1. I wrote this column in today’s Post about Mike Piazza and the steroid era in baseball. I think Piazza is representative of the era. He had great accomplishment, but now it is looked back upon with great suspicion. Of all the problems from that period of baseball, this in many ways might be the one that lingers the longest and is the worst: No one is quite sure what we saw, what to believe and whom to believe in. I do agree with Piazza that there were many reasons for offensive inflation beyond drugs such as smaller parks, worse pitching, improved bats, better/legal weight training and the improvement in technology that allowed hitters to (for example) better study pitchers through video. But as the steroid testing has improved the offensive numbers have gone into some decline. So I think it would be naïve to believe that steroids were not a major part of that offensive orgy. And because of that we keep looking back at what stars did in that era – including stars culled from the unlikeliest of places, like the 62nd round of the draft – and wonder was it them or was it an illegally enhanced them?
If you get a chance read this column from the San Diego Union-Tribune to see that even rotund Tony Gwynn is worried about the guilt by association that comes from playing in the Steroid Era.
2. The Yankees tend to sign their non-arbitration players in drips and drabs, and announce them at one time when everyone is under contract. But I know for sure that they have already inked Phil Hughes and Jose Veras. And I decided to use those two guys as an example of how contracts move incrementally (at least on the major league side) for players who do not have the service time for arbitration.
First, a quick explanation of what a split contract is for anybody who does not know: A player who is not yet arbitration eligible is signed to a contract that represents both what he will be paid in the minors and majors. Both are usually very sensitive to service time. The minor league dollar figure tends to swell significantly once a player puts in some major league time. The major league contract is usually determined by each team’s individual formula, which generally revolves around days on a 25-man roster. So even a Cy Young winner such as San Francisco’s Tim Lincecum ($650,000 in the majors/$243,000 in the minors) gets a split as does AL MVP challenger Carlos Quentin of the White Sox ($240,000/$550,000). That is why it is so valuable for players to get the service time necessary (generally three full major league seasons) to break away from the constricts of both a minor league contract and full control of their salary by the major league team.
So let’s see how Hughes and Veras have progressed the last three seasons with the splits reading this way minor league salary/major league salary:
Hughes in 2007: $30,000/$380,000 (major league minimum at the time); 2008: $199,000/$406,350. 2009: $213,218/$407,650.
Veras in 2007: $80,000/$382,475; 2008: $212,637/$392,100; 2009: $215,842/$432,975.
3. I want to say two things up front: I like that my slow-moving business has finally embraced the internet more and is trying to find new ways to interest our readers. And I know that my job revolves heavily around the passions of fans that want to know every detail about their favorite teams.
Having said that can I please now ask everyone for a few deep breaths about spring-training results. I have noticed that many papers (including this one) are having writers provide details of spring games, including some that are pretty much live-blogging whole games. And I have noticed in comment sections people responding to events in the games as if they have some larger meaning to a season that is still nearly six weeks away and 162 games long.
Some stuff that happens in spring matters, but we will probably not fully know which stuff until July at the earliest when regular-season sample sizes are big enough to make some truer judgments. But the reality is many players who thrive in spring will be non-factors during the season and many who stink will star from April-through-September.
There are many elements that exist in spring training that artificially determine results that mostly do not exist during the regular season, at least not in large doses.
Why don’t we take Luis Castillo’s two-run, opposite-field double in the fourth inning Wednesday against Baltimore for an example:
1) Castillo did hit the ball with some pop to the opposite field, good for him. But the sun in day games in Florida does play havoc. The term you hear often here is that it is a “high sky” meaning that it is cloudless and the ball is difficult to find. Yesterday was worse to some degree, because it was overcast, but there were moments of intense sunlight and Castillo happened to hit one at that moment and you could see just what a terrible read left fielder Luke Scott had on the ball. 2) As the beat guy for this paper way back when, I covered many Yankee spring trainings in Fort Lauderdale Stadium before the team moved to Tampa. I can attest to just how devilish the winds can be whipping through the facility. Buck Showalter used to play a game when he was manager asking reporters if they thought certain homers were “wind-aided.” The wind was significantly blowing from right to left Wednesday, blowing many fair balls way foul. In Castillo’s case, it blew his fourth-inning loft at least 20 feet, forcing Scott (already battling sun) to look over one shoulder while retreating to having to flip the other way. 3) At this time of spring in particular you have many pitchers who are not major leaguers and/or many pitchers working on specific items in their repertoire. David Pauley, a fringe major leaguer, seemed to be working on fastball command (poorly) in the inning in which Castillo hit his two-run double.
Look, I know it is cold in New York. I know huge baseball fans are hungering for news from down here. All I am suggesting is that if Brett Gardner homers in his first at-bat of the spring or Castillo drives in four runs in the first game of spring that these facts are not devoured as signs of what is to come.
