Mauer and the Twins agree to $33 million contract

The American League star and batting champion Joe Mauer and the Twins agreed to a $33 million four year contract Sunday. The twenty-three year old catcher hit a .347 with 84 RBIs last year to help the Twins win the AL Central and played his first All-Star game last summer.

He was selected first in the 2001 amateur draft out of Cretin-Derham Hall high school in St. Paul. Mauer was eligible for arbitration this winter for the first time. The pro-catcher is the first in his position to lead the majors in batting average of all AL catchers.

Mauer will be getting 3.75 million this year, 6.25 million in 2008, 10.5 million in 2009 and 12.5 million in 2010. He will also be eligible for performence base bonuses and has the right to designate three teams each year that he can't be traded to without his consent.

Sosa is back!

The Texas Rangers agreed on a minor league contract with Sosa on Tuesday. Sosa is posed to enter the Majors by the end of spring training. He is quoted that there is only a one in a million chance that he will not make the big leagues. If he does make it to the Majors, he will get a fraction of what he was paid before he retired. For the season, he would get a $500,000 one-year deal, and can earn up to $2.1 million during the season.

Arizona Diamondbacks may aquire Randy Johnson

The Arizona Diamondbacks are in talks with the New York Yankees to aquire Randy Johnson. The five-time Cy Young Award winner may agree with the Diamondbacks to a one-year, $10 million extension. Hopefully Arizona can get this superstar back in their ranks next season. The Padres are interested in Johnson also but have a slim chance of taking Johnson away from the Diamondbacks.

Guitar Hero causes missed games!

The Detroit Tigers pitcher, Joel Zumaya missed three playoff games from a repetitive strain injury caused by playing way too much Guitar Hero(best game ever). The right-handed pitcher missed the games during the American League Championship Series in October because of forearm pain. Training staff found that his injury was more in line with a guitar playing motion than throwing. Guitar Hero’s main selling-point is the guitar-shaped controller that simulates the strumming and fretboard fingering of a real guitar. When staff told him to stop playing the PlayStation 2 game, the pain went away, and he pitched pain-free for three appearances during the World Series.
The funny thing is, I totally don't blame him for playing the game, it gets VERY addicting.

Igawa to play for Yankees next season.

The New York Yankees signed Igawa to play for them next season. The left-handed pitcher has agreed to a five year, $20 million dollar contract. Kei Igawa played for the Japanese club, Hanshin Tigers. He had an ERA of 2.97, 194 strikeouts, and a 14-9 record last season with them. Igawa eight-season career with the Hanshin Tigers, the pitcher went 86-60 with an ERA of 3.15. Kei’s best season was in 2003 where he finished with a 20-5 record and was named the league’s MVP.

Wells Agree's to Blue Jays Extension

Vernon Wells agreed to a seven year, $126 million extension with the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday, December 15. There should be a press conference early this week so announce the deal but Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi wouldn't confirm or deny that a deal had in fact been reached, saying only that "nothing has been finalized from our end." The extension is said to include a no-trade clause and an opt-out clause after the fourth season. Since the extension is so high, it had to be approved by the Blue Jays team owner Ted Rogers.

Wells offered $120 million extension by Toronto Blue Jays

All-Star center fielder Vernon Wells was offered a contract extension worth more than $120 million making it the sixth-largest contract in baseball history. The general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, J.P. Ricciardi, would not give a specific amount as to how much the extention would be worth but did say it will be between $126 million to $136 million and would extend seven or eight years.

If they cannot reach an agreement, the Blue Jays might trade Wells, but Ricciardi didn't give any details on when he wanted to finish the deal.

Daisuke Matsuzaka agreed to a six-year contrat with the Red Sox

Matsuzaka signed a six year contract with the Boston Red Sox worth $52 million Wednesday afternoon. The pitcher has high expectations from the Red Sox; scouts from the organization seen Daisuke play dozens of times; they say, "He has plus stuff across the board" and a 96 mph fastball that tops off his arsenal. While Boston is optimistic for this import, Matsuzaka is not the most major-league ready player to come out of Japan. On the other hand, Daisuke arrived in Japanese professional baseball like LeBron James did in the NBA. It will be interesting on how Daisuke Matsuzaka will impact the Boston Red Sox next season.

