Longoria's Deal Upsetting to Agents

"Some of the recent contracts signed are completely pro-management. They completely favor the team. Look at Evan Longoria's deal, and between all the options he's tied up through age 31. I have no idea why you'd do something like that when you have a player who has the potential to win the Rookie of the Year award." --Anonymous Agent

"I understand security and peace of mind for the player, but before he's even played a game in the majors?" --Anonymous Agent, on Longoria's minuscule extension.

"Might have cost himself $40 million over the length of the contract. I can't understand it. If he's the player everyone thinks he's going to be, there will be many regrets." --Anonymous Agent (Nick Cafardo, Boston Globe)

I read these quotes from a recent Baseball Prospectus article and fell in love with Evan Longoria, the rookie third baseman with the Tampa Bay Rays. Any player that makes a deal that ticks off that many anonymous agents is okay in my book.

If you read my last post, you may have noticed that I quoted Tony Gwynn's book, The Art of Hitting. I haven't read this cover to cover, but everything I have read has made Gwynn an even greater baseball hero in my eyes. For example, talking about his history with the Players Association (basically the most powerful union in the nation), Gwynn says, "They know I could have been a free agent in 1997 and gone out in the open market and commanded some heavy money, but I know the Padres couldn't afford to match it." In a time when his peers were jet-setting from team to team, signing bigger and bigger deals at each stop, Tony Gwynn stayed loyal to his team and his town, despite pressure from the Association. "Team jumping is about ego as much as money. You want to be the highest-paid guy in baseball, or you at least want to rank in the top 10... I've just won my eighth batting title, and I doubt if I'm in the top 50. Does that bother me? Not at all, because I'm happy. I have enough, on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm greedy like anybody else. I'd like more. But the Padres offered me enough to stay and I took it."

How refreshing is that?

What's in a Slump

Almost a month into the 2008 season, there are some players who aren't exactly living up to expectations. Here in Kansas City the talk is about the futility of Jose Guillen, who signed a contract for 3 years, $36 million. He was supposed to bring a proven productive veteran presence to the Roayls' lineup, but so far, his bat has been absent. It's still early in the season, so there is still plenty of time for an offensive turnaround.

He's not the only slugger who has started the season with less than stellar results. ESPN.com has a good article here that lists a slumping player at every position from around the league. I was surprised at some of the names in that group. Coincidentally, over half of the players listed had new big-money deals during the off-season.

It's hard to say how a slump begins, but whatever the cause, they can easily and quickly snowball. The harder you try to hit, the harder it becomes. The same goes for pitching or fielding. Baseball can sometimes be counter-intuitive that way. This phenomenon is usually referred to as "pressing."

It easy to tell when a hitter is pressing. He looks a little too anxious, a little stiff, and swings at a lot of pitches outside of the strike zone. It might start with a game when a player goes 0-4. In his four at-bats he hits the ball hard, but right at the defense. The next day, maybe he has to face a really good pitcher, and goes 0-3. The next day, maybe he loses concentration in his first at-bat and strikes out, and suddenly he has trouble remembering the last hit he had. It's at that point that it switches from a physical problem to a mental problem. Joe DiMaggio says in his book Baseball for Everyone, "The emotional progress of a slump is approximately as follows: simple wonder, prolonged bewilderment, dawning realization, horror, grim determination, helpless rage, self-pity, relaxation, cure."

Hall of Fame member Tony Gwynn says this about slumps in his book, The Art of Hitting: "When you start thinking, you usually start guessing. And if you're guessing, and you're wrong, you're making a lot of outs... You enter a slump because even though you might know what you're doing wrong, you just can't seem to correct it." That goes hand in hand with a comment Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers made in an article by the Sporting News. "Mentally, I try to be not there at all," he says. "Whenever I'm going good, it's when I'm not thinking about anything, kind of like in a daze. Still focused on what I'm trying to do but not worrying about the outcome, what the count is, what the score is." Not thinking about hitting is tough to do when friends, fans, and especially media won't let you forget that you're not hitting.

