The Ultimate Spring Training Story
Posted: February 25th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 58 Comments »
Of course, I love early spring training. Love spring training for the same reasons that everyone loves it. Love how every team has hope again. Love watching the players do drills in the sun — reminds you that winter is almost over. Love all the corny stuff — the green grass, the crack of the bat, the baseball chatter, infield practice, the first sign of outfielders unwinding their arms, pitchers working on covering first and on and on and on.
Most of all, I love the stories. This is the time of year for stories. The aging veteran is trying to squeeze one more year out of his tired body — he looks better than he has looked in years! The phenom is looking better than the manager ever dreamed — he might actually make the club! This legend is visiting camp — all the kids ask him questions! The stories rarely pan out, of course. The wrinkles in the aging veteran’s face tend to show up in late March. The phenom starts striking out as the curveballs tighten up. The legend goes back to his home and the kids return to their same habits. The spring training stories are usually illusions. But like many illusions. they’re a lot of fun.
My favorite spring training story so far comes from Surprise, Ariz. — the best name ever for a spring training home — where according to my good friend Bob Dutton the Kansas City Royals look serious about trying to make Kyle Farnsworth a starter.
I like this story so much because it has a little bit of everything a spring training story needs. Unrealistic hope. Aging veteran. A pitcher with a new pitch. I like this story so much because it’s – thisclose – to desperation. But in February, desperation can feel a lot like promise. In February, the unreal can feel real. In February, you are still in the middle of the dream … and you don’t know that you’re dreaming.
Kyle Farnsworth has been one of the crazier baseball stories. He was a non-prospect — he was drafted in the 47th round by the Chicago Cubs in 1994. And to be honest, he did not pitch especially well in the minor leagues. In 1998, he had a good half season in Class AA (8-2, 2.77 ERA, 73 Ks, 21 walks) but then got smacked around in Class AAA. The Cubs saw that he had a great arm. His fastball could hit the high 90s, even 100 mph. When you can throw 100 mph, people will look past so-so numbers. People will see great things in you. This has been the Kyle Farnsworth Story.
The Cubs gave him 21 starts in 1999, and like most 23-year-old pitchers with great arms, he was overmatched. He did throw a two-hit shutout against the Dodgers. But his zippy fastball went awfully straight — he could not strike out anybody then — and he had no second pitch. The next year, Farnsworth made only five starts, the club lost four of them, he punched up an 8.13 ERA and everyone decided it might be for the best if he went to the bullpen where he could throw his fastball as hard as he wanted.
That’s where Farnsworth has been for 10 years, throwing serious gas out of bullpens across America. For a while, there was a fun life-is-a-box-of-chocolates quality to the Farnsworth career. No, you never knew what you were gonna get. In 2001, for Chicago, he struck out 107 in 82 innings and the league hit .213 off him. He was especially good in high leverage situations — the most important situations — when the league hit a Tony Pena Jr. like .176/.207/.236 against him. He looked for all the world like a potentially dominant closer of the future.
The very next year, in Chicago, Farnsworth went 4-6 with a 7.33 ERA, and in those high leverage situations the league hit ..309/.415/.603. Though, to be fair, they hit Farnsworth at all levels of leverage in 2002.
So it went. He was pretty good in 2003, lousy in 2004, almost unhittable for two teams in 2005 — he had a 28-game stretch where he allowed a total of one run — and mediocre in 2006. Along the way, Farnsworth would do a few looney-bird things like the time he body-slammed Kansas City’s Jeremy Affeldt for reasons that only made sense to him (after the game he would admit that he mistook Affeldt for someone else, though he never revealed who he was hoping to body slam) or the time he went on the disabled list after kicking an electric fan. He was exactly what he was — a hard throwing reliever with a fastball that would straighten out in the biggest moments, shaky control and a hair-trigger temper that was both intimidating and self-destructive, depending on the moment. He threw hard enough that he always had suiters. And he had enough problems that marriage never seemed viable.