Matsuzaka possible to play for Red Sox

Matsuzaka may be able to play for the Red Sox as early as next season. The star pitcher for Seibu Lions reportedly is flying to Boston, a good sign that both Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Red Sox have reached an agreement. An official with knowledge of the negotiations said, "You should assume a deal is close or done."

A few days prior, Scott Boras would not allow Matsuzaka to take a physical unless both the pitcher and Boston had reached a preliminary agreement. The MLB team has a deadline of midnight Thursday to reach an agreement.

The Red Sox bid $51.1 million last month for the rights to negotiate with Matsuzaka. If Matsuzaka and Boston reaches a deal, the bid will be paid to the Seibu Lions of Japan. If they do not reach a deal, Matsuzaka will not be eligible until he becomes a free agent next November.

Gagne reaches an early agreement with the Rangers

Eric Gagne the reliever for the LA Dodgers has reached an agreement Tuesday with the Texas Rangers on a one-year contract worth about six million dollars. While there is no official announcement, a person familiar with the negotiations has confirmed the agreement. The deal will give Gagne the opportunity to earn around five million more in performance bonuses.

Eric Gagne became the closer for the LA Dodgers in 2002. He had 52 saves and an ERA of 1.97 in 77 games that he closed for the Dodgers that year. The 2003 season, Eric won the Cy Young Award presented to the best pitcher of the season. In 2004, he saved 45 games.

Gagne became a free agent last month when the LA Dodgers declined his twelve million dollar option for 2007.

Juan Uribe is being acquitted of all charges in his alleged involvement in a shooting in the Dominican Republic earlier this year.

Read the Entire Story

Is this a case of mistaken identity or another baseball player getting away from a scandal unscathed?

My final post

I don't know how many people are still stopping by to check out this blog, but awhile ago I promised an announcement in March, and now it's time for said announcement. While I will no longer be writing about baseball at Universal Baseball Blog, Inc., I will still be writing about baseball on the internet.

I have joined with a bunch of other guys to start a web site called The Hardball Times. We have a welcome message on the front page of the site, so rather than tell you all about it, I'm going to make you go there and read about it. However, I will tell you who the other writers involved with this project are. You may not recognize all of them, but I'm sure you'll recognize at least a few:

Aaron Gleeman
Matthew Namee
Alex Belth
Craig Burley
Joe Dimino
Robert Dudek
Vinay Kumar
Larry Mahnken
Bryan Smith
Dave Studenmund
Steve Treder

Go check out what we have to say, and hopefully you'll keep on coming back for more. Oh yeah, I'd like to thank everybody who read Universal Baseball Blog, Inc. and made it such a fun project for me last season. I really appreciate it.

Mike Mussina

I know my last post said that I would only be making one more post and it would be to announce a new project I'm working on, but I guess I lied. This post has nothing to do with my project, which I will still be announcing some time in March.

The reason for this post is that Alex Belth of Bronx Banter is doing a preview week for the Yankees and he asked me to write an article for him. The article I wrote is about Mike Mussina and is on his web site right now.

I don't know if it's ironic or just funny, but after everything I wrote on this blog, my first Clutch Hit comes on the first thing I write for another blog. Anyway, thanks Repoz.

30,000 and done

I just recently reached the 30,000 mark for visitors to this blog. When I started the blog back in mid-April last year, I didn't know exactly what to expect from it. I have to say that I've throughly enjoyed writing this blog and I hope you've enjoyed reading it.

As you may have noticed, however, I haven't been making very many posts since November. In fact, the main purpose of this post is to inform all of you that it's my second-to-last post on this blog.

The reason I'm quitting the blog is because I'm starting an exciting, new project that will take up most of my free time. My last post on this blog will come some time in March, probably early in the month, when that project is ready to be announced.

If you're interested in finding out what I'm going to be doing that will prevent me from blogging, check back in March to find out. If you don't particularly care, I thank you for all the times you've visited so far and I hope my writing was interesting, informative and enjoyable. Or at the very least, one of the three.

I'm back

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my several long absences from posting this winter. It has been due to a combination of a decrease in baseball news and an increase in my laziness, as well as some other things I've had to spend time on in the past couple months. At any rate, if you've continued to check this blog regularly (or even semi-regularly), I very much appreciate it.

