Baseball’s Dirty Words

This wouldn’t be happening on Marvin Miller’s watch.

Most baseball fans are aware that there are two words that should never be mentioned in polite company in conjunction with the sport; the “S” word (steroids), and the “C” word (collusion).

Interestingly, both have (indirectly) raised their ugly heads this offseason. With eight of the top ten free agent players sitting at home, unsigned, three weeks before training camps open, something certainly seems to be amiss. The fact of the matter seems to be that players who have reached that exalted status (free agency) are not being snapped up at the frenetic pace that was the norm in years past.

Where does the “S” word (steroids) come in? Well, there was a time, (say, 1995 -2006), when veteran players’ performance had seemingly stopped declining. Stars routinely played at a high level well into their 30’s, many signing more than one multi-year deal after becoming a free agent. There were many reasons; offseason training, nutrition, rest, advances in sports medicine, but the one that continued to raise its ugly head was PED’s. Regardless of how many players were suspended (or suspected), once testing came in (2006), player’s performance relative to age gradually returned to more normal levels.

This was the era in which big-money veteran contracts made the most sense; when a given level of performance from a veteran player could be relied upon for an extended period. In the decade or so following 2006, it seems a new era has dawned.

A test case, of sorts, may well have been seen last year, when Edwin Encarnacion turned down the multi-year offer made by the Toronto Blue Jays right after the 2016 postseason, expecting a bidding war between teams like the Red Sox (who had just lost David Ortiz to retirement) and the Yankees (who were finally out from under the mega-contracts due A-Rod, Carlos Beltran and Mark Texiera). Disappointed, Edwin ended up signing with Cleveland just before Christmas, for less than Toronto had offered.

In the past, teams would sign an aging free agent star for multiple years to take advantage of the first one or two seasons, when his production would still be close to its  peak. Now, it would seem, the clubs have decided that mortgaging their future to win now is folly, and are content to live and die by their young stars. Teams with stars signed to long-term deals are, in fact, now trading them away.

But is it the dreaded “C” word (collusion)? Have Major League teams just decided to employ enlightened self-interest? Are analytics departments, as first explored in “Moneyball“, just as effective at tracking the declining performance of veteran players as finding diamond-in-the rough Bush Leaguers ?

This is what the 30 Major League teams would have you believe. The message seems to be: “We’ve smartened up. We’re tired of overpaying for “veteran presence” and “good influence in the clubhouse” and all those other old bugaboos that were excuses for shelling out on a declining veteran player.”

And, to be fair, analytics do seem to be helping talent evaluation, at least at the amateur end of the scale. The days of first-round draft picks being complete busts, never making it to the majors at all, seem well behind us.

But ALL 30 TEAMS? It seems unlikely. It’s definitely not your father’s collusion. “Collusion” in the 1980’s sense meant (then-commissioner) Peter Uberroth ordering teams not to sign one another’s free agents, and then daring them to defy him. Now, if this is some form of the “C” word, it’s no longer about restricting player movement; it’s simply about suppressing salaries.

A majority of baseball’s brightest stars are now in the under-30 age bracket. These players, in addition to being young, are also cheap; most have yet to reach the six years’ service time necessary to test their value on the free agent market. This represents a double win for the club; a marketable star, with the attendant performance, at a bargain-basement price!

Will the cycle be broken? Well the second tenet of “Moneyball”, after embracing analytics, is not following convention. Billy Beane  made his reputation as much by zigging when everyone else zagged as he did by discovering new means of player evaluation. What if he, or someone like him, suddenly decided that the best bargains were still on the shelf, and convinced some significant free agents to take a flyer on a short-term deal and win one now, with him? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, especially if said players are feeling vindictive after being shown such disrespect.

We shall see…

Launch Me Out to the Ball Game

Gregg Zaun has made much of the “new” Rogers Centre, but since he hardly ever posts to his blog, I figured I’d help him out a bit on mine.

The area formerly known as Windows restaurant.

For the uninitated, what’s happened is this; Windows, the restaurant that hung over centre field, and that was once a showpiece amenity for SkyDome, has been declining in popularity for several years. In order to get some of that appeal back (and to make it look like something other than a big empty restaurant smack-dab in the middle of the ballpark), Rogers brass decided to take all the glass out and convert it into a general admission, standing & sitting party area à la the Home Run Porch at Progressive Field. An admirable idea, to be sure, and one the younger fans (i.e. the ones who come to a ballpark to party) seem to be quite taken with.

Workers removing all that pesky glass.

The issue, however, is that removing all that glass seems to have done something to the game on the field.

