The Dawning of a Whole New Joe Morgan Chat Day

Spring still makes spring in the mind,
When sixty years are told;
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart,
And we are never old.

-Emerson (i.e., the inventor of crappy electronics equipment)

Today in the Northeast people are more concerned with snow than baseball. Spring seems as far away as a Barry Bonds home run ball. But unbeknownst to the locals, the new season has begun. How do I know? The first Joe Morgan Chat Day is in the books. And unbeknownst to Speed, Racer X is actually his long-lost brother Rex, but I digress.

We-I can't decide if that's the royal We or I'm schizophrenic, and so am I-here at Mike's Baseball Rants love the Joe Morgan and we love the Joe Morgan Chat Days even more. Joe was the greatest second baseman we've ever seen. He had one of the greatest stances in baseball history. And he was a member of the 1983 "Wheeze Kid" Phils, not to mention an earlier team referred to as the Big Red something-or-other. Joe is also a charming and affable gentleman, or appears to be so. He knows tons more about baseball on the field than we will ever know.

But as a baseball analyst, Joe is the most infuriating in the business. He is not as execrable as the di-a-bo-lical sab-o-tag-E (to quote Bugs) that is being perpetrated during a Steve Lyons- Thom Brennaman broadcast. Joe is far more subtle and insidious. He can make a great point followed by one of the most inane and backward statements you will ever hear. Sometimes he does both at the same time. This is JMCD nirvana for the initiated.

Joe has spent the offseason holed up somewhere out of the baseball spotlight, probably playing golf as is his wont. He has chosen this propitious time (i.e., right after the Veterans' Committee failed to elect anyone to the Hall) to spring his head out of his self-imposed hibernation like a groundhog and survey the baseball landscape. Indeed, Joe casts himself as a baseball harbinger, a precursor foreshadowing what is to come.

Joe is baseball's intrepid groundhog. In this pivotal year in which labor strife, contraction, Bud's ugly mug, and decent major-league pay (apparently) are a distant memory, baseball needs to forge ahead and in a forward-thinking, fan-tabulous spirit. It needs new ways to attract fans like demanding that it's players sign autographs before games and that its mascots give that little extra when he is sweating off 10 pounds on a sultry summer night.

Joe, the most stalwart of the new generation of "it was just better in our day" curmudgeonly old-timers needs to instead embody a new spirit of open-minded analysis. The first step this offseason wasn't the most positive: the old Hall-of-Fame Vets rejected all candidates. However, perhaps Joe in his new State of the Unionized, i.e., his chat session can change that direction.

If groundhog Joe comes out of his hole and does not see his shadow, it means that there will be murkier baseball horizon but one rife with positive change in the near future. That is, Spring, a new dawning is near.

If Joe casts his eyes down and sees his shadow, he and stalwarts like him will forever be dwelling on their baseball pasts. This means that we will remain in the cold baseball winter of our discontent for some time to come.

C'mon, Joe, we need Spring very badly.

I can't say that he starts with the most positive step:

Joe Morgan: As Vice Chairman of the Hall of Fame, I think we have to give the Veteran's Committee Process one more chance before we say it doesn't work. I think it needs one more turn. As a player and HOFer, I wish there was voting again next year. I think a lot of people understand the process better now. Instead we have to wait two more years. Therefore, I'm not pleased with that. But as Vice Chairman, I do think the process will work in the long run.

[Mike: Ok, there's positive tone in there. I disagree with him though. I think that the Mike Schmidts of the Committee are of the mindset of, "These bums weren't selected by the writers, so why should I pick them? They're just not Hall of Famers"-not realizing that that mindset invalidates the existence of the Vets' Committee in the first place. It's also incorrect in some cases. But I'm afraid that the Vets will be unable to agree-at least to the required degree of 75% concordance- on any candidate. No one was over 60% this year and given that the only new candidate in two years will be Jim Kaat, the odds do not increase. I think that the Vets Committee embodies the same stagnation that the writers had in the mid-Forties and it will be scrapped by the time that the next vote is released, if not sooner. Maybe they'll let 'em vote again next year instead of waiting.

But that's not very positive of me. Let's give it another chance, Mike. Who cares if White Herzog is dead by the next time he is eligible or if arguably the best available manager, Gene Mauch, is not even on the ballot? There, I feel better already.]

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The Good: No Shadow

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Andy Nunez, NY: Joe,
Do you think the Veteran's Committee was being objective in their decision or just trying to prove a point that they won't be practicing cronyism? I think it is a shame that Gil Hodges didn't make it in. What do you think?
Joe Morgan: I don't think anyone was trying to prove a point. You have to respect everyone's opinion, even if they differ with yours. My voting differed with most of them but they have that right. It's a big step. The HOFers are deciding who will sit next to them. That's important. They take it very seriously. It had nothign to do with anything that has happened before.

[Mike: I agree: It was not cronyism. You have to like someone for cronyism to work. They didn't like anyone. They don't want anyone to "sit next to them". They're the women on the subway who take up an extra seat with her shopping bags. "It's my Hall of Fame and you can't have it." But I have to hand it to Joe for respecting everyone's opinion.]

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Thom..Providence ,RI: Joe: What's your take on Red Sox GM Theo Epstien's new "Bullpen By Commitee" approach? Dud or Stud?
Joe Morgan: My understanding is they hired Bill James and are using his stats to set up the bullpen. They think they can get it done with lots of folks. They are basically pinning their hopes on Bill's stats. We'll just have to see how it works. Some teams have been successful that way. There isn't just one way to do it.

[Mike: OK, that's fair. I'm not sure that it will work either, though I think James' theories are superior to the approach bringing in Jay Witasick and Aaron Fultz in the middle-to-late innings of the World Series to blow a lead, thereby never allowing you to use your best reliever, Robb Nen.
Think positive, Mike. He's keeping an open mind. Right!]

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John: Has Reds managemetn strained its relationship so much with Ken Griffey Jr. that they will be forced to trade him? If so, wouldn't Atlanta be a perefect fit for everyone involved? The Reds get young pitching, the Braves get more offence, and Griffey gets to play closer to his family.
Joe Morgan: I don't think they will be forced to do that but they have strained the relationship. I'm sure the Reds felt the same way when Griffey said he wanted to be traded. In my opinion, they are even. From what I have heard from Ken, that's OK. I think he will prove he is still one of the best, if he can stay healthy.

[Mike: Well, I think Griffey has fallen off since his prime. He had an OPS that was just the league adjusted average in 70 games last year. He wasn't that great in his last full year in 2000 either. But who knows how much of that is due to injury, though some may be attributed to age as well.

That said, Joe's point is a good one. If Griffey is healthy his play should improve and everything in Cincy will be hunky-dory. That's 3-for-3 for Joe. Maybe he's turned over a new leaf. Uh oh!]

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Carl (Chicago): Why hasn't Ron Santo been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The numbers are there, and everything he's been through should defintely put him in. And 5 gold gloves!
Joe Morgan: IHe got one of my ten votes. That's all I can say. I was shocked that Marvin Miller didn't make it. I thought Gil Hodges would make it. I thought Maury Wills and Ron Santo would make it. I voted for ten guys I thought would make it including Tony Oliva. I just get one vote for each guy and I used on on Santo.

[Mike: OK, Joe. I'm not such a big fan of Wills, but kudos for knowing enough to vote for Santo, one of the top 10 at his position all-time.

Well, Joe finally got another "Good", but it took him a half-dozen questions to get there.]

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The Bad: Shadow

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Pete (Washington DC): Is Jeter as lazy and unfocused as George thinks he is? I think he will be a distraction this year, how did your teams handle problems like this when you were a player?
Joe Morgan: I don't think it will be a distraction. He is not unfocused. I just think George has a way of trying to push buttons. Some players respond to that and I think Jeter will. It's not the party life or any of that that has affected his BA. Hitting .349 was very special. He's a good hitter but he's not a .350 hitter. His actual average is lower than that and we should find out this year.

[Mike: Look, Jeter had an off year in 2002. No one is really arguing that. But he batted .297 and is 65th all-time in batting average with a .317 (actually, .3168 which ties him with Larry Walker and is right ahead of Edgar Martinez). His career high yet far is .349, but he also batted .339 and has never been lower than .291. Batting average is a spurious basis for a player's worth at best (Jake Stenzel batted .339 for his career for crissake), but to hold him to being a .350 hitter is just not fair. There are only three players who have batted over .350 in their careers. Tony Gwynn and Todd Helton are the only men since Musial to bat over .330 for their careers. The problem with Jeter is the 130-point dropoff in his slugging percentage. I don't think the Yankees will complain if he bats his average and slugs a good .475.]

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Jake, Bloomsburg PA: Mr. Morgan, how do you feel about the comeback seasons of Hampton, Alomar, Juan Gonzalez, and Kevin Brown?
Joe Morgan: I think if you put them in order, it's Hampton first. He'll be with Leo Mazzone and he gets the best out of his pitchers. He just needs his sinker to work again. Then Roberto Alomar. He has been such a good player and was adjusting last year. Gonzalez just needs to stay healthy. Kevin Brown is a different story. He has had so many injuries, you just don't know what is going on. No doubt, when he is healthy, he is one of the top pitchers in baseball.

[Mike: I couldn't disagree more. Hampton is most suspect from where I am sitting. He had a couple of decent seasons and one great one, so he wasn't that great a pitcher to begin with. Then he fell completely apart in Colorado. True, his sinker didn't work at Coors, but it didn't work on the road either. Nothing worked for him. He may bounce back to his, but he has a quite a journey ahead of him to get there.

Alomar had an awful season in 2002. He was literally half the player he was the year before. If you took a number of his stats (HRs, RBI, etc.) and divided his 2001 totals in half, you would approximate his 2002 totals. He had the worst year of his career by far. It has to be a little more than "adjusting." This is a man who has played for five different teams, 3 in the AL and 2 in the NL, in his 15 seasons. He's used to re-adjusting to new surroundings. He will also 35 in April. Comebacks get harder for players as the get up in years. I think Alomar will bounce back but wouldn't be entirely surprised by another sub-par season.

As for Gonzalez, he is passing the magic age of 32 and may be just finding his level for the final third of his career. He wasn't that great in 2000 either. He'll probably recover somewhat, but his glory years may be behind.

I agree with Joe about Kevin Brown, his injuries and advanced may catch up with him like they did in 2002. That said, if healthy he has the best chance to bounce back. He has had a nine-year stretch in which he was one of the best in the game. That's hard to ignore. It's something that Gonzalez and Hampton cannot say about their careers.]

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Adam (NY): Yo Joe!

Ya think Soriano can eclipse 50 home runs this year? I sure think so. Also what do you think of Matsui's potential?
Joe Morgan: 50 is a lot of HRs even in today's game. I dont think he can do that, he only hit 39 last year. Matsui won't have the same impact that Ichiro had, they are different players. Ichiro was immediately one of the best. Matsui can become one of the best, but not right away.

[Mike: C'mon, Joe. 50 home runs is a lot, but it's only 11 more than Soriano hit in 2002. It's only his second full season in the bigs, and he hasn't yet hit his prime years.I wanted expect him to hit 50 but it would be far from unprecedented. I don't know much about Matsui, but he is a different type of player than Ichiro. He has much more power. Whether that power translates into the game on this side of the ocean remains to be seen. But if it does, I don't know why he wouldn't have as big an impact as Ichiro.]

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Chris(Cincinnati): Joe, my Dad says that you were the best second baseman who ever played the game. What was the locker room like during the hey-day of the Big Red Machine?
Joe Morgan: It was indescribable. Fantastic. To walk into a lockerrom with all those guys, Seave, Rose, Griffey Sr., Bench, etc. Just imagine. There were about six or seven HOFers in that room each day. It's a pretty special feeling.

[Mike: By the time Joe is done, they will all be Hall of Famers. The friggin' bat boy will be in Cooperstown. That is pretty special.]

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Birdie (STL): How does the Cardinals pitching look to you? Is Eldred healthy? All we get is propaganda in STL...
Joe Morgan: You have to remember you won the division last year! But it will be more difficult this year. LaRussa always gets the best out of his guys. The one thing about baseball, there aren't any great teams. The Cardinals have a pitching flaw, but every team has a flaw. The one thing in this game today, you can go right from last to first. Anyone can win .. with a few exceptions.

[Mike: Joe, offer an opinion. If you don't know about Cal Eldred's condition, you can always say that he has not been a good pitcher since the mid-Nineties, so who cares if he's healthy? Morris should continue to be the staff leader. Williams and Stephenson should be reliable starters if healthy. The rest (Tomko, Carpenter, Simontacchi, Hermanson, Eldred, whoever) should be able to round out a decent staff. As always for the Cardinals' rotation, injuries will be the issue. That was the issue last year (along with Darryl Kile's untimely death) and they still were fourth in the NL in ERA.

