A Tip of the Cap to Jeff Kent

It was a bit unsettling to see Jeff Kent’s notoriously gruff facade crumble during the press conference in which he announced his retirement last month.  Kent had always struck me as akin to another Giant, Bill Terry, a player who spent the better part of two decades making it clear that he did not love the game of baseball, but, realizing his talent was exceptional, found the game the best way to make a buck.  Just as Terry would have been content to serve as an executive for Standard Oil had they paid him more than did Charles Stoneham, so Kent would have worked his Texas ranch had punching cows paid more than did the major leagues.  Thus the sight of him fighting back tears was surprising, and, to me, affecting.

Less than two months shy of his 41st birthday, there’s little doubt it was time for Kent to say goodbye.  He hit .280/.327/.418 for the Dodgers in 2008, with just 12 homers, his lowest total since 1996.  He missed most of the final month of the season due to a torn meniscus that required surgery; though he rehabbed doggedly and made the Dodgers’ post-season roster, he was confined to the bench while Blake DeWitt took over at second base.  A future as a part-time player was unthinkable for Kent, who had once declared, upon being sidelined by a more minor injury, “I hate watching baseball.”

While Kent hasn’t received many fond farewells, the widespread consensus in the mainstream media is that he’s bound for the Hall of Fame.  From a traditional perspective, it’s not difficult to see why.  Although he didn’t debut in the majors until he was 24 and didn’t top 400 plate appearances until the following year, Kent nonetheless racked up 2,461 hits and 377 homers, reached the postseason seven times, made five All-Star teams, and won the 2000 NL MVP award.  The 351 home runs he hit as a second baseman are tops for the position, far outdistancing the second-, third-, and fourth-ranked second-sackers — Ryne Sandberg (277), Joe Morgan (266), and Rogers Hornsby (263) — all of whom are enshrined in Cooperstown.  He also leads all second basemen in RBI and extra-base hits, while ranking 12th in games played.

If Kent’s case for Cooperstown appears on firm footing from a traditional standpoint, it’s on shakier ground sabermetrically.  As odd as it sounds for a player who lasted through his age-40 season, he’s hampered by a lack of durability.  Kent topped 145 games just five times (including 2002, the season he infamously broke his wrist while “washing his truck“) and averaged only 133 games a hear over his last six seasons, the Houston/Los Angeles phase of his career.  By some sabermetric measures, he tops only one of the nine second basemen elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America, that being Jackie Robinson, whose career was shortened by the color barrier but who nonetheless had a peak that was well above average, to say nothing of his monumentally large role in history.

It won’t get much better for Kent, either.  By the time he actually reaches the 2014 ballot in the company of Greg Maddux and Mike Mussina, both Craig Biggio and Roberto Alomar will likely be enshrined.  The former is a lock given his 3,060 hits, while the latter’s round-number combination of a .300 lifetime batting average and 10 Gold Gloves probably put him into the no-brainer category of many voters.  All these factors may mean Kent doesn’t get in the first year he appears on the ballot.

Kent was a good player for a long time, and an often misunderstood one.  His lack of charisma and his businesslike approach made him an easy target, but he was passionate in his work ethic and respect for the game.  The more I look at his numbers the more I realize he’s actually a borderline Hall of Famer.  (Unless one attaches special importance to his leading his position in homers, which has much to do with his era, it’s difficult to draw the conclusion that he’s an elite or even average Hall-of-Fame second baseman.)  Nonetheless, were I a voter, I can’t help but suspect my own memories of his high level of play with the Giants would sway me into making him a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

 

Keeping Perspective on PEDs

We have word today that Eliezer Alfonzo, who was the Giants’ backup catcher in 2006-07, and is currently a Fresno Grizzly, has tested positive for a banned substance and been suspended for 50 days.  I still think that when all is said and done, most PED users will turn out to be the Marvin Benards and Eliezer Alfonzos of the game, rather than the Barry Bondses and Mark McGwires.  It’s these AAAA guys, on the bubble between AAA and the majors, who have more incentive to seek any edge, including PEDs.  I also wonder whether to date more pitchers haven’t tested positive, which also puts Bonds and McGwire in some perspective.  Many want to “asterisk” the sluggers’ hitting numbers without thinking about how many juiced pitchers those sluggers were facing.

This same rush to judgment came up recently when Miguel Tejada was implicated in the Mitchell report.  Folks told me knowingly that this explained his drop-off in production over the past couple of years:  Once he got off the juice, his slugging fell.  I pointed out, remembering the rumors swirling around Tejada since he was signed by the Athletics, that it could be the result of aging, and a not-unexpected drop-off linked to that.  Now we know Tejada is 33, not 31.

