I’m going to admit to you, right up front, that this doesn’t have a lot to do with Johnny Damon. But I am falling behind on my ill-advised Player of the Day plan, and so this will have to count. It was while watching Johnny Damon hit a home run in Lakeland that I came up with this idea to really break down the 2009 season. What follows is really and truly a technological miracle … and by that I mean that it is miraculous that someone as inept as I am was able to figure out a way to do this.*

*A couple of weeks ago, I installed a new toilet in our basement bathroom. I did this because … at some point I decided that I HAD to do it. I could not let that toilet beat me. Now, I have a toilet installed in the basement, and it works, and I’m overly proud of this achievement, and I have absolutely no doubt that at some point it will cause a basement flood that will cost me thousands of dollars. No doubt. If I had any sense at all, I would call someone and have them come over and fix that thing immediately. But I will not call anyone because that is admitting defeat, and I cannot admit defeat, not yet, not until I see the leak. I must admit I had no idea I had this ridiculous stubbornness gene in me. You learn a lot about yourself in fatherhood.

I cannot begin to describe to you the ridiculous pains I went through to get these rather pointless statistics. I worked and worked and worked the Excel Worksheet — this spreadsheet now looks like something you would see in a really bad inventors workshop. You can see exposed wires and duct tape everywhere. Why does this column feed to that thing? What were you trying to do with that number? I feel quite certain that people with a facility for numbers and spreadsheets could have done the following work in about 3.2 minutes. I feel quite certain that somebody else had already FIGURED these numbers and if only I had tried I could have found the numbers on the Internet. But I decided that I had to do it myself, and it took me two days of trial and error and more error and another trial and another error and a stupid mistake and I have to start all over and … ugh. Hell, doubleheaders set me back three hours.

But I did it, and I’m pretty sure the following numbers are accurate or, anyway, close enough that I’m really not interested in hearing complaints.

Periodically, I’ll try to throw in some Johnny Damon and Detroit comments to keep the thing honest.

* * *

OK, so, the other day I reprinted Bill’s stat about how in the 2009 season: the team that got the most hits won 80.3% of the time. And it was while watching Johnny Damon hit in a spring training game against the Yankees, that I wondered if there was a way to break down other statistics. For instance, how often in 2009 did a team win when they hit the most home runs? How often did they win when they hit into the fewest double plays? How often did they win when they got the most men on base?

It was at that point that Damon hit a long home run — carried long by a howling Lakeland wind — and I thought: Hey, that’s a sign. Well, no, actually I didn’t think that. First, I thought how Damon, no matter how many years go by since his years in Kansas City, no matter how many teams he plays for or how much fame he gains, always goes out of his way to talk with me. During the World Series, he made a specific reference to me* during his press conference. There is no greater meaning to that — it’s not like Damon’s general friendliness to me has anything to do with how good a player or teammate he is — but I think about it. I like people who do not forget where they came from. I like people who connect to their past. I think most of us like people like that.

*I don’t know if you happened to watch the Big 12 Championship Game Saturday night … I was watching it in Fort Myers, and to be honest with you I was kind of nodding off. Not sleeping, you know, just kind of dozing. When all of a sudden I heard Brent Musburger say: “Joe Posnanski, one of the great sportswriters in America …”

I snapped awake. Wait. What? Wait, BRENT MUSBURGER said what? Huh? Wait, Brent Musburger is talking about me? It was this odd moment … hell, I’ve been watching Brent Musburger on TV since, well, frankly as far back as I can remember. I have mentioned here before — Musburger has been such a big part of my life as a sports fan that frankly he has crossed beyond that point of “Is he or isn’t he good?” He’s bigger than such questions. He’s the voice. To hear him just blurt out my name Brent Musburger! — well, it was a bit like this Mel Brooks bit about Cary Grant:

Second, I started to battle an Excel spreadsheet in order to get some answers. Finally, I was able to make it work … and Bill’s numbers about hits are (of course) exactly right.

More Hits than opponent: 1766 wins, 433 losses, .803 winning percentage. (Also: 231 ties).

So what about Times on Base? Well, it turns out, if you get more people on base you actually win quite a bit more often even than when you get more hits.

More Times on Base: 1880 wins, 393 losses, .827 winning percentage (Also: 157 ties).

That’s pretty good — get on base more often, you win about 83% of the time. Now, by my calculations, Washington lost 24 times in 2009 when the Nationals had more men on base. I cannot tell if this is hopeful sign or a discouraging sign. There are a lot of things I can’t tell about the Nationals. I can also tell you that the Nationals lost a game to Atlanta when they got 23 men on base, a very difficult thing to do. What’s even more amazing … they lost the game 6-5. To score five runs with 23 men on base is a pretty tough trick — teams will, on average, score a run for ever three or four runners they get on.

But the Minnesota Twins lost a game with 25 men on base (although at least they lost 14-13). The Marlins twice lost game — once to Arizona and once to Chicago — with 24 men on base.

I believe I mentioned this before: The White Sox got 16 men on base in a 1-0 loss to Seattle. But that’s not even close to a record. In 2001, the San Francisco Giants got 20 men on base in 18 innings against seven Arizona pitchers, and did not score.

More Home Runs: 1250 wins, 414 losses, .751 winning percentage (Also: 766 ties).

Seven teams — including Houston twice — lost when hitting five home runs in a game. Since 1954, the most home runs hit in a loss is seven — and it was done twice by the Detroit Tigers. In 2004, the Tigers hit six home runs off of Boston’s Tim Wakefield and another off Mike Timlin, but Wakefield got the win and Timlin got a hold. In 1995, the Tigers hit seven home runs off Chicago four pitchers — including Rob Dibble — but lost 14-12.

Fewest Left on Base: 951 wins, 1322 losses, .418 winning percentage (Also: 157 ties).

I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising … after all, leaving men on base means that you are GETTING people on base. But when I ran these numbers, I was surprised. I was really surprised. Maybe it’s because we have it jammed down our throats that you can’t win when you are leaving players on base. You have to take advantage of your opportunities!

But what this stat tells me is that scoring runs more about creating opportunities than cashing in on them — I think this takes us back to the whole RBI discussion. The RBI is a tempting stat to love because it feels tangible and heroic — to score runs, you usually need to someone to drive ‘em in. But what the numbers consistently seem to show is that if you create enough opportunities, SOMEONE is going to drive in those runs.

And if you don’t create as many or more opportunities as your opponent — no player and no team is consistently clutch enough to make up for that gap. Not over a long season. My evolving theory about baseball is like my evolving theory about life. Sure, there are heroics in baseball and in life. But you can’t count on ‘em. You’re better off banging on a lot of doors.

Five teams in 2009 left 17 men on base — that was the most in a game. Four of those teams won.

Fewer Grounded Into Double Plays: 884 wins, 673 losses, .568 winning percentage (Also: 873 ties).

Probably doesn’t mean much except to reiterate, perhaps, that outs are precious.

More Total Bases: 1926 wins, 347 losses, .847 winning percentage (Also: 157 ties).

In 2009, total bases was a better indicator of victory than times on base. Every team with 32 or more total bases won except those unlucky Minnesota Twins in their 14-13 loss to Oakland.

I ran a few more semi-advanced stats to see which one best predicted victory. I was surprised with the answer:

Teams that had more Runs Created: 2064 wins, 366 losses, .849 winning percentage.

Teams that had more Base Runs: 2071 wins, 359 losses, .852 winning percentage.

Teams with more Super Total Bases (total bases + walks + hit by pitch + stolen bases): 1994 wins, 332 losses, .857 winning percentage (Also: 104 ties).

And teams with the higher OPS: 2094 wins, 335 losses, ..862 winning percentage.

Yep, that surprised me. OPS won? I think it’s pretty well accepted among people who understand such things that OPS is a badly flawed statistic because it gives too much credit to slugging percentage and because you are not supposed to add fractions with different denominators and other stuff that, to be honest, goes a bit over my head. But unless I figured it wrong*, OPS was the strongest indicator of wins and losses I could find without inventing my own version of OPS**.

*A good possibility.

OK, more stats coming, but I just had another thought about Johnny Damon. You know, he only once finished in the Top 5 in batting average — and that was in Kansas City, 10 years ago, when no one except me and a few Royals fans were paying attention. That was long before his Idiot days and his hair days. Damon has only led the league in runs scored once (that same year) and in stolen bases once (that same year). His .355 lifetime on-base percentage is good but hardly legendary. He has never hit 25 home runs in a season. He has only made two All-Star teams. His arm tends to be the punch-line to many baseball jokes.

And still, there’s a pretty decent chance, if Johnny Damon stays healthy for another four or five years, that he will get 3,000 hits in his career. He will 100 triples. He will hit 500 doubles. He will steal 400 bases. He will hit 250 homers.

Do you know how many players have made that stat bouillabaisse? Take a minute. Think about it: 3,000 hits, 500 doubles, 100 triples, 250 homers, 400 stolen bases. Paul Molitor? Willie Mays? Rickey Henderson? Craig Biggio?

Here you go: Nobody. As in: Nobody.

I know, you can create a stat line that will separate any layer: Who is the only player in baseball history to get more than 800 hits while hitting only one home run? You betcha: Duane Kuiper! But my point is that Johnny Damon, who has not put up many jaw-dropping seasons in his career, can collect a series of numbers unlike any in baseball history. And on top of that, he looks to be on pace to finish somewhere in the Top 20 all-time in runs scored. And he will pass 1,000 RBIs this season.

And you know why? Because he has been unsinkable. Because he has played 140-plus games every year since 1996, because his average is usually somewhere close to .300, because he battles pitchers for long at-bats, because he runs the bases hard and intelligently year after year, because even with that weak arm he tends to play a solid corner outfield, because he often will take the media questions which allows his teammates to avoid all that stuff. He’s always there. And teams are happy to have him there.

Of course, it also could end quickly for Damon. He’s 36. He has taken a beating. You never know what will happen with players in their late 30s. But Bill James recently did a fascinating study on players who got the absolute most out of their careers and out of their talent. He did not do active players … But I suspect that no matter how the rest of his career turns out, nobody of his generation has gotten more out of his talent and his body than Johnny Damon.

OK, a few more team victory stats. Here are three core stats that we use here all the time BA/OBP/SLG

Higher Batting Average: 1963 wins, 434 losses, .819 winning percentage. (Also: 33 ties)

Higher On-Base Percentage: 2003 wins, 395 losses, .835 winning percentage. (Also: 32 ties)

Higher Slugging Percentage: 2,016 wins, 393 losses, .837 winning percentage (Also: 21 ties).

What does any of this mean? Probably not much that we don’t already know. To win, you need to get on base. To win, you need to move runners around bases. To win, you need to prevent the other team from doing the same. No deep insights there.

But the beautiful thing about baseball is even if you do the right things — even if you have MORE hits than your opponent and get on base MORE times than your opponent and hit MORE home runs than your opponent … you still might lose. In fact, in 2009 teams that outhit their opponent AND got on base more often AND hit more home runs still lost 33 times. Colorado did it and lost four times, the Yankees and Rays did it and lost three. There are still mysteries in this game.

In fact, teams that had more RBIs lost 15 times in 2009. The San Diego Padres lost three times with more RBIs. And another 90 times, the winning and losing team had the same number of RBIs.

But, it should be noted that the team that had the most runs scored finished 2,430-0.

Which of those two options would give you a better chance of winning?