Besides, every team has holes. You're storied Big Red Machine had a rotation in 1976 led by the ever-average Gary Nolan. And " you can go right from last to first"-I thought that we were adrift in a sea of predictability in which the big-money teams always win. Isn't that what the analysts have been telling us for years. Sorry, negativity. I'm back on board.]

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Tom Nampa, ID: I was wondering why doesn't baseball follow all of the other sports and have drug testing like they do?
Joe Morgan: I've said this for a long time, that they should. The real reason is Kim Caminiti, Jose Canseco, when they said a lot of guys were using steroids, that's coming from actual players. It's not writers speculating. I thought at that point, they should have started trying to prove that the problem wasn't as bad as Ken and Jose said. But they should be testing.

[Mike: Way to support the Union! The last CBA settled this for steroids. Maybe the players could have been more forthcoming, but it's done. As for the rest of the drug world, the union is proceeding very slowly and cautiously. We'll have to wait to see if we can add wisely to that list. You could have mentioned ephedera, Joe.]

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Joe, Queens, NY: Mr. Morgan, how do you think the Mets will do after so much expectation was put on them last year and they were horrible.
Joe Morgan: You have guys who have proven they can have good years. Vaughn, Alomar, they all have great potential. The addition of Floyd will help. Art Howe will be a little different than Valentine. We'll just have to see how that works.

[Mike: Who are these young players, Alomar and Vaughn, with so much potential? I've never heard of them. First, the Mets had a .466 winning percent last year, not great, not good, but also not "horrible". They are a team that is getting long in the tooth that had some veteran players have off years. Whether that trend can be reversed, we'll have to see, but the odds should not improve as they get older, not matter how many tons Vaughn sheds this offseason. Also, Howe will be much different from Valentine. Unfortunatley, Steve Phillips is still Steve Phillips.]

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Brandon, Spencer: why isnt roger maris in the hall? Hes a legend but i see he only gets 22% of votes to get in. I dont care if he only had a couple of good years he should be in the hall. What do you thing?
Joe Morgan: Again, that's the great thing about baseball. It's more sujective than you realize. I voted for Maris as well. But it's not all stats. Some have said he wasn't consistent enough. He didn't have 400 HRs. So a lot of people didn't feel he deserved it. But I felt breaking Babe Ruth's record was so special and he won two MVP's. I believe he should be in the Hall, but again, I just get one vote.

[Mike: Hey, how about puuting Ned Williamson in then? He held the homer record before Ruth. How about Earl Webb, who owns the doubles record? Maris had some great years, but he was basically washed up by thirty. Is that a Hall of Famer? He was a home run hitter who hit 275 home runs. Bob Allison is the most similar batter in Maris in history. Maris is not a Hall of Famer. Make a nice display case for 1961 and move on.]

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Lindsay, Seattle: Do you really think the Tigers will lose 100+ games, or do they even have 1/2 of a chance of being .500?
Joe Morgan: I don't think they will lose 100. There will be a differnet attitude with some of the guys from the glory days around. To say they will be .500 is difficult. But they will be better.

[Mike: What, is Alan Trammell going to pitch for them? Guys from the glory days mean nothing. This is a bad team, a very bad team. Wish it into the cornfield.]

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Teddy (Milwaukee): Hi Joe. Love your chats! You're the best ESPN analyst. A question for you--I'm very worried about my Brewers and don't know whether the front office has a real plan to compete. What's your take on this?
Joe Morgan: A lot of changes were made when Lopes left. Even in the front office. Wendy Selig is not the President anymore, so you expect some chaos. But they will have to get their act together. I don't know much about Ned Yost.

[Mike: They lost their best player and cut payroll wherever they could. What do you think their direction is? To the head of the welfare line to take Steinbrenner's money away by the wheelbarrow-ful.

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Jeff (Ohio): Joe, have you had a chance to see Great American Ballpark? Will it truly be a great American ballpark?
Joe Morgan: I haven't seen it. I should have seen it but I haven't. I was there for the final game in Riverfront and meant to go look at it but I was running late. But I hear it is going to be something special. I will be there for Opening Day.

[Mike: Thanks for taking an interest in the old club during the offseason, Joe.]

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Doug ( Detroit ): Joe, Will the DH ever leave baseball...I hope so....
Joe Morgan: No. Most of the folks in the NL want to do away with it but it's an AL thing. If the leagues every truly combined you would probably lose it. But as long as there is an AL and NL, probably not.

[Mike: Why? Opinions change on a yearly basis. I remember a time when there were strong rumors that the NL was going to institute the DH. I also remember a time when the AL was discussing ridding itself of the artifice. Baseball has been too concerned with beating down the players and fleecing the Yankees of their wealth to deal with this issue.]

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Doug ( etroit ): Quick Joe, i have the third pick in Fantasy baseball draft....A ROd and Randy Johnson are gone.....Should I take Vlad???
Joe Morgan: That's not a bad choice!! Somebody asked me for about the most underrated player the other day and he may be it. He is as good as anyone. He just plays in a bad situation. If he played for the Yankees or Dodgers, he would be considered the best player in the game. He is among the best .. as good as ARod.

[Mike: You've got to be kidding me. Vlad is so underrated that he's overrated now. It's trendy to select him as the most underrated. The media jump through hoops to prove he's more valuable than A-Rod and Bonds (or just ignore Bonds altogether). I have to update my "About Me" because I still list him as underrated. How about Brian Giles, languishing in Pittsburgh. Vlad is a great player, but not as good as A-Rod or Bonds, not yet.]

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The Ugly: Bill Murray and Punxsutawney Phil going over a cliff in flames in Groundhog's Day after being awakened to Sonny & Cher's I Got You, Babe for, literally, the umpteenth time

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Phil - St. Cloud, MN.: Greetings to the man I regard as the greatest 2B of all time (yes, greater than Eddie Collins)--Who, in your opinion, is history's best LF? Has Mr. Bonds eked his way past Williams, Musial & Henderson with his single-season OBP & SLG records and monster World Series, or will his so-called "attitude" drag him down in history's eyes? (You can probably tell that I think he's already there.) Thanks Mr. Morgan-- P.S: My wife thinks you're handsome & wants to know if you're ever mistaken for Quincy Jones...
Joe Morgan: That's a generation type of question. Baseball, you used to be able to compare guys, Cobb to Mays, etc. But the game has changed so much. It's hard to compare across decades. The parks are smaller and the parks aren't as big. Barry is unbelievable. But my point is if Williams and Musial played in the game today, their stats would be far better than what they were. Williams would hit 50 HRs every year and probably be close to .400. It's just not fair to compare guys that far back. It's 'hard to even compare Bonds to a guy like Willie Stargell. There is no doubt in my mind Stargell would hit 60 HRs in today's game. But Bonds have certainly set himself apart from everyone else in his era.

[Mike: This is Classic Joe if I have ever seen it. "Things were better in my day, you young whippersnappers. Stargell would hit 60 homers today." There's just so much to choose from. Where do I start?

First, you can not compare Cobb and Mays straight up, and you never could. Mays played in an era with much lower batting averages and on-base percentages than Cobb. And Cobb played in an era with fewer home runs and a much lower slugging average. In Cobb's first full season (1907), the league leader in home runs had eight, eight dingers!. At 35 Cobb batted .401 and finished a distant second in the batting race to George Sisler's .420 average. I would feel more comfortable comparing Mays straight up with today's players. Even though that is problematic at best, the stats mean the same thing today for the most part as in Mays' day.

Second, yes the stats of Williams and Musial would be better but that does not mean that players like Bonds who have better stats than Williams or Musial ever recorded can just be ignored.

Third, thanks for patronizing us, Joe. "Bonds to a guy like Willie Stargell. There is no doubt in my mind Stargell would hit 60 HRs in today's game. But Bonds have certainly set himself apart from everyone else in his era." Bonds is a nice player today, young'uns, but Stargell now that was a real ballplayer. Stargell broke 40 home runs in a season twice and amassed 475 homers in his career. There's doubt in my mind that he would hit 60 in a season. He's far behind contemporaries like Schmidt, Jackson, Killebrew, and McCovey. Bonds is 114 home runs ahead of the next active player. Besides that Bonds has stolen fitfty bases in a season, something Pops never came close to. Bonds has eight Gold Gloves; Stargell, none. Bonds' OPS is 77% better than the adjusted league average; Stargell's is 47% better. No offense meant to Stargell, who is a clear-cut Hallof Famer, but he couldn't carry Bonds' body armor.

Last, nice sidestep of the Quincy Jones comparison.]

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Jamison(Fair Lawn, NJ): Hi Joe, I like to compare my swing to pros. Which ones do you think have the nicest overall swings? I like Piazza's, but is he a good choice? Thanks
Joe Morgan: Barry Bonds! It's the most effective! There are a lot with nice swings but Barry's is so short, quick and powerful.

[Mike: This would have gone under The Good, but Joe cannot have it both ways. Either Bonds is exceptional or he's not.]

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Juan (New York): What if any, do you see as a common misjudgement amongst GM's and other team officials when assessing talent?
Joe Morgan: When they just look at stats, esp. power stats. Many teams do that. Oh, he hit 24 HRs last year, instead of looking at when they happened, what he does to start rallies, how he hits with guys on base, etc. You can't judge a player with just two stats.

[Mike: You mean like evaluating pitchers based on wins? Now, who would possibly do that?]

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Joe Morgan: In closing, I know a lot of fans are disappointed that no one was elected by the Veterans Committee yesterday and I'm disappointed myself. Let's hope in the future some of these guys get in. This Committee was set up to help guys who had fallen through the cracks. It wasn't set up to be on a par with the writers. There have actually been more guys elected by the Committee than the baseball writers in the time period that the Committee has been around. The Committee has inducted a lot of guys, just not this year.

I'm looking forward to talking with you again after the season starts when I start up again with my weekly chat. Take care and enjoy Spring Training!
[Mike: Ah, now I feel bad for castigating him. He's really a nice optimistic, cheerful sort. Take care, Mr. Morgan.]

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Stark Discipline

Jayson Stark published a piece on ESPN today congratulating the Veterans' Committee on their inability to select a Hall of Famer. He also continued to prove why he is sports journalism's answer to Carrot Top.

Apols to Mr. Top aside, Stark's article is basically a means to cozy up with Mike Schmidt. Michael Jack is quoted copiously by Stark like a schoolgirl citing Aaron Carter from rote after her weekly perusal of Tiger Beat.

Mike is one of my favorite players but seems to still be a smug egomaniac:

"I looked at them all," Schmidt said. "And I go back to what I said before. They had great, great careers. But you only ought to vote for them if they were one of the best of all time at their position for an extended period of time. But if they were that, they'd already be in the Hall of Fame, right?

"The Hall of Fame," said this particular Hall of Famer, "is for no-doubt guys."

Well, that's fine for you, Schmidty. You were a Hall of Famer by any standard. But that standard went by the boards the first time that the Veterans' Committee was formed. As Bill James once wrote, "The Hall of Fame selection process was an afterthought to an accident." Schmidt's argument obviates the need for a Veterans' Committee in the first place. If the writers are always 100% right then why re-vote later?

Well, if the writers had been getting it right all along, then the Vets' Committee never would have existed. The writers failed to elect a Hall-of-Famer in 1940, '41, '43, '44. '45, and '46. You may notice 1942 is missing from that list. That year the writers deigned to induct the lowly Rogers Hornsby. Basically, the problem was that there were too many qualified candidates. The voters couldn't concentrate their energies on one or two to get them elected. And we're not talking about Ron Santo and Dick Allen. These were Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx for goodness sake.

The Veterans' Committee, then called the Permanent Committee, was appointed by Judge Landis before his death in 1944 (and subsequent apotheosis in the Hall) to oversee the selection process as well as 19th century players. They changed the writers' rule of voting every two years (sound familiar) to a yearly vote but they created a two-tier system, which only created more gridlock for the writers. And they started to induct bushels of the Roger Bresnahans and Tom McCarthys, to which we have since become accustomed.

From James:

"From the standpoint of the Hall of Fame's membership, the things we talk about, the selection of these eleven men [by the VC in 1946] was the critical moment in the history of the Hall of Fame. From that moment on, the argument that the Hall of Fame should be only for the greatest of the great was irretrievably lost. It is strange that even now, 48 years later, so many people still don't realize this, that there are still people around who think that the standards of the Hall of Fame are being diminished whenever anybody below the level of Mickey Mantle is inducted. That standard died a long, long time ago.

