Kuzul

Over at Baseball Prospectus today, the estimable Sam Miller has a (free) piece on Albert Pujols’ slow start and whether it’s due to an expanding personal strike zone. He concludes that it just might be:

The Angels signed Albert Pujols for 10 years because even the decline phase of a .328/.420/.617 hitter should be pretty good. It turns out they’re getting a different hitter entirely. Probably a great hitter, maybe still the best hitter, and if there’s anything you take from this piece, I really hope it’s not that Albert Pujols is anything less than awesome still. He is awesome still, and I hate all of you who quit reading way up there and think that I’m giving up on Pujols. But he’s a different hitter.

Are his eyes getting worse? Are his reactions getting worse? Is he guessing at pitches to compensate for slowed bat speed? Is he in his own head? Is this related to his wrist injury last June, the one he came back from with almost miraculous speed? Or is it all nothing, or even part of Pujols’ evolution as a hitter, and will the next seven or eight years at least work out beautifully for the Angels? Quite possibly! But, man. Ten years.

Pujols has now gone 70 plate appearances without a home run to start the season, the longest such streak of his career. He has all of four RBI. He’s hitting .154 with runners in scoring position and .231 with men on.

So far, year one of the Angels’ investment in Pujols has been a disaster. Of course, year one is not very old. Unless there is a physical problem we don’t yet know about, he’s going to turn things around this year.

His providing value over the course of the rest of the contract is doubtful, but that was always going to be the case whether he hit .370 with 70 home runs, .270 with 20 home runs or anything in between. Age is inexorable both in the real world and in baseball, with the main difference being it strikes faster in the latter.

Paraphrasing a commenter in the article linked above, the list of the longest contracts in baseball history is almost identical to the list of the worst contracts in baseball history.

In the first blush of free agency, teams showered players with 10-year contracts. Most of them got burned in one way or another. Either the player (most often a pitcher) failed to perform, or the team’s and player’s needs diverged; rebuilding was required, but the former was stuck with the latter or had to deal him for pennies on the dollar in terms of talent returned.

That was a hard lesson learned, but it has been mostly forgotten now. Richie Zisk to the Rangers for 10 years? Who? Wayne Garland to the Indians for 10 years? Never happened. Larry Hisle to the Brewers for six years? Bud Selig would prefer not be reminded about that.

Now, whether the player is Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Prince Fielder or even the 30-year-old Ian Kinsler, those old foolish signings are being replaced with new foolish signings.

Thus, if you’re asking whether Pujols or any of these players will provide value throughout the years of their deal, the answer is hell no. In the short term? Maybe, sure, probably. In the long term? There is no way. The aging curve is too well established for us to pretend that it will be otherwise.

Don’t think of Pujols’ deal as a 10-year, $240 million contract; think of it as a five-year, $480 million deal, with anything coming after that as gravy.

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On Tuesday night in Texas, two natives of Japan will match up when the Yankees’ Hiroki Kuroda takes the mound against the Rangers’ Yu Darvish. Here’s Kuroda (via The LoHud Yankees Blog):

“This is not a one-on-one game,” he said. “It’s the Rangers against the Yankees. I’m going to do as much as possible so that our team is going to win. … I try not to think about (the hype in Japan). I don’t want to make it any bigger than it is.”

And it’s not that big. It isn’t any more novel than two pitchers born in Newark, New Jersey matching up, or Joe Niekro squaring off against Phil Niekro or any game that might be a playoff preview. Mostly though, it’s a matchup of two pitchers who have, in their own way, disappointed so far this year. Kuroda has had one good start this season pitching eight shutout innings against the Angels. He’s allowed 12 runs in 10 other innings.

Meanwhile, Darvish has struggled with his command, walking 13 in 17.2 innings while also allowing 19 hits. His ERA is only 3.57 by virtue of the fact that he has yet to allow a home run, but that’s not going to last, particularly when left-handed hitters have seen him as well as they have so far, hitting .313/.431/.396. Conversely, Darvish has been almost dominant against right-handers, holding them to .174/.321/.217 line. Those splits are akin to those you sometimes see from sidearmers, and if they persist then Darvish is going to be a lot less than we expected him to be.

What is correctable is the number of walks. It has been suggested that Darvish has been nibbling and that he needs to get ahead with first-pitch fastballs. Of course, that carries its own risks—if batters are looking fastball and a first-pitch strike catches too much of the plate, Davish’s homerless streak would be over in a hurry.