I, like most of the civilized world, was entirely baffled when the Royals signed Farnsworth to a two-year, $9.25 million deal before the 2009 season. By the time the Royals signed Farnsworth, he had lost his spontaneity — he was about to be 33 years old, and he had been decidedly blah for three years. These are the worst kinds of signings, I think, the “name” signing, when the “name” isn’t much good in the first place. I think that’s why I was so frustrated by this Royals off-season … because the signings of Scott Podsednik and Rick Ankiel and Jason Kendall are backward looking* — and they look back to a past that wasn’t all that glorious to begin with.
*Not to fear — that positive Royals post is still coming.
Still, Dayton Moore was not the first general manager seduced by an arm that can still hurl fastballs in the high 90s. And Farnsworth gave Moore and the Royals exactly what they paid for — no false advertising here. In low leverage situations, the league hit .200/.241/.247 against him. He would look so good when it did not matter that Moore would find himself struggling to find the words for how good it made him feel.
In high leverage situations, the league hit .548/.605/.774 against Kyle Farnsworth.
I’ll repeat that: In high leverage situations, the league hit .548/.605/.774 against Kyle Farnsworth.
I’m going to repeat that one more time: In high leverage situations — those situations where the game was on the line — the league hit .548 against Kyle Farnsworth. They got on base 60.5% of the time. They slugged .774. Now, this was only 39 plate appearances. This was a small sample size. This was undoubtedly due in part to bad luck and bad mojo. But it’s so preposterous, that you can’t just say it once.
So what do the Royals do now? Signing Farnsworth was clearly one of those Winter Meeting panic moves — when the Royals brain trust sat in a closed room in Las Vegas and freaked out because their bullpen needed a power arm*
This is the sort of thing baseball types freak out about in the off-season.
*The Royals needed a power arm in the bullpen because they had traded away two power arms — Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez — in ill-conceived moves to acquire Coco Crisp (who got hurt) and Mike Jacobs (who was inexplicably allowed to face lefty pitchers).
And so, undoubtedly, they talked about it and talked about it and talked about it until it somehow seemed to make sense. My own view of what followed I would put in free verse. I call it:
How Kyle Farnsworth Makes Sense
What power arms are out there?
What power arms?
Gotta have a power arm
Need a power arm
Can’t live without a power arm
Hey, Kyle Farnsworth’s out there.
What do you think about Kyle’s style
He throws hard
But he puts up mediocre numbers
But he throws hard
Would he come here?
Check with his people
See what they want
They say he might come here
For the right deal
What’s the right deal for Kyle?
He’s not really that good.
He throws hard
But he puts up mediocre numbers
But he throws hard
He wants a two-year deal
He wants more than nine mil
Seems like a lot.
But, for that, he will come here!
Kyle Farnsworth will come here!
We need a power arm
Kyle Farnsworth is a power arm
He will come here!
All we have to do is write a check
Write the check
Yes, in the chill of the moment, in the excitement of the chase, the Royals signed Farnsworth, and they talked a lot about his great arm, and they did not talk at all about his mediocre numbers, and they pitched him in the bullpen for a year and lost the requisite number of games that come with such decisions. And then they realized that they had him for A SECOND YEAR. Who the hell signed this deal anyway?
And now, they’re trying to make Farnsworth into a starter. Like I say, it’s the perfect spring training story. Farnsworth comes into camp with a brand new change-up — and the Royals are AMAZED by how advanced that change-up looks. “I couldn’t believe it,” pitching coach Bob McClure says. Farnsworth comes into camp enthused — he LOVES the opportunity to start again for the first time in 10 years. And the Royals talk on and on about how this makes perfect sense. Farnsworth still has the great arm! He might be reborn as a starter!
Of course, it has about a 1.3% chance of working — that’s on the high end (and also depends on what you mean by “working.”) Kyle Farnsworth will be a 34-year-old pitcher with a career 98 ERA+ and a strong tendency to not get people out when he’s throwing 98 mph — hard to see how he’s going to get people out throwing 92.