Fans, and particularly the major media covering the game, need to acknowledge that we don’t know exactly how and to what extent steroids or testosterone or human growth hormone effect the performance of ball players.  Keeping our perspective, allowing for what we don’t know, can lead to more informed and reasoned discussions and solutions based on facts rather than conjecture or assumption.

 

Is the Bell Tolling?

Brian Sabean is absolutely right about Armando Benitez’s share of the blame for the Giants poor play thus far this season. The Giants’ lineup, and their inability to hit, bears far more responsibility than any pitcher. He points out that in Benitez’s last game as a Giant on Tuesday, in which he blew the save, Durham and Klesko were not available. He notes that despite that, Barry Bonds took the night off.

Asked about a potential trade for a bat, an “agitated” Sabean said, “Ask the guys who can’t answer the bell every day. . . . We need guys on the field, and as usual, we’re not getting it.”

It is here that Sabean tries to have it both ways, here that the train of his logic runs off the tracks. Of course we need players who can play every day. But those aren’t the players Sabean chose to sign this past offseason. He knew as well as anyone that Ray Durham’s legs need constant attention from the trainer and periodic time off; he knew that one of Bonds’s knees has bone scraping against bone, so that he would need time off; he knew that Klesko’s bad back was one of the reasons the Braves unloaded him on the Padres several years ago; he knew the rap on Dave Roberts was that he couldn’t hold up long enough to be an everyday player. These injuries, and the rest our veteran lineup needs, is the predictable result of having the oldest lineup in the history of major league baseball.

One of the troubling aspects of team sports is the ethic that encourages players to play through pain. We see them do it all the time, often to their detriment. Pitcher Mark Prior of the Cubs endured criticism from writers and fans for complaining of pain and having to go on the DL several times over the past few years. When his shoulder was finally cut open a couple of months ago, doctors who saw the damage to his labrum and rotator cuff were amazed he could even lift his arm, much less throw a baseball. Teams, including the Giants, who under Sabean have always had a top-notch training staff, have realized that winning demands preventing and managing injury. Given that, and given the age of the Giants’ roster, doesn’t it make sense to occasionally rest the aged and infirm? Shouldn’t Dave Roberts, in whom the team has invested millions, be commended for telling his team he needs surgery to remove the bone chips in his elbow so that as much of their investment is preserved as is possible? Isn’t it wise to let Ray Durham and his hamstrings rest a couple of days rather than try to play through tightness but end up spending 15 days on the DL?

If Sabean wanted guys who play every day, he should have fielded a team with less gray in their beards. He didn’t. Maybe he’s the one who isn’t answering the bell.

 

Focusing on Benitez Misses the Point

I’m not going to defend Armando Benitez’s performance in last night’s loss to the Mets.  He lost his poise after a questionable balk call allowed Jose Reyes to advance from first to second with no outs in the twelfth inning.  Reyes, later at third, conned Benitez into another balk that allowed Reyes to tie the game, and then Benitez gave up Carlos Delgado’s second homer of the night.  End of game. 

Closers aren’t supposed to lose their poise the way Benitez did last night, but let’s face it, his mistake was not the first balk.  It was going 3-0 on Reyes and then walking him.  Once Reyes was walked, we knew he would get to second, probably by stealing the base against a pitcher who takes too long to get the ball from the mound to the catcher. 

I think, though, that the fans’ lamenting Benitez’s shortcomings or the inadequacy of the bullpen is misdirected.  Most of the time, in fact, the Giants’ bullpen has done its job.  The team is 20-4 in games in which it leads after seven innings.  What sticks in our memories are the failures, and some do stand out.  But it is important when making judgments about ballplayers and teams that we look past what our eyes see, which we are likely to remember vividly, and look at what actually happens on the field.  Sometimes what happens on the field is revealed in the numbers.

Despite its imperfections, the Giants’ glaring weakness is not their bullpen.  The weakness is on the other side of the ball.  They have scored 219 runs so far this season, good for 22nd in the majors.  (Detroit leads in this category with 289 runs.)  Lowly Colorado has scored only one fewer run than have the Giants.

Why so few runs?  Well, the Giants aren’t hitting.  But why aren’t they hitting?  The big reason is that opposing pitchers are just not having to waste a lot of time getting them out.  The Giants as a team see 3.67 pitches per plate appearance, which looks to be 27th in the league.  Only the Angels, the Dodgers, and the Mariners rank lower.  Take Barry Bonds and his extreme patience out of the mix, and the Giants fall somewhere between the Angels and Dodgers on that list.

Why are pitches per plate-appearance so important?  Bonds’s secret is that he only swings at balls he can drive.  (He sees 4.02 pitches per plate appearance.)  He does not waste time on balls out of the strike zone.  He is perfectly happy to have a pitcher expend energy on thowing balls that aren’t worthy of his swing.  His discipline in this regard is remarkable.  Call him the anti-Pedro Feliz.  (Feliz sees 3.4 pitches per plate appearance, which while not Randall Simon bad, should be something that would keep him from being an everyday player on a major-league team.)