Being the good-hearted person that I am, I've done a little research and found some resources that may help Mr. Guillen and the other slumping sluggers to break out of their ruts. There is this article, which apparently provides A Scientific Hitting Slump Cure...That Works. Or, if you're into a more psychological approach, you could fork out a little money for some Hypnosis, Visualization and Mental Toughness Training. According to this site, Pete Rose offered his proven remedies during a radio program. Or, you could try what Richie Ashburn would do -- "To cure a batting slump, I took my bat to bed with me. I wanted to know my bat a little better."

Despite some of the... mmm... promising solutions I've found, I tend to agree with DiMaggio's comment, "There is no handy cure for slumps, any more than there is a reasonable explanation for them. If anyone ever finds a slump cure, he can sit back and get rich on consultation fees, for he'll find lots of clients wherever baseball is played."

Judging from the websites I saw today, no one is getting rich yet.

Jump on the Banny-wagon

I've mentioned Brian Bannister on this blog before. This probably won't be the last time I'll mention him either. I'm not the only one impressed with his Maddux-like, cerebral approach to pitching. Rany Jazayerli wrote a great piece today about how the Royals have, well, tanked in the past week and a half. However, he also commented about how solid Bannister continues to look on the mound. And I agree. He wasn't as good as Cliff Lee was last night, then again, no one has ever been as good as Lee has been in three consecutive starts. But, through six innings of work he had allowed one baserunner, which came in the form of a scratch-hit, which probably should have been an error.

I left a comment on Rany's post and introduced the term "Banny-wagon." It's got a nice ring to it, don't you think?

I'm telling you, this kid is good, and I think he's going to be consistently good. Far too many pitchers rely on their arms more than their brains. It's so refreshing to see a guy who knows how to pitch. If the Royals can ever put together some good offensive outings for him, he'll have at least 15 wins this season. If he does, the whole city might want on the Banny-wagon.

Poor Execution

Did you see that the "cursed" David Ortiz jersey sold on eBay for $175,000? If you haven't heard about this story, here's the short version: The Yankees are building a new stadium, and one of the construction workers, who happened to be a Red Sox fan, buried an Ortiz jersey in one of the service corridors of the new park, hoping to curse the arch rivals.

Seems a little silly to me.The proceeds from the week long auction go to the Jimmy Fund organization to help fight cancer. It's a worthy cause if there ever was one, but I really can't believe it sold for that much money. First of all, it didn't really do anything. The Curse of the Bambino lasted for 86 years. Now that was a curse. This was just a poorly executed attempt. The Yankees didn't even play a single game in that new stadium. What's more, Ortiz started off the season ice cold, and has only now begun to produce. Maybe the curse backfired.

I have a theory about baseball curses: The most successful curses (or devastating, depending on your vantage point) are self-imposed. Take, for example, the two most famous baseball curses, the previously mentioned Curse of the Bambino, and the Curse of the Billy Goat, which has "prevented" the Chicago Cubs from winning the World Series since 1908. The Bambino Curse began when the Red Sox owner sold George Herman Ruth, Jr., The Babe, to the New York Yankees and allegedly used the proceeds from the sale to finance his production of a Broadway musical, commonly believed to be No, No, Nanette.

The Curse of the Billy Goat goes back to Game 4 of the 1945 World Series when the Detroit Tigers came to Wrigley Field to take on the Cubbies. A local tavern owner had two box seat tickets for the event. According to Wikipedia, he took his pet goat, draped in a blanket that read, "We Got Detroit's Goat." They let both ticket holders into the game, and allowed them to take their seats. But, when it started to rain, the man and his goat were thrown out due to the foul wet goat smell. The man was so mad, he cursed the Cubs, and the rest is baseball history.

Had the Yankees gone years without going to the World Series after moving to their new stadium, followed by rumors of a David Ortiz jersey buried on the premises, a frantic search to locate the textile, and a dramatic unearthing of the cursed object, then maybe you could justify a six-figure sale of a tattered, torn, dirty jersey.