Beyond that, though, the selection of these eleven men would ultimately make it impossible for the Hall of Fame discussion to reach any kind of firm consensus about who should and should not be selected. Why?

Because they created a gray area, so large that it could never be made dark."

Well, why not reverse the trend and go back to Mantle-or-better standard? First, it won't work because there are so many Ken Keltner devotees who can compare their favorite player favorably to any of a number of Hall-of-Famers. Second, because it is extremely unfair to the post-Fifties players, who are grossly underrepresented (about 50% of the norm)-I did a study on this a couple of months ago but can't seem to find it right now.

Stark sums up in his inimitable style:

"So after all the hoopla, what did this new system accomplish, anyway -- other than to make sure Eddie Murray and Gary Carter can make longer acceptance speeches next July?

"I don't know that this (system) resolves anything," Newhan said, "except that, in my mind, it validates the way the writers have always gone about it."

Bingo. We may have had our own differences with the writers' take on certain players over the years, but we know this: The writers devote more time, more passion, more thought and more care to the business of electing Hall of Famers than they're ever given credit for.

And thanks to the players and the newfangled Veterans Committee, at least we know now what we've always suspected -- that the writers have done exactly what they're supposed to do in life:

They got it right."

First, the past problems with the BBWAA's vote clearly display that the writers have not always gone about it right. Second, Stark employs some faulty logic. To be exact he disobeys the rule of Modus Tollens.

Modus Tollens is a basic rule of inference, which is best demonstrated by example: Where there is smoke there's fire. There is no fire. Therefore, there is no smoke. If A then B. Given Not B, we can derive Not A.

Stark assumes that if the writers would pick someone then the Vets' Committee would pick them as well. Otherwise, his statement that the Vets' dismissal of the available players validates the writers' wouldn't make sense.

However, you can go through the voting over the years and find the Mazes, Whitey Ashburns, and Nellie Foxes that were writers overlooked and the Vets voted in. Well, he may be saying that they were mistakes, and maybe some of them were. But the argument invalidates the existence of the Veterans' Committee in the first place. Well, maybe we don't have a problem with that either.

But my mind keeps going back to the stagnation in the writers' vote in the Forties. Without the Vets' Committee safety net, how can that be avoided in the future?

Also, we now have better tools to evaluate who fits the Hall's de facto standard. Guys like Santo, Blyleven, Kaat, John, and Dick Allen, who were or are being overlooked by the writers, are demonstrably average Hall of Famers. They would not lower the standard. They are the standard. Maybe that not only proves that the Vets' Committee didn't get it right. Neither did the writers in the first place.

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The Mind-Forg'd Manacles, II

The Elephants in Oakland boys inform me that Mark Kreidler is a venerable scribe for The Sacramento Bee, whose stuff is sometimes picked up by ESPN. As I told them, my apologies to ESPN and my condolences to the Bay Area. Why ESPN picked up this piece of tripe I'll never know.

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Dying to Get Into Cooperstown

After failing to get into the Hall of Fame this year, Whitey Herzog has pronounced, "That's the end of it. It isn't ever going to work out now." Herzog is apparently anticipating the demise of his supporters by the time the next vote rolls around in 2007, four years from now.

Whitey then proceeded to put down every manager since Harry Wright, who is already in the Hall:

"Earl Weaver never put on a sign in his life," said Herzog, only half-kidding. "He had two switch-hitters who hit 30 home runs and he had four great starting pitchers.

"Are those guys better managers than me? I don't think so. I'm not popping my own bill but I'd venture to say that Lasorda would say the same thing. And Sparky always said that I'd handled pitchers better than anybody he'd ever seen."

Get 'em up against the wall, Whitey. And stop popping your bill-you'll go blind.
He also is not too pleased with the players who were active when he was a manager:

"You worry about guys like Mike Schmidt and Reggie Jackson," Herzog said candidly. "They really don't care who gets in. They've always been kind of self-centered guys, like 'Who cares if anybody else gets in?' Maybe they didn't vote for anybody. Maybe Reggie voted for Billy Martin, who he played for.

Whitey, I can't imagine why anyone would not vote for you.

---

The Mind-Forg'd Manacles

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

-William Blake

It was announced today that baseball will ban ephedera use in its minor-league system. ESPN touts this as the first step towards a universal ban. However, it should be pointed out that baseball has been using drug testing with its minor-leaguers for years.

Donald Fehr of the players' union says that the union will wait for the toxicology reports on Steve Bechler's death. It is already saying that its players should not be prohibited from taking legal, over-the-counter drugs.

Mark Kreidler of ESPN disagrees. He judiciously opines:

You know what baseball already knows? This much exactly: Athletes cheat. Not all of them cheat -- not even most of them, maybe -- and even the cheaters don't cheat 365 days a year. But athletes cheat.

They will do just about anything to gain an edge, and if that includes the ingestion or injection of questionable or outright dangerous substances, so be it. And if those substances are legal, so much the better -- but it's not the No. 1 concern...

It [baseball] already knows, in this very particular case, that players have taken, are taking and will take the legal, over-the-counter substance ephedra and abuse it wildly.

What the union's many critics do not understand is that the underlining assumption that the players are cheaters adds to the players' apprehension. Yes, some players "cheat" but do they "abuse [drugs] wildly", and do "anything to gain an edge"? Ken Caminiti admitted to steroid use. Others acknowledge its use. However, when Caminiti and Jose Canseco claim, with only anecdotal proof, that steroid use is so widespread to be the rule rather than the exception, the media are ready to accept it as gospel-players "abuse it wildly."

That said, the union should act on ephedera testing and it should have acted more quickly on steroid testing. But I disagree with Kriedler that the issue is about cheaters. The issue, my friends, is about power. The union has the power to say "No" and doesn't want to cede that power. Why would they when they can't trust the owners anyway?

Besides the issues of power and trust, the union has to ensure that it is protecting its members' rights. This is the difficult issue. If the union caves in to pressure because of over-the-counter drug like ephedera, what about prescription medication and illegal substances, not to mention other over-the-counter drugs.

Should some of those substances (especially the illegal ones) be monitored? Sure, the union would probably agree to that. But who decides which? And what are the repercussions and penalties?

The union is correct not to cede too much power too quickly. They have an obligation to their constituents. However, the power that they wield is theirs at the fans' behest. If the fans decide not to come to the ballpark or watch on TV, then the union has power over a bunch of unemployed superstars. The union has to remember that P.R. is an important part of their obligation to the players. Without a favorable public image, the players as a union would have as little power as the Richie Phillips-led umpires.

Again, it's not so simple an issue as the media portrays it, but negotiations are never easy about easy solutions. For a union that had once seemed morally and intellectually superior to the owners in the woebegone days of Marvin Miller, they have apparently lost the capacity to lose some battles to win the war-something for which Miller was famous. They don't seem to remember what the war is and have lost sight of it as each new issue appears. After being fleeced by the owners in the last negotiations, the union now looks more disorganized and misdirected than the Democratic party.

The "war" for the players' union is to get the best working and living conditions for its constituency, the players. That means ensuring that they receive salaries commensurate with their talents, that they have a healthy working environment, and that they don't die from over-the-counter drugs. When the union treats a drug-related death like a complaint about player accommodations or lost per-diem checks, it is not doing its players a favor. So, Donald Fehr, take the required time to make a decision, but when you make it, be certain it is the right one. Otherwise, you may not be making decisions for the players for much longer.

---

Son of Dock LSD

David Wells is preparing for a Barbara Walters special. First, he admitted to using ephedra for weight loss, apparnetly unsuccessfully. Now, he has admitted to pitching a perfect game "half drunk" and on only one hour of sleep. He at least did not go so far as to murder (allegedly) his wife like Robert Blake did, but his rhetoric is escalating.

"As of this writing, 15 men in the history of organized baseball have ever thrown a perfect game,'' he writes in galleys of the book. "Only one of those men did it half-drunk, with bloodshot eyes, monster breath and a raging, skull-rattling hangover. That would be me.''

The book, Perfect I'm Not! Boomer on Beer, Brawls, Backaches and Baseball, will be published April 1 by William Morrow, a subsidiary of News Corp.

The pungency of Boomer's breath aside--maybe monster breath is as close to minty fresh as he can get--, I beg to differ on the difficulty involved in the event.

Dock Ellis never pitched a perfect game, but he had a no-hitter in 1970 and he pitched it on an hallucinogen. Ellis disclosed it in his autobiography as well. I guess some sort of addictive substance is required in a baseball tell-all.

I remember the story reading like something by Hunter S. Thompson. Ellis claimed that sometimes the catcher's glove was a tiny dot and other times it seemed as large as a house. And all he was trying to do was hit that amorphous, Technicolor glove with the ball. Why a crappy movie about him featuring Christina Ricci was never made, I do not know.

Ellis and Wells also shared flaky personas. Ellis wore curlers in his hair in the locker room, had a flare for polemic, and once hit three batters in a row to tie the still-standing record. Not to sound like John Rocker, but they also both pitched for the Yankees. Of course, the mid-Seventies Yankees were a much different team from today's and that tends to accentuate Wells peccadilloes a bit more even without monster breath.

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"Baseball's Glad Lexicon"

These are the gladdest of possible words:
"Joe Morgan Chat Day tomorrow."
Reductio ad absurdum, his facts fleetly blurred,
Joe Morgan Chat Day tomorrow
Ruthlessly promulgating gonfalon babble,
Making a giant hit with the ole rabble--
His words numb your brain like a bad game of Scrabble:
"Joe Morgan Chat Day tomorrow!"

---

Lou Lou

Lou Piniella must be thinking of his new managerial job as a form of Floridian retirement, a time for him to putter around the house, or rather the clubhouse. Or maybe there's something in the Florida water that makes men of Piniella's years senile. Otherwise how does one reconcile his plan to bat Greg Vaughn leadoff and Rey Ordonez second?

"You're going to laugh at this one," explains the skipper. "We'll try it out in spring training and see what it looks like. It seems to me he [Ordonez] can handle the bat. Put some speed in front of him and a good hitter behind him and he'll get a lot better selection than he did when he was with the Mets.

"He should be able to bunt, we should be able to hit and run with him, hit the ball behind the runner. And what that will do is allow us to keep some left-handed hitting stacked up a little deeper into the lineup. I like balance throughout the lineup. To me, balance is the most important thing."

Well if by balance he means posting a lineup with your worst hitters in the most prominent positions than he's done it. Pitch selection? Ordonez has never broken 50 walks, he only once had an on-base percentage over .300, and his adjusted OPS has never broken 70% of average. He's a horrible hitter. He can apparently bunt (double digits in sacs on four occassions), but should that be the basis of his batting second? Piniella should be toying with whether Ordonez can start any longer (or ever should have) on a major-league team. There's no way he should bat higher than ninth.

Vaughn leading off?:

"The reason being he has a good on-base percentage, he can steal a base, he's going to get good fastballs to hit in the leadoff spot," Piniella said. "It's just something that runs through my mind, nothing more, nothing less."

Vaughn has stolen more than 11 bases twice (15 in 1992 and 1999). His stolen base percentage is average, 67%. He stole three bases in five attempts last year. And he is 37.

Good OBP? His OBP was under .300 last year. It has been in the .360s as late as 2000, but if it ever gets that high again, the Rays are going to need him in the middle of the lineup.

Basically, there is more casue to believe that Vaughn and Ordonez are no longer major-league caliber players than top-of-the-order men. If Piniella does not see that, then the Rays fans (or is it fan?) may look back on 2002 as those halcyon days when the Rays could win 55 games a season.

---

Too Many Chefs?

ESPN reports that no one gained admittance to the Hall in this year's Veterans' Committee vote.

According to the source, former Brooklyn Dodgers first baseman Gil Hodges came the closest to election, falling 11 votes shy. Former umpire Doug Harvey was next, getting within 18 votes of election.

It seems that the new system may not be able to concentrate its attention on the large field of candidates. Perhaps, next time they will narrow the field a bit more (say 25 men) to let the voters focus on fewer, better-qualified candidates. The Hall faced this isssue in the early days when there were too many qualified candidates available. That's what caused the ill-conceived Vets' Committee in the first place.

We've come full circle, grasshopper. It's another tied-All-Star-game-like black eye for the sports' showcase.

---

Robbing Gil to Elect Ron

Rob Neyer has a nice overview of the men eligible for the Vets' Committee voting.

He supports the apotheosis of Ron Santo, Minnie Minoso, Wes Ferrell, and Carl Mays. I agree about the first two (and also with his assessment of who should not get in): Santo's case has been stated clearly by Bill James for years. Basically, given the dearth of hot corner men and our ability now to assess Santo's worth, he should get a nod.

