High Five Friday

Though the Cardinals remain prohibitive favorites to come out of the National League, their injury situation makes that perch seem a bit more tenuous. Although they have played well without four of their starters for the last month or so, the potential loss of Scott Rolen should still frighten fans. Rolen has a rotator cuff tear, similar to the one that kept Mark Ellis out of Oakland’s lineup last year, and stands to miss about six months after having surgery. He also needs knee surgery that he has put off since early in the season, so shutting it down now to get ready for the spring is not only possible, but probable.

I recently watched a game where the Cards’ announcers were extremely optimistic about Walker and Molina, almost suspiciously so. They seemed to think that Molina would have no lasting effects and that he would come back at or above his previously established level of performance immediately. More surprisingly, they said that Walker’s back trouble is a thing of the past, and that he was only sitting out as a precaution and to give other players a chance to see some PAs.

I’m not very comfortable with any of these events, as Rolen’s loss leaves a vastly overachieving Abraham Nunez to man the hot corner in the playoffs, they have no credible backup at catcher, and Walker has a chronic back condition that isn’t going to go away with any amount of rest. The Cards should cheer for Houston so they get to play the Padres in the first round of the playoffs, because they could struggle with Philly or Florida if the Wild Card comes from the East (and isn’t the Nats).
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The Royals found a way to make people start talking about them again, but unfortunately, it required approaching the all-time loss streak to do it. I don’t have much to add that hasn’t already been written: indeed, the tightwad Wal-Mart owner has cost his team a chance to compete. Also, they have a troubling collections of has-beens, never-wases, and won’t-bes to fill out the lineup card behind Matt Stairs. My biggest question is how Stairs is not yet in Boston, as he’s precisely the kind of known-commodity-in-slag-heap player that Theo has gobbled up so far (Jeremy Giambi, Wade Miller, Matt Mantei, even David Ortiz). There will be more to talk about here if the A’s, Red Sox and Yankees blow through them in the next 10. Here’s hoping that we get to experience infamy.

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I spoke too soon about Shingo Takatsu’s unemployment, as the quietly signed with the New York Mets earlier this week, immediately making him the team’s second most accomplished reliever behind Roberto Hernandez. The folks at BP have been campaigning for an NL team with bullpen woes to sign him up, as his goofy delivery and freak show changeup make him something of a one trick pony that the AL collectively solved after a little over a year. I am a little less enthusiastic, as a bad pitcher is a bad pitcher is a bad pitcher, and playing slow pitch softball isn’t going to work anywhere. He benefited from an absurdly low BABIP last year, so even that success can be attributed somewhat to luck. Even if his change his supposed to suppress BABIP, it doesn’t help that his velocity and location can’t get anyone out. Finally, it has always confused me that a Japanese pitcher throws such an extreme changeup, as I’ve always heard that the pitch doesn’t even exist in Japan. Instead, most Japanese pitchers (see Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu as evidence) throw a variation of a forkball as their “change of pace.” Akinori Otsuka of the Padres also throws a traditional changeup, but there may be a selection bias, as American scouts could be prone to prioritizing these pitchers who have already adapted to the American style of pitching.

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ESPN Insider reported yesterday that J.C. Romero wouldn’t mind leaving the Twins, as players like David Ortiz and Casey Blake have had so much success after leaving the Cities. I can understand J.C.’s ambivalence toward the franchise that left him out to dry for the month of July, but his reasoning seems a bit ridiculous. Certainly, Ortiz has blossomed in Boston, but his rate stats aren’t that much better than the times he was healthy in Minnesota, and that doesn’t account for the times that he was playing hurt. Maybe he never would have put it all together for the Twins, but leaving probably wasn’t the source of his emergence. More importantly, he has no argument at all beyond that one example. Casey Blake hit lots of HRs last year, but it was pretty fluky, as he’s been one of the worst hitters in the MLB this year. And what about player’s who came to Minnesota to see their greatest success? Joe Nathan, Carlos Silva, Shannon Stewart and Rick Reed (briefly) probably don’t think anywhere-but-Minnesota is the best place to play. And there are plenty of examples of players who left and never again reached their Minnesota peak. Latroy Hawkins and Doug Mientkiewicz are obvious examples, but even Guardado, Milton and Guzman also demonstrate the same effect. I won’t fault Romero for his logical fallacy, but if more people start pointing to the leaving Minnesota effect, I’ll be a little steamed.

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While Randy Moss isn’t a baseball player, I think his news is interesting nonetheless. His agent, a shifty-eyed lawyer named Dante, appeared on Cold Pizza this morning (don’t ask why I watched it) and ran out some boring drivel about an ellipsis in the quotation and the past vs. future tense. Eventually, he became a little frustrated and finally said what was on everyone’s mind since the story broke, something like, :”Look, we’ve all known this for the last ten years. Why is it such a big deal that he admitted it?” And I couldn’t agree more. First of all, I think the NFL should turn over positive tests for non-performance enhancing drugs to the authorities and they can do what they want with them. I don’t see any reason for them to come down hard on an athlete for doing something that has little impact on the game. More importantly, did anyone really think that Randy Moss didn’t smoke pot, either in the distant past, the recent past, or as you are reading this? Just hours before the news broke, I was discussing NFL players with the most street cred, and we agreed that Moss came in second behind Ray Lewis, who probably killed someone.

Other highlights of the story so far include John Kruk and Jay Crawford jumping on the Skip Bayless “holier than thou” train to condemn all pot smokers and vow that they had never touched it. Kruk even said that Moss should have lied to Bryant Gumbel in the interview, which seems like the wrong advice for someone who has a spotty reputation to begin. Randy’s agent also made himself sound like a parent trying to punish a nine year old by saying that Moss was trying to cooperate with the media until they go and do something like this. From now on, he’ll just have to keep to himself. I also learned that there is no random drug testing in the NFL for non-PEDs, only a scheduled test in training camp. So if pot can get through your system in about a month, the players can still smoke for 10-11 months a year with impunity. Pretty toothless, but it makes sense if Lomas Brown was correct in his assertion that more than 50% of the league smokes pot. Brown doesn’t have Jose Canseco’s vendetta, so I think that his numbers are a little closer to reality than Canseco’s steroid approximation, but he’s probably a little high- or should I say above the true figure.