But it’s February. It’s spring training. It’s that time to hope for the impossible. And, so, I love this story. Can Kyle Farnsworth become a successful starter? Hey, crazier things have happened! Though, I must admit, none immediately come to mind.
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Circle me Paul Wilson
I’m wondering, though, even though this decision will most likely not succeed- isn’t this a good sign? The Royals are willing to try something new and different? Farnsworth is already a sunk cost, so maybe we can get some starts out of him?
If Kyle Farnsworth is a 34-year-old pitcher with a higher OPS+ than Tony Pena Jr., then the Royals should make him an infielder!
But good article! I especially like the poem.
Excellent, as always.
Alas, a typo nitpick: I assume the career 98 OPS+ is supposed to be a career 98 ERA+… ?
At least there was no tease once the season began. Opening Day (well, the day after the postponement of OD) validated the incredulity we all felt when the Royals signed Farnsworth.
It is a great story and it will be fun to follow. Of course, it would be darned disappointing not to be able to rag on Farnsworth in my blog. Every blog needs a whipping boy.
Well, they do train in Surprise.
“Though, to be fair, they hit Farnsworth at all levels of leverage in 2002.”
I positively loved that line – drink would have visited the nose had I been drinking at the time.
Of course it probably ought to read “to be accurate…” because it really wasn’t particularly “fair.”
(Still giggling)
Speaking of Paul Wilson, I thought he was the victim of Farnsworth’s WWF special … or did he do that to multiple mediocre opposition pitchers? Circle me, Roid Rage!
Circle me waiting for Godot
If I’m a Royals fan I’m much more likely to buy a ticket to a Kyle Farnsworth start than a Robinson Tejada start. So I guess, why not?
I’m convinced that a tumblr blog which consisted of a single sentence (or short burst of sentences) from each of your posts would be the most-read sports blog in the universe. Today’s would be: “Can Kyle Farnsworth become a successful starter? Hey, crazier things have happened! Though, I must admit, none immediately come to mind.”
“I’m going to repeat that one more time: In high leverage situations — those situations where the game was on the line — the league hit .548 against Kyle Farnsworth.”
Nothing to fear here, when are the Royals ever in high leverage situations?
One immediately comes to mind for me: The Cardinals did the same thing with Todd Wellemeyer and it was semi-successful for about a year until he turned back into a pumpkin.
And actually, I undersold Wellemeyer’s successful year. He went 3-2 with a 3.11 ERA in 11 starts in 2007 and then went 13-9 with a 3.71 ERA in 32 starts in 2008. Then he fell off a cliff, but hey, who would have thought that you could get even 43 decent starts out of Todd Wellemeyer?
This reminds me of a great, early Bill Simmons article; you know, before he whored himself out and became the exact type of sports columnist he always railed against.
It was called “The Writes of Spring” and it detailed all the cliche’d stories that appear every spring training for every team in every paper.
Here’s the link for the article JohnA mentions:
http://proxy.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/020219
I was going to make a braden looper comparison here, but learned he actually had a good ERA the last 6 years as a reliever. Yeah, you’re in trouble.
I was hoping one of you could help me out. I read an essay last year about baseball and cannot find it anywhere.
Essentially, it is about how every ballplayer, no matter at what age or level, finds that the game has passed him by and he is no longer good enough to play. This applies to the 8 year-old who was never good; the 14-year old star who can no longer catch up to the bigger kid’s fastball; the high schooler who is not quite good enough to play college ball; right through to the major league star whose better days are behind him
Anyone who has played the game can remember the day/year that this happened to him.
At any rate, it is a great read and I would love to be able to read it again. If you have any idea what I am talking about and/or know who wrote it or where it can be found, please let me know.
Thanks
This move has Joba Chamberlain + a decade written all over it.
Farnsworth does body slam people pretty well. He could start with Hillman.
Farnsworth does body slam people pretty well. Maybe he can start with Hillman.