The Yankees’ lineup is going to present some challenges in that regard anyway given its status as the best in the American League—right ahead of Texas. The Yankees are hitting .284/.365/.489 as a team, which is a bit like saying the entire roster is composed of Hall of Famer Dave Winfield. With switch-hitters Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher and left-handed hitters Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and Raul Ibanez about, Darvish’s lefty problems are going to get tested very, very quickly.

The Yankees are also third in the league in walk percentage (this in spite of Ibanez’s best efforts) so if Darvish nibbles again, they’re going to happily walk around the bases.

None of that is to say that Kuroda will skate by easily. He has yet to show consistency this year and has had his own lefty problems. Fortunately for him, the Rangers are mostly right-handed. Unfortunately, their one left-handed hitter of note is Josh Hamilton, who is hitting .408/.429/.789 on the season.

The Yankees beat Derek Holland last night and they may well beat Darvish tonight as well, and as for Phil Hughes vs. Scott Feldman on Wednesday, well, that’s anyone’s guess. Whatever happens, though, it is clear that these are the two best teams in the American League and the story is far from over whether the Yankees sweep or take one or two out of three.

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It is with sadness that I note the imminent passing of The Band’s great drummer/vocalist Levon Helm. According to a note on his website, “Levon is in the final stages of hit battle with cancer.” As a cancer guy myself, this is depressing on a personal level. Less selfishly, it means the loss of one of rock and roll’s great musicians.

Through their work with Bob Dylan and on their own, The Band became one of the most prominent practitioners of what became known as roots rock or Americana. Many of their best songs, almost all authored by Robby Robertson, evoke a sense of time and place, be it “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” “Acadian Driftwood,” or “Up on Cripple Creek.”

“Old Dixie,” one of the greatest evocations of the post-Civil War South you will ever find, was sung and drummed with great feeling by Arkansas native Helm. In his book Mystery Train, critic Greil Marcus called Helm the only drummer who can make you cry, and if you listen to the drumming on that song, you can hear that he was right.

One of the fascinating aspects of The Band is that they wrote and played such great songs about American history and characters, but everyone aside from Helm was Canadian. That may explain the lack of baseball references, though you could imagine an alternative reality in which they did a good tune about Jackie Robinson’s stint with the Montreal Royals. Alas, substance abuse and internecine squabbling broke up The Band before they could get around to it.

This is, of course, not important now, just my excuse to say a few words about one of my favorite musicians as he prepares to leave us. Thank you, and may you have a peaceful journey to your next gig.  

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Don’t let the hyperbolic headline distract you: the Red Sox just have to get through these two days before breaking through to a good part of the schedule. In the long run, things like today’s order doesn’t matter very much. But in the short term, specifically this short series against the Rangers, detail work can make quite a difference.

The Red Sox went a long way towards righting their listing ship by taking three out of four games from the Rays over the weekend, even if the final, Valentine-designed loss rankled. They now face an even harder test with a quick two-game series at home against the two-time defending pennant winners.

The Rangers are 8-2, but the schedule gods have been kind to them, with series against the White Sox, Mariners, and Twins.

Now they have their first real test of the season, with consecutive series against the Red Sox, Tigers, Yankees, and Rays. If the Rangers are still winning four out of five games at that point, wake the masses because something truly special is going on.

Chances are it won’t happen, but it’s worth noting that the Rangers have a very strong rotation, one in which the heralded Yu Darvish may be the weakest link. It got lost amidst Derek Holland’s strong postseason pitching, but Matt Harrison also had a breakthrough year last year.

Neftali Feliz’s move from the bullpen could save a ton of runs in the long run—180 good innings is more valuable than 60 (sorry closer fanatics). Colby Lewis looks well set to spend another season as a mid-rotation innings-eater.

The bullpen is a bit more of a problem because Joe Nathan has been inconsistent, but his 6.00 ERA is distorted by his bad outing against the Mariners on April 11; remove that and he’s allowed one run in five innings.

The overall unit is deep enough that they can survive a post-peak Nathan if they have to. The point being that this stretch of difficult games will see the Rangers pick up a few more losses than they have to date, but it’s not going to reveal any heretofore unsuspected weaknesses.