God bless capitalism and the free market.

The Perfect Game Redesigned

There are still some pictures that need to be re-done, but other than that, I think I'm done with this redesign. Obviously the color scheme is different, and hopefully it will be a little easier to read now. I thought about recreating the banner logo, but I've seen it now for so long, that it's kind of become the blog's trademark. It's here to stay. I went to great lengths to hack the HTML codes to provide png functionality for all of you people still using IE 6. If you don't know what that means, I salute you -- you're not a geek. But if you're not already using Firefox, shame on you. Anyway, I am really happy with the results. There may still be a few minor tweaks here and there, but this is TPG (The Perfect Game) 2008.

One thing I changed was the list of links to other blogs. You'll notice that Home Run Derby is gone, because they're mostly garbage geared towards the basest of baseball fans. The Yellow Flag is also gone because, well, it never really got off the ground (maybe next year?). In their places are two superb baseball blogs, specifically focusing on the Royals, but are great reads nonetheless. Ball Star is the Royals blog for the Kansas City Star, the big newspaper in town, and Rany on the Royals provides excellent statistical insight along with great writing. And, unlike many other blogs, the comments are usually good too.

Hopefully TPG will live up to its design. It'd be a shame to have a blog that looks this cool that never has any new content. So far so good for this season, although my production seems somehow tied to the Royals production. Neither has been great the past two weeks.

This blog started out as a way to explain some of the finer points about the Game to casual fans. So, if you have a question you'd like to be addressed in a future post, leave a comment and let me know. I'm always open to suggestions. Oh, and I'm working on the post about how the Yankees are the greatest sports franchise of all time...

Really...

I am...

Under Construction

I'm trying to roll out a new design, so if you see something that looks weird it's probably temporary.

Powder Blues

My wife and I attended our first Royals game of the 2008 season on Saturday, April 12. The Royals played the Minnesota Twins that night. Our team was off to a great start, having swept the Mighty Tigers and taken two of three from the Formidable Yankees. But, I have to admit, the real reason we had tickets for this particular game, and that we'd had them since day one of single game ticket sales, was because of the promotional give away: Powder Blue Billy Butler Replica jerseys, #16, which was my number in high school and college. The first 20,000 fans would receive these jerseys in commemoration of the unveiling of the new powder blues the Royals would be wearing that night.

I tend to obsess about baseball, and attending a game is no exception. It is not uncommon for us to spend over six hours at the ballpark on game day. I love to get to the park early enough to see the visiting team take batting practice, and I love to linger after the game. Had the weather cooperated that day, we probably would have arrived at Kauffman Stadium at about 3:30, two-and-a-half hours prior to the first pitch. As it turns out, the weather would not be the last thing to disappoint us.

It was like the dead of winter. Okay. Not quite, but it was really cold. But we were prepared, wore countless layers, and planned on adding an additional Powder Blue layer at the game. We figured the weather would keep other folks from going early too, but we were wrong. We didn't go to the game until about 4:45pm. We only live 10 minutes from the stadium so we arrived at the park about an hour before game time. When we handed over our tickets at the gate, there must have been 30,000 people there, and the coveted Powder Blue replica jerseys were being worn by two-thirds of them. When we didn't get our jerseys we were really disappointed.

After pushing through the crowds and finding our cheap seats, our eyes beheld the one bright spot of the evening: Crown Vision -- approximately 8,925 square feet of high definition LCD goodness. It's almost 105 feet tall and 85 feet wide, and it is amazing. For the time being, it is the largest HD LCD video display in the world. Did I mention it was amazing?

Still in awe of the biggest, sweetest TV I'd ever seen, we soon realized that we were sitting in front of a group of rowdy college-age kids who had obviously been there for a few hours and had been drinking all the while. We were disappointed and annoyed, but not surprised. We always seem to sit by annoying people.