You’re kidding right? Farnsworth has a career 5.81 ERA when he starts. Batters have a .356 OBP against him when he starts. They slug .498 when he’s starting! Of course, this just fits into my theory that the Royals current regime doesn’t know about baseball statistics yet.
@Devon – It’s not that they don’t know about baseball statistics, it’s that they don’t believe in them and ignore them. GMDM doesn’t trust statistics and prefers the eye test. Baffling I know.
I was all for “the process” until last year. Trading off Nunez and Rameriez for Jacobs and Crisp, signing Farnsworth and Betancourt has to be one of the worst off season in a long time. They did nothing but make the team worse for multiple years. He hasn’t done anything this year to change my mind.
“Of course, it has about a 1.3% chance of working”
So you’re saying there’s a chance!
Farnsy in the rotation will be fun for about two weeks, in which he pitches three games and gives up 26 runs in eight and one-third innings. Then he goes back to mop-up duty. He will, however, continue to rotate about the earth’s axis.
The only change I can imagine appearing in the same sentence as “Kyle Farnsworth” would be a sex change.
Farnsworth is a real game changer.
…(Farnsworth) always had suiters…
suitors=wooers
suiters=people who want to sue you
Typo, or intentional?
“[W]ho would have thought that you could get even 43 decent starts out of Todd Wellemeyer?”
The thing that irritated me the most about this was that he was in KC for a full year before heading off to St. Louis. Waived by a scary bad team, then went elsewhere and looked like a real pitcher. Was it a different league? A different pitching coach? Or the water there? But the guy was a total chump in KC…and no one was sad when he left. Boy, who here, besides a couple of names, has made 43 quasi-decent starts this decade?
Stealing from a better poet than I’ll ever be, can I add this as a coda to Joe’s free verse . . .
I don’t know how he does it
But he lives like a king
And he dallies
And he gathers
And he plucks
And he shines
And when the man dances
Certainly, boys
What else?
The piper pays him!
Yes sir, yes sir
Yes sir, yes sir
When the man dances
Certainly, boys
What else?
The piper pays him!
Yessssir, Yessssir
But he doesn’t know the territory
The only problem w/Wellemeyer was that the Cards didn’t trade him for a bag of balls when they had the chance. The positive, as mentioned, 43 solid Jeff Suppan like starts and they didn’t sign him to a large weighty contract after the 13 win season. The Cards have done a pretty solid job of IDing the “low hanging fruit” and getting the most out of them without committing large contracts to them. Joel Pineiro comes to mind. No way he repeats last season. Doesn’t always work, see Adam Kennedy,but you get the point.
This is where the Royals need to do a better job. You can take a flier on Farnsworth, but you don’t sign him to a 2 year deal for close to $10M. There are a number of players that could have helped the Royals for that much $.
Hey Joe,
Heard something very interesting this morning in a Theo Epstein interview. Theo was asked about the projections in the Bill James handbook. Theo stated that Bill James has nothing to do with the handbook except allowing his name to be used (for a fee I’m sure). Theo said that the projections in the handbook haven’t been used by professional GM’s or scout in years. They all understand that there are inherent problems with these projections, specifically that most seem to trend downward.
The Red Sox for instance use proprietary statistics to measure players…Bill James evidently has some input on these new proprietary stats….
Just thought you may find this interesting. I love the site and will keep reading no matter whose handbook you use!
The Royals have a prize in Robinson Tejeda. Hillman does not like him, so they will look at every other (worse) alternative, and leave him in the bullpen where Trey will again bring him in in the middle of an inning more than any other pitcher (Tejeda’s weakness). Tejeda was the second highest plus player on the Royals last year. He will probably break out for another team.
One quote that I read talked about how the Royals were looking for rotation depth, as they were in deep trouble last year when injuries hit. I think it’s highly unlikely Farnsworth beats out both Tejeda and Davies for a rotation spot. I think, more than anything, this is an experiment to see if Farnsworth can give them five innings in a pinch, rather than calling up a mediocre 4-A starter for a couple weeks.