The Red Sox, meanwhile, remain a mess. Here is tonight’s lineup against Lewis:

SS Mike Aviles
2B Dustin Pedroia
1B Adrian Gonzalez
DH David Ortiz
3B Kevin Youkilis
RF Ryan Sweeney
LF Cody Ross
C Jarrod Saltalamacchia
CF Jason Repko

Yeah, Jason Repko is playing for Jacoby Ellsbury. That’s Repko, the career .225/.296/.348 hitter. Put that together with Aviles, of the .317 career on-base percentage in the leadoff spot, and you have the perfect cycle of death for the Boston offense.

You could lead off Sweeney, you could even lead off Youkilis and his career .390 OBP. You could do almost anything better than putting your worst on-base guys back-to-back in the batting order.

Look, this is a small thing; one bad batting order won’t make or break a season, and the fluctuations between the best and worst orders are pretty small most of the time.

It’s just another example of Sox management taking a bad situation and making it worse. They don’t have the depth to replace Ellsbury, that’s to be expected. MVP candidates don’t grow on trees. Still, you don’t have to use that as an excuse to highlight your weaknesses.

The Sox follow the Rangers with three games at home against the Yankees, but then they are given series against the Twins, White Sox, A’s, Orioles, Royals, Indians and Mariners. There are a lot of winnable games in there, and just as the Rangers look like world-beaters now, the Red Sox are going to look better when they’re done with those 20 or so games.

In that sense, what happens in these two games doesn’t matter much. The Red Sox are going to get better whether they like it or not, whether Valentine writes good batting orders or pushes Daniel Bard to 150 pitches and 12 walks a game. It would just be easier if he didn’t.

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Back in the 1940s and 50s, the Yankees and Dodgers played each other in the World Series so often it might have gotten boring for everyone involved, perhaps including fans in New York. The two clubs first met in 1941 and have played 11 times.

Since 1981, though, when the Dodgers beat the Yankees in a six-game World Series, their windows haven’t matched up. That might change now that the McCourt era has ended and the Dodgers, who won 95 games as recently as three years ago, can get back to spending money and putting a representative product on the field—not that this year’s 9-1 start suggests that they are suffering.

Not so fast, say the Yankees in this article by Bill Shaikin:

“This team is built to win,” Yankees catcher Russell Martin said. “If there’s a piece missing, they’ll  do anything they can to get that piece.”

 Yet there is more to winning than spending money.

 “Much more,” Martin said. “It is more about piecing the puzzle together than just buying players.”

Even before the McCourt ownership, the Dodgers should have been better in the 1990s and 2000s. Their players had great seasons—Mike Piazza, Adrian Beltre, Eric Gagne, Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw last year. Somehow the rest of the club could not live up to those performances.

The Dodgers threw away some excellent players in the 1990s, including Paul Konerko and the greatest peak-level pitcher of all time, Pedro Martinez. Amateur drafts have been a mixed bag. Matt Kemp came in the sixth round in 2003, an obvious steal, but the Dodgers have had a harder time finding lasting value in their other selections.

Some drafts, such as 2007, appear to have been complete swings and misses. Players developed through the international scouting process are also hard to spot on the current roster. Kenley Jansen came out of Curacao, but he’s about it.

Meanwhile, the Yankees have just gone on and on, outspending their mistakes whenever they had to and failing to win when they couldn’t. It remains to be seen if this is one of the seasons where they can get away with it.

They are very old. Their pitching staff is about to get older (though possibly better) with the arrival of Andy Pettitte. Ownership is on an admitted austerity kick, a problem given that players such as Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia are signed at high salaries through the end of time, limiting the team’s flexibility.

We tend to assume the Yankees will be able to bull through their weaknesses because they always have, or at least, they mostly have in the post-1993 period, but nothing lasts forever. If ownership is not going to tack on dollars to the budget when things get rough, the essential ingredient that has allowed them to do so will have vanished.

That’s a problem given how weak the Yankees’ system is in position players. There are no ready replacements should one of the starters become injured or decline.

The AL East looks a mess right now, with none of the teams doing quite what they’re supposed to as of yet. The Yankees should be in line for a postseason berth when it all shakes out, but perhaps with a weaker claim than we thought during the offseason.

Despite their fast start, the Dodgers may not be along for the ride. Yes, they are 9-1, but they have also played seven games against a very poor Padres team and three more against a Pirates club that can pitch a bit but can’t hit at all.

They have five one-run victories in those 10 games, and a team’s luck in close games can change very quickly. Beyond Kemp and Andre Ethier, the lineup is thin. The starting rotation drops off quickly after Kershaw, with the one hope for more quality being that Billingsley’s revival is for real.