Minoso is a tough nut to crack. His career after the age of 28 would rank with many all-time greats. However, his missed years have cost him a plaque. Some of those years were lost to the color line, and he was a two-time All-Star in the Negro Leagues (as a third sacker). The real crime came when he was kept in the PCL for two years while in the Indians organization. Here are Minoso's home run, runs batted in, and runs scored totals for his career and projected out for the lost years:

	HR	RBI	R
Actual	186	1023	1136
W/ 1949-50	215	1180	1311
W/ 5 years 	258	1416	1573
extra

Basically, all post-1900 players with 1550+ runs who are eligible are in the Hall of Fame. The players with at least 1400 runs are pretty consistently in Cooperstown.

Does that mean that all of Minoso's "lost" years should be used to get him in. Well, no, or Lyman Bostock And Mark Fidrych would be a Hall-of-Famers. Those years should be weighed in evaluating him given that a) the performance of Negro League players has been used as the basis of a numebr of Veterans' Committee picks and b) his performance in the nearly major Pacific Coast League indicates that he should have been a major-leaguer. I would count his PCL years as Negro League service given that the Indians' prejudice against him kept him in the PCL.

Now to the pitchers. Neyer's picks just do not overwhelm me. they apparently don't overwhelm him either:

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Ferrell and Mays, because they have absolutely no chance of getting elected and, to be honest, there are days when I'm not completely convinced myself. Today, though, I'm writing in support of both old-time pitchers.

Ferrell's 4.04 career ERA doesn't look like much, until you notice that he did much of his pitching in hitter's ballparks and that he did all of his pitching in a hitter's era. Oh, and he was maybe the greatest-hitting pitcher ever, which helped him post a .601 career winning percentage (193-128). Give him a small dollop of extra credit for his 31 career pinch-hits, and he looks like a Hall of Famer to me.

Mays never got much support from the writers, and it's hard to say exactly why. It might be because he threw the pitch that killed Ray Chapman. It might be because he was suspected of trying less than his hardest in Game 4 of the 1921 World Series. But it's obviously ridiculous to vilify Mays for head-hunting when Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale are lionized for the same, and Mays was cleared of the World Series accusation by none other than Judge Landis himself. So it seems to me that his 208 wins and .623 career winning percentage should be enough to get him elected.

Wes is probably a better candidate than his Hall-of-Famer brother and batterymate, Rick Ferrell, but two wrongs yudda yudda. Ferrell had had six very good seasons by age 28, but he was basically washed up in a year. It may have something to do with leading the league in complete games and innings for three years straight, but as opposed to rewarding Minoso for time he was prevented from serving due to circumstances beyod his control, I cannot credit Ferrell for the years lost. His body may be to a certain degree beyond his control but as an athelete, it's part of the package.

As for Mays, I would think a number of things barred his entrance to the Hall: the beaning, the Series rumors, the ugly schism caused by his trade demand in 1919, and probably his curmedgeonly demeanor. Mays has a stronger case than Ferrell given that he was productive for a longer span, about 15 years. He, however, had no great years after the age of 29 (even though he won 20 at the age of 32). I cannot get behind his candidacy until Blyleven, Kaat, and John get their due. I see Mays as an early Ron Guidry, great in some years and average in others, not the worst choose for the Hall but just not the best.

---

Miller Time?

Murray Chass has a good though slight article on the Hall-of-Fame voting by the Vets' Committee, the resultf of which will be announced today. Chass reports that Marvin Miller may have some strong support. It is encouraging given his importance to the game in the last 35 years. And I guess it makes sense given that "younger" veterans are now involved. When Miller first headed up the players' union, Teddy Ballgame, the man who had the most pull in the old Vets' Committee, was a retiree and then a representative of management.

Chass also has a good assessment of how Torre's managerial career may help him even though it's still active and therefore, not supposed to be part of the review.

I guess I would put Miller, Santo, Herzog, and Minoso in. There are a lot of 'tweeners in that group, and who knows about the execs and the ump? I guess Hodges is expected to garner the votes he needs. It will be interesting.

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Lee Way

I have been enjoying Lee Sinins' free ATM Reports for over a week now. Lee includes little tidbits that you can't get on most MLB-wide new wires like the one at ESPN.

Here are some choice cuts from his reports over the last couple of days:

Real Gonzo

"The Diamondbacks plan on giving LF Luis Gonzalez occasional days off this year and may limit him to about 150 games."

If the D-Backs think that limiting Gonzo's appearances will improve his game, well, they just may be right. Here are his 2000-2002 stats per month:

Month	AB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
April	287	.272	.382	.624	1.006
May	303	.347	.454	.558	1.012
June	301	.326	.407	.628	1.035
July	296	.345	.426	.632	1.058
August	276	.293	.404	.572	.976
September	263	.259	.360	.433	.793
October	25	.360	.433	.760	1.193

He appears to be wilting in the Arizona sun by late August.

That said, it's unlikely that Gonzalez will re-capture his 2001 stroke. It was just so far out of character. He nearly doubled his previous high in home runs and his slugging percentage was almost 150 points higher than the previous high. Also, the man will be 36 by the end of the season so those sorts of aberrantly high, career years will be harder to acquire.

Non-Dancing Homer

"Homer Bush announced his retirement, saying he's been bothered by pain in both of his hips. Bush was in the Padres camp as a non roster invitee and GM Kevin Towers says Bush might try a comeback next year, if his hips feel better.

Bush had a .685 career OPS, compared to his league average of .780, and
-39 RCAA in 400 games, including a .265 SLG, .266 OBA, .531 OPS, -10 RCAA in 63 games with the BlueJays and Marlins in 2002.

His -33 RCAA in 2000 was tied for 4th worst on the BlueJays single
season list-"

Bush was awful in 2000. His only full year, 1999, wasn't anything to write home about but it was OK (96 adjusted OPS) for a rookie. At 26, this kid had a World Series ring and appeared to have a nice career, if not stardom, ahead of him. Who knew that it would be his peak.

GM: 2 And 2 Make, I'll Get Back to You on That

Check these two items out:

"According to the Boston Globe, trade talks for Redsox 3B Shea
Hillenbrand had stopped, at least for now. "

And...

"The candidates for the Indians starting 3B job are Casey Blake, Greg LaRocca and Bill Selby.

Blake may be the early frontrunner. Blake, 29, has a .643 OPS/-5 RCAA in 49 major league games, LaRocca, 30, has a .671 OPS/-3 RCAA in 34 games and Selby, 32, has a .673 OPS/-19 RCAA in 171 games."

What's wrong with this picture? The Red Sox have two viable starting third basemen. The once proud Indians have none, just a bunch of journeyman nobodies. Can't they work out some sort of deal-Hillenbrand should still be cheap and the Red Sox would love to part with him. The best that can be said of the three Indian never-was-es is that they are cheaper than-and, at this point, probably better than-Travis Fryman, one of the worst starting third baseman in the majors last season (he was the fourth worst in OPS behind, or really ahead of, Castilla, Cirillo, and Truby).

If I were stuck with those three stiffs, I would probably be scouring the waiver wire. Offensively Greg La "Coca" Rocca may be the best of the lot based on his offensive numbers last year. He at least drew six walks, scored 12 runs, and had a 95 adjusted OPS in his 52 at-bats in 2002. That's a small sample and it may not mean a thing, but the other two guys have not recorded any sorts of numbers that would make me confident that they are major-league hitters. If no one better surfaces, I guess you look for the best defensive player of the three and take your lumps.

A's Hole

"The candidates for the A's 4th and 5th starters spots are Ted Lilly, John Halama, Aaron Harang, Erik Hiljus and Ed Yarnall.

Lilly and Halama are considered the front runners. "

Lilly and Yarnall? What's Brien Taylor up to?

Season   G  W  L  ERA  K/9 K/BB WHIP HR/9  ERA+ Age
Lilly   64 10 14 4.92 8.13 2.38 1.35 1.53  92   27
Halama 136 42 32 4.54 5.09 1.81 1.47 1.00 100   31
Harang  16  5  4 4.83 7.35 1.42 1.57 0.80  96   24
Hiljus  34  8  3 4.72 7.19 2.06 1.47 1.52  96   30
Yarnall  7  1  0 5.40 6.30 1.08 1.75 0.90  85   27

Nothing all that impressive there, but then again, how good did Cory Lidle look before joining their rotation? He couldn't even make the D-Rays rotation.

I guess that Lilly and Halama are the logical choices. Harang has the most room for improvement, but the A's don't have to wetnurse another young arm at the end of the rotation when they have three of the best in the game at the front of the rotation. Hiljus has good strikeout numbers but is prone to the long ball. Yarnall is the worst of the lot.

Sticking Lilly and Halama at the end of the rotation and trading Harang to a team hungry for young arms would probably be the best course of action.

Rockie Start

"The candidates for the Rockies starting 2B job are Pablo Ozuna, Brent Butler, Chris Stynes and Ron Belliard. "

And Belliard sprained his ankle today. There's no possibility for platooning since they all bat right-handed. Butler was pathetic at the plate last year. Ozuna is a 28-year-old Triple-A player. Stynes has never played over 43 games at second in any season.

I guess the best option is to use both Stynes and Belliard and hope one can channel past success. Failing that, Belliard is probably the best defensive player and the most logical choice.

Boone Doggle

"The battle for the Reds 5th starter's job are Jose Rijo, Pete Harnsich, Osvaldo Fernandez, Jimmy Anderson, Lance Davis, Seth Etherton, Luke Hudson, Bruce Chen, Jose Acevedo, Chris Reitsma, Brian Reith and Blake Williams. "

What does Bob Boone have against Chris Reitsma anyway? He had a pretty good year last year (121 adjusted ERA) even with a 6-12 record. He's young (25). The job should be his, not the avuncular Rijo or Harnish's.

Hicks Taken By City Slickers

"According to the Hartford Courant, the Yankees could be showcasing Sterling Hitchcock for a trade to either the Reds or Rangers."

Playing Out the String

"A's SS Miguel Tejada had previously stated he's looking for a new 8-10 year contract. But, now he says, 'I really don't look for particular years. I just want to play baseball, and Billy Beane will decide how many years I'll be here.' "

Not So Schoeneweiss, Better to Go the Callaway

"The Angels don't expect Aaron Sele to be available until at least May, possibly even June. So, Scott Schoeneweis and Mickey Callaway are the top candidates to take his spot in the rotation, with there being speculation both ways as to who which pitcher is the frontrunner. "

I would have to go with Callaway for the 5th spot, and not because the Mickster is such a hot prospect. I would do whatever is possible to keep Schoeneweiss in the bullpen. Here's his breakdown from last year:

2002      ERA  G  IP    AVG WHIP K/9 IP K:BB HR/9IP
Total    4.88 54 118   .264 1.42 4.96 1.33 1.30
Starter  5.38 15  90.1 .276 1.51 4.38 1.10 1.20
Reliever 3.25 39  27.2 .225 1.16 6.83 2.33 1.63

In the pen, he was prone to the long ball, but all of his numbers improved dramatically. He may be a major-league reliever. He certainly is not a major league starter (never had an ERA under 5.00).

"Big Tub Of Goo"

David Wells says players using ephedrine is the team's fault because they have imposed the unfair expectation of requiring players to not come into camp overweight.

The clown also says, "The Orioles should be accountable [for Steve Bechler's death]. They didn't realize the kid was so eager to make the team. He was going to take whatever it took."

David Wells and weight loss-what a contradiction in terms.

Dusting Off the Old Rocking Chair

According to Cubs MGR Dusty Baker, Eric Karros "is working his butt off. He is out there in the morning hitting early and still out there hitting when I leave. It's a positive sign he is healthy or he couldn't do all these things."

It's not a good sign when a manager with a reputation for preferring veterans sings the praise of someone like Karros when the team has a rookie like Hee Seop Choi who's ready to claim the job.

The Hee Seop Choi career death watch begins today. I like Dusty Baker, but he may be the wrong man in the wrong place with the youthful Cubs. A bad start may drive this team down a path that will take them years to recover from.

Marquis de Sod

Braves MGR Bobby Cox says the 5th starter's job is "wide open."

Horacio Ramirez, Andy Pratt, Jung Bong and Trey Hodges would be
attempting to take Jason Marquis's job away from him. That is, if Cox is really serious and isn't just attempting to motivate Marquis.

What is it with the Braves and fifth starters? A year ago the Braves had both Marquis and Moss to work into the rotation. Marquis appeared a hair better so Moss was relegated to the fifth spot.

Moss ended up having the big year and Marquis is looking for a job. Marquis was pretty bad last year. It may be more than motivation. He may have simply been lapped by younger, probably better prospects.