SkyDome/Rogers Centre has always been a hitter’s park, not as extreme as some, but definitely built for the bat. I’ve seen park factors as high as 113 for the building over its existence; in layman’s terms, that means one could reasonably expect to see 13% more offense there than at a theoretically “average” Major League ballpark. 13 seems awfully high to me; Baseball Prospectus, whose numbers are universally respected, has Rogers Centre listed at an average of 103 for the past three seasons – a hitter’s park, but not terribly so.

Though it’s really too early to gather meaningful statistical data for this year (park factor, bercause it’s based on an average of all Major League ballparks, is a moving target; it literally changes with every game played), it seems that the ball is jumping off the bat in Toronto. In the first six games there have been  47 (!) extra-base hits, including 23 home runs. Add to that, the number of seemingly catchable fly balls that have dropped in for hits; Melky Cabrera, especially, seems to be taking some funky routes to fly balls; is it because  it’s hard to get a good read, or are the pitchers missing their spots by that much, or is the ball suddenly caught in some sort of jet stream that makes it change trajectory?

The one that really made me wonder was hit on opening day; R. A. Dickey gave up what looked like a routine flyball to Asdrubal Cabrera, and it kept going, and going, and going…and wound up being a two-run home run. Dickey just shook his head, and so did I.

Again, this represents an extremely small sample size, and they haven’t played one game with the lid open yet – it’s been too cold. But flyball pitchers (Mark Buehrle, for example) should be at least a little concerned. You’d hate to see Toronto get into that situation where free agent pitchers instruct their agents not to return your calls.

I don’t think there’s any suggestion that Toronto’s ballpark with the roof closed is functioning as a giant Tupperware container, where the ball changes its flight path every time someone opens an outside door on the 200 level. At this point, it’s just something to keep an eye on. I think we may review this topic sometime around the All-Star break.

Turf Me Out to the Ball Game

“I don’t know. I’ve never smoked the stuff”. – Tug McGraw, on artificial grass.

Just before the baseball season began, I happened across an interview with Paul Beeston on TV. One of the topics, which has been discussed for a couple of years now,  was replacing the artificial turf in the Rogers Centre with real grass which, Beeston assured us, was contemplated “for either the 2015 or 2016 season”.

I reflected on this a little bit, and realized that the SkyDome (as it was called when it was built) and the Florida Suncoast Dome (as it was called when it was built) are the only two Major League ballparks that still have an artifical playing surface. Of course, the FSD is now better known as Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays.

This is particularly amazing when you consider that every single Major League ballpark built between 1970 and 1991 was constructed with an artifical playing surface. Though that might seem like sacrilege from this perspective, you have to remember that this was the first generation of modern sports stadiums (I’m pretty sure the Colosseum in Rome was publicly funded) which were built with taxpayer’s money. Prior to that, each team owned its own ballpark.

With the enormous (or so it seemed at the time) public expenditure involved, each building had to be an all-purpose facility that could be utilized up to 200 mights a year; housing not just 81 baseball home games, but the local NFL team, and rock concerts, and tractor pulls, and politcal conventions, and whatever other use local promoters could dream up.Thus, the justification for using an artificial surface was essentially, “we need to be able to switch quickly between events, and having a playing surface you can swap out is the only way to do that”.

The Astrodome

The history of artificial turf is roughly thus: when Major League Baseball expanded to South Texas in 1962, it discovered that Texas heat and ravenous insects weren’t conducive to the grand pastoral game – more than once, a game had to be called on account of bugs. Judge Ray Hofheinz, the team’s principal owner, had an answer in his back pocket – the Harris County Domed Stadium. Move the game indoors (R. Buckminster Fuller had already assured Hofheinz that you could enclose an area the size of a ballpark, “provided you didn’t run out of money”), crank up the a/c , and “Play ball!”.

They installed a sprinkler system for the turf, and placed Lucite panels in the ceiling to let in sunlight. However, when it became apparent from the first game that the clear panels made flyballs impossible to see, they were painted over. As the paint dried, the grass died.

Assistant GM Tal Smith was sent to find a solution. Monsanto, as it turned out, had been working  on an artificial playing surface for some time, intending it to be used for high school and college fields; institutions who couldn’t afford to resod their grass fields after every rainy, muddy game. A deal was struck; the team got their turf and, in exchange, Monsanto got the free publicity. Because Houston was home to NASA’s Mission Control Center, and everyone in the US was space-struck at the time, the team (originally the Colt .45’s) became the Astros, the Harris County stadium became the Astrodome, and Monsanto’s fake grass became AstroTurf.

Then the dominoes started to fall; new facilities in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Montreal, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Seattle, San Diego, St. Louis & Toronto all had artificial turf. It changed the way the game was played – speed became king. Punch-and-Judy hitters learned that they could chop the ball off the infield and leg out a base hit; infielders learned that they could skip the ball off the turf on a throw to first and actually get it there quicker.