The bullpen is strong and should stay strong, but that’s not a whole team. And like the Yankees, there is no depth in position players. Let’s face it: when you can’t kill off James Loney five years after he last hit like a first baseman, you have problems.

So, the Dodgers will now have money. The Yankees have had it, and even with a little less of it to spread around, will continue to have one of the highest, if not the highest budget in baseball. But the Yankees players are right.

It takes more than a blank check to win, as George Steinbrenner demonstrated throughout the 1980s—a period in which the Dodgers won two championships and the Yankees couldn’t get out of the AL East.

Baseball doesn’t need to return to the days when the World Series was contained in two boroughs, but it has been too long since the two great franchises representing two great cities have clashed in October. The time may come again, but it is not necessarily going to be soon, as both teams have work to do first. 

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Jacoby Ellsbury hit the 15-day disabled list today with a subluxation (dislocation) of his right shoulder, incurred when Reid Brignac fell on it in Friday’s game. There is no sure return date for Ellsbury, or what condition he will be in when he does, but recall that Derek Jeter incurred the same injury under similar circumstances on Opening Day in 2003 and came back in good form almost exactly six weeks later.

It was the top of the sixth inning in Toronto. Jeter had drawn a walk off of Roy Halladay. Jason Giambi tapped back to the mound. Halladay threw to first baseman Carlos Delgado at first for the out, but Jeter was still running towards third, which was uncovered. Blue Jays catcher Ken Huckaby raced up the line to take the throw. Delgado fired.

The throw was high, and Huckaby, in full gear, leaped for it just as Jeter was diving into the bag. What goes up must come down, and Huckaby’s knees, shin guards and all, landed on Jeter’s left shoulder.

The key to Jeter’s quick return was that he had done only slight damage to his labrum and had not torn the rotator cuff. That meant no surgical intervention was necessary. Had it been required, Jeter would have missed most of the season.

The Red Sox can only hope for such an outcome. They called up confirmed non-hitter Che-Hsuan Lin to replace Ellsbury on the roster, but he’s no real help. They can only hope Carl Crawford returns quickly and that he hits the way he did as a Ray (unlikely, for various environmental reasons). Should he do so, that may solve some of the team’s offensive shortfalls but will still leave the team without a top center fielder.

The Red Sox were just off to a slow start before. Now they’re in trouble.

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After getting knocked around by the Mets this afternoon, Yankees right-hander Ivan Nova said that today, “was one of the worst days of my life. I wasn’t pitching right.”

Well, you might have to get used to it, Ivan.

The Mets, with a lineup not expected to provoke memories of 1986, knocked out eight hits and drew two walks in just 2.2 innings. Nova, who has struggled this spring, saw his exhibition ERA rise to 8.06.

Nova has hardly been dominant this spring, but he was hardly dominant last season despite going 16-4 with a 3.70 ERA. His fastball averages 93 mph, but he lacks a strikeout pitch, leading to a low rate of 5.4 strikeouts per nine in 207.1 career innings—the offspeed stuff that would lead to stranding batters at home plate just isn’t present.

What made Nova effective last year was that he had one of the highest ground-ball/fly-ball ratios in the AL and was very difficult to take out of the park, particularly outside of Yankee Stadium. This was both a positive development and a bit of a nervous mystery in the making for three reasons:

1. Nova hadn’t been billed as a ground-ball pitcher coming into the season, and there is no guarantee that he will be one again.
2. Ground-ball pitchers are very dependent on their defenses to turn grounders into outs, and with an aging Alex Rodriguez at third and ol’ I-Can-Only-Go-To-My-Right Derek Jeter at shortstop, Nova isn’t going to get a lot of help.
3. Even if Nova had a peak Graig Nettles and Ozzie Smith behind him, sometimes pitch-to-contact guys just have off-years. Balls hit right at fielders last season find holes this season.

In baseball, the only proof against failure is stranding the batter at home plate. Any other outcome may not result in disaster,—indeed, most of the time it won’t—but it at least risks it.

Before last year’s breakthrough, the conventional wisdom was that Nova’s shallow arsenal would ultimately condemn him to a life in the bullpen. That may still be the case. Batting average on balls in play isn’t always the answer, but sometimes it does provide a hint.

And, in Nova’s case, last season’s .284 average is going to have to hold steady or drop for him to keep winning games if he’s walking three and striking out five per nine innings. Just a tick higher, and last season’s strand rate is going to plummet.