Pudgy Logic

Orioles MGR Mike Hargrove says Geronimo Gil will retain his starting C job, but he also wants to use Brook Fordyce more often this season.

Gil hit .363 SLG, .270 OBA, .632 OPS, -26 RCAA in 125 games in his first year as a starter in 2002, while Fordyce is coming off a .315 SLG, .301 OBA, .616 OPS, -7 RCAA season in 56 games and has a .718 career OPS, compared to his league average of .776, and -25 RCAA in 461 games.

Why not? Fordyce did slug .500 and hit 14 home runs two years ago and Gil was pathetic at the plate last year.

Got Any Cubans In There?

The Rockies say they'll use a humidor to store the baseballs at Coors Field again this year.

Good to know. But will it help them win this year?

Brother, Can You Spare a League Minimum?

Lance Johnson showed up in the Pirates camp yesterday, looking for the job, and wasn't offered a contract.

I guess he heard the Pirates needed outfielders. 38-year-olds who have not played in two years and have not been good for 6, need not apply.

Two Timing

The Phillies re-signed P Carlos Silva to a 1 year, $310,000 contract, which will pay him $160,000 if he's in the minors.

Silva had a 3.21 ERA/5 RSAA in 68 games as a 23 year old rookie in 2002.

The Phils are big on the split contract of late. The signed Vicente Padilla, an All-Star last year, to one. Silva looks like a pretty good (118 adjusted ERA), young (still 23) righty reliever, and not only do the Phils sign him to only ten grand over the league minimum, they force him to take a split contract. Nice.

---

Expos, Hey!

The Expos signed veteran Jose Offerman to a minor-league contract today....Really.

The Expos, who cannot afford the veterans that they already have, signed another and a bad one at that.

OK, so maybe he will play for the league minimum, but Montreal still is getting a 34-year-old player who was awful last year (77 adjusted OPS), has not played acceptably since 1999, and cannot play the field any longer (well, maybe first base). The only real spot for Offerman defensively is DH and his weak bat and the Expos' residence in the NL limit his use there.

Why would the Expos even bother to look at Offerman when there must be a spare Roberto Petagine or two floating through the minors who will play for the league minimum and can be acquired for a song? Oh, I forgot--it's because Omar Minaya is an impenetrable genius. My bad.

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Grab An Abben

I have added a new site to my links, Abben's Baseball. Actually, Abben writes about many topics on his site. Amongst his weaponry is baseball.

Abben has also asked to reproduce some of my stuff on his site. So if I ever say anything that merits repeating, you may see it there.

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Take Off, Roser!

So Pete Rose didn't end up making the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Grill, but Joe Carter did.

I don't get those wacky Canucks: I mean, why allow him on the ballot if you're not going to elect him? I know his career in Montreal was brief but he did collect his 4000th hit and break the singles record there.

Maybe they wanted a little publicity but didn't want to tick off the commissioner's office entirely. Maybe the Candian Hall of Fame, perhaps, means a little bit more.

But Carter over Rose? Why not Wayne Garrett?

---

"Smell-A-Vision Replaces Television"

Today is officially the slowest baseball news day of the year. The following is an actual ESPN headline:

Yankees' Matsui has root canal

If the writer had been a little more creative he could have come up with Godzilla vs. Toothra or something.

And for those enquiring minds who must know, tooth and Yankee are doing fine. Thanks for asking.

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Jose, Can You Play Short?

Jose Valentin is going into spring training for the first time in three years as the White Sox starting shortstop reports MLB.com. After putzing around in center field and at third base, Valentin replaces the disappointing Royce Clayton, his one-time replacement at short, and 24-year-old Joe Crede takes over hi first full season at third.

The concern is that Valentin does not have what it takes to start at short. After all his last full season at short, 2000, did result in 36 errors and a .950 fielding percent, didn't it?

I think that this is shear nonsense. Valentin may not be the next Ozzie but he has always had better than average range at short. He is rated a B by Bill James defensive Win Shares. And whatever shortfall he does have defensively, he makes up for it with the bat. Incidentally, he plays even better offensive when used as a shortstop. Take a look at his numbers since being rotated in position like a volleyball players (i.e., 2000-2002):

POS AB   R   H 2B 3B HR RBI BB HBP  SO SB CS  AVG  OBP   SLG   OPS
3B 501  71 118 24  4 28  85 45   5 117  6  6 .236 .302  .467  .769
SS 882 166 242 55  7 45 133 95   4 176 22  2 .274 .345  .506  .851
CF  70   9  19  5  0  3   9  8   0  19  2  2 .271 .346  .471  .817
RF   4   0   2  1  1  0   4  0   0   1  0  0 .500 .500 1.250 1.750
OF  74   9  21  6  1  3  13  8   0  20  2  2 .284 .354  .514  .868
DH   1   0   0  0  0  0   0  0   0   0  0  0 .000 .000  .000  .000
PH  23   5   5  0  0  2   4  4   0   6  0  1 .217 .333  .478  .811

He hits for more power, takes more walks, and even runs the bases better. Maybe it's just a comfort thing. Moving Valentin to short will strengthen the Sox at two positions as Crede appears to be a pretty good prospect at third (112 adjusted OPS in his half-season). Just eliminating Royce Clayton (and his contract) improves this team immensely.

---

"Sounds Great, Greg"

The D-Backs Greg Swindell is contemplating using his knuckleball in real live, honest-to-goodness games. Given his precipitous dropoff in the last few years, anything is worth a shot.

Take a look at his ERA and relative ERA (thanks to baseball-reference.com) since converting completely to a reliever:

Year	Age	ERA	Adj ERA
1997	32	3.58	130
1998	33	3.59	130
1999	34	2.51	177
2000	35	3.20	147
2001	36	4.53	101
2002	37	6.27	70

That's four very good years, one average to subpar (given that "average" is actually poor for a reliever), and one god-awful year. It looks to me like his arm has reached the end of the line. Maybe a knuckleball can save his career-he wouldn't be the first pitcher to extend his career via a trick pitch.

The sad part is that the D-Backs bullpen is so poor and so starved for a quality left-hander (Eddie Oropesa? C'mon!) that he may make the team even if the knuckler doesn't pan out.

[By the way, bonus points to anyone who knew that the headline was a line from the Brady Bunch.]

---

"Welcome to the Hall's of Relief", VII

Previous entries:
The 1870s, '80s, and '90s
The 1900s and '10s
The 1920s, '30s, and '40s
The 1950s
The 1960s
The 1970s

The 1980s

These growing feathers plucked from Caesar's wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men,
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.

- Flavius in Julius Caesar, act 1, sc. 1, l. 72-5 by William "Moose" Shakespeare

Since the turn of the century relief pitching had been a tool in the manager's bag of tricks, but rarely was a valuable member of the staff used exclusively for relief. An odd Firpo Marberry might appear here and there, but mainly a swingman, someone used as a starter and a reliever, either the star or the 10th man on the staff, would act as the reliever. Sometimes whole staffs were used as the support structure for a failing starter. And that's a key point: only when the starter began to fail did the manager turn to a reliever.

These trends changed extremely slowly. More pitchers were used per game and fewer pitchers completed games as time wore on, but the process took literally decades and it was far from a linear progression with retreats and lurches along the way. In the Fifties things began to accelerate as star relievers like Joe Page and Jim Konstanty took center stage. The better starters rarely if ever relieved and swingmen started to be eclipsed by the pure reliever.

In the 1960s the baseball cognoscenti started to experiment more with relief pitching. After the 1950s finally established the bullpen as a key element on the pitching staff, they started to push the envelope. Barriers like 30 saves and 90 relief appearances in a year were crossed. Career relievers like Hoyt Wilhelm, Roy Face, and Lindy McDaniel relieved in more games than anyone who came before them.

The role of the reliever was still being defined, especially that of the closer. The Seventies proved a mercurial time for relievers. Five-man rotations, the designated hitter rule, and expansion caused staff leaders to be worked harder than in the previous few decades. They started more games and completed more games as well. The reliever's role was also becoming one of endurance: 80 appearances and 130 innings pitched were common. Finally, in 1979, Bruce Sutter, who had broken down in the second half because of overuse in the three previous seasons, was used in limited situations. No longer was he asked to pitch almost daily. No longer was he asked to pitch 3 or more innings. He came in in save situations and pitched fewer innings. This came in a year in which two men were used as closers and still appeared in 90 games (Kent Tekulve and Mike Marshall).

Managers, who were looking for the correct way to use their closers and were afraid that the envelop-pushing approach was abusing them, were given a guide. Though it seemed they had been railing for a decade against using a closer in save situations exclusively, the results with Sutter was the tipping point. And the modern reliever that we boo the manager for not bringing in in the seventh inning with the game on the line was born.

Now that this rather lengthy preamble is complete, what exactly did happen in the Eighties, that era when Michael Jackson was still cool and not a pedophile (allegedly, of course, if any of Mr. Jackson's lawyers are reading-he was allegedly cool as well)? The view from 50,000 feet tells us that:

a) the first 40-save season was recorded (45 in 1983 by Dan Quisenberry)

b) Rollie Fingers became the first pitcher to surpass 300 saves in his career, the number that has since become the standard much like 300 wins for a starter, and c)

c) For the first time since the advent of unlimited substitution, relievers outnumbered swingmen by the end of the decade. That trend has continued and now there are almost twice as many pure relievers as swingmen.

d) Higher save totals: Since the beginning of the Eighties there has never been a full season in which someone has not save at least 30 games. Since 1983, when Quisenberry was the first to eclipse 40 saves, there has not been a full season in which someone has not saved 40 games.

e) The number of men who amassed 300 or more relief appearances increased from 31 in the Seventies to 54 in the Eighties. However, the number of men who made 500 or more relief appearances (7) stayed the same: the abuse was subsiding.

f) The number of men with 100 saves for the decade went from 12 in the Seventies to 23 in the Eighties.

g) The top relievers were now saving a larger percentage of their relief appearances. Compare the 100-save relievers of the Seventies and Eighties:
The Seventies:

First	Last	RA	Sv	%Sv
Rollie	Fingers	611	209	34.21%
Sparky	Lyle	600	190	31.67%
Mike	Marshall	618	177	28.64%
Dave	Giusti	467	140	29.98%
Tug	McGraw	533	132	24.77%
Dave	LaRoche	538	122	22.68%
John	Hiller	409	115	28.12%
Gene	Garber	436	110	25.23%
Clay	Carroll	436	106	24.31%
Bruce	Sutter	240	105	43.75%
Rich	Gossage	322	101	31.37%
Terry	Forster	321	100	31.15%
Total	 	5531	1607	29.05%

The Eighties:

First	Last	RA	Sv	%Sv
Jeff	Reardon	629	264	41.97%
Dan	Quisenberry	637	239	37.52%
Lee	Smith	580	234	40.34%
Rich	Gossage	494	206	41.70%
Bruce	Sutter	421	195	46.32%
Dave	Righetti	393	188	47.84%
Dave	Smith	518	176	33.98%
Steve	Bedrosian	438	161	36.76%
John	Franco	393	148	37.66%
Greg	Minton	625	146	23.36%
Willie	Hernandez	564	140	24.82%
Todd	Worrell	281	126	44.84%
Tom	Henke	320	122	38.13%
Ron	Davis	433	121	27.94%
Rollie	Fingers	243	120	49.38%
Jesse	Orosco	476	119	25.00%
Bob	Stanley	465	118	25.38%
Jay	Howell	323	117	36.22%
Gene	Garber	485	108	22.27%
Bill	Caudill	404	106	26.24%
Roger	McDowell	322	103	31.99%
Kent	Tekulve	687	101	14.70%
Dan	Plesac	210	100	47.62%
Total	 	10341	3458	33.44%

Note that only Sutter records a save in more than 40% of his appearances in the Seventies while nine relievers do so in the Eighties.

h) Further note the appearance among the relief appearance leaders more men who were setup men as opposed to closers. Kent Tekulve shows up in the list above even though he was a true closer for only a short period (around 1978-'80). So even though save totals are skyrocketing, men like Craig Lefferts, Larry Andersen, Frank DiPino, and Ed Vande Berg are among the leaders in relief appearances (all 396 or above). And as you go below 400 relief appearances, more and more setup men appear. Frank Williams and Dan Schatzeder both have over 300 relief appearances but have single-digit save totals. No one in the Seventies could claim to have done that. The closers are more dispersed in the relief appearance list as they are used in fewer games but save a higher percentage.

i) Of the ten men who made 80 or more relief appearances in a year in the Seventies, only one was not the team closer (it is somewhat problematic to designate some pitchers as closers in the Seventies since teams used their pens in a diverse way and save totals for the main reliever varied greatly). Of the 14 men who appeared in 80 games or more in a season in the Eighties only two were closers (Quisenberry in '85 and Guillermo Hernandez in '84).