When I saw the title for this one, I immediately thought of the spring training where a camera caught George Brett telling a fantastic pooping the pants in public story. A piece by Poz discussing his need to share this with a no-name player would be a humorous article to say the least.
@25 Mark Daniel…nicely played.
Joe, as far as signing Rick Ankiel…you’re always going on about how Tony Pena Jr should be a reliever, maybe Ankiel can talk to TPJ about how changing positions in a radical way saved his career.
As for Jason Kendall and Scotty Pods….uh, I got nothin’.
I think the front office did the opening song from Guys and Dolls.
I got an pitcher’s berth, the name is Kyle Farnsworth, and the man says he got a power arm, power arm, power arm, the man’s got a power arm.
I gotta say, the Royals have done it: it’s Spring Training and I just…don’t…give…a…rip. I just don’t care. I have no hope, irrational or otherwise. I’m done. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll go to a Greinke start or two, and maybe a game or two when the weather is nice just because that’s a nice thing to on the right summer day (assuming I avoid Sluggerrrrr–that dude’s a menace). But I also might just hold out to go to minor league games in Springfield when I visit my parents, because I just don’t care anymore. The Royals are not good now, and they never will be good until something changes substantially in the ownership or the financial structure of baseball (or, honestly, both). I’m into sports for another few weeks, until Mizzou gets bounced from the tourney. Then, other than maybe the Belmont if there’s a Triple Crown on the line, I won’t really care passionately about another sporting event until Labor Day Weekend. Oh well.
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So the Royals can afford to blow $9.25 mil on Kyle Farnsworth who has proven that he’s not going to be much help. Joe, can you tell me again why the city/county can’t negotiate a lease agreement that doesn’t cover the cost of doing business st the sports complex? This applies to the Chiefs as well. Remember Law, Warfield,and Johnson.
I remember hearing a story about Billy Beane’s A’s, I don’t remember if it was in the book Moneyball or not, and I don’ t even know if it was true. But the story was that before the A’s released a pitcher, they tried to get him to throw submarine-style, and that this worked out for a few pitchers. Brad Ziegler, I think, is an example of this.
Anyway, they should probably do this with Farnsworth.
Bad in high leverage situations, has a good fastball and is fairly average. It sounds to me, rather than make him a starter, you go back and make him one of those old style “firemen”. Don’t bring him in the 9th with the tying run on third, but let him start the 6th and pitch 2 or 3 innings. If it works out, do that fairly often. Saves wear on both ends of the pitching staff and might fit Farnsworth’s profile better.
@JohnLL (2) – Love the optimism. Granted, it’s a bit like having a hole in your roof and deciding to call it a sky-light.
But nonetheless, I do (honestly and without sarcasm) appreciate the optimism.
Count me among those who thought “The Ultimate Spring Training Story” had to do with George Brett’s pants.
It could be worse (or maybe just ‘Ultimater.’)
One of the Cubs story lines this spring is whether Carlos Silva will regain health, lose weight, find his arm slot, throw an effective sinker, win the 5th spot in the rotation (or maybe a bull pen spot,) and, most importantly, not be Milton Bradley.
I think I’d rather have Farnsworth’s story. They are both preposterously funny, but the thought of Silva pitching for a team that has to “win now” makes me wince.
[...] Farnsworth is a big, stupid idiot. But his Spring Training story really is pretty [...]
Just to clarify, the Royals did try Wellemeyer as a starter (it wasn’t a Dave Duncan idea), and he did show promise in a few outings. That Duncan was able to turn him into a productive starter is a major hat tip to him; personally I thought KC let him go too early and believe he might have found the same success under Bob McClure who is a great pitching coach in his own right.
There once was a pitcher named Kyle
Who hadn’t pitched well for a while
He only threw straight
And the hitters said “Great,
We’ll hammer his fastballs a mile.”
The GM of the team from KC
Could have got Kyle almost for free
But for some stupid reason
He signed Kyle for two seasons
Just like throwing nine mil in the sea.