Look at the teams that lead the majors in pitches per plate appearance.  Cleveland (3.98), Oakland (3.97), Boston (3.93), the Yankees (3.86), Philadelphia (3.83).  Cleveland and Boston are of course two of the best-hitting teams in the majors, and the Yankees and Phillies are not far behind them.  Oakland’s patience tells me that their hitters will turn it around over the course of the season; we should expect them to score runs at a greater clip from here on out. 

Patience at the plate, and ability to judge what is and is not a pitch that can be hit hard, is the key to scoring runs.  This sort of patience was actively discouraged under the Baker and Alou regimes, where “aggresiveness” at the plate was prized.  (Dusty Baker, while at Chicago, said he didn’t like guys who took walks since all they did was “clog up the basepaths.”)  I’m still willing to give Bochy a pass since he comes from an organization that at least takes such information as pitches per plate appearance into account when making personnel and lineup decisions, and since he came over with little input into what his roster would be this season.  But so far, the numbers are not encouraging. 

 

A Silver Lining?

Having been swept by the Rockies, let’s suppose that the Giants are done — that they not only have nearly no chance of winning the National League West, but that the last two months of mediocre play and bad luck, and the fact that three teams in their own division probably have more talent than they do, will make it impossible for them to win the wild card as well. Even if one doesn’t grant this premise, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s so, and that the collapse has come. This leaves a simple question: Is it necessarily a bad thing?

The winter after the 2006 season should have been when the Giants made hard decisions, but they didn’t, instead persevering with their strategy of signing veteran “presence” to surround Barry Bonds. But this year and next year were also always going to be a time of transition for the Giants, even in the best of circumstances. After this season, Bonds, Omar Vizquel, Armando Benitez and Pedro Feliz are all free agents. Next year will be nearly as busy: After the 2008 campaign, the Giants will be done with their commitments to Ray Durham, Matt Morris and Rich Aurilia.

For the Giants, the complex of decisions and opportunities presented by the expiration of so many contracts is more important than the question of whether or not they make the playoffs this year. After all, they are a relatively rich team, and they have young pitching talent; falling short this season is not going to doom them to irrelevance. It would, though, allow them the chance not taken last year — to make decisions based on the long-term interests of the team. Even better, it would allow them to think about what those long-term interests are.

I’m beating a dead horse at this point by stating that much of the blame for this year’s poor showing rests on the fact that the team is just old. Neither Durham nor Aurilia are slugging .400. Leadoff “hitter” Dave Roberts, currently on the DL, has a .283 on-base-percentage. Pedro Feliz gets on base at a .292 clip, which more than negates his .438 slugging. There are a lot of benefits to having All-Star players in their 30s, but older players are vulnerable to injury and abrupt decline, and when you count on a lot of older players, you’re susceptible to this sort of thing.

The 2005-06 Giants paid the bill for a long run of winning with veteran talent that had to be signed to contracts that took them well past their primes. Brian Sabean’s mistake for 2007 was trying to milk a couple more years from the same strategy. That doesn’t mean they were wrong to do so — we all enjoyed the winning — just that there are consequences for bringing in a brigade of well-seasoned talent every year to prop up a run at a pennant. The Giants under Sabean have never written a season off to establish a young player at a position and thus avoid having to make questionable long-term commitments, and since they haven’t had the kind of farm system that the Braves had during their run of division championships, it was inevitable that their reliance on oldsters would eventually catch up with them.

Yet another season when they miss the playoffs, then, might not be such a bad thing if the team takes advantage of the opportunity it provides to really assess what they want to do and how they want to do it. Do they want continue to take on bad contracts and commit to playing expensive veterans at the end of their usefulness? They were pressed into that in the past by circumstance, but now is the time to master circumstance. As well as he fields, and as classy as he is, for instance, Omar Vizquel is a 40-year-old shortstop. Would signing him even for a year really be the best idea for the future, or would it be better to sign a stopgap while looking for (or developing) a long-term solution? Do the Giants really want to lock themselves into paying a 42-year-old Barry Bonds a salary of something over $15 million just to watch him get his three thousandth hit next season?

There is another way to build a perpetual winner, though, one that values flexibility, one that tolerates the risks associated with young players in the knowledge that those risks come with their own rewards, and one that exhibits an awareness that there are worse things than having a losing season while executing such a plan. If this year’s disappointment inspires the Giants to embrace such an approach, Giant fans in 2012 just might look back at this year with a special fondness. Losing is bad, after all, but not learning anything from losing is worse.