j) Check out the all-time career saves leaders (with 100 or more) after the 1969, 1979, and 1989 seasons:

After 1969         | After 1979         | After 1989 
Name            Sv | Name            Sv | Name              Sv
Hoyt Wilhelm   210 | Hoyt Wilhelm   227 | Rollie Fingers   341
Roy Face       193 | Sparky Lyle    223 | Rich Gossage     307
Stu Miller     154 | Rollie Fingers 221 | Bruce Sutter     300
Ron Perranoski 138 | Roy Face       193 | Jeff Reardon     266
Lindy McDaniel 127 | Mike Marshall  187 | Dan Quisenberry  244
Dick Radatz    122 | Ron Perranoski 179 | Sparky Lyle      238
Don McMahon    119 | Lindy McDaniel 172 | Lee Smith        234
Al Worthington 110 | Stu Miller     154 | Hoyt Wilhelm     227
Ron Kline      107 | Don McMahon    153 | Gene Garber      218
Johnny Murphy  107 | Ted Abernathy  148 | Roy Face         193
Ted Abernathy  106 | Dave Giusti    145 | Dave Righetti    188
John Wyatt     103 | Tug McGraw     145 | Mike Marshall    188
Ellis Kinder   102 | Clay Carroll   143 | Kent Tekulve     184
Firpo Marberry 101 | Darold Knowles 143 | Tug McGraw       180
                   | Jim Brewer     132 | Ron Perranoski   179
                   | John Hiller    125 | Dave Smith       176
                   | Jack Aker      123 | Lindy McDaniel   172
                   | Dick Radatz    122 | Steve Bedrosian  161
                   | Dave LaRoche   122 | Stu Miller       154
                   | Frank Linzy    111 | Don McMahon      153
                   | Al Worthington 110 | Greg Minton      150
                   | Gene Garber    110 | John Franco      148
                   | Fred Gladding  109 | Ted Abernathy    148
                   | Ron Kline      108 | Willie Hernandez 147
                   | Wayne Granger  108 | Dave Giusti      145
                   | Johnny Murphy  107 | Darold Knowles   143
                   | Bruce Sutter   105 | Clay Carroll     143
                   | John Wyatt     103 | Gary Lavelle     136
                   | Ellis Kinder   102 | Bob Stanley      132
                   | Firpo Marberry 101 | Jim Brewer       132
                   | Rich Gossage   101 | Ron Davis        130
                   | Terry Forster  100 | Terry Forster    127
                                        | Bill Campbell    126
                                        | Todd Worrell     126
                                        | Dave LaRoche     126
                                        | John Hiller      125
                                        | Jack Aker        123
                                        | Tom Henke        122
                                        | Dick Radatz      122
                                        | Jesse Orosco     119
                                        | Jay Howell       117
                                        | Tippy Martinez   115
                                        | Frank Linzy      111
                                        | Al Worthington   110
                                        | Fred Gladding    109
                                        | Wayne Granger    108
                                        | Ron Kline        108
                                        | Johnny Murphy    107
                                        | Bill Caudill     106
                                        | John Wyatt       103
                                        | Ron Reed         103
                                        | Roger McDowell   103
                                        | Tom Burgmeier    102
                                        | Ellis Kinder     102
                                        | Firpo Marberry   101
                                        | Dan Plesac       100

Or to break it down by plateaus reached (with percent increase):

Saves	1969	1979	% Inc.	1989	% Inc.
300	0	0	0%	3	Inf
250	0	0	0%	4	Inf
200	1	3	300%	9	300%
150	3	8	267%	21	263%
100	14	32	229%	56	175%

These numbers accelerated into the Eighties.

k) Closers were being used in fewer situations in which their teams trailed or were tied with these opponents. They also pitched fewer innings per appearance. How do I know this?

Below is a table of cumulative stats for all closers in the Eighties and Seventies (min. 20 saves per season in the Eighties and 15 in the Seventies-I tried to compensate for the job's changing). The total games, relief appearances, wins, losses, saves, and innings pitched are listed along with the percentage of games in which the pitcher was used in relief and the percentage of games won, lost, and saved and innings-per-game.

Decade     G   RA    W   L   SV    IP     %RA       %W     %L    %Sv    IP/G
1980s   8892 8890  869 854 3980 12753.2  99.98%   9.77%  9.60% 44.76%   1.43
1970s   8422 8364 1025 885 2873 14101    99.31%  12.17% 10.51% 34.11%   1.67
%change                                   0.67% -19.70% -8.60% 31.21% -14.34% 

So what changed? Closers wee used in relief slightly more often-no biggy. They had a drop of nearly twenty percent in wins-per-game, nine percent in losses-per-game, and fourteen percent in innings-per-game and an increase of about thirty-one percent in saves-per-game. The saves come as no surprise. But why the decrease in wins, losses, and innings-per-appearance?

The innings-per-game dropoff represents managers attempting not to overwork their closers to save them for key situations.

The decrease in wins represents the resistance on the manager to use the closer when the game is tied or the team is losing. These situations produce a win, but as the role changed the closer usually came in after the lead was established in his team's favor. Also, fewer innings pitched meant that the pitcher had less time in which his team could recapture a lead once he had given it up.

The decrease in losses represents managers not using the closer in tie ballgames. Also, fewer innings had an effect. The loss decrease is less because wins also were affected by the team-trailing scenario being removed from the closer's possible situations.

The closer was being used more often in save situations for shorter periods.

l) The number of pure starters reached 20% of all pitchers by the end of the decade. This was the first time since 1902 that they comprised such a large segment of the pitching corps.

m) Pure reliever relievers now averaged an ERA that was .15 points better than a pure starter. In the Seventies the relievers' average ERA was .11 point worse than starters. And swingmen lagged far behind.

Well, that's the view from on high. I also have three little studies that I think might shed some light on this seemingly homogeneous decade:

Rollie Fingers in 1981

Brewers Rolled Behind Rollie

[From The Sporting News 1982 Baseball Guide]

It was fitting that Rollie Fingers was the winning pitcher when the Brewers clinched the East Division's second-half title on the next-to-last day of the season.

Without Fingers, the fourth relief pitcher ever to win the Cy Young Award, where would the Brewers have been? "Probably three games behind Toronto," said Manager Buck Rodgers.

The Brewer manager may have been stretching it a bit, but there isn't much doubt that they wouldn't have won their first title ever without the THE SPORTING NEWS' American League Fireman of the Year.

The Brewers had been a relief pitcher short of being a legitimate pennant contender for three seasons, and the addition of the tall man with the famous mustache proved to be even better than anybody had expected. Fingers led the major leagues with 28 saves and had a 6-3 record. He had an earned-run average of 1.04 in 78 innings.

He was phenomenal in the second half with a 5-1 record, 16 saves and a 0.72 ERA. The Brewers won 31 games to clinch the second-half title, and Fingers figured in 21 of the victories. In 1981 Rollie Fingers won the AL Most Valuable Player award.

Now compare that to what Bill James said of Fingers in his New Historical Baseball Abstract:

One player that I will be criticized for omitting [from his 100 best pitchers] is the Hall of Fame's second reliever, Rollie Fingers. But again, meaning no disrespect to Fingers, or anyone else who has a moustache you could weave into a carpet, I don't really see what is uniquely wonderful about Rollie Fingers' career. Yes, Fingers won an MVP Award in 1981, but...why? He faced 297 batters that year. Yes, he posted a 1.04 ERA, but Goose Gossage posted an ERA of 0.77 that same season, Rob Murphy posted an ERA of 0.77 in 1986, Dale Murray had a 1.03 ERA in 1974, Tim Burke had a 1.19 ERA in 1987, Frank Williams a 1.20 ERA in 1986. Jim Brewer and Ted Abernathy had ERAs of 1.27. Bob Veale in 1963 pitched the same number of innings (78) and allowed the same number of earned runs (9) as Fingers in 1981. It's just not a remarkable accomplishment.

Veale, for pitching 78 innings and allowing 9 earned runs, was credited with 10 Win Shares. Fingers, for doing the same, was credited with 17 Win Shares. That is a reasonable recognition of the importance of Fingers' role on the team. The BBWAA, however, gave Fingers an MVP Award. This is excessive. In my opinion, the BBWAA did something dumb when they gave Fingers an MVP award, and compounded the dumbitude by using that as a reason to put him in the Hall of Fame.

Rollie Fingers' proponents used the argument that Fingers was remarkably consistent for a relief ace. But for a relief ace, an ERA a full run better than the league is a basic standard of competence. Fingers met that standard only six times in his career, and pitched all of his career in pitcher's parks. Gossage met that standard 11 seasons, seven straight seasons, and pitched as many innings per year in tougher parks while doing it. Quisenberry met that standard his first nine seasons in the league, ten overall, also pitching more innings in tougher parks.

Fingers' ERA, adjusted for the parks he played in, was 16% better than league (2.90 vs. 3.45) [Baseball-Reeference.com says 19%]. Quisenberry's ERA was 31% [46%] better than league, Gossage's was 20% [26%] better than league, Sutter's 26% [36%] better, Wilhelm's 31% [46%] better. Kent Tekulve and Lee Smith were 24% [both 32%]better than league, Sparky Lyle 21% [27%] better than league. Fingers is more in a class with Jeff Reardon (17% [21%] better than league), Ron Perranoski (18% [21%] better), Gene Garber 11% [17%] better), and Don McMahon (16% [19%] better).

What lifted Fingers out of that class, I believe, was simply that he had exceptionally good taste in teammates-and the same is true of Jesse Haines and Rube Marquard. Haines in his career was ten games better than his teams; Marquard was two better than his.

Those are two quite different takes on Fingers' 1981 season. I believe that there's a little truth in both excerpts and that this season is illustrative of relievers of this era as a whole.

First, neither makes direct mention of the fact that Fingers lost a large segment of the season (53 games) to the strike and yet appeared in 47 games, pitched 78 innings, and tallied more saves (28) than he had in three years. That said what would Fingers' prorated season totals look like?

Year Ag Tm  Lg W L  G GS CG SHO SV  IP  H ER HR BB SO  ERA ERA+ WS
1981 34 MIL AL 6 3 47  0  0  0  28  78 55  9  3 13 61 1.04 331  17
1981 34 MIL AL 9 4 70  0  0  0  42 116 82 13  4 19 91 1.04 331  25

Well, that's a bit more impressive. 42 saves would have been the first time that a reliever reached 40 in a season, and therefore, a record. His 25 Win Shares are a little more respectable than the 17 James sites (and besides I am not completely sold that Win Shares measures relievers worth accurately, especially as the role has changed over time, but that's an argument for another day).

How many closer's have saved 42 games, won 9 others, and had an ERA in the 1.07 range? Just one comes close, John Wetteland in 1993. Wetteland had 9 wins, 43 saves, and a 1.37 ERA in 85.1 innings. So maybe Fingers deserved that MVP award after all?

Maybe. But I'm not willing to give it to him based on that argument. I cannot accept a player's projected totals as fact, especially a pitcher's. Why? Because a veteran pitcher like Fingers in 1981 (34 years old) benefits greatly from a 50-odd game break in the middle of the season. The most grueling part of the season is removed to provide a breather. Note that, as James points out, Gossage produced an even lower ERA in that season.

Second, pitcher's ERAs tend not to represent the pitcher's actual value-they appear more impressive or much less impressive-over short spans. This is especially true of relief pitchers, whose effectiveness may not show up as readily in ERA. This is due to ERA being zero-bound at the lower end (i.e., a pitcher cannot give up negative runs) and unbounded at the upper end (i.e., a pitcher in theory could give up infinite runs and infinite ERAs are possible if a pitcher allows a run without recording an out). Therefore, one bad outing does more damage to a pitcher's ERA than a few good outings do to help his ERA, especially if the pitcher throws very few innings at a time like a reliever. Look at John Smoltz last year for example. He gave up 8 earned runs in two-thirds an inning in his second outing in 2002, raising his ERA to 43.20. He gave up one run in his next 11 games (13 innings) and had a 5.52 ERA to show for it. At that point he had thrown 13 scoreless innings in 11 outings and had given up 9 runs in 1.2 innings in two outings. The two subpar outings had much more affect on his ERA than the many good ones. However, as the season wore on the good outings were able to overpower that one atrocious outing on April 6. It still had some effect though since his 3.25 ERA on the season would have only been 2.37 without that outing. Therefore, had Fingers pitched an entire season, they likelihood of a damaging outing would go up. One outing like Smoltz' would have almost double Fingers' ERA (to 1.94).