Many of you probably have it as well, but one of the things I got for Christmas this year was the 2004 Bill James Handbook (which you probably know is just the new name for what used to be the STATS Major League Handbook). Like I said, I got it for Christmas, but I've just recently gotten a chance to look through it. As you know if you have a copy (or if you ever got the STATS version in the past), there's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

The thing that interested me most, at least yesterday and today, is something that wasn't in the old STATS books -- the manager's record. Throughout the year, most fans get annoyed by certain things their team's manager seems to do a lot, but you never really know how much they're doing that particular thing. Well, now you can find out, and I think that's a great thing.

The manager's record provides statistics for each manager in several categories -- lineups used, platoon percentage, pinch hitters used, pinch runners used, defensive substitutes, relief pitchers used, long outings, stolen base attempts, sacrifice attempts, intentional walks and pitch outs. Most of those categories are pretty self-explanatory, but two aren't. Platoon Percentage indicates how much of the time the hitter in a manager's starting lineup had the platoon edge on the opposing starting pitcher, and Long Outings are any outings by a starting pitcher of more than 120 pitches.

The book just has each manager listed alphabetically, so I went through and entered everything from last season into a spreadsheet so that I could see where the managers and teams (since some things are more dependant on the team than the manager) ranked in each category. Now, I'm going to share the things that I found interesting with you.

For lineups used and platoon percentage, I was only able to list 28 teams because Florida and Cincinnati both had multiple managers and it would have been difficult for me to figure out their numbers in those categories. Anyway, of the other 28 teams, only six teams used fewer than 125 different lineups an all six teams won more than 85 games (average of 94 wins). Bobby Cox's Atlanta Braves used 98 different lineups, the only team with fewer than 100.

On the other hand, seven teams used more than 150 different lineups and none of the seven won more than 86 games (average of 77.6 wins). This isn't to say that using more lineups causes a team to win fewer games, as Felipe Alou used exactly 150 different lineups and his team won 100 games. If there is a strong correlation throughout history between using fewer lineups and winning more games, it's probably because the teams that use fewer lineups have better players and fewer injuries, so there's less need to change the lineups.

Only four teams out fo the 28 had a platoon percentage below .50 -- the Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros. Four teams had the platoon advantage more than 65-percent of the time -- the Detroit Tigers, Cleveland Indians, Arizona Diamondbacks and New York Yankees. The Tigers had the platoon advantage 72-percent of the time, but won just 62.5-percent of their games, so I guess having the platoon advantage doesn't always help.

The average team used 190.7 pinch-hitters. Not surprisingly, every NL team was above average (San Francisco was closest to average with 195 pinch-hitters) and every AL team was below average (Tampa Bay was closest to average with 159).

Coincidentally, seven NL teams used fewer than 270 pinch-hitters and those teams averaged 90.6 wins (with a low of 83 in Montreal) and won 14 more games than their Pythagorean records. The other nine NL teams averaged 74.7 wins (with a high of 87 in Houston) and won 10 fewer games than their Pythagorean records. As I said, I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

If you, like me, are a Red Sox fan, than you probably thought he pinch-ran for hit hitters more than anybody in the history of baseball. Well, it wasn't that severe, but he did use 62 pinch-runners, which was the most in baseball. Only four other managers used more than 40 pinch-runners. As far as I can tell, only four active managers have ever used more pinch-runners in a season than Little used this year. Bobby Cox used 72 pinch-runners in 2000, Art Howe used 74 in 1996 and 81 in 2000, Lou Piniella used 96 in 2002 and Joe Torre used 70 in 1997.

Jerry Manuel used 67 defensive substitutes to tie for the most in baseball with Art Howe. No other AL manager used more than 40 defensive subs and Florida, with 17, was the only NL team to use fewer than 25 defensive subs. The average team used 33.8 defensive subs.

Only one AL manager was in the top 10 in relief pitchers used -- Buck Showalter was third with 494. When your starting pitchers post a 6.24 ERA and can only manage 5.14 innings per start, that leaves a lot of innings for the bullpen to pitch. Texas had a 4.88 ERA from its bullpen, which was 29th in the majors, but that's not quite so bad when you consider that the Rangers bullpen was called on to pitch 601 innings. That's 205 innings more than the Yankees needed from their bullpen, which is essentially an extra starting rotation spot that the Rangers had to fill with relievers.