* * *

There are many things I love about reading the words of my friend Bill James. But I think the thing I love most is that whenever I read anything by him — an essay, a blurb, an email, whatever — I find that it sparks me to write something. I’ve never really talked with Bill about this, but to me that is a unique quality of his writing: A reader feeds off it. To read Bill is to have a conversation with him. He writes interactively.

I thought about this again the other day when I was reading an essay in The Bill James Gold Mine 2010, and I came across the most perfect sentence I’ve read about the problem with RBIs.

As you probably know, the problem with RBIs and the similar problem with pitcher wins have been two of the hotter topics on this blog for a long time. Bill actually begins the essay — which is called “The Attribution Problem (in Baseball and in Life) — by talking about pitcher wins. He writes:

We attribute the victory won by the team to the individual pitcher — and then conclude, based essentially on that attribution, that the pitcher is the key to victory.

That sums it up pretty well, doesn’t it? The win is all about sleight of hand. Pitchers don’t win games, and pitchers don’t lose games — that should be obvious to everyone. But people decided a long time ago just the opposite: That pitchers do win and lose games. We actually credit them with wins and losses. And based on that decision we have made many suspect judgments through the years based on little evidence — such as the dubious idea that pitchers can “pitch to the score,” or the concept that some pitchers are “Just winners,” or the various calculations that estimate pitching is 60% of baseball or 75% of baseball or 90% of baseball.

Similar thing with RBIs — though I think the attribution problem is even more stark with RBIs. At least with wins and losses, hey, a pitcher does have quite a lot of control over the run prevention half of baseball. He doesn’t do it alone, not even close to alone. He will rely on his defense, and he will rely on his ballpark, and he will rely on his catcher, and he will rely on whoever is calling pitches, and he will rely on luck and countless other things, but few would argue with the premise that when it comes to stopping the other team’s offense, you begin with the pitcher.

The RBI guy, though, is not necessarily the most important guy when it comes to scoring runs. It SEEMS that he is because that’s what we are conditioned to believe. We are taught, throughout our baseball fan lives, to lionize the big-time RBI players. We have been conditioned — by MVP votes, by fantasy baseball, by all the stories in newspapers about “productive” hitters, by announcer voices that celebrate the clutch hits — to believe that runs, for the most part, come about because of the hitter who drives them in.

But it really isn’t so. Take this situation: One out, Rick Manning cracks a line drive single. Duane Kuiper hits a high chopper in front of the plate, he’s out, but Manning takes second. Jim Norris, with first base open and two outs, works for a walk. Manning and Norris move up on a wild pitch. Pitcher works around Andre Thornton, and he walks. Then, with a 3-1 count and the bases loaded, the pitcher has to throw a fastball that catches too much of the plate, and Rico Carty rolls a single between short and third, scoring two runs.

That’s a fairly typical sequence, I would guess. In our mind and in our statbook, Carty is the hero — two RBIs. He is, in fan and media shorthand, RESPONSIBLE for those runs. But he isn’t. Carty’s single didn’t make those two runs happen. Those two runs scored because of a series of events, and Carty’s single was just the last of those events.

And this is the point: Teams don’t score runs because they have uniquely talented RBI men. Teams score runs because more often than their opponents, they put together a string of useful offensive plays — walks, hits, stolen bases, hit-by-pitch, beating out double play grounders, taking extra bases, advancing on throws , on and on and on. That, most of the time, is what lead to runs.* The RBI guy cannot do it himself except with solo home runs. And teams don’t win games by hitting solo home runs. No, really, they don’t. I looked it up. In 2009, offenses that scored all their runs on solo home runs were 24-193. Houston lost a game to Cincinnati 6-5 while hitting five solo home runs. For the decade, teams relying entirely on solo home runs went 267-1837.**

*You can reduce the confusion and make it pretty simple, really. Here’s a Bill James stat to think about, and it focuses only on hits: How often does a team win when they get more hits than their opponents? Well, in 2009 the answer: 80.3% of the time. Teams won four out of five games when they got more hits than their opponents. How remarkable is this? Well, I’m glad you asked — we go back to the trivia question at the top. You’re a manager of a baseball team, and before the game the genie gives you the choice: You can either outhit your opponent tonight or you can hit three or more homers tonight … which one would be more likely to bring you the victory.

Teams that outhit their opponents won 80.3% of the time.
Teams that hit three-or-more homers won 78.4% of the time.

**And for the record: Only one team in baseball since 1954 scored exclusively on six solo home runs in a game — the 1991 Oakland A’s. They lost 8-6 to Minnesota.

So, my point is, that people have through the years counted RBIs and celebrated RBIs and given too much credit to to the men who knock them in. And, as a result, many people have come to determine that RBI men are the most valuable part of an offense. That’s the circular thinking we have here.

Well, I have been bouncing around this topic for a long time, never quite getting to the heart of things. And it wasn’t until I read the following sentence from Bill that it all snapped into place for me:

If you add a low-average power hitter to a bad team, the low average power hitter will lead the team in RBI — and the team will score fewer runs, not more.

Bingo. There it is. All this time, I’ve been wondering, for instance, why Jose Guillen’s 97 RBIs for Kansas City in 2008 bothered me so much. I mean, sure, I knew Guillen was mostly crummy that year (a 95 OPS+ despite two extremely hot months). And I knew that those 97 RBIs just felt pointless. But, hey, I’m not immune to the seductive powers of RBIs. I will see 97 RBIs, especially for a Royals player, and think “Well, hey, that’s a lot.” The Royals had not had anyone with more than 86 RBIs since Carlos Beltran and Raul Ibanez left town. So, hey, at least Guillen did that, right?

But it bugged me. And as soon as I read that Bill statement, I instinctively knew why. I went to Baseball Reference, and confirmed what I was thinking.

The Royals without Guillen scored 706 runs in 2007.
The Royals with Guillen’s RBIs scored 691 runs in 2008.

That was it all right. Guillen’s RBIs were an illusion. He did not make the team’s offense any better at all. He may have contributed RBIs — giving the Royals someone to credit for their lousy offense — but he did not contribute any actual improvement to the offense. Frankly, he made the Royals offense worse. Several players — Alex Gordon, David DeJesus, Mike Aviles — had markedly better years than in 2007. But the Royals had Jose Guillen and his dreadful .300 on-base percentage hitting in the middle of the lineup. He drove in runs. But he did not help.

This is not an uncommon theme in baseball history. Bad teams (and, to be fair, mediocre and good teams too) often will fall for the allure of the RBI guy. A middle of the order bat. A producer. And, hey, it can help you if you get an RBI guy who is also, you know, a GOOD HITTER, you know, someone who hits for an average and gets on base and slugs and all that. But the teams aren’t necessarily looking for good. No. They are looking for “productive.” They are looking for RBI men.

After winning 89 games during the 1989 season, San Diego felt like it needed a middle-of-the-order bat, so the Padres traded for RBI guru Joe Carter. And Carter did exactly what they hoped he would do — he drove in 115 RBIs. Unfortunately, he also punched up an 85 OPS+ … and the Padres dropped from fifth to eighth in runs scored and and finished 75-87.

Just before the 1992 season started — I mean just before, on March 30 — the Chicago White Sox determined they needed a middle of the order bat to make a run. So they traded for George Bell, a guy who had driven in more than 85 RBIs for eight straight seasons. And it worked: Bell drove in 112 RBIs for the White Sox. Trouble is, he had a 99 OPS+. He was a below average hitter. The White Sox scored 20 fewer runs and won one less game.

And, of course, one of the players they included in that deal: Sammy Sosa.

In 2004, the Montreal Expos signed Tony Batista to a contract, and then batted him third or fourth, and why not? He bashed 32 home runs! He drove in 110 RBIs! Great year! Unfortunately, his on-base percentage was .272, and the Expos scored 76 fewer runs than they had the year before.

I’m not doing a full study on this … I’m sure there are some counter-examples of low-on base percentage guys with a lot of RBIs who helped a team. Maybe. But there are probably not many. It’s pretty well documented that scoring runs is a process of getting on base and advancing on the bases. There are more accurate ways to figure it, like Base Runs, but if you simply multiply on-base percentage by total bases — that basic version of runs created — you will come pretty close to the number of runs a team scores. This really isn’t a mystery.

So, no, low average, low-on-base guys simply do not help the offense very much, even if they have a lot of RBIs. They just don’t. In their case, the RBI numbers is a deception. Now, it should be pointed out that the most big RBI men are also good or great hitters. But I would argue that RBIs are a by-product of their greatness, not the root. Willie Mays wasn’t great because he drove in 100 runs 10 times. He drove in 100 runs 10 times because he was great.

All of which (finally) brings us to Houston’s new third baseman Pedro Feliz. You know the Astros signed Feliz during the off-season for $4.5 million — he was the big offensive acquisition for a team that finished 14th in the league last year in runs scored. Now, I should start by saying the Feliz is not without value. He is an excellent defensive third baseman. He has never won a Gold Glove, but I think he should have won in 2007 for sure, and he had a strong case the previous two years. He does not seem quite as mobile now — he used to be the best in baseball at charging the bunt; now, not so much — but he’s still awfully good defensively. And he has a great arm. And, by all accounts, he seems a very good guy.

Also, every now and then, his bat will run into a fastball.

OK, those are the positives. Now, the downside: Feliz is a terrible hitter. No, really, dreadful … historically dreadful. The last five years, Feliz has not had an OPS+ of better than 85 in any season. The last four years, his combined OPS+ is 80. His batting Runs Above Replacement? Minus-70.9 for his career. He isn’t just worse offensively than a replacement level player, he’s A LOT worse. His .293 on-base percentage … worst in baseball for the decade (4,000 or more PAs).

Feliz isn’t a bad big league hitter … he’s an atrocious hitter.

BUT … yep, he has some decent-looking RBI numbers. Feliz is the only player in baseball history to have three 80 RBI seasons with sub-85 OPS+. So he’s got that going for him. Among all players with career OPS+ of less than 85 (min. 2,000 plate appearances), only Craig Paquette has more RBIs per plate appearance. Bob Boone used to say that the ball “exploded” off of Craig Paquette’s bat. He said that a lot.

So Feliz is a poor hitter who got enough at-bats on good teams to drive in runs. Pretty obvious, right? Nobody inside baseball would fall for that illusion. Right?

Here’s what it says about Feliz in The Sporting News:

“The Astros moved quickly to sign free-agent third baseman Pedro Feliz who has four 80-RBI seasons on his resume …”

Um. Oh oh. And in The Houston Chronicle:

“Astros general manager Ed Wade is direct with his expectations of Feliz, saying the team projects third base to produce 85 to 90 runs.” This is followed by the writer adding: “A career .254 hitter with a below average on-base percentage of .293, Feliz nonetheless has forged a reputation as a consistent run producer.”

Oh no. And in USA Today, quote after quote about how Feliz’s championship experience in Philadelphia will bring happy intangibles to Houston. And then there’s something in there about how Feliz’s .301 batting average in Houston is the highest he has in any park with at-least 25 at-bats. Not to even get into the silliness of small sample size … do you know what Feliz’s numbers are at Minute Maid Park the last three years? Yep, he’s hitting .250/.298/.295. That’s about what you can expect.

Of course, people have to say nice things … but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I think the Astros realistically expect Feliz to help them offensively this year. And I think that is as good sign a sign as any that the Astros are going to have a rough year. It never fails to amaze me how baseball people trying to turn around bad teams have this amazing knack for seeing what they want to see and drawing unlikely conclusions and creating unrealistic happily ever afters. Pedro Feliz cannot hit. At all. He hasn’t been able to hit the last five years, and now he’s getting old which could mean he will hit even less.