It’s possible we’re already seeing a bit of that this spring.

Manny Banuelos, come on down? It could happen sooner than you think.

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Sayeth Bill Chastain of MLB.com:

“Joe Maddon has never been one to adhere to conventional wisdom for the sake of adhering to conventional wisdom, which leads to the topic of the Rays‘ No. 2 spot in the batting order.

“Right now there is a good chance that either Luke Scott or Carlos Pena will fill the second spot in the batting order. Using either of the sluggers in the second spot runs counter to conventional wisdom, a fact that doesn’t rattle the Rays’ manager in the least.

“‘I just think [conventional wisdom is] all based on the perception that a No. 2 hitter has to be a guy who can bunt, hit-and-run and move the runners,’ Maddon said. ‘It doesn’t happen anymore. That’s not part of the game right now.'”

Darned straight, Joe. But this isn’t anything new.

As Maddon himself pointed out, Jim Edmonds started more than 300 games batting second and did very well there, hitting .281/.363/.536 with 81 home runs.

Think about it: Forget the whole single, hit and run/stolen base, double thing—just get two runs straight away with the ol’ leadoff walk and home run. It’s not quite Earl Weaver, but in the first inning, it will do.

More to the point, the batting order is just a way of distributing playing time. The leadoff hitter will come to bat more often than any other player on the team, the No. 2 hitter a little less than the leadoff guy, the No. 3 hitter less than both and so on. With a slugger at or toward the top of the order, you simply give him more opportunities to do what he does best.

Managers have known this for a long time, but the old received wisdom dies hard, and each generation must discover anew that it makes more sense to give Mickey Mantle more chances to hit than it does, say, Scott Podsednik.

Consider this Red Sox batting order from my youth. Ralph Houk, not a brilliant manager despite a couple of World Series titles with teams other people built, used it 66 times in 1984:

1. Wade Boggs, 3B
2. Dwight Evans, RF
3. Jim Rice, LF
4. Tony Armas, CF
5. Mike Easler, DH
6. Bill Buckner, 1B
7. Rich Gedman, C
8. Marty Barrett, 2B
9. Jackie Guitierrez, SS

Two facts for those too young to remember these guys:

Boggs was a leadoff man who stole about two bases a season, both probably on busted hit-and-runs, yet he annually scored 100 runs.

Evans was not your prototypical No. 2 “bat-handler,” but was a slugger who walked as many as 114 times in a season and hit up to 34 home runs a year. That season, he hit .295/.388/.532 and, with all those power hitters coming up behind him, scored a league-leading 121 runs, while Boggs scored a mere 109.

Here’s another favorite from the next season, this time a New York Yankees-Billy Martin production. This one was used on Aug. 11, 1985 at Boston:

1. Rickey Henderson, CF
2. Don Mattingly, 1B
3. Dave Winfield, RF
4. Ken Griffey, LF
5. Don Baylor, DH
6. Willie Randolph, 2B
7. Butch Wynegar, C
8. Mike Pagliarulo, 3B
9. Bobby Meacham, SS

Normally, you would think of the patient, singles-hitting Randolph—who was also a good baserunner—behind Henderson, and the Yankees did quite a bit of that as well. But in this case, Mattingly’s contact-hitting abilities and power, combined with Henderson’s speed, meant that any time the latter reached, the worst-case scenario was that he would be on third base with one out for Winfield.

Mantle batted second sometimes. Willie Mays did as well. And if you’re impressed by Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera batting back-to-back, consider this San Francisco Giants lineup from August of 1959:

1. Jim Davenport, 3B
2. Willie Mays, CF
3. Willie McCovey, 1B
4. Orlando Cepeda, LF
5. Willie Kirkland, RF
6. Darryl Spencer, 2B
7. Hobie Landrith, C
8. Eddie Bressoud, SS
9. Jack Sanford, P

Davenport really had no business being a leadoff hitter, but check out Nos. 2-4: three straight future Hall of Famers, with 600 home runs followed by 500 home runs followed by almost 400 home runs, followed by Kirland, who slugged .475 that year. Mays had an off-year in 1959; he hit only .313/.381/.583 with 34 home runs. No wonder manager Bill Rigney felt like he had to hide him in the two-hole.

The real point here is a simple bit of common sense, one that goes hand-in-hand with the plate appearance/distribution concept of batting order construction: The Rays just don’t have a lot of hitting.