The average team used 431.9 relief pitchers, and Florida was the only NL team to use fewer than 400 despite the fact that Jeff Torborg used 115 relievers in the 38 games he managed (3.03 per game). Jack McKeon made up for that by using just 2.26 relievers per game, by far the fewest in the NL. Art Howe was next among NL managers with 2.56 relief pitchers used per game.

The average team allowed 6.2 long outings by its starting pitchers, but only 10 teams allowed more than six long outings. Three teams had more than twice as many long outings as the average team and two teams had more than four times as many long outings as the average team. It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that that team is the Chicago Cubs.

Dusty Baker rode his starting pitchers for 28 long outings in the regular season and two more in the postseason. Kerry Wood made 13 long outings (plus one more in the playoffs), including a 141-pitch outing and a 130-pitch outing. Mark Prior had nine long outings (plus one more in the playoffs), including three starts with more than 130 pitches. Carlos Zambrano had five long outings and Matt Clement had one long outing.

That didn't surprise me at all, but I was surprised that Frank Robinson allowed the second-most long outings with 27. Javier Vazquez and Livan Hernandez each had 13 long outings, including two outings for each with at least 130 pitches, and Zach Day had one long outing.

(Doing the last three paragraphs on long outings, I just realized that either the Bill James Handbook or ESPN.com isn't entirely accurate. The Handbook says Baker had 26 long outings and Robinson had 23 long outings, but I checked and double-checked the game logs for all the starting pitchers on both teams and came up with 28 for Baker and 27 for Robinson. Hopefully, there aren't that many inaccuracies.)

If you like the National League better than the American League because it's more interesting with its extra bunting and base stealing, you'll be disappointed about the following news. The average team had 123.5 stolen base attempts, but nine of the 12 teams that were above that average were AL teams. Florida obviously led the majors (with 224 attempts), but the other six teams with at least 140 attempts all resided in the AL. Of the 10 teams with fewer than 105 stolen base attempts, seven were in the NL.

The Marlins attempted nearly two steals per game under Jeff Torborg (74 attempts in 38 games). The only other manager whose team attempted more than one steal per game was the other manager of the Marlins, Jack McKeon, with 150 attempts in 124 games. While the Marlins had an edge of 30 in attempts, they only had an edge of eight in successful steals. Florida stole 150 bases at a 67-percent success rate while Tampa Bay stole 142 bases at a 77.2-percent success rate.

Of course, just because more AL teams are trying to steal a lot then NL teams, that doesn't mean that all AL teams are. Only two teams attempted fewer than 90 steals -- Toronto and Oakland with 62 each. Despite not trying very often, Oakland was very proficient with 48 steals for a 77.4-percent success rate. Toronto stole 37 bases for an awful 59.7-percent success rate.

Tony LaRussa called for nearly 100 more sacrifice bunts than Carlos Tosca did. The Cardinals attempted to sacrifice 111 times while the Blue Jays attempted just 13 sacrifices. The only AL manager who was in teh top 15 in sacrifice attempts was Alan Trammell, who was ninth with 94.

Speaking of Tony LaRussa, he issued five intentional walks in one game against the Boston Red Sox. In the other 161 games combined, he issued just 31 intentional walks. The top two teams in intentional walks both resided in the NL East. Art Howe issued 71 intentional walks and Bobby Cox issued 69.

Ten teams issued at least 50 intentional walks and, not surprisingly, three of them were in the NL West, home of the man who was intentionally walked 61 times. Bruce Bochy issued 52 intentional walks total, 10 of them to Barry Bonds. Bob Brenly also issued 52 intentional walks, nine of them to Bonds. Clint Hurdle issued 51 intentional walks, but only three were to Bonds. Jim Tracy intentionally walked Bonds seven times, but only issued 35 IBBs total. In all, the non-San Francisco NL West issued 190 intentional walks with 29 of them (15.3-percent) going to Bonds.

Well, that's all I've got for today. I hope you enjoyed this little trip through the 2003 major league managers. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get some stakes, garlic and silver bullets so I can hunt down and kill the Vampire Trade Rumor.