But if the Astros hit him 5th or 6th all year, which seems to be the plan, he might drive in 80-plus RBIs. Some people will point to the RBI number and maybe feel good about things. Maybe there will be pressure to bring Feliz back — you can’t let go of a third baseman with 80-plus RBIs! And it will remain a mystery why the Astros don’t actually get any better.

Of course, it’s not really an equal opportunity. Best I can tell, there really aren’t many “Gardy is Awesome” websites out there. This seems to be one of the closest things. On the other hand, there is the FireRonGardenhire Blogspot. There’s the apparently more official FireRonGardenhire Website. There’s the more informal firegardy.com. My dear Kansas friend Ken Tremendous wanted to know if Gardenhire was the worst manager in baseball, an astonishing question considering that was the year the Twins would go on to win 96 games and Dusty Baker’s Cubs, with the third biggest payroll in baseball, would lose 96.*

*Not to say that Ken and the boys failed to take Sir Dusty to task from time to time.

I’m not entirely sure why there isn’t much Gardy appreciation out there. Yes, I understand that Gardenhire will make his share of bizarre decisions — for instance he is the guy who keeps giving Nick Punto a staggering number of at-bats. Yes, I feel confident that if I watched him every day, point by point, I would be annoyed by many of his managerial habits. Yes, I feel sure that people who follow Gardy on a daily basis can send me a long, long list of Gardy transgressions — I feel sure about this because my email is filled with such lists.

But, I don’t know, it seems to me that the guy has managed the Twins to five division titles in his eight years, or, to put it another way, THE GUY HAS MANAGED THE TWINS TO FIVE DIVISION TITLES IN HIS EIGHT YEARS. I mean, sure, you would expect a good manager to manage the Twins to at least six division titles in eight years, but, doesn’t he get SOME credit for this? He’s done this even though the Twins have never in those years had a payroll in baseball’s top half. And only once in all those years, in 2003, did the Twins have even the highest payroll in the low-paying division. Last year, the Twins had the lowest payroll.They won. Gardy won a division title in 2002 and a division title in 2009, and he did not have any of the same starting players. It seems pretty good to me.

Sure, you could say that the Twins success comes from their scouting, from their player development, from their star players, from anyone BUT Gardy, and I would not be able to prove you wrong. Maybe the Twins win year after year despite Gardy. Maybe he’s the guy who keeps making the $40-$60 million payroll Twins underachieve year after year. I don’t know. I don’t see it that way.

I bring this up now because in my recent post about Joe Nathan, I mentioned — just mentioned — that I would not doubt Gardy’s ability to find a solution. After all, his team did win the division title last year even though Joe Mauer missed a month, Justin Morneau missed a month and the starting rotation was basically dreadful. This led to the following comment from Brilliant Reader Chris …

I know this isn’t a post about Ron Gardenhire, but I have to comment on this.

I know you love Gardenhire, but this argument did nothing for me. Mauer was out for a month, but for the rest of the year he was unbelievable. Losing Morneau hurt, but the last month of the season was only set up by the Tigers’ collapse. And starter’s ERA doesn’t do anything for me without context. How does that compare with other teams, specifically the Tigers? Again, I know this wasn’t a Gardenhire post, but that paragraph bothered me as being lazy, from a writer who usually is not.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you. I found this comment to be exceedingly grating. And one of the reasons I found this to be exceedingly grating is because it seems to me that these are the paper thin arguments people typically make against Gardy.

FIrst, we don’t ALL agree that the Twins won simply because the Tigers fell apart. The Twins won 17 of their last 21 games including the one-game playoff against the Tigers to win the title. Yes, the Tigers did fall apart. Yes, the Tigers went 8-10 in their last 18 games. Yes, if the Tigers had played better they would have won the division. So what? They didn’t play better. The Twins were virtually unbeatable at the right time. The Twins won 87 games. The Twins won the division.

Secondly — I have no idea what the Mauer point is. Joe Mauer was really good the rest of the year so the fact he missed the first month doesn’t matter? I would think that makes it matter MORE … the point is that the Twins were without the best player in the league for a month and still won the division. Yes, looking back, I’m pretty sure that was the point.

Also, I’m not sure what you mean by saying that Mauer’s great season had NOTHING to do with Gardenhire. I mean, I’m not saying that you have to give Ron Gardenhire any credit for Joe Mauer being a great player. You don’t. But why the hostility? Mauer has blossomed into the best player in the league, and Ron Gardenhire has been his big league manager the whole time.

Thirdly, I have no idea how losing Justin Morneau was in any way set up by the Tigers’ collapse. I don’t follow that. What I do know is that Justin Morneau is a very good hitter, a star, and he missed the last month or so with an injury and the Twins won 17 of 21 games without him to win the title. That seems pretty straightforward.

Fourth, the Twins 4.84 starter ERA is lousy — it’s lousy on its face, and it’s lousy compared to the Tigers starters (which was a half run better) and it’s lousy compared to league average.

I don’t mean to pick on one comment — the point is we get a LOT of seemingly angry anti-Gardy stuff like that around here. And a lot of it just seems petty to me. Look, I think he’s a great manager. A lot of people think he’s a fraud. That’s fine. I can point to five division champions. A lot of people can point to his weak division and playoff failure. That’s fine. I can point to a team that has consistently won and players who consistently play well for him as the season goes along. A lot of people can point to Gardy’s bizarre individual decisions and they would rather credit other people for the Twins’ success. That’s fine too.

And I’m not saying I’m right. But I’m not saying I’m wrong either. I guess the Gardy anger just seems a bit out of place to me. I’m just telling you, he could manage for me any day.

Player of the Day: Jose Reyes, shortstop, NY Mets

Of course, different people have different ideas about what makes an exciting baseball player. But, in general, the blueprint would look an awful lot like Jose Reyes.

In fact, not that long ago, Bill James and I plotted out formula (admittedly the formula is a lot more me than Bill — he just offered suggestions) to try and determine the most exciting players in baseball. I lost that original formula, but I tried to recreate it, taking into account triples (the most exciting play in baseball!), stolen bases, batting average, defensive excitement (subjective) and a couple of other things. I’m pretty sure I created the most wildly flawed formula to appear on the Internet today.

Here then, according to this wildly flawed formula, are the 11 most exciting seasons of the last 25 years:

1. Jose Reyes, 2006.
2. Jose Reyes, 2008
3. Jimmy Rollins, 2007
4. Ichiro Suzuki, 2001
5. Carl Crawford, 2004
6. Jose Reyes, 2007
7. Chuck Knoblauch, 1996.
8. Hanley Ramirez, 2006
9. Tony Gwynn, 1987
10. Tim Raines, 1985
11. Carlos Beltran, 2001.

Obviously, you can create your own formula — and I hope you will — but the point is that at least according to one fairly standard view, Reyes defined exciting baseball. He hit lots of triples. He also hit doubles and a few home runs. He led the league in stolen bases three years in a row. He made dazzling plays at shortstop. Sure, there were always people who thought Reyes needed to get on base more and could have been a touch steadier defensively. But that stuff would come! The point with Reyes was excitement. He was exciting. The Mets were exciting.

Anyway, that’s how it was in 2006, when Reyes was 23 years old and the Mets won 97 games. That’s also how it was in 2007, when Reyes stole 78 bases — most in 20 years — and the Mets led the National League East by seven games in mid-September, you know, before losing 12 of their last 17 and blowing it to the Phillies.

Oh well, there was excitement even then. The Mets signed the best pitcher in baseball, Johan Santana. Reyes has probably his best season — led the league with 204 hits and 19 triples, stole 56 bases. And the Mets led the National League East by 3 1/2 games in mid-September, you know, before losing four of their next five and never again getting back into first place.

Sure, the late season fadeouts hurt. They hurt a lot. But — and it’s easy to forget this — the Mets still looked to be in awfully good shape. Reyes was exciting. Santana was dazzling. Third baseman David Wright was one of the best players in baseball. Center fielder Carlos Beltran was one of the best players in baseball. Carlos Delgado had hit 38 home runs — the 11th time in 12 years he hit 30-plus homers. Francisco Rodriguez came to New York after he had set the single-season save record in Anaheim — finally, the Mets had their answer for the Great Rivera.

So, how did it all go so wrong? Just look at the Mets now. They are now arguing over Jose Reyes thyroid. That’s the big story at Mets camp these days. The Mets seem to believe — based on what they’re hearing from doctors — that Reyes has an overactive thyroid. Reyes seems to believe — based on what he’s hearing from doctors — that his thyroid is fine. Everybody is waiting for the results from the latest tests. These days, Jose Reyes’ thyroid has the third highest Q-Rating in New York, behind only David Paterson and David Letterman. It could get its own show by the weekend.

Of course, the thyroid talk is just an emblem of the Mets issues — of Carlos Beltran’s knee surgery, of David Wright’s power outage, of Carlos Delgado’s hip injury, of the surgery Johan Santana had to remove bone chips, of the Mets abominable 70-92 record last year*

*The Mets became the first team in baseball history to spend $140 million (well, $149 million and some change) and have a losing record. Here is a list of all the teams to spend $140 million on payroll in a season and their win total:

2009 Mets: 70 wins
2009 Yankees: 103 wins
2008 Yankees: 89 wins
2007 Yankees: 94 wins
2007 Red Sox: 96 wins
2006 Yankees: 97 wins
2005 Yankees: 95 wins
2004 Yankees: 101 wins
2003 Yankees: 101 wins

In other words, the thyroid talk is just the latest in a whole bunch of really weird things to happen to the Mets. Of course, Mets fans — at least the ones I hear from all the time — seem to think this is all just part of being … Mets fans. The It’s all part of the tradition. The Mets have a proud history of “The Mets Being The Mets” that, of course, goes back to the 1962 team that most people would agree was the worst baseball team of the last 100 years.

The teams that followed were not much better — until the 1969 Miracle Mets and the 1973 Ya Gotta Believe Mets. Then, the late 1970s, another dreadful lull, that time when Joe Torre came to understand that it’s hard to be a genius with Lenny Randle at third, Doug Flynn at second and Craig Swan as your Opening Day starter.

Then, came the great mid-80s Mets that didn’t win quite as much as they should have won. Then came the dreadful early 1990s Mets, the good-but-not-good enough late 1990s Mets, the dreadful early 2000s Mets, and finally this team dealing with a spotty lineup, a spotty rotation and a thyroid problem.

The thing is, that if they could stop the bad momentum … this Mets team has talent. Johan Santana, if he’s healthy, is as good as anybody. Beltran appears to be on the mend after knee surgery — he says that he’s feeling better about his knee than he has in years. You would like to believe that David Wright, having worked out whatever swing problems he had last year, will return to being a terrific player. Jason Bay gives the Mets a strong middle-of-the lineup bat. The rotation — with 20-somethings Mike Pelfrey, John Maine and Oliver Perez — could be OK, and K-Rod is still a top closer no matter what Goose Gossage may have said about him.*

*I guess Gossage called K-Rod a “clown” because of his theatrics on the field, and K-Rod responded by saying he had never heard of Gossage. So, that went well. Gossage also suggested that while Mariano Rivera is the best “modern reliever,” he prefers himself and the 52 saves he got where he got at least seven outs. Rivera, he points out, only has two of those. Case closed.

