MLB Insider...June 29: D-Backs at crossroads; Expos; All-Star squeeze; Rumors
D-Backs at crossroads
By Rob Neyer
Looking at the list of team payrolls for this season, we find that, with one exception, all 12 teams spending more this season than the Arizona Diamondbacks are competing for division titles. The exception? The Seattle Mariners, who've got Arizona "beat" by about eight million bucks ($78.5 million Opening Day payroll for the Mariners, $70.2 million for the D-Backs).
Sunday, of course, the Mariners finally gave up on 2004.
After hearing about the Freddy Garcia trade, my first thought was "what took them so long?" My second was "so what are the Diamondbacks waiting for?" Because of course Arizona's in almost exactly the same boat as the Mariners: distant last place and moderately large payroll, much of it spent on aging veterans who will be collecting pension checks by the time their current teams are ready to compete for division titles again.
How did the Diamondbacks get in this mess? The easy answer, of course, is that they're spending a lot of money on old players and haven't developed enough young ones. Specifically, this season they haven't scored enough runs, or prevented few enough. Particularly troublesome has been the pitching rotation, where Randy Johnson and Brandon Webb have been the only effective starters.
Randy Johnson could point a contender to a crown.
Johnson's a Cy Young candidate, while Webb's a candidate to lose 15 or 20 games if his luck doesn't turn around. But Webb, not so obviously, is pitching like a guy who's going to spend a long time in the major leagues. While his strikeout-to-walk ratio is dramatically worse this season than last season, he's still throwing that super-sinker, and he'll eventually settle in as a dependable No. 3 starter.
Johnson and Webb have combined for 12 wins, 13 losses, and a 3.47 ERA. But the other seven Diamondbacks who've started at least one game? Knuckleballer Steve Sparks, 2-4 and 4.94 in 13 starts, has been the best of them. By far. Even including Sparks, Arizona's non-Webb/Johnson starters are just 6-20 with a 6.72 ERA.
I suppose that all this isn't particularly interesting, but I thought it was worth mentioning how a team that was supposed to be at least on the fringes of a pennant race is currently living in the basement of a division that's really not all that good.
So that's how the Diamondbacks got here.
What's next?
We're already seeing a lot of the future. Entering this season, the Diamondbacks' two best prospects were third baseman Chad Tracy and second baseman Scott Hairston, and both are playing for the big club nearly every day. Hairston's doing exactly what everybody thought he would, while Tracy's scuffling just a bit.
Down in the minors, outfielder Josh Kroeger is doing well -- .331/.393/.580, including 26 doubles already -- in the Double-A Texas League, and he doesn't turn 22 until the end of August. One of Kroeger's El Paso teammates, shortstop Sergio Santos, is even younger, and in his own way more impressive. Santos, the Diamondbacks' first pick in the draft a couple of years ago, turns 21 next Sunday but is holding his own in the Texas League. As Baseball America would say (and, in fact, did say), "Santos brings a full toolbox to the field ..." Built like Alex Rodriguez, Santos can do almost anything ... except control the strike zone. In 70 games this season, he's drawn only 20 walks while striking out 76 times.
It's a good group of young players, but the Diamondbacks need more of them. Fortunately, if management would just raise the white flag, they've got a great chance to essentially restock the farm system.
If, Sunday morning, you'd made a list of the 20 major-league pitchers with the lowest ERA's, you'd have come up with 1) 18 pitchers whose teams are at least nominally involved in a pennant race, 2) Freddy Garcia, and 3) Randy Johnson. But now Garcia's pitching for the best team in the American League Central, which leaves only Johnson. The Lone Unit. Which teams can both use and afford him? Remember, Johnson's owed roughly $8 million for the balance of this season and $16 million next season, when he'll be 41. I see only four possibilities: Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, and Phillies. All four of those clubs have openings in the rotation and $24 million laying around the vault like so much loose change.
The Angels have the most to offer, but then again their top prospects are so promising that Bill Stoneman probably won't let them go. The Yankees obviously can afford Johnson, but can they cobble together a Johnson-worthy package from a farm system that's loaded with Grade C prospects and little else? The same goes for the Red Sox, and to a lesser extent the Phillies.
Speaking of the Phillies, in addition to a starting pitcher they could also use a center fielder, and in Steve Finley the Diamondbacks have one of those, too. Finley's 39 but apparently he can still hit, and at roughly $3.4 million for the rest of the season he's not making an outrageous amount of money.