The next disappointment came when we realized that our favorite player, John Buck, was not in the lineup that night. When we saw that his backup, Miguel Olivo, would be handling the duties behind the plate, I realized that the way our night was going, there was no way the Royals were going to win.

After about five innings the rowdies behind us won and we relocated to some empty seats on the lower level. On our way down we stopped at the Flipside Grill, home of our all-time favorite ballpark treat, Chili-Cheese Tots, where we learned that Tots in any form were no longer on the menu. So, we settled for the Chili-Cheese Fries, but they were those soggy crinkle fries (a curse upon you, your children, and your children's children, Mr. Inventor of the crinkle fry). What's more, the chili was different and didn't look nearly as appetizing. This would also be a great place to mention that we waited 15 minutes at the cash register before anyone helped us, but you don't need to hear about too many disappointments. I think the employee taking orders from our line was due for a break, so she left, and no one stepped in, but like I said, you don't need to hear about that.

We finally sat down to eat our Chili-Cheese Fries, now surrounded by plenty of quiet, empty seats, where we no longer needed to endure the moronic criticism of the game offered by our previous neighbors. The Royals were, of course, losing. They only had two hits thus far in the game, and we missed both of them while waiting in line. I looked at my wife, and before I realized what I was asking for, said, "Well, at least it's not raining."

I looked up as the ninth inning began and it began to snow...

Despite the loss and all the other disappointments, we actually had a good time at the ballpark, which is probably just further testament of the sweetness of Crown Vision.

As I pulled into our driveway my phone rang. It was a friend calling to tell us that he had grabbed a pair of the Powder Blue promotional jerseys for us. Garth Brooks and the rowdy college drunks can have their friends in low places. I'll keep my friends in high ones, thank you very much.

The Golden Sombrero

Growing up as part of a winning baseball team had many advantages. One of which was being able to give your teammates a hard time when things didn't go their way. Practical jokes are more acceptable in the dugout when you are winning. One of my favorite recurring gags was when someone would strike out three times in the same game. Everyone on the team knew when a guy who went to bat had already struck out twice, and was in danger of a third. When he would get one strike away from his third strike out, everyone would be on the edge of their seats, with their hats in hand. Then, on the third strike of the third strike out, dozens of hats would fly out of the dugout in his "honor." It was a hat trick, and not in the positive sense of the term.

In sports, most often hockey and soccer, a hat trick is a rare and spectacular feat because it involves one player scoring three goals in a single game. Sometimes the term is used in describing any sort of success in triplicate, although 3-peat seems to have taken precedence when it comes to winning titles, pennants, or championships.

I had never stopped to think where the term "hat trick" originated, until now. According to Word-Detective.com, the term apparently started in the 1800's in the English game of cricket. The bowler (the guy throwing the ball to the striker -- the guy with the funny bat) who would hit three wickets with three consecutive balls would be awarded a brand new hat from his club. By the early 1900's, the phrase began to creep up in other sports. In the 1940's the Toronto Maple Leafs were given new hats for scoring three goals in a game as well. These days, players that score three goals in a game are likely to get rewarded with something much more valuable than a new hat.

But in baseball, the hat trick is still something you'd rather not be associated with, unless you are the opposing pitcher who contributed to the feat. But, there is something even more humiliating: The Golden Sombrero. That's the distinction you earn if you were to strike out four times in one game. According to Wikipedia, their are two more sombreros of which I was not aware. After all, who strikes out more than four times in one game? The Platinum Sombrero is reserved for the fifth strike out (and can also be termed "Olympic Rings," for the five zeros added to your batting average). If you've already earned a Platinum Sombrero, your worst nightmare may be for the game to go to extra innings, because you may be in danger of the Titanium Sombrero, also known as a Horn (named after player Sam Horn, who accomplished the coveted sixth strikeout in 1991). To date, no player has ever struck out more than five times in a 9-inning game.

"The count is one ball, two strikes... The pitcher looks in and gets the sign from the catcher...checks the runner...And here's the pitch...Swing and a miss at a slider on the outside corner; He struck him out. That's his fourth strikeout of the game."