1. Rollie Fingers, 74 saves
2. Dan Quisenberry, 65 saves
3. Gene Garber, 64 saves
4. Hoyt Wilhelm, 61 saves
5. Mike Marshall, 57 saves
6. Sparky Lyle, 56 saves
7. Goose Gossage, 52 saves
8. Lindy McDaniel, 51 saves
9. Bill Campbell, 49 saves
10. Bob Stanley, 48 saves.

And then there’s Jose Reyes. He was hurt for almost all of the 2009 season. He has had a rough camp with his thyroid issues and with the FBI questioning him about his connection to Canadian doctor Tony Galea, who has been charged with conspiring to smuggle HgH into the U.S. But here’s the thing. He’s only 26 years old. He says that he feels healthy. He still has the talent to be one of the most exciting players in the game. And he and the Mets are due for something good … it has to happen one of these days.

Player of the Day: Joe Nathan, pitcher, Minnesota.

OK, before we get to the heart of the matter – and the elbow of Joe Nathan – it’s probably worthwhile to show you a few numbers that could blow your mind. Here are Joe Nathan’s statistics against the other four teams in the American League Central:

Kansas City Royals: 3-0, 0.85 ERA, 35 saves, team hitting .144 against him.
Detroit Tigers: 2-1, 1.55 ERA, 30 saves, team hitting .153 against him.
Chicago White Sox: 3-2, 2.06 ERA, 24 saves, team hitting .151 against him.
Cleveland Indians: 3-1, 2.98 ERA, 26 saves, team hitting .201 against him.

And here is how some of the biggest stars of the division have hit against Nathan over the last six years:

Grady Sizemore: 0-for-15 with 7 strikeouts.
Miguel Cabrera: 0-for-8 with 4 strikeouts.
Frank Thomas: 0-for-7 with 6 strikeouts.
Miguel Olivo: 0-for-8 with 6 strikeouts.
Reggie Sanders: 0-for-12 with 6 strikeouts.
Juan Uribe: 0-for-10 with 5 strikeouts.
Alberto Callaspo: 0-for-9 with 2 strikeouts.
Jose Guillen, 0-for-6 with 2 strikeouts.

Admittedly, yeah, the last few there are not stars or even close to stars, but, well, there aren’t that many non-Minnesota hitting stars in the American League Central. If you want, you can add in Manny Ramirez (0-for-7 with 5 Ks), Raul Ibanez (0-for-6 with 3 Ks), Ian Kinsler (0-for-6 with 1 K) and so on. There are more than 200 players who have gotten at least 2 plate appearances against Nathan and have not managed a hit.

And all that gets us to the point, which is this: NOBODY is going to replace Joe Nathan as closer for Minnesota, not if you understand the word “replace” to mean “fill the role.” Nobody. If Nathan’s torn ulnar collateral ligament leads to surgery – Nathan insists he will pitch through the injury it if at all possible – then he will be out for the season. And if he is out for the season, then the Twins will have myriad options for the ninth inning.

— They could give the job to Jon Rauch, the 31-year-old skyscraper who at 6-foot-11 looks like a closer, and who did the job passably with Washington for a while. He’s your experience candidate.

— Jose Mijaries, 25 years old, is the youth candidate. He has a great arm, and he pitched well last season; he was especially good in key moments. The league hit just .169 off him in high leverage situation – those situations when the game was most on the line.

— Longtime Nathan setup men Jesse Crain and Matt Guerrier are the “don’t change horses in mid-stream” candidate. Crain is 28, Guerrier is 31 – both have been good and shaky in their time with the Twins. Guerrier, unlike Crain, was good last year; he led the league in appearances and had the best WHIP of his career (.969 walks and hits per inning pitched). Neither candidate will excite anyone.

— Pat Neshek is the surprise candidate. Neshek was terrific in the Twins bullpen in 2006 and 2007 before he underwent Tommy John surgery. He has not thrown a pitch in a big league game since May of 2008, though the hope is that he’s healthy again.

— Francisco Liriano is the hope and change candidate. He was electrifying in 2006 as a 22-year-old. He went 12-3, struck out about 11 batters per nine innings, was often unhittable. And then he hurt his elbow, got Tommy John surgery, and he has never been the same. Last year, he was 5-13 with a 5.80 ERA and he gave up 147 hits in 136 2/3. There is this lingering hope among some that maybe in the pen, Liriano could regain his magic. The Twins would have to go out and get another starter – maybe someone like Jarrod Washburn – but it’s at least a possibility.

There are probably other options that I’m not even considering – don’t be surprised if the Twins go closer by committee until one pitcher emerges naturally. Still, the one certainty is that whatever substitute the Twins find, he won’t be Joe Nathan. So what does it all mean? Well, people have different feelings about the importance of closers. Many people inside baseball think a good closer is absolutely crucial to a team’s success. Look at Rivera. Look at Papelbon. Look at Nathan. It is true that just about every team that wins a World Series has a strong closer.

Others think that the closer role, while important, is probably overrated. There is a point to that. Look at the Philadelphia Phillies.

In 2008, the Phillies were second in the league in runs scored, and fourth in ERA, and closer Brad Lidge was virtually unhittable – he saved 41 games in 41 opportunities. He finished fourth in the MVP balloting.

In 2009, the Phillies were first in the league in runs scored, sixth in ERA, and closer Brad Lidge was a fiasco – he was 0-8, with a catastrophic 7.21 ERA and 11 blown saves.

The Phillies won one more game in 2009 than they did in 2008.

So, yes, there are arguments both ways. It’s difficult to say just how much the Twins will be hurting without Nathan’s dominance and his aura of invincibility inside the division. I have long talked about how much I think of manager Ron Gardenhire and his ability to improvise. Let’s face it: Last year, the Twins were without Joe Mauer for the first month and Justin Morneau for the last, and their starters ERA was 4.84. But they still won the division. So, yeah, it’s hard to say what the Twins will come up with.

What you can say is that, even before this injury, the Twins issue coming into 2010 was their pitching. The rotation – with Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, Nick Blackburn, Carl Pavano, and Liriano – seems to lack a true No. 1 starter. There may not be a true No. 2 starter in there.

Most people still picked the Twins because their offense should score a bunch of runs – they were fourth in the league in runs scored and added Orlando Hudson, J.J. Hardy and Jim Thome – and their bullpen, with Nathan playing the starring role, would make up for it. Now, with Nathan potentially out of the picture, it’s different. The American League Central has a bunch of flawed teams. The White Sox offense still looks one dimensional – homer or nothing – and the Tigers could have trouble scoring runs, and the Indians and Royals need a lot of things to go right.

But with Nathan hurting, there is definitely a new wind of hope blowing through the American League Central. Combined, the Indians, Tigers, Royals and White Sox hit .161 against Joe Nathan. They’ll be happy to take their swings against someone else.

Player of the Day: Aroldis Chapman, pitcher, Cincinnati.

GOODYEAR, Az. – We live in a world where there just aren’t many surprises. We know who will win the Academy Awards before they win. We hear about the best college football and basketball players long before they reach college. We hear rumors about the remarkable capabilities of the iPad months before the thing comes out.

So, no, there just aren’t too many revelations in our lives.

Maybe that is why the spring training phenom still electrifies us. Here it is, a cool gray day in Arizona. The Cincinnati Reds play the Kansas City Royals. There are a couple thousand people in the stands, maybe. There’s no buzz in the stands. How could there be any buzz? The Reds and Royals playing on a Monday afternoon in a spring training game under gray skies in Arizona?

And then: Aroldis Chapman steps on the mound. You have probably heard Chapman’s story. He is a 22-year-old left-handed pitcher from Cuba. He tried to defect from Cuba in 2008, was arrested, was given a reprieve and then successfully defected in Amsterdam. He eventually signed with the Cincinnati Reds for more than $30 million, which seems like a startling amount of money for someone who has never pitched in the big leagues.

And then: You watch Aroldis Chapman pitch.

“I mean, holy cow,” says longtime Kansas City scout Art Stewart.

Holy cow. There was a time in baseball when baseball phenoms would just show up, when blazing fast and switch-hitting sluggers would wander out of the Oklahoma mines and 17-year-old pitchers throwing 100 mph would walk off of farms in Iowa. But now – you can follow baseball prospects through high school, through college, through the minor leagues, you can see film on them on the Internet, you can hear scouts talk about them, you can find prospect lists that go all the way to No. 2,000.

And then here comes Chapman. He’s tall and lean – he looks taller than the 6-foot-4 that is listed in the media guide. He picks up the baseball to warm up, and he throws so easy, like he’s skipping a rock on a lake. The ball popped hard into the glove. The next one popped harder. Kansas City manager Trey Hillman was only half joking when he used that old line about how Chapman’s pitches “sounded good.” They really did sound good.

But the amazing part was the ease … there was no grunting, no straining, no laboring. You hear that line all the time about athletes who look as if they were born to do something. Chapman struck out David DeJesus on a hard-sweeping slider that seemed to break two feet. He struck out Chris Getz on a 100-mph fastball that sliced the outside corner – anyway Stewart clocked the pitch at 100 mph. Another scout clocked it at 102. Another got it at 98. Chris Getz’s speed approximation: “It was moving.”

Two batters later Chapman struck out Rick Ankiel on a slider that Ankiel missed by so much he had to be rebooked on a later flight. Watching Ankiel trying to hit Chapman was somewhere between comedy and tragedy; you got the sense that if Ankiel faced Chapman 100 times, he would strike out 100 times.

The Ankiel at-bat was especially poignant because there was a time, not long ago, when Ankiel was that left-handed pitching phenom, the 19-year-old kid who had struck out 416 batters in just 298 minor league innings. No, you never know exactly how the phenom’s story will play out.

On a day like this, really, anything seems possible.

“I would say Chapman has the best young left-handed arm I’ve seen since Herb Score,” Art Stewart says, and here he is referring back to one of my heroes, Score, who as a 22 and 23-year-old for the Cleveland Indians led the American League in strikeouts. That was in 1955 and 1956. Score seemed to be on his way to becoming one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history – Sandy Koufax before Sandy Koufax – when he got hit in the eye on a line drive by Gil McDougald.

But, Art Stewart concedes, even the Herb Score comparison isn’t quite right because Score had a famously violent motion. Chapman makes you think he could throw 115 mph if he was really trying.

Chapman has already made his goals known: He wants to be the best pitcher in the world. So, sure, he was thoroughly unimpressed by his two-inning, one hit, three strikeout game in Goodyear where he may or may not have hit 100 mph on the radar gun.

“I wasn’t worried about how hard I threw,” he said. “But I did (throw 100), it’s just one of those things.”

It’s a funny thing: Every year, there are a couple of teams that are hot preseason choices, and this year’s teams seem to be Seattle and Cincinnati. The Reds have a good and fairly young middle of the lineup – Jay Bruce, Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips – some promising young pitchers like Johnny Cueto and Homer Bailey and a couple of proven veterans like Scott Rolen and Aaron Harang.

The Reds, like most teams trying to break through after a long dry spell, could use something amazing to happen. And here’s Aroldis Chapman, a pitcher longtime Reds announcer Marty Brennaman calls the best arm he has seen come through in 30 years. Here’s a left-handed pitcher with a 100 mph fastball and a desire to be the best ever. Here’s a real live phenom, out of nowhere, the kind baseball used to have.

“Well, hey, they did spend $30 million on him,” Art Stewart says. “But I would say they got their money’s worth.” 

And I would answer: Because it’s there.

We start with Joakim Soria, reliever deluxe for the Kansas City Royals.