With Carlos Beltran and Freddy Garcia both having found new homes (at least temporarily; Beltran could get traded again if the Astros don't start winning), two of baseball's most valuable midseason commodities are now under contract to the Arizona Diamondbacks.
It's what they do -- or don't do -- with Johnson and Finley that will likely determine the long-term future of this franchise. The Royals and the Mariners have made good starts in their rebuilding process. Will the Diamondbacks do the same? We'll know within a few weeks.
Game should be growth industry
By Rob Neyer
The Washington Post published in Tuesday's editions the third and final installment of a brilliant three-part series about, essentially, the eventual relocation (or not) of the Montreal Expos (here's the first part, which includes links to the rest of the series).
Not so long ago, Major League Baseball strongly suggested that the Expos' fate would be decided, finally, by the 2004 All-Star Game. I should have known better, but this time I actually believed them.
Now, of course, MLB tells us that the Expos' fate will be announced after the All-Star Game ... which could mean July 14, 2004, or April 19, 2007. There now seem to be two viable ballpark financing plans on the table -- one in Washington, D.C., the other in northern Virginia -- but there's little indication that anybody's quite figured out how to handle Orioles owner Peter Angelos. That said, it's probably just a matter of time before Angelos takes a payoff from MLB or sells the Orioles (or both).
So once the Expos have been banished (and renamed, we can all hope, "the Washington Grays" , what next? There's been background talk of other teams moving, but is that realistic? I don't think so, at least not in the short term. Let me throw another possibility out there ...
Expansion.
Sounds crazy, right? Remember, it was just a few years ago that Commissioner Bud solemnly announced, "We will contract." Major League Baseball did no such thing, of course. Contraction is widely considered by skeptics to have been little more than a bargaining chip in negotiations with the players' guild, but there were owners who did favor the idea, at least in principle.
Contraction is now dead, of course. But does that necessarily mean we're stuck with 30 franchises now and forever?
Here are the five biggest metropolitan areas, based on projected 2010 population (derived from population growth from 1990 through 1999, which is dicey but the best I can do on short notice), that do not currently host a Major League Baseball franchise:
Rank Metro Pop.
20 Las Vegas 2.87 million
21 Portland 2.86 million
25 Orlando 2.21 million
26 Sacramento 2.18 million
29 Charlotte 1.93 million
Now, the five smallest -- again, based on projected 2010 population -- that currently do host major-league teams:
Rank Metro Pop.
23 St. Louis 2.72 million
24 Pittsburgh 2.32 million
27 Cincinnati 2.16 million
28 K.C. 1.99 million
32 Milwaukee 1.78 million
Should we surmise, then, that in six years Portland will be a better market than St. Louis? Of course not. There's obviously a substantial value in the Cardinals' long history, and it's also true that the Cardinals are a "regional team" that draws fans (and TV viewers) from all over Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The same sort of things might be said (if not as convincingly) about the Pirates and Reds. But does anybody really want to argue that if we look ahead five or six (or 20) years, that Kansas City and Milwaukee will be better homes for Major League Baseball than Las Vegas and Portland? That notion strikes me as fairly preposterous, and I've been a Royals fan for nearly 30 years.
But the Royals aren't moving, and the Brewers aren't moving. If this were the 1950s, they would probably be gone already. But with long-term leases and lawyers and politicians, moving just ain't what it used to be. The Royals and Brewers are going to be where they are for quite some time. And if they're not going to become complete jokes, then they'll have to be heavily subsidized by both the taxpayers (the Brewers have already got that one covered) and the other teams (don't worry; the Brewers have that one covered, too).
Anyway, contraction's off the table. But what about expansion? When you bring up the idea, baseball people scoff. "Why should we add teams when the ones we've got are struggling?"
Does that make any sense? If you're having a problem selling air conditioners in Buffalo, does that mean you don't try to sell them in Tucson?
This is how screwed up Major League Baseball is, though. Is anybody actually thinking about the big picture? Because I get the strong impression that if a solution doesn't involve a tax break in 2005, it won't even be considered.
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I've never had much good to say about Major League Baseball (as opposed to major league baseball, which of course I still adore), but Major League Baseball should be credited for sending checks this week to a group of Negro League veterans. Granted, this should have happened a long, long time ago -- the program to provide pensions to Negro Leaguers wasn't started until 1997 -- but justice done late is still justice done (if not particularly well).