So long, Mo

First, I'd like to apologize for my absence the past couple days. I've been very busy and unable to sit down and get a post written. Today, I still don't have any real outstanding analysis or anything, but I'd like to talk about something that is not much of a surprise at all. According to WFAN, Mo Vaughn is not retiring, but he will not be able to play at all in 2004 and he probably won't be able to play baseball again.

In recent years, Vaughn's career has turned into a joke, but I'm very appreciative of what Vaughn did for the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox took Vaughn in the first round of the 1989 draft, and he made his major-league debut two years later.

Vaughn's first two seasons in the big leagues were not good as he hit .244/.331/.389 (.719) with 17 homers, 63 runs and 89 RBI in 187 games. Then, in 1993, he turned into the hitter who would anchor the Boston lineup for the next six years. He played 152 games and hit .297/.390/.525 (.915) with 29 homers, 86 runs and 101 RBI.

From 1995 through 1998, he was one of the most feared hitters in the American League, playing at least 140 games each season while posting an OPS+ of at least 145 each year. In those four seasons, he made the All-Star game three times, he finished in the top five in MVP voting three times, he finished in the top 10 in batting three times, he finished in the top six in OBP three times, he finished in the top 10 in SLG four times, he finished in the top 10 in OPS four times, he finished in the top 10 in runs twice, he finished in the top four in hits twice, he finished in the top five in total bases three times, he finished in the top 10 in homers four times, he finished in the top three in RBI twice, he finished in the top 10 in walks twice, he finished in the top 10 in extra-base hits three times, he finished in the top eight in times on base three times and he finished in the top 10 in OPS+ four times.

If you didn't feel like reading through that whole list, let me summarize it for you. From 1995 through 1998, Mo Vaughn was one of the best hitters in the American League. And he played for my favorite team. And I loved it.

He was this big, huge, intimidating guy, but he was as friendly as could be. My dad liked to call him a big teddy bear, but he was a teddy bear who could crush a baseball.

I remember being awed by the fact that Vaughn could contend for a batting title with that swing of his. That uppercut swing that spent so little time in the strike zone that it required perfect timing looked like a sure recipe for a low average and lots of strikeouts. Vaughn did strike out a lot, but he was able to hit .315 from 1993 through 1998.

I remember Vaughn leading the Red Sox to the playoffs for the first time in 1995, and then going hitless as Boston was swept in three games by the Cleveland Indians. And I remember three years later when Vaughn got his next chance in the playoffs, against that same Indians team, and smacked two home runs and drove in seven runs.

I remember the Opening Day walkoff home run that is alluded to on Vaughn's Baseball-Reference page.

I remember a lot of times when Vaughn made me a very happy Red Sox fan, and I'm truly appreciative of everything he did for the franchise over those six seasons.

I was sad to see Vaughn leave Boston after 1998. Even though I knew it would have been foolish for Boston to give him a contract similar to the one that Anaheim gave him, I was sad to see him go. And I'm sad that his career took such a turn for the worse, and that it now appears to be over.

He was a very, very good player over a six-year stretch with my favorite team. I hope his career is remembered for that and not for the fat jokes that dominated the end of his career.

Perfect he's not

Boomer on breaking his word

Last off-season, David Wells reached a verbal agreement to sign a one-year deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks, where he would have filled the third spot in the rotation behind Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. Instead of pitching for Arizona, however, he ended up helping the Yankees reach the World Series (and then he helped them lose the World Series by pitching just one inning in game five).

This off-season, Wells reached a verbal agreement to accept a minor-league contract with the Yankees that most likely would have turned into a major-league contract and a spot, part-time at least, in the rotation. Instead of pitching for New York, however, he will end up being the "ace" of the San Diego Padres rotation after signing a one-year deal that could be worth as much as $7-million with incentives.

Just as Wells' change of heart last year left Arizona with a dearth of starting pitchers, so will his change of heart this year leave New York with a dearth of starting pitchers, at least compared to what the Yankees are accustomed to having.

Last year, if you'll remember, one of the biggest stories heading into the season was how much depth the Yankees had in their starting rotation. Even after trading the broken Duke, Orlando Hernandez, to Montreal, the Yankees five-man rotation had seven applicants: Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, David Wells, Jose Contreras, Jeff Weaver and Sterling Hitchcock.