Johan Santana was 21 years old when the Minnesota Twins got him in the Rule 5 Draft. Well, technically the Minnesota Twins took Jared Camp with the first pick from Cleveland, the Florida Marlins took Santana with the second pick from Houston, and then they swapped. You may ask why they did it that way … and the answer seems to be that the Twins wanted to save the 50K that it costs to make a Rule 5 selection. That should tell you how things were in Minnesota then.

Santana had not pitched especially well in the minor leagues. But he had a great arm — even then his strikeout numbers were terrific — and he was left-handed, and the Twins were awful, had been for seven or eight years, so carrying him seemed a viable option. Santana pitched 86 innings in his Rule 5 year for the Twins, had a 6.49 ERA and walked about as many as he struck out. Obviously, he was raw. But the Twins saw something great in him. In 2002, they sent him to the minors to perfect his change-up. He was down there for 48 innings, he struck out 75 batters.

And when he returned, he was ready. He spent the last month of 2002 in the bullpen, and he struck out 26 in 18 innings, allowed just three runs and was helpful as the Twins rolled to their first division championship in more than a decade (helpful but not decisive — the Twins entered September with a 14 game lead). There seemed no doubt that Santana had the skills to be a dominant bullpen guy, and for the first three months of the 2003 season, that’s exactly what he was — threw 66 innings in the bullpen, struck out 77, held the league to a .215 batting average.

And then in mid-July — with the Twins mired in a terrible stretch when they lost 12 of 13 games — they made Santana a full-time starter. He lost his first start (though it was a quality start, six innings/three runs) and he made his second start with the Twins 7 1/2 games out of first place. He was dazzling that second start, terrible his next two, and then Santana finished off the year going 8-0 with a 2.51 ERA, leading the Twins to their second straight division championship.

Santana won the Cy Young the next year, probably should have won it again in 2005, did win it again in 2006, and so on.

OK, so what the heck does that have to do with our Player of the Day, Joakim Soria, and the Kansas City Royals?

Well, of course, Soria was also a Rule 5 selection. He was the second pick of the Royals in 2006 off of the San Diego Padres. The man behind the draft was first year Royals GM Dayton Moore — well, he listened to the advice of the excellent baseball man Louie Medina — and the Royals made one heck of a find. Soria had pitched just 120 innings in the minor leagues. He had missed seasons after going through Tommy John surgery. He did not throw breathtakingly hard — topped out at 90 or 91 — but he had secondary pitches and he had this calm about him. The Royals thought he could be useful. Just after the Royals drafted him, Soria threw a perfect game in Mexico.

One big difference between Soria and Santana is that, against all odds, Soria was already a finished product by the time the Royals got him. Nobody knew how that happened, and even now nobody knows. But Soria started the year with Kansas City and did not allow a run his first five outings — heck, he only allowed one hit. He got hit a little bit, and then beginning mid-May and for the next two months he was basically unhittable — he allowed one run in 22 2/3, struck out 29, walked 6 and allowed the league to hit .128 against him.

It was remarkable to see. Soria still did not throw that hard. But he had this slow curveball that fluttered like a wiffle ball*, and this good slider that dived away, and this change-up that left hitters muttering. And anyway, his command was SO GOOD on the fastball that he didn’t really need any of those other pitches. He was something else.

*Royals starter Brian Bannister has one of my favorite Soria stories — he went up to Soria and asked him how he threw that curveball. Soria just shrugged and said something to the effect of: “I just throw it.” Bannister wanted to know how he gripped it, where the pressure points where, what the arm action was — that’s how Brian is, a technical thinker. Soria tried to show him but had no success. Bannister walked away shaking his head. Soria really did just throw it.

After those dazzling two months, the Royals made Soria their full-time closer. He was typically great, though, of course, the Royals did not really need a closer. They lost 93 games, finished in last place for the fourth straight season. Well, people have different views about the importance of closers. Many good baseball people believe that a closer is one of the three or four most important pieces of a good team because a late inning loss can be so demoralizing and because teams may play with a certain confidence if they know they have a dominant guy to pitch the ninth. Others believe a closer is like a sun roof for a car — you probably want one, and you will like having one, and it’s standard on all upper-level teams … but overall a closer is pretty low on the priority list and it doesn’t make much sense to get one for a cheap car that breaks down all the time.

Just about EVERYONE, though, believes that a high quality starter is significantly more valuable than a dominant closer. Even Mariano Rivera failed as a starter — or, anyway, did not pitch especially well in 10 starts his rookie year — before turning into the greatest closer in baseball history. Sure, some pitchers because of their stuff clearly seem to fit the closer role better — nobody knows how Rivera’s one-pitch arsenal would have played out as a starter but it’s a pretty good guess that closing suits him better. Some pitchers blossom as closers — Jonathan Papelbon’s already good stuff went electric when he became a one-inning pitcher. There are good reasons to make some pitchers relievers — the Yankees, I suspect, will find in the end that Joba Chamberlain is better throwing Goose Gossage fastballs out of the pen than a middling starter with shaky control.

But, all things being equal, everyone would take the ace over the closer, the Wainwright over the Franklin, the King Felix over the K-Rod, the great starter Santana over the great reliever Santana.

And so, the Royals had a choice with Soria. They had this gift fall from the sky, this preternaturally calm right-hander with four pitches. They could make him their closer — they knew he was good at closing games. Or they could move him to the rotation and see if he could become their own version of Johan Santana.

And … the Royals kept him as closer. They never even tried to make him a starter.

Now, there were reasons for this … the Royals did not just back into the decision. There was this sense among some Royals deciders that Soria was too frail physically to be a starter, that his arm was better suited for short work often than the long haul of 100 to 120 pitches every five days. And there was this feeling that Soria had already proven he could be a dominant closer and so little had gone right for the Royals for a decade — you don’t mess with proven success. There were some who just felt like the Royals NEEDED a good closer for psychological reasons — the young starters needed someone to close out their victories, the young hitters needed to know that if they could just take a lead into the ninth they would win. And, finally, there were some who thought the Royals were about to contend and contenders need good closers.

Of course, there are also counter-arguments for all those. Soria might very well be BETTER with five days rest — shoot, the guy did throw a perfect game in Mexico — and his four-pitch repertoire seems perfect suited for a starter. Soria was only 23 years old that rookie season — there was every reason to believe that he had tremendous potential in whatever direction the Royals pushed him. The psychological benefits of having a closer may or may not be real, but the ACTUAL benefits of having a potentially dominant starter to join Zack Greinke are pretty obvious. And the Royals were not ready to be contenders, and you could argue that non-contenders need a dominant closer in the same way that a McDonald’s meal needs a white tablecloth.

The point is this: The Royals never tried to make Soria a starter. They talked about it … quite a lot, in fact. They hammered it back and forth. But they never tried to do it. Soria was one of the best closers in baseball in 2008. He saved 42 games with a 1.60 ERA. Soria was awfully good as a closer again in 2009. He had some injury issues — people talked about his frailty again — but he saved 30 games, posted a 2.21 ERA, and he actually made six 2-inning appearances (going 1-0 with five saves). No other closer in baseball made more than two 2-inning appearances. Now, he seems entrenched as a closer. The Royals do talk about making one of their relievers into a starter — but that reliever is Kyle Farnsworth.

Should the Royals have at least tried out Soria as a starter? I think so. But my point here is more about the quirks of luck. One of my all-time favorite jokes involves the man who prays every night for his lottery ticket to finally hit. Night after night he prays for his lottery ticket until finally he asks, “Lord, I have lived a good life. I have tried hard. Why has thou forsaken me.” And he hears a heavenly voice that says, “Look, I’ll do what I can but first you have to BUY THE TICKET.”

Point, of course, being that, to a large degree, you make your own luck. The Minnesota Twins ended up with a brilliant Rule 5 guy — they kept him on the team, sent him to the minors, brought him back as a dominant reliever, turned him into a starter, and he became the best starter in baseball. Both years he won the Cy Young Award, the Twins went to the playoffs.

The Kansas City Royals ended up with a brilliant Rule 5 guy — they pitched him in the bullpen, saw that he was good there, kept him in the bullpen, made him a closer, where he has been quietly excellent, saving about half of the Royals all-too-rare victories. If the Royals ever get good, they seem to have the closer to finish the job. But, of course, the Royals are a long way from being good. Could Soria have been a dominant starter? How good would the Royals be with a dominant Greinke and dominant Soria in the rotation? We’ll never know. And you make your own luck.

OK, you probably know the basic rules of the Rule 5 draft. To put it as simply as possible, once a year, teams are allowed to draft players from other teams assuming:

1. They have room on their 40-man roster.
2. The player have been in the organization for four years (five years if the player was drafted at 18 years old).
2. The player is NOT on the team’s 40-man roster.

You probably know all that. And you probably know the catch: If you draft someone in the Rule 5 draft and you want him for your very own, you have to keep him on your active roster for a whole season. That’s the deal.

You may not know — I did not — that the Rule 5 draft goes back more than 100 years. It was set up as a mechanism to redistribute talent so that one team did not just take all the best players and hide them in various nooks and crannies. The rules — especially the eligibility rules — have changed quite a bit through the years. But all in all the basic concept of the Rule 5 Draft has been about the same. Teams were allowed to draft players off other teams if they were willing to keep them on the roster for a whole year. Even in the early days, a few good players were taken in the Rule 5. Hack Wilson, for instance, was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 1925 Rule 5 draft.

In 1947, I think, the Rule 5 took on a whole new meaning because of something that was somewhat unrelated. That was the year that baseball instituted the Bonus Baby Clause. The rule stated that any amateur player who got a bonus more than a certain amount ($4,000 at first) had to be kept on the big league roster for the whole season (and, for a time, two whole seasons). The idea, at least on the surface, was to prevent the richest teams from buying up all the best amateur players. Some thought that the real idea was to discourage teams from giving big bonuses.

Either was, the Bonus Baby rule stayed on the books, on and off, until the amateur draft (the Rule 4 draft) began in 1965.

Again, this is mostly unrelated but since this whole post is unrelated — let’s talk about the Bonus Baby rule for a minute. It created many interesting — and in some cases sad — situations. A couple of the interesting ones:

– Jim Kaat was going to sign as a bonus baby in 1957 … and his father forbid it. Kaat’s Dad thought that a year at the big league level could ruin his son’s development. They signed with the Washington Senators for LESS MONEY so that Jim could go to the minor leagues. Kaat to this day will tell you that if he had not had the time in Superior and Missoula and Chattanooga and Charleston, he would not have had the career he had — winning 283 games and so on. But, seriously, how many parents would have the wisdom (and wherewithal) to take less than they can in a bonus.

– The New York Yankees wanted talented Clete Boyer, but he was a bonus baby and they did not want to carry him for a year. So, in what now looks like a remarkably underhanded deal, the Kansas City Athletics took Boyer and carried him for two years (he could not hit at all) and then included him as the “player to be named later” in a 13-player trade with the Yankees. Boyer went to the minors for a couple of years and then came up and was a brilliant defensive third baseman and key player on five Yankee pennant winners.

The sad situation is that many talented players spent that year in the big leagues and were never heard from again. In 1973, much was made of the story of David Clyde — who was drafted with the first overall pick out of high school, sent right to the big leagues out of high school and, by popular account, was ruined. Well in the Bonus Baby period that was a pretty common tale.

