

Yoshida throws a side-arm knuckleball and says she wants to follow in the footsteps of Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, who has built a successful major league career throwing a knuckleball.

Whether it's inspired by fastballs from Jeannie Finch or ill-advised comments from Keith Hernandez, the subject of women playing professional baseball comes up every couple of years. My take each time it comes around: (a) I'd love to see it, because you know that ballplayers would say all kinds of stupid things if it happened, and ballplayers saying stupid things makes for great blogging; (b) if we do see it, it will take the form of a deceptive knuckleballer like this Yoshida appears to be; but (c) we probably won't see it outside of the independent leagues any time soon, if ever, because baseball is a really damn conservative institution that, at least in this day and age, isn't all that willing to take chances.

None of this, by the way, constitutes an opinion on my part regarding whether a woman could be successful in professional baseball. Yes, I've heard all of the arguments (all of which are required by law to include the phrase "upper body strength"), but I have no idea if it's possible. Part of me looks at the David Wells and Dimitri Youngs of the world and thinks "man, there HAS to be a dozen women who could do what those slobs can do." Part of me looks at Tim Wakefield and notes that even he has to sneak in an accurate 80+ MPH "fastball" once in a while, and there aren't even a ton of men who can do that.

NOTE: I don't have a particularly dirty mind, and I'm not that big a conspiracy theorist, but when I read the headline Sports Illustrated chose to run with this story, I can't help but think that they were hoping for the extra traffic that may come from guys with no interest in baseball Googling the phrase "Japanese teen girl."

(thanks to Alex Brissette for the heads up)

On Second Thought . . .

Major League Baseball just found itself a perfectly legitimate non-anti-competitive reason to keep Mark Cuban out of the club:

Federal regulators have charged Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with insider trading for allegedly using confidential information on a stock sale to avoid more than $750,000 in losses.

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Cuban on Monday in federal court in Dallas. The agency says that in June 2004, Cuban was invited to get in on the coming stock offering by Mamma.com Inc. after he agreed to keep the information private.

The SEC says Cuban knew the shares would be sold below the current market price, and a few hours after receiving the information, told his broker to sell all shares in the search engine company.

I think one hellacious lawsuit at a time is enough for anyone.

(thanks to Jason at IIATMS and reader Doug Christy for the near simultaneous heads up emails)

UPDATE: A couple friends of mine have already speculated that this smells like a smear job. I'd agree if this was simply a "sources say Cuban is in trouble with the SEC" kind of story, but this is an actually-filed lawsuit. It takes a while to put one of those together and to get the clearances to pull the trigger, and it's not like anyone in baseball has the kind of juice to get that ball rolling in order to squash Cuban.

Not that baseball is some mere bystander here. My guess: the bold talk from last week saying that Cuban-as-Cubs-owner will "never happen" came from someone who was privy to the investigation and imminent filing and thus felt pretty free to say something that, in the absence of this lawsuit, would be pretty reckless.

Gentlemen Start Your Engines (and open your pocketbooks)

Maury notes that baseball guys are getting more and more interested in auto racing. Meanwhile, SI's Brant James notes that auto racing could be in deep doo-doo as the result of the financial crisis.

So, if you're wondering why your team can't sign that big free agent, blame ownership's love affair with the vroom-vroom.

Baseball vs. Cricket

Go here to stuff the ballot box.

(thanks to Ron Rollins for the heads up)

Baseball to Cease Operations

Well, it will if the writer of this idiotic editorial gets his way:

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works."

Those words came not from the mouth of baseball super-agent Scott Boras but from fictional financial lizard Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie "Wall Street." Yet at a time when Americans are worried about losing their jobs and their homes, Major League Baseball continues tossing around millions of dollars as if it were Monopoly money.

Then, after a list of numerous recent contract offers and business decisions made by teams such as "Last week, the Phillies raised ticket prices," and "Last week, the Dodgers made a $45M offer to Manny Ramirez," we get this:

Last week, the national unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent, the highest level in more than 14 years. At some point, baseball fans are going to say enough is enough.

You know, if a business reporter went to his editor saying that he wanted to write about roster construction and in-game strategy, the editor would probably make sure he knew the first thing about baseball before allowing him to do so. Why the sports guys aren't required to know a single thing about business before unloading this kind of garbage is a mystery to me.