Olé!

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Four games into the season I never would have thought that I'd be writing that the Royals finally lost their first game, ending their run as the only undefeated team in baseball. Oh well. You know it's a weird game when a sacrifice bunt followed by a suicide squeeze in the fourth inning ends up producing the game-winning run. But, like I said, oh well.

On that note, however, Kansas City is ready and waiting to be a baseball town again. We went to dinner last night and then did some shopping and everywhere I looked there was someone wearing a Royals hat, or a jacket, or a jersey. Oddly enough, that isn't always the case, not with the Chiefs being here. When we first moved to Kansas City, it always bugged me that that annoying red and yellow color combination was everywhere, even in the middle of baseball season. But, not last night. I saw some Kansas Jayhawks gear, but I can't really blame them – only hope for the end of the Final Four as soon as possible so the sports talk guys can start focusing on the Royals. Just on our way out of the restaurant I saw four different guys decked out in Royal blue.

After dinner we stopped at Target. From the time we got into the car at the mall to the time we drove across the street to Target, we had to wait briefly at two stop lights. When we started the car (and consequently, the radio) Billy Butler was at the plate with two outs and Mark Grudzielanek was on second base. There were probably eight or nine pitches thrown before we parked the car at Target, and Butler fouled them all off before earning a base hit up the middle to score the runner. While we were in Target a few minutes later, we overheard two kids. The taller one had a Royals hat, a pair of ears that jutted out from the sides of his head, and a cell phone. He was reading the text alert he had just received to his friend that Butler had singled up the middle and scored Grudzielanek before being tagged out at second base to end the inning. I couldn't help but smile.

Later, as we pulled into the Kohl's, John Buck was in the middle of an at bat. I cut the engine, but kept the radio going. Three more cars parked around us, but we were still glued to the radio and the sweet tones of Hall of Fame Radio Broadcaster Denny Matthews. And then, with a man on second base, Buck drove the ball to left-center for an RBI single. I clapped once, gave him an old, 'at a boy Johnny, and got out of the car. My wife noticed that another couple that had parked at nearly the same time as us also got out of the car at that moment. We can't be sure, but you have to believe they were waiting for the same reason we were waiting – we had to see if the Royals could get that run in with two outs. Another smile.

I have really enjoyed living in a baseball town. But, if the Royals can actually keep this up and contend in the division, I think I'm going to love living in a baseball town that has a team that's winning.

Beating the System: Brian Bannister

Growing up, I wasn't what you would call the star of my teams. There's only one team I have ever been on where I could maybe, possibly say that I was the best player, and that was a really bad team. I started pitching when I was 9 years old. I wanted to pitch when I was eight, but only one eight year old pitched on that team, and it wasn't me. It was an eight year old who looked twelve, who my eleven year old self feared three years later whenever I knew he would be pitching against me, and with whom my fourteen year old self was glad be teammates again. He, for the greater part of our youth, was the fireballer on the mound who no one wanted to face. I, from the time I was fourteen all the way through college, was the unimposing, right-handed, "other" pitcher who opposing teams were happy to draw, thinking they had caught a break.

They hadn't, but thinking they had probably played right into my hands. There really wasn't anything too impressive about me as pitcher. I didn't throw hard, that's for sure. But velocity is only one of the components to being a successful pitcher. It's practically universally accepted that there are four altogether, and here they are, in no particular order: Velocity (how hard the ball is thrown), Location (throwing it where you want to throw it), Movement, (making it curve, slide, cut, sink, split, knuckle, or explode), and Changing Speeds (throwing some hard and some harder). Coaches and scouts always said that none of those four aspects of pitching was more important than the others. Guys like me though, know the truth. When they come up a hand-held device for scouts that measures anything other than velocity, let me know. People would always say that I didn't throw hard enough to be effective and I spent most of my time proving them wrong. And that brings me to Brian Bannister.