So what connects the Bonus Baby clause and the Rule 5 Draft? Well, one guy connected them — Branch Rickey. People tend to know Rickey first and foremost for signing Jackie Robinson and, not far behind, for really inventing the farm system. Well it seems to me that if you think about it: Rickey’s professional life was really an insatiable quest to find new baseball talent. Rickey was very much a moral man, no question about it, but he also knew how much talent there was in the Negro Leagues. And by signing Jackie Robinson and, soon after, Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella, he helped build the best team in the National League.

He did not get to enjoy that team though. In 1950, he was bought out and he moved to become general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And there, he went at acquiring players in a whole new way — Bonus Babies and Rule 5 picks. It’s really staggering if you look back at it. Rickey was more than happy to carry any player with talent. The Pirates were awful, and he knew it, and he was willing to sacrifice wins and losses today for the potential of good players down the road.

It was bold and interesting and from 1952-55 — four years — Rickey put together one of the most awe-inspiring shows of baseball maneuvering ever.

Look:

– For the 1952 season, the Pirates signed Bonus Baby and basketball superstar Dick Groat out of Duke in 1952 and carried him (Groat then played pro basketball and went to the army before returning to Pittsburgh). Groat, of course, went on to a stellar career; he won the MVP in 1960.

– For the 1953 season, Rickey signed Heisman Trophy winner and Bonus Baby Vic Janowicz to a $25,000 contract and carried him for two seasons (Janowicz punched up a 45 OPS+ in 214 plate appearances and went back to football before his career was ended by a terrible automobile accident).

– THAT SAME YEAR, Rickey signed a carried a 17-year-old Bonus Baby catcher and multi-sport star out of Hartford named Nick Koback — he only got 35 plate appearances in the big leagues and then returned to Connecticut to become a golf pro.

– THAT SAME YEAR, Rickey signed Bonus Baby Eddie O’Brien, a 5-foot-9 shortstop out of Seattle University. They carried him too — gave him 282 plate appearances. He hit .238/.289/.280 — a 50 OPS+. He returned to the minors and returned a couple of years later as a utility man. He later made a brief run as a pitcher.

– THAT SAME YEAR, Rickey signed Bonus Baby Johnny O’Brien, Eddie’s twin brother, also out of Seattle University. The O’Brien twins were really more famous for basketball — together, apparently, they were on the team that upset the Harlem Globetrotters — but as you can see that was Branch Rickey’s thing. He liked multi-sport athletes. Johnny was a second baseman and a slightly better hitter … but only slightly. In 1955, Johnny showed real promise hitting .299/.346/.378 in 304 plate appearances. But it was an illusion, and Johnny also made a brief run as a pitcher.

– THAT SAME YEAR, Rickey drafted 25-year-old right-hander Elroy Face off the Brooklyn Dodgers in the Rule 5. That was the second time Rickey had drafted Face — he plucked Face out of the Philadelphia minor league system two years earlier. Face appeared in 41 games in ‘53, and had a 6.58 ERA. After a year in the minors, Face returned and, of course, went on to a great career that included that amazing 18-1 record in 1959 and three saves in the 1960 World Series.

– THAT SAME YEAR, Rickey drafted two veterans in the Rule 5 — 29-year-old righty pitcher Bob Hall and 31-year-old right Johnny Hetki — and carried them both.

Incidentally, this means that the 1953 Pittsburgh Pirates carried FOUR Bonus Babies and three Rule V guys … which might explain why they went 50-104. Then again, that was better than the 42-112 they had gone the year before.

– For the 1954 season, the Pirates and Rickey signed Bonus Baby Laurin Pepper who was — you guessed it — a huge football star at Mississippi Southern. He was drafted by the Steelers, but Rickey and the Pirates brought him for 35K. He went 1-5 with a 7.99 ERA in his Bonus Baby Year. He won one more game in his career.

– Also for 1954, Rickey drafted Jerry Lynch off the Yankees in the Rule 5 and carried him in the Rule 5. Three years later, Cincinnati would take Lynch away in their own Rule 5 pick and Lynch would go on to a nice career as an outfielder and pinch-hitter.

– For the 1955 season, Rickey signed a 6-foot-6 Bonus Baby pitcher from Pennsylvania named Paul Martin. I can only suspect that Martin was a big basketball star too, though I’m not able to find that in my quick research. He started one game and has the distinction of having walked 17 batters in only 7 innings — the highest walks per nine inning ratio of any pitcher who ever threw more than five innings (21.86 walks per nine).

– That same year, Rickey signed Bonus Baby Red Swanson — son of the old LSU coach who also went by Red Swanson. Confusing. Red Swanson got into one game that year, nine the next year, pitched decent in limited duty in 1957 and never again pitched in the big leagues.

– And, finally, that same year, Rickey made the most famous Rule 5 Draft of his career — the most famous in baseball history — when he took Roberto Clemente away from the Brooklyn Dodgers. Apparently, the Dodgers had an inking of what they had with Clemente and tried to hide him by benching him whenever other scouts came around. This seems to me one of the dumber strategies I’ve heard. Anyway, Rickey drafted Clemente even though his own scouting report — reprinted in David Maraniss’ epic “Clemente” — suggests that Rickey was not entirely sold. But at that point, Rickey was so into carrying players on the big league roster, he had to figure: What the heck?

That amazes me — in a four year period, Rickey and the Pirates carried 10 prospects on the big league club. And hey, while most of them busted, you would have to say that a process that gave a team Dick Groat, Roy Face and Roberto Clemente is not bad at all. The Pirates did not do much Rule 5 drafting or Bonus Baby signing after Rickey left for health reasons.

By 1965, there was an amateur draft and the Bonus Baby concept died. With that, I think, teams no longer had much stomach for carrying player on their roster. For instance, in 1970 the St. Louis Cardinals were pretty bad and in the Rule 5 they saw a talented and available first baseman in the Boston Red Sox system named Cecil Cooper. He had just turned 21, and he was wrecking the minor leagues, and the Cardinals took him. But, then the Cardinals realized that they really did not want to open up a spot for him and returned Cooper to the Red Sox. Cooper, as you know, would go on to an awfully good career.

And that was common. Most Rule 5 players get returned to their original teams. There are not many players worth that sort of commitment, certainly not players who have been in the minors for four or five years and are not deemed good enough to give a 40-man roster spot.

But a few talents sneak through the Rule 5. You have probably heard the biggest names — George Bell, Willie Upshaw, Willie Hernandez. Darrell Evans is one of the best Rule 5 picks. Evans was drafted four times in the amateur draft before he finally signed with the Kansas City Athletics who, almost immediately, because the Oakland Athletics. Six months later, he was taken by the Atlanta Braves in the Rule 5 — the Braves carried him and he would go on to a near Hall of Fame career.

There have been some prominent recent Rule 5 picks, and now we’re getting to what was SUPPOSED to be the crux of this post. In 2005, the Florida Marlins took a stocky and strikeout-prone 25-year-old second baseman who had never gotten out of Class AA named Dan Uggla. The Marlins were not only able to keep him in the roster … he made the All-Star team the first year. He hit 27 homers that year and has hit more than 30 in the three years since.

In 2004, the Philadelphia Phillies took Shane Victorino — interestingly that was the SECOND time Victorino has been drafted Rule 5. The feeling with Victorino was that he was so good defensively, a team could carry him as a fourth outfielder and wait for his bat to come around. Victorino only played 21 games his Rule 5 year. He has been the Phillies every day center fielder — and a two-time Gold Glove winner — in the years since.

In 2006, the Cubs took Josh Hamilton in the Rule 5 … everyone knows Hamilton’s story of failure and redemption and all that. The Reds purchased Hamilton, and in 90 games he hit 19 homers and punched up a 131 OPS+. He then was traded to Texas where he had a huge season — .304/.371/.530 with 32 homers, 130 RBIs, 134 OPS+ — and he had that memorable home run derby.

And there are two pitchers — I think you instinctively know who they are — who define the Rule 5 Draft for me and, perhaps even more, define the whole concept of getting lucky. But since we are about 2,000 words into this thing — foolishly assuming you actually made it this far — you’ll have to wait a bit for that post.

So, my SI colleague — the brilliant Tom Verducci — had a great little chart in his story today about Ryan Howard. The chart, from Stats Inc., list off the players who faced the most breaking balls in 2009. The chart showed that Ryan Howard faced about 200 more breaking balls than the guy in second place (Dan Uggla).

I absolutely love stuff like this. There are so many games within games in baseball.

With the other-worldly Fangraphs, we can now take a little look into those games-within-games. Fangraphs uses Baseball Info Solutions pitch information to tell us what kind of pitches the players were facing. For instance, here are the five qualifying players who faced the most fastballs in 2010:

1. Luis Castillo, 73.9%
2. David Eckstein, 73.8%
3. Jason Kendall, 70.7%
4. Chone Figgins, 68.6%
5. Denard Span, 68%

See, that’s really interesting. A few thoughts about the players:

1. Castillo. His utter lack of power — .354 career slugging percentage — means pitchers are unafraid to challenge him with fastballs. Castillo can’t really run much anymore, so the thing you DO NOT want to do is walk the guy. Throw him fastballs, let him put the ball in play, take your chances. Doing that, Castillo did hit .302, and it is interesting that he was able to foul off enough pitches to draw 69 walks — Castillo has a high rate of contact and he tends to have longish at-bats.

2. Eckstein. He is so impotent as a hitter — .340 slugging percentage the last two seasons — and is so eager to put the ball in play that pitchers simply feed him fastballs and are happy to let it all play out.

3. Kendall. Another no power hitter who makes contact. Pitchers have long fearlessly (as in “without fear” not “bravely”) challenged Kendall with the fastball. It is striking how much Kendall’s on-base percentage went down the last three seasons — it’s clear now that in addition to offering no power threat, Kendall is having trouble catching up with the fastball too. Expect that fastball percentage to rise in the American League.

4. Figgins. Interesting thing … pitchers have long challenged Figgins with fastballs, again you would think because of his general lack of power and because like Kit Keller he has long had trouble laying off the high ones. But in 2009, Figgins DID lay off the high ones quite a bit more. His walk percentage jumped, his contact rate continued to go up, his percentage of long at-bats went way up, and Figgins had quite a good year. You wonder if in Seattle pitchers will continue to bust Figgins (he still strikes out a lot) or if they will mix in some other pitches.

5. Span. One of my favorite young players, I don’t think pitchers will continue to throw Span as many fastballs … this is that “adjustment” thing everyone talks about. Span last year showed a good ability to foul off pitches in the strike zone, work for walks and he led the league in triples. I would bet he could start seeing a healthy diet of breaking pitches and off-speed stuff. But we’ll see.

Wasn’t that fun? OK, so you stopped reading back at the Eckstein comment. Fine. I never promised this blog would be all Snuggies. Here are the five players facing the FEWEST fastballs.

1. Ryan Howard, 44.9%
2. Alfonso Soriano, 46%
3. Garret Anderson, 50.1%
4. Ryan Ludwick, 50.4%
5. Hunter Pence, 50.7%

I probably don’t need to go through all of these individually since, basically, there’s a clear pattern here. Nobody wants to throw Ryan Howard a fastball — he crushes those. The league challenged him with fastballs when he came up in 2005, and he banged 22 homers in 312 at-bats. The next year, he still got more than 50% fastballs as the league tried to adjust — 53% to be exact — and he massacred them, crushed 58 home runs, had the highest contact numbers of his career, had the best season of his career. These days, a pitcher would have to be either crazy or behind in the count to feed Howard a fastball.

The other guys are pretty much Pedro Cerrano types — “Bats. They are sick. … No hit curveball. Straight ball, hit it very much.” I want to show you something kind of interesting about Soriano. Take a look at the percentage of fastballs he has faced vs. his OPS+.