Many managers might stick Jeff Keppinger or Sean Rodriguez up there, simply for lack of anything better to do with them. Rather than burying them at the bottom of the order, where they would receive the fewest at-bats, they would get what amounts to a promotion.

Maddon is smarter than that. He will give his best hitters the most chances to do damage. It’s an elementary bit of thinking, but it eludes 9.9 or 10 skippers working today.

Just ask Dusty Baker.

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Early tomorrow morning, or late tonight depending on your point of view, the 2012 regular season will kick off with a game between the A’s and Mariners at the Tokyo Dome in Japan.

This is not the first time Major League Baseball will make Pacific overtures to its fans in the Chrysanthemum Kingdom and it won’t be the last. In an ever-shrinking world, one in which businesses must go where the money is if they are to remain vibrant and profitable, baseball’s overseas fans are crucial to its future.

Baseball has come a long way from barnstorming Japan both before and after World War II, tours that brought teams of All-Stars, not to mention whole Yankees and Giants rosters and such luminaries as John McGraw, Casey Stengel, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. Another visitor of note was two-time National League batting champ Lefty O’Doul, who made many trips back to Japan to teach and help establish the country’s version of professional baseball. Now, through these official games, Japan is actually a part of the official baseball season. 

The game was ever a common language between the two countries, even at war. At times during World War II, when the two sides were in close enough combat to hear each other’s shouts, Americans would call out, “To Hell with Hirohito,” a blasphemy to Japanese ears given the divinity of the emperor. In return, the Japanese would cry, “To Hell with Babe Ruth.” Word got back to the Babe. Offended, he purchased $100,000 in war bonds. 

It would be years before an actual exchange of players took place. Don Newcombe and Larry Doby were the first American ballplayers to play for a Japanese team (with the Chunichi Dragons in 1962), beginning an outflow of talent that hasn’t ceased to this day. The reverse, Japanese players coming to America, didn’t happen for much longer due to the tight grip that Nippon Professional Baseball kept over its players as well as a cultural bias against playing elsewhere. Left-handed pitcher Masanori Murakami was the first Japan-born player to reach the major leagues, debuting with the San Francisco Giants in 1964. Though only 21, he returned home after the 1965 season and spent the rest of his career in Japan. 

It would be many years before another Japanese professional established himself in the majors. That was the Dodgers’ 1995 Rookie of the Year winner Hideo Nomo. Nomo was successful enough that major-league clubs began taking a more serious look at Japanese players. This roughly coincided with an economic crunch for the Japanese clubs that made American posting fees for their players increasingly attractive. Suddenly there was Shigetosi Hasegawa, Hideki Irabu, Kazuhiro Sasaki and more, climaxing with Ichiro Suzuki. 

Ichiro is the most successful major league to come over from Japan, easily surpassing his closest rival, Hideki Matsui. Already a star with the Orix Blue Wave, Ichiro made his stateside debut with the Mariners at 27 in 2001 and was an immediate sensation. A throwback to the Deadball Era, Ichiro pounded out a league-leading 242 hits, many of them infield singles, also led the league in batting average and stolen bases, won both Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards and picked up a deserved Gold Glove for defense.

In the years since, the outfielder has won another batting title and led the American League in hits another half-dozen times, breaking George Sisler’s ancient single-season hits record in 2004. Despite his late start in the majors, he retains an outside chance of reaching 3,000 hits on these shores. 

Ichiro has served an important dual purpose. His success has helped bind American talent-watchers to Japan and Japanese fans to the American game. As good as players such as Matsui, Nomo, Akinori Iwamura, Kaz Matsui, Tadahito Iguchi have been at times, as many good seasons as pitchers such as Nomo, Hasegawa, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Takashi Saito, Tomo Ohka and others have had, these were mere transients. Ichiro is a real star, a legitimate Hall of Famer purely for what he has done in a Mariners uniform. 

Ichiro’s off-year in 2011 brings his career to a difficult crossroads. As great as he has been overall, with the exception of the 2001, 2004 and 2009 seasons, he has not been a dominating offensive player. Hitting .300, running the bases well and playing strong defense are all valuable, and Ichiro has certainly been that, but walking and hitting for power are also essential components of productive hitting. Ichiro cannot (or, some would argue, will not) do those things, and when his batting average drops closer to .300 than .350—or, as last year, when it dropped well below that mark—he has less to fall back on than a player with a wider array of skills. 