My lasting memory of Kyle Farnsworth is of him getting booed at Yankee Stadium…when he came in to relieve for the Yankees. To his credit, he held the lead, but a 12-run lead shouldn’t be that hard to hold.
@23 Devon: OK, but does the stat you cited have any predictive value? I.e., does the fact that Farnsworth has been worse as a starter than reliever in the past imply that that will continue to be true in the future?
This is what Bob McClure said yesterday in Suprise:
““I’ll tell you what,” pitching coach Bob McClure said, “watching him throw a (bullpen workout) is almost like watching Zack (Greinke) throw one. He’s that accurate.”
That is what he said folks.
To JohnLL and the Royals organization,
That is EXACTLY why the Royals have sucked for over 15 years. They continually try to fit square pegs in round holes. They continually take ‘projects’ and hope they can turn them into the gem that no one else in the entire MLB could figure out how to do (Mike Jacobs at 1st or against lefties, Mark Teahen at 2nd, Yunieski Bettancourt -period, are other recent examples). They REACH for everything but fail to realize that when you reach for everything you, most of the time, fail to nab any ANYTHING. The Farnsworth maneuver is another in a long line of failed attempts to ‘think outside the box.’ The problem with thinking outside the box is that usually you are in that position because of a bad decision or some other unfortunate circumstance relegating you to approach the problem from an entirely different perspective. The Royals are always trying to think outside the box and that says all you need to know about how this organization is operated. There is no attempt by ownership or management to identify the sure thing and go get it. David Glass constantly looks to ‘hit the jackpot’ without going all in. What they end up doing is whittling away, season after season, the few chips they have along with any credibility remaining, until they are forced to start over, again.
We all know that this is all window dressing anyway. Just a distraction. Moore is simply trying to bide his time for another 2-3 year until his fantastic highschool draft picks materialize in the majors. They hope that if and when that day comes, they still have fans left.
[...] of his latest pieces is on the optimism of Spring Training, how the hopes of preseason baseball and unrealistic stories are so deeply intertwined–and [...]
“In low leverage situations, the league hit .200/.241/.247 against him. ….
In high leverage situations, the league hit .548/.605/.774 against Kyle Farnsworth.
I’ll repeat that: In high leverage situations, the league hit .548/.605/.774 against Kyle Farnsworth.”
Slow down Joe, and don’t let the obvious hit you in the ass while you pontificate.
Sabermetricians are generally in agreement that there is no statistical support for the so-called “clutch hitter.” And that makes sense. If we assume that professional ballplayers always try their best. then it follows that a “clutch hitter” is an oxymoron. BUT, its does not necessarily follow that the observe is true, and here, I think Farnsy presents overwhelming statistical evidence of that. You want antedotal evidence as well. How bout the 2009 home opener meatball that Thome hit 500 feet to win it?
Call it how you see is. Farnsy is a wuss, a pantywaist, lacking in cohanas, has insufficient intestinal fortuitde, is a moneyless ballplayer, etc., etc. All subject to debate. But the statistics are clear: The professor is an example par excellance of the “un-clutch” player.
[...] Joe Posnanski wrote about the ultimate spring training story in a post artistically named, get this, The Ultimate Spring Training Story. Posnanski’s muse was Kyle Farnsworth and his attempt at rejuvenation by joining the rotation. [...]
Big picture, folks … Farnsworth won’t make it as a starter with the big club, and please pray they don’t hang on to him as a reliever. He can choose to become part of the “inventory” at Omaha or take his $$$ and hope somebody else picks him up. Hardest thing to do in baseball is admit your mistakes, but Moore needs to rid the team of the Farnsworths of this world. Nothing personal, but after 40 years as a fan, I say get kids into the lineup and let ‘em learn the hard way. It’s gotta be less painful than watching Guillen, Betancourt, Ankiel, et al….
[...] Kyle Farnsworth is being initially pegged into your starting rotation, you’re not going to have a successful season. That’s sort of a given. Not that this [...]