2002: 54.4% fastballs — 129 OPS+
2003: 57% fastballs — 126 OPS+
2004: 52.4% fastballs — 100 OPS+
2005: 47.9% fastballs — 109 OPS+
2006: 54.1% fastballs — 135 OPS+
2007: 54% fastballs — 122 OPS+
2008: 53.2% fastballs — 119 OPS+
2009: 46% fastballs — 84 OPS+

It’s not a perfect rhythm — and there are so many other things involved such as healthy and league and so on — but generally speaking when you throw Pedro Soriano fastballs, he peppers you. He can’t hit a curveball. He REALLY can’t hit a slider. And his plate discipline is as dreadful as ever so you can throw him those curveballs and sliders on three-ball counts. He might not see a fastball until July.

So, now, we will go to Fangraphs and see look at who faced the most and least of certain kind of pitches.

* * *

Most sliders
1. Ryan Ludwick, 24.8%
2. Alfonso Soriano, 24.7%
3. Ryan Howard, 24.4%
4. Justin Upton, 24.4%
5. Hunter Pence, 24.2%

Fewest sliders
1. Luis Castillo, 6.5%
2. Melky Cabrera, 7.9%
3. Kendry Morales, 8.2%
4. Chone Figgins, 8.3%
5. Randy Winn, 8.6%

Comment: More or less what you would expect based on the fastballs percentages. One surprise is Morales — the lack of sliders suggests maybe the league was still feeling him out. I don’t know. It was really Morales’ first full season and he proved to be the sort of hitter who could hit the fastball and who pounced on hanging curveballs and change-ups. I would wager that his slider percentage will go up pretty significantly in 2010 as pitchers work on their best plan to beat him. Adjustments!

* * *

Most curveballs
1. Ryan Howard, 14.2%
2. Aaron Rowand, 13.2%
3. Jack Cust, 13.0%
4. Alfonso Soriano, 12.2%
5. Aubrey Huff, 11.9%

Fewest curveballs
1. Luis Castillo, 4.8%
2. David Eckstein, 5.6%
3. Derek Jeter, 5.6%
4. Carlos Lee, 5.6%
5. Jason Kendall, 5.7%

Comment: Before we get to Jeter — who I know you noticed right away — I should point out that all of this pitch selection stuff involves more than strategy. Execution is really key. What I mean is … I was once talking with a manager and a hitting coach, and we talked about a player who could not hit good curveballs. And the hitting coach, in a disgusted way, said this: “NOBODY can hit good curveballs. That’s the thing people miss.” And it’s a great point. It’s HARD to throw curveballs that buckle the knees or sliders that start in the strike zone and at the last instant tilt out or change-ups that seem for all the world to be coming at 90 mph but are in fact only fluttering in at 80, fastballs with movement that slice the black on the outside corner. If you throw those sorts of pitches, you are going to get EVERYBODY out, Ruth to Bonds, Pujols to Mays, Aaron to Zobrist.

So pitchers with great curveballs will throw curveballs to any batter. Same with great fastball pitchers and pitchers with great sliders and all that. Strategy gets toned down.

But nobody can throw those pitches just right every time and nobody ever could. “It makes me laugh,” relief pitcher and pitching philosopher Mike Marshall told me, “whenever someone gets a hit you will always hear the announcer say — ALWAYS — ‘Oh, he left that pitch up.’ Or ‘he just missed his spot on that.’ That’s not it. You can’t throw it in a tea cup every time.” Marshall thinks the art of pitching is how you set up a hitter, the selection of pitches you use, the order you use them, because (and I love this phrase) you can’t throw it in a tea cup every time.

And THAT is where where strategy comes in. So, when you see a guy who gets a lot of curveballs — say Aaron Rowand — that is not because he can’t hit a good curveball. It’s because pitchers believe he can’t hit a mediocre curveball. It’s a great game. The pitcher knows Rowand isn’t very good on breaking stuff. Rowand knows the pitcher knows this and comes to the plate expecting to see breaking stuff. The pitcher knows that Rowand knows that the pitcher knows, so he is on alert that if he throws a hanging curveball, Rowand might just crush it. But Rowand knows this, so he might be overanxious if he sees the hanging curveball and hit it nine miles foul. Or he might be thinking curveball so much that he promises himself to not wing, and the pitcher might cross him up and throw fastball — even Aaron Rowand got more than 50% fastballs last year — and Rowand is so screwed up in his head that he just watches it go by for strike three and … yeah, it’s a great game.

Pitchers have thrown Derek Jeter the same for years — two-thirds fastballs, a healthy dose of sliders, and a few change-ups and curveballs to keep him honest. Jeter generally pounds curveballs and change-ups. He will swing and miss some — more than you might expect from a lifetime .317 hitter* — but his ability to pick up the different speeds and spins of pitches is uncanny. “You can beat him side to side,” a scout friend tells me. “But you can’t beat Jeter back and forth.” In other words, Jeter will swing at stuff outside of the strike zone, but if you try to fool him inside the zone with different speeds, he generally will crush you.

*Among the players with more than 7,500 plate appearances and a .300 batting average, Jeter ranks fourth on the strikeout rate list behind Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez and Larry Walker.

* * *

Most change-ups
1. Ben Zobrist, 17.6%
2. Mark Teixeira, 16.3%
3. Melky Cabrera, 15.6%
4. Shane Victorino, 15.4%
5. Cristian Guzman, 15.3%
(tie) Nick Swisher, 15.3%
(tie) Victor Martinez, 15.3%

Fewest change-ups
1. David Eckstein, 4.7%
2. Jason Kendall, 4.8%
3. Ryan Theriot, 5.4%
4. David Wright, 6.4%
5. Jacoby Ellsbury, 6.7%

Comment: There was a little bit of desperation in the American League in 2009, I think, as pitchers were trying to figure out HOW THE HECK to get Ben Zobrist out. I mean, in mid-June the guy was hitting .318/.429/.694. He was slugging almost .700, for crying out loud. Clearly, they were not getting Zobrist out by throwing what had been a fairly typical pattern — two-third fastballs, mix of other pitches. The advance scouts noticed that Zobrist was a big-time fastball first hitter. And so pitchers went crazy on the change-ups. Zobrist did settle down in the second half of the season … but he was still pretty darned good. It should be fun to watch how pitchers attack him in 2010.

You will notice three Yankees in the Top 5 list on most change-ups. The Yankees reputation is as a fastball hitting team that will make pitchers work and lay-off on stuff that breaks out of the strike zone. That means a healthy dose of change-ups. I can’t say it was an especially effective strategy but you have to do something.

The fewest change-up guys are easy to understand — if you throw a change-up to Jason Kendall, and he cracks a single on you, yeah, you and your catcher will have some Ricky Ricardo ‘splainin to do back at the dugout.

* * *

And here are a few 2009 hitter charts (numbers rounded up and down):

Albert Pujols: 53% fastballs, 20% sliders, 10% curveballs, 10% change-ups, 7% other stuff.
– There’s no right way to pitch Pujols, just any number of wrong ways. He hits everything; a pitcher’s best bet is to keep Pujols off-balance and never give him a fastball that catches too much of the plate.

Joe Mauer: 63% fastballs, 11% sliders, 10% change-ups, 8% curveballs, 8% other stuff.
– More of a typical pitching pattern than Pujols. Mauer as a lefty mashes right-handed sliders which is why he doesn’t that many of them. Mauer has always hit well the other way and with his new-found pull power, he’s a nightmare.

Chase Utley: 61% fastballs, 17% sliders, 10% change-ups, 8% curveballs, 4% other stuff.
– Utley’s remarkably quick bat helps him adjust to just about any pitch. Last year, pitchers really tried to make Utley chase; they only threw about 46% of pitches in the zone. Utley walked more than he ever had before, but he did admit that he chased a bit more than he should have.

Billy Butler: 57% fastballs, 17% sliders, 12% change-ups, 8% curveballs, 6% other stuff.
– Butler’s only turning 24 this year, but the league pitchers have known for a while that he crunches fastballs. He really improved against the slower stuff in 2009 … fun to watch him grow as a hitter.

Pablo Sandoval: 60% fastballs, 12% change-ups, 12% curveballs, 9% sliders, 7% other stuff.
– Kung Fu Panda loves the fast stuff. Fastballs. Hard sliders. Faster the better. Look for that fastball percentage to go down as pitcher try to feed him soft foods.

The inspiration (if you can call it inspiration) came from a longtime Kansas City humor columnist named Bill Vaughn who in the 1950s and ’60s, as a lark, would pick the Kansas City Athletics to win the pennant every year. Bill meant it as a joke — he was, after all a humor columnist — and the Athletics never once even approached a .500 record when in Kansas City so it was a joke that just kept on giving.*

*It’s a weird thing … people sometimes talk to me about how LUCKY I am to have been writing baseball in Kansas City when the Royals were so comically bad. I never really saw it that way. Now, maybe I’d feel that way if I had I had written baseball during the KC Athletics time — when the A’s were ALWAYS bad, and the team had a pet mule and a mechanical rabbit brought baseballs to the umpire, and Satchel Paige pitched for them once, and at least ten future managers played for the team — Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog, Tony La Russa, Tommy Lasorda, Dick Williams, Dick Howser, Joe Morgan the Red Sox Manager, Hank Bauer, Doc Edwards, Rene Lachemann … not to mention hitting guru Charlie Lau, and pitching guru Dave Duncan, and all-round baseball guru Bill Fischer, and announcing titans Hawk Harrelson and Joe Nuxhall. It seems like that would have been a perversely fun team to write about.

It was probably easier for Bill Vaughn to do his annual “Athletics will win it all” column because everyone was so clearly in the joke. He spent his days writing funny and charming columns about tax day and the way trees changed colors and the fact that people all over the country long for the food of their hometowns. Writing a “This is the year for the Athletics!” column kind of fit into his daily work.

I had a different combination of hopes for my columns. I hoped these Royals Will Win columns would be taken as jokes but not ENTIRELY as jokes. Call it the Jon Stewart conundrum. I know people have different feelings about Stewart, but my impression is that Stewart wants to be funny and serious at exactly the same time. It’s a tightrope walk, and it’s one I think Stewart does better than anyone ever on television.

I cannot claim to have been nearly as successful with my “Royals will win” column. On the one hand, I guess I expected that people understood I wasn’t entirely serious when I picked the Royals to win. I do spend a fair amount of time studying baseball. I talk to a lot of people around the game. I write hundreds of thousands of words about the game every year. I suspected people would know that, yes, I was fairly aware of the Royals’ place in baseball.

On the other hand, I DID want to be taken somewhat seriously because, more than anything, I believe that there should be hope in baseball. When I was a kid in Cleveland arguing with my father about the varying talents of Rick Waits, Rick Manning, Rick Kreuger, Rick Wise, Rico Carty, and the rest of the Cleveland Ricks, I wanted to believe — I NEEDED to believe — that if the world tilted just so the Indians could win it all. I desperately looked for optimistic paragraphs and promising sentences in the baseball preview magazines. I talked to neighbors in search of even the the dimmest glimmer of hope.

And as an adult charged with writing columns about the Royals, I wanted to give Kansas City kids (and adults) a few of those optimistic sentences because, hey, it’s hard enough being a Royals fan. April showers bring May flowers and May flowers bring mathematical elimination day to Kansas City. You gotta have hope in February and March.