Brian Bannister is a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals. Last year, in his rookie season, he put up numbers that placed him in contention for the American League Rookie of the Year. His Earned Run Average (ERA) was 3.87. He won 12 games (which no Royals pitcher had done in five years). And he did it with less than average Major League stuff. Even Bannister himself admits, "I know I’m just a guy with average ability. I’m trying to pitch in the major leagues, against the best hitters in the world. I’m pitching against guys who are like 7 feet tall and can throw 98 mph and have sliders that explode. I mean, seriously, look at me. What am I doing here?"

What is he doing here? Multiple sources say that he is wicked smart. He received a perfect score on the math section of his SAT, and graduated cum laude from USC. And that is why I love this guy. Too often you see pitchers that can throw the ball through a barn wall, provided they can actually hit its broad side -- guys with "million-dollar arms and ten-cent noggins," to borrow a phrase I read somewhere. Not Bannister. He knows who he is, and he's smart enough, and has studied enough to know who he's facing, probably better than they know themselves.

Despite his staggering intellect and his promising rookie season, the geeks (and I say geeks in the most endearing sense of the word) behind Baseball Prospectus have projected that Bannister will have quite the sophomore slump this year with an ERA of 5.19, and a 6-8 win-loss record. They attribute this to his freakishly low BABIP (batting average of balls in play) of .264 from a season ago. The League average is .303, so with a less than stellar walk to strikeout ratio, Baseball Prospectus basically thinks his luck will run out this season. Bannister disagrees, and he's aiming to prove them wrong.

This afternoon was the chance he had to do so, and just like any other test he's ever taken, he flew through this one with near-perfect results. Going head to head with Detroit's potent offense, you might figure it to be a long afternoon for this pitcher who looks more like a guy who should be crunching numbers at a desk than punching out Major Leaguers, but not today. Bannister threw seven innings, striking out four, walking none, allowing no runs, and only three hits. His current ERA of 0.00, and record of 1-0 seem like the perfect start to a season in which Brian Bannister takes on the stat men and wins.

Stat Man: Bill James on 60 Minutes

This is a nice piece done on Bill James, whose name I've been hearing quite often recently. This guy invented "sabermetrics" -- the analysis of baseball based on objective data. He is a fascinating interview. The clip is the entire 13 minute spot from 60 Minutes from this past Sunday, March 29, 2008. Check it out. And I apologize for the ads both before and after the clip, but the people at CBS are too smart to allow their footage to be ripped from the internet by jokers like me, so I had to settle for the embedded video option.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

With all due respect to any other time of the year often classified as wonderful, the first week of baseball is the most, most wonderful time of the year. Was anyone out there as thrilled about Opening Day as I was? It's such a relief to finally see baseball highlights on TV again. I went to sleep last night with visions of scrolling score updates dancing in my head. Two things made yesterday especially sweet.

1) The Royals beat the Detroit Tigers (arguably the best team on paper in the league, and easily the best team in the American League Central Division) on the road in extra innings. I found it a little hard to concentrate on work yesterday while listening to the game on the radio.

2) The last Opening Day game ever at Yankee Stadium was postponed due to rain. Seems that not even Mother Nature wants to see the Bronx Bombers leave that historic venue. What's so great about this? Well, close your eyes and imagine over 56,000 rabid Yankees fans sitting in the rain for a few hours, waiting to see this historic game. Then imagine seeing them all leave, disappointed. Pair of Opening Day Tickets $138, Parking $35, Raincoat, $8. Hotdog, Peanuts, and CrackerJacks, $12. Seeing 56,000 wet Yankees leaving the ballpark in the rain, Priceless.

Actually, I can't lie. It is sad to see Yankee Stadium go. In fact, I almost wrote about how I was going to actually pull for the Yankees this year. I was going to describe how I have been searching out all the information I can find on the storied franchise. I was going to announce that I even ordered a Yankees wool game cap, and that it arrived today in the mail, just in time for the first week of the season. And then I realized, you don't joke about something like that, even on April Fool's. Saying you're a Yankees fan when you're not is sick and wrong.