Incidentally, this is why I get such a chuckle out of people who say, “I’m a baseball purist. I like natural grass. And bunts. And stolen bases. And the hit and run.” The running game was one helluva lot more of a sound strategy on AstroTurf. If you like natural grass, you should like the Earl Weaver brand of baseball – pitching, defense and the three-run home run!

One other oft-ignored point about artificial turf is that it does nothing for the comfort of the occupants of the stadium. Aside from the injury concerns of players working on what is essentially thinly-carpeted concrete, it’s no better for the fans. On a hot day, natural grass will absorb the CO₂ exhaled by the fans and release cooling oxygen into the atmosphere. Artificial turf just acts like a giant mirror and reflects the heat back into the stands.

Ballparks built in the early part of 20th century were mostly retired in the late 50’s and early 60’s, having a lifespan of around 50 years. The AstroTurf generation started to be replaced in the early part of this century, sometimes barely 30 years after construction. And, of course, now that they’d had a taste of public money, it was very difficult to wean teams away from the teat – they were a “public institution” (albeit privately owned), after all, and a source of civic pride.

Camden Yards

Was it of necessity that teams needed new ballparks, or was it fashion? In the 70’s, new ballparks were moving to the suburbs, following the fans. In the late 80’s, starting with SkyDome, stadia started moving back downtown, becoming centerpieces of urban renewal projects. Then Camden Yards in Baltimore came along, and the floodgates opened; every team had to have a retro-style ballpark, with modern amenities, right downtown. The public funding was usually disguised in the form of a lottery or consumption tax (hotel taxes were popular – locals don’t stay in downtown hotels, right? Let the out-of-towners pay for it).

So what of the three remaining turf-era ballparks? Kansas City got real grass in 1995, courtesy of legendary Superbowl groundskeeper George Toma. That leaves the two domes. The  Trop is, I think, stuck with an artificial surface – the roof doesn’t open, and even with the best team in the AL East, they don’t draw enough fans to convince anyone to build them a new ballpark; besides, the building they play in is barely 20 years old. So, the Rogers Centre is it;  the last turf park that doesn’t need to be. Let’s hope it changes. Soon.

Wilko Johnson

“I already had a gig when they asked me to do Game of Thrones…”

Wilko Johnson has played his last gig, according to a story in the Daily Express. He was hoping to do a series of gigs on his home turf of Canvey Island in Essex, but his failing health wouldn’t allow it.

Dammit, dammit, dammit…

Just saw on Facebook that Dr. Feelgood founding member Wilko Johnson has pancreatic cancer, and has elected not to have treatment. Doctors give him less than a year to live, but in true Road Warrior fashion, he’s off to Japan for a tour, back to England to mix a new album, a short tour of France and then, hopefully a series of farewell gigis in the UK.

Gigs – March

Rick was off travellin’ and recordin’ last month, so there wasn’t much new.

Rick & the Krickets

March 10  – The Old Lawson House, Hagersville, ON

March 16 – The Corktown Tavern, Hamilton, ON as special guests of The Matadors

March 23 & 24 =  The Come BY Chance, Hamilton, ON

March 31-  The Nines, Burlington, ON as special guests of The  Hellbent Rockers.

Gigs – January

Rick & the Krickets
January 6  – The Wobbly Scotsmen, Hamilton, ON
January 13 & 14 – The Come BY Chance, Hamilton, ON

Gigs – December

Rick & the Krickets:

The Wobbly Scotsmen, Hamilton, ON Dec 2
The Nines Brick Bar, Burlington, ON w. The Hellbent Rockers  Dec 3
The Gladstone Tavern, Hamilton, ON – Dec. 23
The Come BY Chance, Hamilton, ON – Dec 30
The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 163, Hamilton, ON – New Year’s Eve Bash! Dec 31

Gigs – June

Rick & the Krickets
June 3 – The Wobbly Scotsmen, Hamilton, ON
June 12 – Faloney’s of Ancaster (with Trevor Rogers on bass), Ancaster, ON
June 18 – Krickets plus special guests – 447 Club, Mount Hope, Ontario

Burnin’ Ethyl featuring rick Prinsthal:
June 10 – The Corktown, Hamilton,. ON

Gigs – May

Rick & the Krickets:
May 13  –Frankie’s Bar and Grill, Mount Hope, ON

Burnin’ Ethyl (featuring Rick Prinsthal):
May 7 –Stonewalls, Hamilton, ON with special guests Petit Fours vocalist Hot Tea and Peter MacAluay (otherwise known as the “guest singer” for Teenage Head)
May 27 –  The Cadillac Lounge, Toronto, ON as special guests of The Millwinders
May 28 – The Brass Door  London, ON as special guests of the Hi-Tones