There has been much gnashing of teeth in recent days when it comes to one former player who has stopped denying what he does own, and another who was denied what he believes he should own.

We’re supposed to stand up and applaud the fact that Mark McGwire has finally come clean and admitted what everyone already knew – that his slugging career was chemically enhanced.

Nice try.

Is it better that he did admit the truth many years after the fact?  I suppose so, but consider why he did it. 

Is it coincidence that the admission comes just after his third straight ringing rejection by Hall of Fame voters despite almost 600 home runs, and just before he begins his first coaching position in baseball as hitting instructor for the Cardinals?  What do you think? (more…)

RFK Stadium. Good Friday 1999.

With the signing of Jason Bay by the Mets and Matt Holliday by the Cardinals, the “crown jewels” of this winter’s crop of free agents – weaker than usual in quality and stronger in quantity – have now been claimed.  So with the market set, general managers will spend the remainder of the run-up to spring training primarily working around the edges, adding middle- to bottom of the rotation starters, 7^th to 9^th place hitters, situational relievers, utility men and the like.

 With every addition to, or subtraction from, their rosters, general managers are making – or more precisely, building – a statement about where their teams are headed.  Some of those statements can be made publicly.  Most of them can’t.

For example, Mets’ GM Omar Minaya can and did tell the media that his team needs more power and that signing Bay was easier than signing Holliday.  What he can’t say is (more…)

Happy New Year.

Bud Selig has decided to assemble a “study group” (does that mean they will only study, rather than implement, change?) to offer recommendations for improving the game. And while we can hardly consider ourselves in the class of such august committee members as Tony LaRussa, Mike Scoscia, Jim Leyland, Joe Torre and John Schuerholz, it seems a good time to weigh in with our own recommended New Year’s resolutions – some of which will just work the edges of the game and others that would make a substantial difference. So here goes:

Expand instant replay: There is such a thing as excess, or too much of a good thing, but not in the case of instant replay. Well-intentioned but misguided protestations of lengthening the game aside, the long-awaited first step of adding replay review of boundary calls (home runs, fan interference) could and should be supplemented by the addition of review of at least fair/foul and catch/no catch calls. (Heck, after watching the 2009 post-season, I was at one point so disgusted with the incompetence of the umpires that I was willing to consider “K Zone” technology to call balls and strikes, which brings to mind an interview a few years ago by my colleague Phil Wood with a major league umpire, who said the rulebook strike zone is “just a suggested strike zone” ). (more…)

A look at the list of still-available free agents makes it seem fairly certain that a lot of last-minute minor league deals will be struck in late January-early February.

As we approach a conclusion to the drawn-out debate about health care reform in Washington, we are reminded of that old political axiom: perception is reality. The perception of accomplishment is so often more significant than the reality of what was actually achieved.

The hot stove season in baseball is much the same.

Sure, the Yankees seemed to help themselves with the acquisition of Curtis Granderson from the hemorrhaging Tigers, the Red Sox certainly are much the better with the signing of John Lackey for their already formidable rotation, and the Phillies can’t help but be buoyed by the addition of (arguably) baseball’s best pitcher, Roy Halladay, despite relinquishing Cliff Lee, who even in the dreams of the Philly faithful could hardly have pitched better than he did in 2009.

At the same time, even with a good two months left before the start of spring training, fans of the Mets, Dodgers and Cubs, among others, seem already prepared to write off their teams’ chances for 2010 due to the inactivity of their respective management teams. (more…)

It was once said that if you repeat something long enough and loudly enough, it will become the truth even if it’s not entirely true. Or that the best way to induce belief in a falsehood is to surround it with layers of truth.

Such is the case with the major issue of big and small market disparities in baseball. We know the historical pattern in this era of unbridled free agency: the Yankees will spend their $200 million + every year, the teams in the next tier (Red Sox, Mets, Phillies et al.) will invest their $125+ million, clubs like the Cardinals and Cubs will spend upwards of $80 million, and then the red haired stepchildren like the Pirates and Athletics will be lucky if they have a scant $40 million or so to dedicate to their players.

And so, conventional thinking goes, those teams in the bottom tier are inflicted with permanent disabilities because of their market size and essentially have no chance to win (the regular season success of the Twins aside), except perhaps in the odd year once every decade if they’re lucky, after which they’ll have to dismantle what they built because they can’t afford to keep it. (more…)