I think the Royals columns have generally worked — I say this because I tended to get an equal number of “You are crazy if you think this team is going to win because the Royals are going to suck,” emails and “You need to quit clowning around and write serious columns about how the Royals are going to suck,” emails. It’s always good when you’re getting an equal number of angry emails on both sides of the fence. And, to be fair to the concept, I also got mails from nice people saying that they looked forward to the “Royals are going to win” column every year. I still get those. They seemed to get what I was trying.

Well, it’s no longer my job to write the “Royals are going to win” column this year. I’m no longer columnist for the Kansas City Star — and big congratulations to Young Jedi Sam Mellinger who was hired to replace me. He will do a great job. He can decide how to handle the whole “Royals will win” column idea.

But I have to tell you: Because I am no longer columnist at the Star, because the Royals are no longer a big part of my work life, and because my daughters are getting to that age where baseball might start making sense to them … I took the plunge and bought Royals season tickets. Well, check that, I only bought the 21-game pass — I mean, hey, I’m not CRAZY or anything — but that still does make our family official Royals season ticket holders.* This was punctuated by an email from the Royals stating that, as season ticket holders, we are entitled to buy more tickets, which I must admit does not seem like much of a perk.

*I’m not all that crazy about parents who go around saying “Oh, our child said the cutest thing today,” but I must share with you our 5 year old Katie’s reaction when we told her that we bought Royals season tickets. She said, and I quote: “I’d rather go to Hawaii.”

On this blog, I have been pretty blunt about how I have not liked just about anything the Royals have done this offseason. My view on this remains unchanged. Basically, the way I see it, the Royals went out and picked up the Chicago White Sox’ best prospects from 2005 and spent real money on a handful of 30-somethings nobody else really wanted. Basically, the way I see it, the Royals are moving at least four new players into the lineup, and not one of them had a 100 OPS+ last year, and not one of them has a 100 OPS+ over a career, and last I checked 100 OPS+ suggests an AVERAGE hitter. No, it doesn’t seem like a great plan.

BUT … now I’m a season ticket holder too. And as a season ticket holder, well, I have to look at things a bit differently. I have to find a little optimism in this team.

So, here is that bit of Royals’ optimism. You can stop now, if you like.

To begin: I’m going to take you back to one of my favorite teams, the 1991 Atlanta Braves. I was 24 years old that year and I had just started writing my first sports column for the Augusta Chronicle. And because 1991 was the year that the Braves went from worst to first — from a 65-97 record to 94-68 and a World Series appearance — I was freed up to write about that team quite often. I was there at Fulton County Stadium when from Atlanta pitcher Zane Smith shut out the Braves in Game 5 to give Pittsburgh a 3-2 lead and the series shifted back to Pittsburgh. I was watching on TV* when Steve Avery (with a little Alejandro Pena help) and John Smoltz shut out the Pirates in back-to-back games to go to the Series. I was there when Jerry Willard hit the sac fly to score Mark Lemke with the game-winning run in Game 4. I watched the Jack Morris-John Smoltz duel on TV.*

*Well, we didn’t have much of a travel budget.

That 1991 Braves team was not much like the dominant Braves teams of the mid-to-late 1990s that most people remember. There was no Maddux, no Chipper, no Andruw, no Javy, no Millwood, no Klesko, no Rocker.

No, that team was really not very different from the 1990 Braves. How do you go from last to first? Well, the Braves made five key moves that don’t even seem so key looking back on it.

1. They traded Dale Murphy in August of 1990. This was a huge move … and a sad one. The Murph was Mr. Atlanta, a great and classy player who had been one of the few shining lights for a franchise that spent most of its time losing. He should have been there when the Braves became good. But that was the point … he could not be there. He was finished as a player by then, and the Braves had the choice: Stick with Murphy for sentimental reasons or trade him off and try to move ahead as a franchise. Never an easy choice. The Braves traded him to Philadelphia. They did not get much in return, but really the value was in moving Murphy and moving on with their lives.

2. The Braves signed 30-year-old free agent third baseman Terry Pendleton. At the time, Pendleton was viewed as a very good defensive third baseman (a two-time Gold Glove winner) with limited offensive skills (his career OPS+ up to that point was 84, not that anyone knew what OPS+ was at the time). He didn’t hit with power, didn’t have much speed, didn’t get on base and was coming off a season when he hit .230.

I suspect the Braves had no idea what what they really were getting with Pendleton … but when you get lucky, the proper response is to act like you knew it all along. Pendleton in Atlanta led the league with a .319 average, he led the league with 303 total bases, he hit a career-high 22 homers and he played his typically outstanding defense at third base. People buy into leadership at different levels, but there seems no question that his teammates fed off his energy, enthusiasm and professionalism. Pendleton won the MVP award.

3. The Braves signed first baseman Sid Bream and shortstop Rafael Belliard. I remember the Braves talking about getting Bream as a “veteran presence.” To be honest, he didn’t have much of a season in 1991. But he was steady enough defensively, and his signing allowed the Braves to move David Justice to the outfield to replace Dale Murphy. Belliard too was steady defensively and even a bit better than that … an upgrade over Jeff Blauser who could hit a bit but was grandfather clock immobile as a shortstop.

4. They signed 36-year-old reliever Juan Berenguer, who pitched well as a closer (2.24 ERA and 17 saves).

5. They basically went to the four-man rotation — Tom Glavine, Charlie Liebrandt, John Smoltz and Steve Avery made 141 of the 162 starts that year. It didn’t hurt that Glavine, Avery and Smoltz all picked the same season to emerge.

That’s pretty much it. The rest happened naturally. The Braves offense — in large part because of Pendleton — scored 67 more runs. They became much more athletic and aggressive (they stole 73 more bases in 1991) and walked a lot more (90 more walks and a few more hits meant moving from last in the NL in on-base percentage to second).

The Braves run prevention improvement was staggering. They jumped from dead last in ERA to third. Their gave up 178 fewer runs. Why? Well, obviously and most importantly there was the emergence of Glavine, Avery, Mike Stanton and John Smoltz (actually, Smoltz had about the same season he had in 1990). But you can guess that another key was an improved defense. The Braves went from allowing the most hits in the National League to the fewest.

OK, so now you ask: What does any of this have to do with the Royals? Well, nothing. But it’s a fun story. And anyway, we all know that Dayton Moore loves using the Braves as his model. The Royals in 2009 did not do anything well. Not a thing. They did not hit for average, they did not walk, they did not hit with power, they did not even hit sacrifice flies well. On the pitching side, they walked more batters than any team in the league and finished 12th in ERA despite a No. 1 starter who won the Cy Young Award. They did the little things as poorly as the big things. It was bad all the way around.

So, how do you fix it in a year? Well, you can’t. Or can you? The Braves did it. Of course, the Braves had some pieces in place — they had three brilliant young pitchers and a couple of brilliant young hitters too, Ron Gant and David Justice.

But, hey, the Royals are not without some pieces too. They had the best pitcher in the American League in 2009, Zack Greinke, and he’s just 26. They have a brilliant young closer in Joakim Soria, and he turns 26 in May. They have an almost 24-year-old first baseman, Billy Butler, who hit 50 doubles and 20 homers last year. They have a 26-year-old third baseman, Alex Gordon, who seemed to building toward stardom before an injury took him out for almost all of 2009 — he looks healthy now. David DeJesus is just a sound ballplayer all the way around.

And so, if you look at it through the Royals prism — admittedly, you may have to squint a little bit — you might see hope. The thing about the Royals is that they have been so bad for so long that it is easy to just bash anything they do. Chances are you will be right. But I find myself asking myself this: What if the Royals are right? It’s not impossible.

They got Chris Getz to play second base. Now, I hear from scouts who see Chris Getz one way — average defensively, good speed, below average bat. But the Royals think he’s better than that. And, heck, he might BE better than that. He’s 26 years old, he is a good athlete, the Royals think he has the tools and instincts to maybe be a poor man’s Luis Castillo — you know, hit around .290, steal 40 or 50 bases, play above average defense.

The Royals signed Rick Ankiel. Again, what I hear from the Royals and what I hear from my scouting and analysis friends is different. My people talk about Ankiel being an indifferent center fielder with an an incredible arm that he shows off by overthrowing cutoff men, and a hitter with enormous power that he conceals with that crater in his swing. The Royals see his athleticism, his arm, his power, and they think he’s extremely motivated — the Cardinals basically dissed him, he’s only signed for one year, he’s playing for his career. It could spell a good season*.

*I should point out here one thing that really works against Ankiel: He is a power-hitting lefty and he is going to a park that is TERRIBLE for power-hitting lefties. There were only 37 home runs hit by lefties at Kauffman Stadium all of 2009 — lowest total in the big leagues. To give you an idea, there were 80 hit at Yankee Stadium, 76 hit at the Metrodome, 62 hit in Oakland which has a reputation as a brutal home run park, and 54 hit at Fenway Park which is supposed to stifle left-handed pull power.

On the bright side, one other lefty did hit a home run at Kauffman Stadium: Rick Ankiel.

The Royals think Jason Kendall brings veteran leadership and will sneak his way on base enough to help out the lower part of the lineup. The Royals think Yuni Betancourt can at least be passable as an everyday shortstop — he IS sturdy and knows how to stay out there for 150 games games. The Royals think Podsednik can more or less repeat what he did in 2009 (.304/.353/.412 with 30 stolen bases) and he will run down some fly balls in the giant Royals left field. The Royals think that between Jose Guillen, Alberto Callaspo and Josh Fields they will find some DH offense somewhere.

The Royals think that Gil Meche will return to being the good No. 2 starter he was in 2008 and 2009, and that our guy Banny will be the solid No. 3 he was before he wore down and got hurt late last year (he was 7-7 with a 3.59 ERA through 123 innings) and that something will click for Luke Hochevar.

They Royals think Greinke will be Greinke, Soria will be Soria, Butler will take another step into offensive superstardom.

Perhaps most importantly, the Royals think that Alex Gordon will become a good player in 2010. There is a lot of disagreement about Gordon, and I suppose that at times I have suggested that I don’t believe in him as a player. I have had my issues with him because he has shown a complete inability to hit lefties and because his attitude has at times struck me wrong. But, I will admit that I probably allowed those things to pull me too much in one direction. Gordon’s WAR in 2007 and 2008 (2.1 and 2.4) suggest he was better than he may have seemed, and fans predict a 4.0 WAR in 2010 which is about what Mark Reynolds, Denard Span and Michael Young offered in 2009. I think he’s probably the most important player on the team in 2010. And I really do hope he has a breakout year.

You can replace “Royals think” with “Royals hope” or even “Royals hope against hope.” But, hey, it’s spring training. And, hey, it’s the American League Central. And hey, any of these things COULD happen. They are not counting on miracles. They are not counting on angels carrying their outfielders to make catches or, even more unlikely, Yuni winning the MVP award. No: They are counting on playing significantly better defense. They are counting on being more athletic. They are counting on Greinke, Soria and Butler to be transcendent, they are counting on Gordon to emerge, Meche to come back, Banny to have a full year, they are counting on decent seasons from some creaky veterans and maybe one big or two big surprises. Is all of that likely? No. But shocking stories are never likely.

As a writer, well, you know what I think. As a season ticket holder? Hey, it’s spring training. Did you see that Ankiel hit two homers in an intra-squad game? Did you see Hochevar has reworked his wind-up to get more consistency? Did you see that Alex Gordon made some kind of Brooks Robinson type play at third base?

Reality is for summer. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming in February (and even early March).