Third, Fingers' MVP candidacy benefited from the Brewers' pennant race in the second half of the split season. The Brewers may not have been in a pennant race had it not been for the strike. They "finished" the first half three games behind the Yankees, won the second half by 1.5 games over Detroit, and had the best record in the division. However, the Yankees were one game under .500 in their meaningless second half and finished two games back. A little incentive could have helped them bury the Brewers by the All-Star break.

Finally, I cannot reward Fingers for games he never pitched because he never pitched them. Lyman Bostock and Mark Fidrych may have been Hall-of-Famers had they been able to lead normal, uninterrupted careers. So might have Stan Bahnsen for that matter and probably a hundred-odd other players, but they didn't. So we'll never know. We cannot reward players for time not served. It's just too dangerous. Fingers was limited to 109 games in 1981 and that's perhaps too bad, but it's all we've got.

However, I think his prorated value had something to do with his winning the award, but I'll return to that later.

Now back to his effectiveness in the season: Apart from the impressive ERA, the most compelling argument promulgated by TSN was, "The Brewers won 31 games to clinch the second-half title, and Fingers figured in 21 of the victories." I wondered if the percentage of total wins and saves compared to team wins was that impressive. I found that Fingers' 54.84% was very good but was only 67th on the all-time list for relievers (with 30 relief appearances). There are 25 over 60% and here they are:

Name              Year  W SV GP Tm  W+Sv   W+Sv
                                 W  /GP   /Tm W
Bryan Harvey      1993  1 45 59 64 77.97% 71.88%
Ugueth Urbina     1999  6 41 71 68 66.20% 69.12%
Mike Williams     2002  2 46 59 72 81.36% 66.67%
Randy Myers       1993  2 53 73 84 75.34% 65.48%
Roberto Hernandez 1999  2 43 72 69 62.50% 65.22%
Bobby Thigpen     1990  4 57 77 94 79.22% 64.89%
Antonio Alfonseca 2000  5 45 68 79 73.53% 63.29%
Dan Quisenberry   1983  5 45 69 79 72.46% 63.29%
Lee Smith         1991  6 47 67 84 79.10% 63.10%
Dick Radatz       1964 16 29 79 72 56.96% 62.50%
Doug Jones        1990  5 43 66 77 72.73% 62.34%
Rollie Fingers    1977  8 35 78 69 55.13% 62.32%
Jeff Montgomery   1993  7 45 69 84 75.36% 61.90%
Trevor Hoffman    2000  4 43 70 76 67.14% 61.84%
Ugueth Urbina     1998  6 34 64 65 62.50% 61.54%
Jose Mesa         2002  4 45 74 80 66.22% 61.25%
Neil Allen        1981  7 18 43 41 58.14% 60.98%
Eric Gagne        2002  4 52 77 92 72.73% 60.87%
Trevor Hoffman    2002  2 38 61 66 65.57% 60.61%
Jeff Shaw         1997  4 42 78 76 58.97% 60.53%
Dennis Eckersley  1992  7 51 69 96 84.06% 60.42%
Dave Righetti     1986  8 46 74 90 72.97% 60.00%
Rick Aguilera     1998  4 38 68 70 61.76% 60.00%
Rod Beck          1998  3 51 81 90 66.67% 60.00%
...
Rollie Fingers    1981  6 28 47 62 72.34% 54.84%

Note that, even though the list is predominately season from the last 20 years, Fingers' 1977 season shows up in the list along with Radatz in 1964 and Neil Allen in 1981. Also, of the 142 season at or above 50%, 22 were from 1981 or before, and of the 66 seasons that rank higher than Fingers in 1981, seven were from 1981 or before (the three above and Ken Sanders in 1971 (55.07%), Sparky Lyle in 1972 (55.70%), Mike Marshall in 1973 (56.96%), and John Hiller 1973 (56.47%)). So it's not as if his performance were unprecedented at the time.

We'll maybe it's just easier to do on bad teams, given the fewer games that they win, and we all know how MVP voters dislike players on losing teams. What if we limit it to teams with winning records?

Name              Year  W SV GP  Tm  W+Sv   W+Sv
                                  W  /GP   /Tm W
Randy Myers       1993  2 53 73  84 75.34% 65.48%
Bobby Thigpen     1990  4 57 77  94 79.22% 64.89%
Lee Smith         1991  6 47 67  84 79.10% 63.10%
Jeff Montgomery   1993  7 45 69  84 75.36% 61.90%
Eric Gagne        2002  4 52 77  92 72.73% 60.87%
Dennis Eckersley  1992  7 51 69  96 84.06% 60.42%
Dave Righetti     1986  8 46 74  90 72.97% 60.00%
Rod Beck          1998  3 51 81  90 66.67% 60.00%
Armando Benitez   2001  6 43 73  82 67.12% 59.76%
Bruce Sutter      1984  5 45 71  84 70.42% 59.52%
Dan Quisenberry   1984  6 44 72  84 69.44% 59.52%
Bryan Harvey      1991  2 46 67  81 71.64% 59.26%
Trevor Hoffman    1998  4 53 66  98 86.36% 58.16%
Doug Jones        1992 11 36 80  81 58.75% 58.02%
Tom Gordon        1998  7 46 73  92 72.60% 57.61%
John Smoltz       2002  3 55 75 101 77.33% 57.43%
Dennis Eckersley  1991  5 43 67  84 71.64% 57.14%
Mariano Rivera    2001  4 50 71  95 76.06% 56.84%
Lee Smith         1992  4 43 70  83 67.14% 56.63%
John Hiller       1973 10 38 65  85 73.85% 56.47%
Trevor Hoffman    1996  9 42 70  91 72.86% 56.04%
Sparky Lyle       1972  9 35 59  79 74.58% 55.70%
Jeff Brantley     1996  1 44 66  81 68.18% 55.56%
Keith Foulke      2001  4 42 72  83 63.89% 55.42%
John Wetteland    1993  9 43 70  94 74.29% 55.32%
Rollie Fingers    1981  6 28 47  62 72.34% 54.84%

Fingers rises to number 27 but is still behind Hiller and Lyle, who preceded him.

Let's give this argument one last try. Let's look exclusively at playoff teams:

Name              Year  W SV GP  Tm  W+Sv   W+Sv
                                  W  /GP   /Tm W
Dennis Eckersley  1992  7 51 69  96 84.06% 60.42%
Rod Beck          1998  3 51 81  90 66.67% 60.00%
Dan Quisenberry   1984  6 44 72  84 69.44% 59.52%
Trevor Hoffman    1998  4 53 66  98 86.36% 58.16%
Tom Gordon        1998  7 46 73  92 72.60% 57.61%
John Smoltz       2002  3 55 75 101 77.33% 57.43%
Mariano Rivera    2001  4 50 71  95 76.06% 56.84%
Trevor Hoffman    1996  9 42 70  91 72.86% 56.04%
Rollie Fingers    1981  6 28 47  62 72.34% 54.84%
Billy Koch        2002 11 44 84 103 65.48% 53.40%
Todd Worrell      1996  4 44 72  90 66.67% 53.33%
Robb Nen          2002  6 43 68  95 72.06% 51.58%
John Wetteland    1998  3 42 63  88 71.43% 51.14%
Mariano Rivera    1997  6 43 66  96 74.24% 51.04%
Dennis Eckersley  1990  4 48 63 103 82.54% 50.49%
Mariano Rivera    1999  4 45 66  98 74.24% 50.00%

Fingers rises to ninth and he was the first to exceed 50% for a playoff team. But I'm still not sure that constitutes much of an argument for his MVP award.

Now for James' argument against Fingers winning the award: "Yes, he posted a 1.04 ERA... It's just not a remarkable accomplishment." Is that true given Fingers' save total? For example, of the comparable pitchers James cites, Murphy was rookie pitcher who threw 50.1 innings and saved one game. Gossage saved 20 but pitched only 46.2 innings. Murray had 10 saves and 69.2 innings in his rookie season. Burke had 18 saves and 91 innings pitched. Williams had one save in 52.1 innings. Brewer, 17 saves and 78.1 innings, and Veale had 3 saves in 77.2 innings. Abernathy did save 28 games and pitch 106.1 innings in 1967, but that does make Fingers' accomplishment a bit more remarkable.

Here's the complete list of relief pitchers with ERAs of 1.50 or less in chronological order (note that a pitcher must have 30 relief appearances or 20 saves to qualify):

Name             Year SV  G RA    IP  SO BB  W L  ERA
Junior Thompson  1946  4 39 38  62.7  31 40  4 6 1.29
Terry Fox        1961 12 39 39  57.3  32 16  5 2 1.41
Bill Henry       1964  6 37 37  52.0  28 12  2 2 0.87
Frank Linzy      1965 21 57 57  81.7  35 23  9 3 1.43
Steve Hamilton   1965  5 46 45  58.3  51 16  3 1 1.39
Frank Linzy      1967 17 57 57  95.7  38 34  7 7 1.51
Hoyt Wilhelm     1967 12 49 49  89.0  76 34  8 3 1.31
Ted Abernathy    1967 28 70 70 106.3  88 41  6 3 1.27
Joe Hoerner      1968 17 47 47  48.7  42 12  8 2 1.48
Ken Tatum        1969 22 45 45  86.3  65 39  7 2 1.36
Steve Mingori    1971  4 54 54  56.7  45 24  1 2 1.43
Darold Knowles   1972 11 54 54  65.7  36 37  5 1 1.37
Jim Brewer       1972 17 51 51  78.3  69 25  8 7 1.26
John Hiller      1973 38 65 65 125.3 124 39 10 5 1.44
Dale Murray      1974 10 32 32  69.7  31 23  1 1 1.03
Bob Apodaca      1975 13 46 46  84.7  45 28  3 4 1.49
Bruce Sutter     1977 31 62 62 107.3 129 23  7 3 1.34
Tug McGraw       1980 20 57 57  92.3  75 23  5 4 1.46
Rich Gossage     1981 20 32 32  46.7  48 14  3 2 0.77
Rollie Fingers   1981 28 47 47  78.0  61 13  6 3 1.04
Jesse Orosco     1983 17 62 62 110.0  84 38 13 7 1.47
Steve Howe       1983 18 46 46  68.7  52 12  4 7 1.44
Frank Williams   1986  1 36 36  52.3  33 21  3 1 1.20
Rob Murphy       1986  1 34 34  50.3  36 21  6 0 0.72
Jeff Calhoun     1987  1 42 42  42.7  31 26  3 1 1.48
Tim Burke        1987 18 55 55  91.0  58 17  7 0 1.19
Jeff Montgomery  1989 18 63 63  92.0  94 25  7 3 1.37
Les Lancaster    1989  8 42 42  72.7  56 15  4 2 1.36
Dennis Eckersley 1990 48 63 63  73.3  73  4  4 2 0.61
Doug Henry       1991 15 32 32  36.0  28 14  2 1 1.00
Jim Corsi        1992  0 32 32  44.0  19 18  4 2 1.43
Mel Rojas        1992 10 68 68 100.7  70 34  7 1 1.43
John Wetteland   1993 43 70 70  85.3 113 28  9 3 1.37
Mike Jackson     1994  4 36 36  42.3  51 11  3 2 1.49
Jose Mesa        1995 46 62 62  64.0  58 17  3 0 1.13
Tony Fossas      1995  0 58 58  36.7  40 10  3 0 1.47
Randy Myers      1997 45 61 61  59.7  56 22  2 3 1.51
Trevor Hoffman   1998 53 66 66  73.0  86 21  4 2 1.48
Ugueth Urbina    1998 34 64 64  69.3  94 33  6 3 1.30
Ray King         2000  0 36 36  28.7  19 10  3 2 1.26
Robb Nen         2000 41 68 68  66.0  92 19  4 3 1.50
B. Villafuerte   2002  1 31 31  32.0  25 12  1 2 1.41
Chris Hammond    2002  0 63 63  76.0  63 31  7 2 0.95
Joey Eischen     2002  2 59 59  53.7  51 18  6 1 1.34

There are a good number of middle relievers and setup men in the mix but there are also closers, especially ones that predate Fingers and Goose Gossage, who did it the same year.

Well, maybe Fingers did something extraordinary that didn't show up in the numbers to enable the Brewers to get to the playoffs. Here are Fingers' game logs for the season.

Keep in mind that the Brewers were in third place at the time of the strike (31-25), three games behind division-leading New York (34-22). In the second half, they won the division with a 31-22 record, 1.5 games ahead of Detroit and Boston (29-23) and 2 games ahead of Baltimore (28-23). Fifth-place Cleveland (26-27) was just 5 games back and sixth-place New York, for whom the second half was meaningless since they had "won" the first, was also five back (25-26). Even last-place Toronto was just 7.5 games back (21-27). In the West the only team in striking distance of the second-half champs, the A's, was Texas, in second by five games. Therefore, any games with Detroit, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Oakland, and Texas could be said to have playoff implications. I, frankly, don't know how to classify the Yankee games-obviously, their spirit was not in the second half and their record reflects this. However, they did have a playoff-caliber team, one that eventually represented the AL in the World Series that year.