The first four each made at least 30 starts and pitched anywhere from above average (Wells) to great (Mussina). Weaver got 24 starts and was ineffective to say the least. Injuries limited Contreras to nine starts and 71 innings (he also made nine relief appearances) and Hitchcock got just one start in his 27 appearances before being traded to St. Louis in August.

And now only two of those pitchers remain: Mussina and Contreras. Three new pitchers have been added: Javier Vazquez, Kevin Brown and Jon Lieber. Most teams would kill to have a rotation of Mussina, Vazquez, Brown, Contreras and Lieber, but the Yankees are not most teams.

The Yankees can afford to buy insurance policies, but at the moment they don't have any insurance on this rotation. And it is a rotation that could use insurance.

Mussina is as solid as they come. He has pitched at least 200 innings in each of the last nine seasons and he was just one-third of an inning from reaching 215 innings for the seventh time in nine years last season. He's very economical, meaning that his high inning totals do not come with outrageously high pitch totals. Other than the risk of a fluke injury that follows every player, Mussnia is not a risk to miss time.

Vazquez has been just as durable, pitching at least 217 innings in each of the last four seasons. Unlike Mussina, he is not economic with his pitches and many people feel that he has been overworked in his early years. However, he's shown no real signs of arm trouble and there are those who think he might be one of those pitchers who is a sponge for abuse. While he will suffer through arm fatigue from time to time, he may not be a real risk to be out for an extended period of time.

That leaves the other three pitchers, which is where the real trouble lies.

Brown pitched 211 innings last year, but he only pitched 179.1 innings in the previous two seasons combined. He'll be 39 years old when the season opens, and he has an injury history as long as his 6-foot-4 frame. Before those two injury-plagued seasons, Brown pitched at least 230 innings in five straight seasons for a total of 1209.2 innings. He's thrown over 3,000 innings in his career and at this point he's probably more likely to make 15 starts than he is to make 35 starts.

Contreras, as I said, was limited to just 71 innings last year due to injuries. Who knows what his pitching history looks like and who knows exactly how old he is? Could he make 35 starts and pitch 230 innings? Yes, he probably could. Could he be limited to 15-20 starts and 100-130 innings? Yes, he probably could.

Lieber did not pitch at all last year and was limited to 141 innings in 2002 by an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery. There is absolutely no way to know how much or how well he'll be able to pitch for the Yankees because he hasn't been able to pitch for a year and a half. Before his injury, he was very durable for three years. If the Yankees get from him what the Cubs got from him from 1999-2001, they'll have the best fifth starter in baseball. But it's just as possible that injury and/or ineffectiveness could cut his season short.

So, the Yankees have two reliable arms and three large question marks. Every team, no matter how dependable its five starters, needs a backup plan in case somebody needs to miss a start for one reason or another. Last year, the Seattle Mariners were the only team to make it through the entire season using just five starting pitchers. Atlanta and Chicago both used seven starting pitchers and the Braves got 159 starts from their five most-used starters.

The average team last year used 10.6 starting pitchers and got 133.5 starts from its top five starters. Those numbers are obviously skewed by a few teams who had so few quality pitchers that their rotations were revolving doors all season, but it still shows how unlikely it is for a team to make it through an entire season without needing at least a dozen or so spot starts.

In fact, only six team last year (including the Yankees) did not need more than 12 "spot" starts. I suppose it's possible New York could fall in that group, but given the question marks in their rotation I think New York will be closer to five pitchers making 133 starts than five pitchers making 162 starts.

So, who will be making the 12-25 starts that are not made by New York's top five? Well, the best option for the Yankees would probably be to go out and sign another starting pitcher. If they really wanted to make a New York-sized splash, they could lure Greg Maddux to the Big Apple. That probably won't happen, but it's certainly possible that the Yankees will sign another starting pitcher or two before spring training opens.

If they don't, then the spot starter will probably be Jorge DePaula. DePaula gets some attention as a prospect, but I think that's just because he's the best thing the Yankees have left. He's 25 years old and he spent most of last season at Class AAA Columbus, where he pitched 167.2 innings while posting a 4.35 ERA with just 125 strikeouts (6.71 K/9IP) and 57 walks (.306 BB/9IP). He also served up 22 home runs (1.18 HR/9IP).

