Baseballhead:
Quarter-Pole Quarry

Michael Cox

Gimme a "B"! Gimme an "a"! Gimme an...cripes, I'm bored with that already. This week we salute Eminem, the rabid Napster-hater whose new CD (titled "More Raps About Me" or something like that) is being released early because the file-swappers managed to get hold of advance copies. Oops.

We reached the one-quarter mark in the season last week, but at that moment the whole industry was running around shrieking and waving their hands above their heads, so this week brings slightly tardy snap analyses of the emerging trends of 2002 (no, I don't consider Jose Canseco's retirement a "trend")...

Barry Bonds is hitting more homers. Go figure. Of course, children born when he was a rookie are now applying for driver's licenses, so each home run means a lot more in historical terms. Still, having ESPN break in to cover a live at-bat which may or may not tie Bonds with Harmon Killebrew is a sketchy premise at best.

Once Bonds has passed Frank Robinson for fourth place all-time, we can rest easy knowing that he won't catch his third-place godfather (you don't know who that is by now, you e-mail me) until sometime next year. Fans outside the Bay Area may now ignore the Giants as usual.

So is Torii Hunter. But don't worry -- Jason Giambi took a while to catch fire, but should pass Hunter before you can say "Ken Phelps."

Whaddya mean, there isn't competitive balance? Well, except where the Brewers are concerned, which probably means their Commissioner/owner will continue pressing the issue. Sure, it's early, but no one is running away with any division yet -- as of Sunday morning, no leader was more than two games ahead -- and only two divisions contain teams with double-digit deficits. The NL East is six games apart from top to bottom, illustrating that "competitive balance" can be a great synonym for "mediocrity."

Rafael Palmeiro Viagra Award Winners: Cincinnati Reds and Anaheim Angels. With their youthful outfielders hammering the round out of the ball, and pitching in the upper third of their league, the Redlegs have prompted the question, "do they even need Griffey?" Answer: Yes. The team is excruciatingly average in both slugging average and on-base percentage (Austin Kearns and Adam Dunn notwithstanding), and none of their interim answers in CF were nearly as good as the incumbent.

The Halos aren't world-beaters in any category, but they've managed to take advantage of the swooning A's and Rangers, as well as a schedule that so far has had them play the oafish and shiftless teams of the AL Central 16 more times than the Mariners did. Expect them to stay close until the M's get a crack at the Royals and Tigers and Tribe (oh my).

"What The Hell Happened" Award Winners: Oakland Athletics and Atlanta Braves. If I had predicted the A's would fall ten games behind the Mariners in May for the second time in two years, you'd have wondered if someone hit me with the crazy stick. Of course, you'd also have thought I meant it would be all the M's doing. The wheels haven't exactly come off the wagon, but without a Jason Giambi it's going to be hard for Oakland to extricate themselves if their hole gets much deeper.

Sure, it may be a bit of a stretch to wonder "what the hell happened" to a team that's in second place, but Conventional Wisdom dictated that the Gary Sheffield deal was the missing piece the Braves needed to re-take their previous dominance, thus sparing themselves the embarrassment of having to overtake the Phillies in September again. No dice.

But who'd have thought it would be partly because Atlanta pitching is dead last in walks allowed? (On the other hand, they're second in strikeouts, kinda like the pitching version of Jim Thome.) As for those Bravo batters, they're abysmal, 15th in OBP and 12th in SLG. The only real question is, how the hell are they only one game out of the lead?

I could have included the Cubs in this department, but honestly, you half-expected this from them, didn't you?

Here We Go Again: The Twins, as they did last year, are making excellent use of their weak division rivals, mated with the unbalanced schedule, to jockey for the AL Central lead. As much as we'd all like the Twins to win a division title before Bud contracts them, we really shouldn't take 'em seriously until they play more than three series against over-.500 teams.

All That's Missing Is a Feud With The Owner: There's an uneasiness in Seattle over their recent swoon, with the requisite soul-searching, pitchers shuttled between bullpen and rotation, frequent highlight clips of helmets being thrown down in anger, and Lou Piniella snapping at the press. (Yes, I know the press often can use a good snapping.) If you didn't look at the standings, you'd probably never guess that they still have the second-best record in baseball.

It's almost like they've been taking lessons from the Yankees.

Damned If'n I'll Let R.J. Win The Cy This Year: Curt Schilling already has 114 strikeouts. That puts him on pace, assuming he pitches 257 innings as he did last year, for 362 K's. That number has only been reached five times since 1900 (and only twice since 1976, both by teammate Randy Johnson). Schilling's personal best? 319 in 1997, the only time he's struck out more than 300. Maybe the Unit gave Schilling one of those wobbly exercise sticks he used to endorse...

Moving on to a couple of the week's big stories...

From The Shrugged Shoulders Desk: While it was far from a blockbuster trade, the deal that shipped Jeremy "The Other One" Giambi to Philly for John "Gee, I Thought He Retired Or Something" Mabry has been discussed with eyebrows hoisted, primarily because most fans believe Oakland wünderkind Billy Beane must've hoisted a few himself before making the trade.

Most interesting has been the media take on the situation. Peter Gammons gave the deal but a single paragraph, clearly suggesting that this was another kind of hoisting altogether: that of the white flag. Yet a salary dump usually means getting a youngster, not the equivalent of Dad's hand-me-down AMC Pacer. Rob Neyer ran down the other initially strange deals Beane has made, drawing the conclusion that there's just no way it could be a bad deal (mind you, Neyer's entire "Beane Count" shtick relies on the premise that this is the smartest front-office employee in baseball).

Most odd was the Baseball Prospectus view, where their usual hair-trigger proclamations were replaced with the suggestion that something is happening here, but we don't know what it is, casting an eerie pall on the whole conflagration. Still, however, the theme remains that Billy Beane must know what he's doing, honest.

I'm not so sure. The only truly plausible explanations I can find for making a trade so outrageously and overtly lopsided as this are that Beane either 1) was explicitly instructed to do so by management, or that 2) Philly GM Ed Wade has purchased some hypnosis tapes off the Internet.

We can rule out the second scenario because we all know Wade would have hypnotized Beane into trading Giambi for Bobby Abreu. Therefore, the move must have been forced on Beane by the A's ownership, either because they want to make yet another in MLB's long series of misguided "large market"/"small market" statements or because they bear some sort of grudge against Giambi himself ("Send him to...Philadelphia!").

Although I don't genuflect in Beane's direction with the verve of some, I do think he's a smart man, and that if it was left up to him, he wouldn't have made this trade.

Acknowledge And Move On: The New York Post last week printed the gossip that Mike Piazza is supposedly gay. Whether it's true or not, I could care less -- if he is, good for him; if not, ALF can rest easy. However, the "revelation" triggered a firestorm of press wherein every two-bit sports columnist upbraided their colleagues for even talking about it, then spewed an entire column of his own on the subject. Jim Rome trotted out Billy Bean once again so the former player could again strongly urge the rumored-to-be-gay Piazza not to come out because he'd be eaten alive (don't even go there), while forgetting that most people don't remember ever seeing Bean play baseball, probably including ex-teammates.

Lost in the shuffle was that the whole thing was started by the Post, a "newspaper" that's one cover photo of the World's Fattest Cat away from being the Weekly World News. That the nation's sportswriters even took it seriously...okay, so that makes sense.

about the author

Michael Cox thinks the gay-player issue has several parallels with the intelligent-sportswriter issue. Ask about the day Neyer was "outed" at mc@strikethree.com.