Therefore, the question remains as to Fingers' contribution in the second half especially in those pennant race games and whether his MVP and Cy Young candidacy should be thereby enhanced. Fingers had 12 saves, one win, and 2 losses at the time of the strike with a 1.34 ERA in 23 relief appearances constituting 40.1 innings pitched in the first half. His second half numbers are even more impressive: 23 games, 37.2 innings, 5-1 record, 16 saves, and 0.72 ERA.

Here is a log of his second-half appearances ("*" indicates that he faced the tying or go-ahead run when he entered the game and a "-" indicates a blown save. Thanks to Retrosheet.com for the data.):

- Aug. 10 vs Clev: 1 IP, Blew save. Entered game with Brewers leading 2-1 n ninth and allowed a run to tie it. Milwaukee eventually won in 13, 5-2.
Aug. 13 vs. Clev: 1 IP, save in 8-5 win, pitched one inning and entered with game already 8-5.
Aug. 16 vs. Tor: 1.2 IP and save in 6-2 win-came in with one out men at first and second in the eighth (already 6-2).
*Aug. 16 (game 2) vs. Tor: 1.2 IP and save in 2-0 win-came in with one out and man on first in eighth (2-0).
*Aug. 18 vs. Tex: 1.2 IP and save in 3-1 win-came in with bases loaded, one out, and one run already across in the inning in the eighth inning (3-1).
*Aug 22 vs. Minn: 2 IP and win in 4-3, 10-inning victory-came in with score tied to start ninth (3-3).
Aug. 23 vs. Minn: 1.1 IP and save in 8-5 win-came in with man on third, two out, and two runs already across in the inning in the 8th (7-5).
Aug. 28 vs. Tex: 1.2 IP and save in 6-3 win-in 8th, came in with man on first, one out, 1 run already across in the inning (6-3).
Aug. 30 vs. Tex: 0.2 IP and save in 6-2 win-came in with men at first and second and one out in ninth (6-2).
*Aug. 31 vs. KC: 2.1 IP and save in 5-1 win-came in with men at second and third, 2 out, and score 3-1 in the 7th.
- Sept 2 vs. KC: 0.2 IP and loss in 5-4 defeat-came in to start the ninth of a 4-4 tie.
*Sept. 3 vs. Minn: 1.1 IP and save in 4-3 win-came in with man on first and two out in 8th (4-3).
Sept 5 vs. Minn: 1 IP and save in 5-3 win-came in with none out and none on in the ninth after Jim Slaton had lost his no-hitter by giving up three runs in ninth.
*Sept. 6 vs. Minn: 2 IP and win in 8-7 victory-came in to start ninth with score tied 7-7.
*Sept. 9 vs. NYY: 2.2 IP and save in 5-3 win-came in in 7th with one out, men on first and second, and score 5-2 (one inherited run scored).
Sept. 12 vs. Balt: 1 IP and save in 6-3 win-came in with man on first and none out in ninth (6-3).
*Sept 15 vs. NYY: 2 IP and save in 2-1 win-came in to start 8th (2-1).
*Sept. 16 vs. NYY: 2 IP and save in 3-2 win-came in to start 8th (3-2).
Sept. 19 vs. Balt: 2.2 IP and save in 11-8 win-came in with men on first and second, one out, and 7-5 Milwaukee lead in 7th (two inherited runs scored plus one uninherited).
- Sept. 22 vs. Bos: 2.2 IP and win in 10-8 victory-came in with one out, man on second, and score 8-7 Brewers in the 7th. Gave up inherited run to tie score and later win it.
Sept. 25 vs. Det: 1 IP and save in 8-6 win-came in to start ninth (8-6).
*Sept. 26 vs. Det: 1 IP and save in 4-3 win-came in with none on, none out, and 2 runs across in the inning in the 9th (4-3).
Sept. 30 vs. Bos: 1.1 IP in 10-5 win-came in with men at first and second and one out in the 8th (10-5).
*Oct. 3 vs. Det: 1.1 IP and win in 2-1 victory-came in with two out, man on first, and the Brewers trailing 1-0 in the 8th. This victory clinches the division for the Brewers.

Actually, it looks more impressive on paper than I anticipated, especially the September numbers. He has 11 of my qualified saves (i.e., facing winning or go-ahead run when he entered) and 3 blown saves. His numbers versus the pennant race teams that we mentioned earlier is 3 "saves" and 2 blown saves (plus 3 "saves" vs. the Yankees). They look more impressive because they helped clinch the pennant and were against the Yankees, but his stats are less impressive against the teams in the race.

Also, consider that Gossage finished 5th in Cy Young voting and 9th in MVP voting probably because his Yankees were never in a real playoff race, but as we documented above, Fingers was not as impressive as one would believe in the pennant race against the tougher teams. Further John Wetteland, whose 1993 season was similar to Fingers' 1981 as I indicated earlier, finished 24th in the MVP vote that year and got no mention in the Cy Young vote even though fellow closers Bryan Harvey and Randy Myers did.

It should also be pointed out that there were a number of players have very good season in 1981 (three of them on the Brewers):

Player	Win Share	Adj OPS
Rickey Henderson	27	150
Dwight Evans	26	163
Cecil Cooper	22	151
Bobby Grich	 21	164
Eddie Murray	21	156
Gorman Thomas	20	146
Robin Yount	20	114
Dwayne Murphy	20	129

One could argue that not only was Fingers not the AL MVP, not only was he not the Brewer MVP, he was the fourth most valuable on his own team.

How valuable was his season after all if his injury-plagued 1982 matches it in most stats but ERA but failed to garner a single Cy Young vote and finished 16th in MVP that year:

Year Ag Tm  Lg  W   L   G   GS  CG SHO SV   IP     H   ER   HR  BB   SO   ERA *lgERA *ERA+
1981 34 MIL AL   6   3  47   0   0   0 28   78.0   55    9   3   13   61  1.04  3.44  331
1982 35 MIL AL   5   6  50   0   0   0 29   79.7   63   23   5   20   71  2.60  3.80  146

I have to side with James in this argument. Fingers had a very fine season but was far from being MVP-worthy. So why did Fingers win? I think it was a combination of things. I think the shortened season threw off everyone's season numbers making it more difficult for voters. I also think Fingers to a certain degree gets the benefit for the time he lost. Why else would a closer with only 28 saves get the MVP when the record had been 38 for nine seasons and Bruce Sutter had had 37 just two years before? Why else would his 1981 season overwhelm voters while his 1982 season did anything but.

Besides Ted Abernathy had had similar statistics in 1967 (adjusting the saves per era): he lead the majors in saves with 28, won six games, and had an ERA a little over 1.00. And Abernathy did it 106.1 innings, a more impressive accomplishment. So why was Abernathy twentieth in the 1967 MVP vote? Well, the Reds did finish in fourth 14.5 games back, but third-place Roberto Clemente was not held back by his .500 team.

Obviously, the way that a closer was viewed in 1981 was fundamentally different from the way it was viewed in 1967. I submit that analysts of the day had an inflated view of the closer's worth. Sutter had just made the reliever's role a glamorous one (again) two years earlier. Writers were just waiting for the next big thing when Fingers and a strike-shortened season gave it to them.

I also submit that this view carried through until when Fingers was eligible for the Hall. Fingers had been the first man to break 300 saves, had the MVP season, and a very good career. He also retired one year removed from his peak at the age of 38. Compare him to near contemporary Goose Gossage: Gossage was, for many arguments that have been listed since he became Hall-eligible, as viable a candidate as Fingers-they are listed as the player most comparable to each other by Bill James Similar Pitcher system. Gossage was still a valuable pitcher when he retired at age 42 but was at least 5 good years removed from closing. However, he started his career four years after Fingers and ended it nine years after Fingers.

Fingers was voted into the Hall on his second ballot (1992). Gossage has yet to get in in three tries. He hasn't even been close. So what's the difference? Well, in 1992 Dennis Eckersley, Gossage's teammate at the time, was re-writing the record books or at least the margins thereof with only the second 50+ save season. It was the culmination of five dominant years by Eck. Fingers' excellent career was still fresh in the writers' minds. It proved to be Eckersley's last dominant season. By 2000, when Gossage first became available, the save was already becoming devalued as a means to measure closers. Saves were a dime-a-dozen, even Gossage's 310 of them. I would say that was the difference in Fingers' rather easy entrance into the Hall and Gossage's yet unsuccessful one.

Eckersley plays a big part in the momentary resurgence of closers in the late Eighties, the subject of our next study.

1987: The Year That the Modern Closer Almost Died (Bye Bye, Miss American Pie)

In 1987 everyone in baseball was talking about the number of balls flying out of the park. The talk didn't slow even though the home runs did after the All-Star break. The ball was juiced, that's what everyone said. They called it the "lively-ball" or "livelier-ball theory". Street and Smith's 1988 Baseball Annual quoted Bobby Bonds, then a 41-year-old coach for the Indians and a proponent of the livelier-ball theory, as saying that when he took an occasional turn in the batting cage:

"I hit the ball as far as I did when I was 25-years-old. I'm not that strong. I hit balls really terrible and they went over the fence. When I was playing, I'd hit balls and say, oh my Gos, and they didn't go out. During my batting practice now, I hit balls and said, oh my God, and they cleared the fence by 30 feet."

Bonds' "Oh my God!"'s may be more easily explained by his son's ability to hit the ball farther as he approaches forty than when he was twenty-five: Maybe it runs in the family. Or maybe Bonds was upset that so many players joined him in the exclusive 30-30 club in 1987, increasing the membership to 10 men, 4 from 1987 (i.e., Eric Davis, Joe Carter, Darryl Strawberry, and Howard Johnson).

However, no one could argue with the record number of home runs being hit. On May 9th alone, Eddie Murray homered from both sides of the plate for the second consecutive game, and weak-hitting Chris Speier hit his second grand-slam home run in a week, after going his first 15 seasons without one. May 27 Greg Gross hits his first home run since 1978. On May 28 Joe Carter hits three home runs and Mike Young becomes only the fifth player ever to hit two home runs in extra innings.

And that's just the anecdotal evidence. Here is a table of the number of home runs per game with the percent increase from the previous year and from five years previous to mitigate one-year spikes. I included every year because, heck, I do like numbers and I thought some of you might too:

Year	HR/G	% Change	5-year % Change
1871	0.185	-	-
1872	0.096	-48.32%	-
1873	0.128	34.00%	-
1874	0.091	-29.36%	-
1875	0.061	-32.75%	-67.10%
1876	0.077	26.37%	-19.56%
1877	0.067	-13.33%	-47.97%
1878	0.063	-6.25%	-30.95%
1879	0.090	44.55%	48.42%
1880	0.091	0.92%	18.53%
1881	0.113	24.04%	69.64%
1882	0.156	37.58%	148.95%
1883	0.152	-2.57%	67.80%
1884	0.223	47.40%	145.07%
1885	0.181	-18.79%	60.45%
1886	0.196	8.17%	26.16%
1887	0.286	45.90%	88.92%
1888	0.239	-16.70%	6.76%
1889	0.306	28.26%	68.61%
1890	0.236	-22.76%	20.39%
1891	0.264	11.79%	-7.76%
1892	0.226	-14.31%	-5.10%
1893	0.293	29.42%	-4.24%
1894	0.395	34.93%	67.29%
1895	0.304	-23.10%	15.08%
1896	0.255	-16.11%	12.66%
1897	0.227	-11.07%	-22.58%
1898	0.162	-28.44%	-58.94%
1899	0.190	17.06%	-37.50%
1900	0.223	17.47%	-12.49%
1901	0.205	-8.17%	-9.64%
1902	0.160	-22.11%	-1.65%
1903	0.150	-5.81%	-20.87%
1904	0.133	-11.87%	-40.63%
1905	0.137	3.11%	-33.34%
1906	0.107	-21.62%	-32.92%
1907	0.099	-7.22%	-33.92%
1908	0.107	8.02%	-19.01%
1909	0.105	-2.39%	-23.32%
1910	0.145	37.96%	34.95%
1911	0.208	43.76%	109.12%
1912	0.180	-13.46%	67.53%
1913	0.190	5.70%	81.41%
1914	0.189	-0.49%	30.85%
1915	0.170	-9.92%	-18.02%
1916	0.154	-9.84%	-14.58%
19