I'm not trying to knock the Yankees starting rotation, because it's very good. However, some people are getting ahead of themselves by saying it's better than last year's. The Yankees 2004 rotation will be better than the 2003 version if everybody stays healthy, but that's a very big if. And the rotation would look a lot more like 2003's if Wells was still around to be the fifth starter, which would allow Lieber to hang around as insurance.

Another effect of Wells changing his mind is that the Yankees do not have a single left-handed starting pitcher (even DePaula is right-handed). It's generally thought that when pitching in Yankee Stadium, it's better to be left-handed than right-handed. That may well be true, but as Brian Cashman said and Rob Neyer noted in his chat today, given a choice between a great right-hander and a good left-hander, you should always take the great right-hander. However, it's worth noting something in regard to the lack of lefties in the Bronx rotation.

The New York Yankees top competition for the AL East is the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees will face the Red Sox 19 times in the regular season, and possibly (as they did last year) seven more times in the playoffs. The Boston Red Sox hit .290/.365/.505 (.870) against right-handers and .285/.347/.456 (.803) against left-handers last year. That is at least part of the reason the Red Sox went 69-40 when a righty started against them and 26-27 when a lefty started.

Those splits might not be quite so extreme this year with Todd Walker being replaced by Pokey Reese and Mark Bellhorn this season, but it seems certain that the Red Sox will hit significantly better against righties than against lefties. For the team that is most concerned with defeating the Red Sox, it must be disconcerting to know that you always have to use a starting pitcher who throws with the hand the Red Sox prefer.

And yes, I'm aware that the Red Sox also do not have any left-handed starting pitchers. However, the Yankees split wasn't nearly as extreme (.791 OPS vs. lefties, .816 OPS vs. righties) and Gary Sheffield will make it even closer because he hits lefties much better than righties.

I was actually going to talk about what Wells' decision means for the Padres too, but I've already spent too much time talking about what it means for the Yankees. So, tomorrow I'll have more to say about Wells changing teams. If you're already tired of reading about Wells, I'm sorry. I promise that tomorrow will be the last time I talk about him for awhile.

Fantasy football

Here's the link to my final fantasy football column of the season:

Fantasy football: Holmes easy pick for MVP

Ho Ho Ho, Merry Everybody!

Merry Christmas everybody (unless you don't celebrate Christmas, in which case you should just have a nice Thursday). I hope you all have a very happy holiday and I'll probably be back on Friday.

Fun with free time

For some reason (probably because there's nothing going on today), I was thinking about Manny Ramirez today. I wanted to see just how good a hitter he's been, so I headed over to Baseball-Reference.com to check out his player page. While I was there, I was completely blown away by something.

No, it wasn't the fact that he's had a batting average of at least .325 in five of the last seven seasons. It also wasn't the fact that his OBP has only dipped below .400 twice in the last nine seasons (and one of those times it was .399). Nor was it the fact that he's had an SLG above .585 in six straight seasons. It wasn't even that his OPS+ has been at least 140 for the last nine seasons and at least 160 for the last five seasons.

No, the thing that blew me away regarding Ramirez doesn't even have anything to do with his offensive performance, at least not directly. It has to do with a table that can be found at the very bottom of the page -- his salary table. What blew me away was that in eight seasons with the Cleveland Indians, Ramirez made just 75-percent as much money as he made last year with the Boston Red Sox.

Think about that. The Indians paid the grand total of $15.2-million for eight seasons in which Ramirez hit .313 with 237 doubles, 236 homers and 804 RBI in 967 games. Let me put it another way. The Indians paid $64,406.78 for every home run Ramirez hit for them. Last year, the Red Sox paid $540,540.54 for each of Ramirez's 37 homers. In case you don't want to do the math, that's 8.39 times as much money per home run.

The difference is almost as significant if you use runs created. The Indians paid $18,181.82 for each run created Ramirez provided for them. Last year, the Red Sox paid $141,843.97 for each of his 141 runs created. That's 7.8 times as much money per run created.

John Hart is taking a lot of crap for what's going on in Texas right now, but he sure knew how to lock players up in order to save money when he ran the Indians.