When Jason Giambi hit .342 with 38 home runs and 129 walks in 2001 (the same year rookie Ichiro hit .350/.381/.457) he had one of the best offensive seasons of all time. When he hit .271 with 32 home runs and 108 walks for the 2005 Yankees, he was no longer historic, but still quite valuable. The same cannot be said of Ichiro as a .272 hitter last year. The baserunning helps. The defense helps. By themselves, they do not make up for a player at a power position posting an on-base percentage of .310 or slugging .335. 

The talent pipeline between the American and Japanese majors is now secure enough that Japanese-born players will continue to star in the States. If Ichiro cannot rebound while batting third for the Mariners this year, another hero will rise up to take his place. Perhaps that will be the Rangers’ Yu Darvish. The next step, for a native of Japan to come up through the American minors without first making a long stop in his home leagues, may have difficult implications for the viability of the Japanese majors, but it will eventually need to happen if there are to be more representatives of the island nation in Cooperstown following Ichiro.

In the meantime, we have games such as the two to be played between the A’s and the Mariners. The home fans will get to see one of their stars playing in a game that counts in a league with a higher level of difficulty than their own (American lineups are deeper than their Japanese counterparts). Just as even Hollywood’s biggest bombs can eke out a profit by appealing to foreign audiences (Disney’s hope for John Carter), baseball’s growth will depend not just on the continuing loyalty of American audiences, but of its ability to become a spectacle that can attract a world audience.

Baseball the game has already won Japanese hearts; Major League Baseball, through games such as these and its embrace of Ichiro, must do the same. 

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Earlier today, Buster Olney reported that Miguel Cabrera has a small fracture under his right eye and might be out a week or two.

It almost goes without saying that Cabrera is a very lucky man. As a Cyclops who has undergone numerous vision-altering (and destroying) eye surgeries, you just don’t want to get in a position when the doctors have to start poking at your peepers with a shrimp fork. I don’t mean to denigrate the wonderful professionals who saved my life, but once you go down that road, there really aren’t a lot of good outcomes. For me, a writer, it means small but significant limitations on my activities. For a ballplayer, it can be the end. If Kirby Puckett was still alive, you could ask him about it.

I alluded to the Tigers’ short-term alternatives to Cabrera in yesterday’s post on the mishap. Assuming the diagnosis and timeframe for recovery are accurate, these are less important than whether the injury calls into question the entire Cabrera-at-Third experiment. The answer, in three one-syllable words: Of course not.

The Tigers will derive great benefits from playing Cabrera at third, or at least they could if they are smart about how they use the designated hitter spot. Instead of alternating Prince Fielder and Cabrera at designated hitter and playing a non-hitter at third base (or spending organizational resources to upgrade there), they get to place bats at both corners and move Delmon Young’s astoundingly poor glove out of left field. This presents only two problems:

1.  Delmon Young isn’t a good hitter for a designated hitter or left field. Young is only 26, but despite his solid hitting in 2006, he must be rated one of the game’s great prospect busts.

2. The Tigers aren’t exactly going to exploit their left field opening. Neither Andy Dirks nor Clete Thomas is an impact hitter; the Tigers might be better to try to pry Kirk Gibson away from the Diamondbacks and see what he has left at 54.

Any third baseman can be undressed, Charlie Brown style, by a hard-hit ball; yesterday’s play was not the inevitable result of Cabrera’s lack of ability at the position, and there is no reason to think that he will be in mortal danger each time a ball is hit his way. The remaining question is,
will Cabrera’s defensive shortcomings be so severe that they will negate whatever offensive advantage the Tigers derive from this alignment?

The answer is probably not, but that may also have more to do with how the left fielders and designated hitters perform. If his defense somehow is that bad, nothing says that the Tigers can’t make another change, whether by moving Cabrera back to first base/DH or trading for another third baseman. It’s a common mistake, but everyone makes it: just because a team is playing a certain roster or lineup on Opening Day doesn’t mean that they’re locked into that alignment.

Given that, it seems particularly unlikely that this is the Tigers lineup we will see in October. They are almost certainly going to win the AL Central, and with the World Series scent in their nose, they’re almost certainly going to upgrade somewhere, be it in left field, at DH, or even second base, where Ryan Raburn may be challenged to last a full season. The good news, in a glass-half-full sense, is that they have the flexibility to make a move, flexibility that Cabrera at third base allows them to have.

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