Extraneous Thoughts On The Draft

Some leftover opinions on the draft that I didn't want to bury at the bottom of the Culver post:

• Wow, those five minute intervals were way, way too long. I understand that the whole reason for putting this thing in prime time was to make money off of it and the longer you stretch it out, the more commercials you can sell. But if you pace it too slow, no one is going to be around to watch those ads. I DVR'd this joint and I tried to watch it at regular speed at first, but ended up fast-forwarding between the breaks and ultimately just turning it off until the Yankees were up.
  
  
• Mysteriously, every fucking team took their allotted five minutes, right down to the second. Yes, that probably made the broadcast flow much smoother since the hosts knew right when to kick it back to Bud Selig. However, in other sports, they might need to use that time since they can trade away their pick, and if the team is ready with the selection, they just go sooner and save everyone the time.
  
  
• After the first round was said and done, I somehow despised Bud Selig even more than I did at the beginning. I hated the fact that he had to go through the same protracted spiel before every pick:

  With the seventeenth pick in the Two Thousand and Ten (that's M-M-X in Roman numerals) Major League Baseball First Year Players Draft, the Tampa Bay Rays of Tampa, Florida select Josh Sale, and outfielder from Seattle High School In Seattle, Washington, down the street from the Mobil station on the right, about a block and a half west of the hospital.
  
  The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have the next pick in the 2010 Major League Baseball First Year Players Draft and will have five minutes, which translates to 300 seconds, and are on the clock - metaphorically speaking, not literally on top of a clock - starting now.

  AAAAAAAHHHHHH! We know what draft we are watching and don't care what town the college or high school the kid goes to is in. I hate hearing you speak. Less is more. Shut the fuck up.
  
  
• Judging by his suit, if Selig wasn't announcing the picks last night, he might have been trying to sell you a 2002 Nissan Maxima with 140,000 miles on it. "All highway. You can drive one of these to 250,000, easy!"
  
  
• By the time they got to the supplemental round, the pacing was much better and it was far more interesting, even though the players were ostensibly less heralded. Even the guys at the desk thought it was better and said so on air (oops!). This thing didn't need to be drawn out for three and a half hours and by pick number #35 or so, it was painfully obvious.
  
  
• It was also pretty cool to see the team's representative announce the pick (and mispronounce the name) during the supplemental round. Jeff Bagwell got stuck with "Mike Kvasnicka" and Roberto Alomar had to try to say "Noah Syndergaard" and "Asher Wojciechowski". As someone with a last name that everyone butchers, I found that amusing.

That's all I got. If they don't ditch the contrived intervals and cut this thing down to about an hour and a half next year, I promise I won't turn it on until the Yanks are on the clock.

A Look At The HoF Voting Results

Good morning Fackers. Yesterday we took a cursory look at the Hall of Fame voting results, noting Andre Dawson's election and the tantalizing near misses of Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar. The entire ballot spanned twenty six players who met the eligibility criteria. Here are some thoughts on those who weren't as lucky as The Hawk.

Byleven (74.2%) - He's a vitrual lock for next year after coming so close this year and seeing an 11.5% jump over last year. He has two more years of eligibility left and the next two classes aren't particularly strong.

Alomar (73.7%) - I'm not a big believer in drawing distinctions between a Hall of Famer and First Ballot Hall of Famer. Even so, I think Alomar's standing relative to the other men who have played his position make him worthy of first ballot induction. Obviously it will have to wait until next year. If waiting a year is Alomar's penance for the Hirschbeck spitting incident then so be it. I realize there are players in the Hall who have done worse, but waiting a year is a small price to pay for what's one of baseball's more despicable moments.

Jack Morris (52.3%) - Morris vs. Blyleven seems to be the next frontier of the old school vs. new school debate. Morris saw an 8.3% jump over last year, the second biggest gainer outside of Blyleven. He still ranks behind where Blyleven was in his 11th year of eligibility. It'll be interesting to see where this one goes in the year's to come. Does anyone remember when Morris nearly joined the '96 Yankees?

Barry Larkin (51.6%) - Larkin deserves enshrinement, but he clearly has a ways to go in the eyes of the voters. Still, it's encouraging to see him start out at 51.6%. For comparisons sake, Alan Trammell, a similar if inferior comparison, garnered just 15.7% of the vote in his first year of eligibility.

Lee Smith (47.3%) - Smith is the highest ranking former Yankee on the ballot. His continued languishing in the sub fifty percent range makes me wonder if the BBWAA is smarter than we give them credit for being. At the time of his retirement, Smith was the all-time leader in saves. He hasn't thrown a pitch in a dozen years, yet he's been passed only by Trevor Hoffman and Mariano Rivera. Normally, that's the sort of thing the writers would eat up: "This guy's the all-time saves leader, he's got to be a Hall of Famer!". Instead, Smith remains far from enshrinement, as he should. I'm just not sure it's because the writers realize the save is a relatively meaningless statistic. More likely, I think Smith serves as an example that the writer's aren't quite sure how to evaluate "closers". The relievers in the Hall - Wilhelm, Fingers, Sutter, Gossage - were "firemen", routinely accumulating 100+ IP per season. Smith accumulated 100 relief IP just twice, in his first two full seasons as a reliever. Smith was at the leading edge of the game-wide transition from firemen to closers. Dennis Eckersley is the only closer in the Hall, and Smith lacks both Eckersley's utter dominance as a closer as well as his years as a successful starter. Smith has seven more ballots for the writers to figure it out.

Edgar Martinez (36.2%) - If the voters don't know what to make of closers, then they have absolutely no idea what to do with designated hitters. The DH has been in existence for 37 seasons now, and it has evolved significantly in that time. What started as place to play the best bench player evolved as a spot to hide defensive liabilities, or to prolong the career of aging veterans, or to protect the health of those too fragile to handle the wear and tear of daily defense. While HoFers like Eddie Murray, George Brett, Rickey Henderson, Paul Molitor, Wade Boggs, Jim Rice, Dave Winfield, Carl Yastrzemski, and Dawson all spent significant time at DH, Martinez is an interesting case in that he's the first worthy candidate to have spent nearly his entire career as a DH. Offensively he has HoF numbers, and I think he's worthy of induction. I'll be interested to see how his candidacy is evaluated over the next several years.

Tim Raines (30.4%) - Far and away the gravest injustice in my opinion. Raines is worthy of his own post, and I hope to have that before the week is out.

Mark McGwire (23.7%) - After taking a slight dip in his percentage last year, McGwire's number returns to where it was in both of his first two years of eligibility - a long, long, long way from induction. Like Smith and Martinez, McGwire is an interesting test case. McGwire is probably the best pure power hitter in baseball history not named Babe Ruth (1st all time in AB/HR, 2nd all time in IsoP), but the problem is that he wasn't all that pure after all. I'm not sure yet how PED users should be judged, but McGwire's four years on the ballot don't bode well for Rafael Palmeiro next year or for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens in 2013.

Alan Trammell (22.4%) - This was Trammell's ninth year on the ballot and his best showing yet. He's still so far off that it's unlikely he'll ever be elected. As a shortstop, Trammell is Hall of Famer. He's comparable, if slightly inferior, to contemporaries and Hall of Famers Cal Ripken Jr, Robin Yount, and Ozzie Smith. I think the problem for Trammell is that he was overshadowed by those three for most of his career, and in the years since the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Miguel Tejada, and Hanley Ramirez have completely changed the concept of what a shortstop could do. Had Trammell begun his career 20 or 30 years earlier he'd likely already be in Cooperstown. At this point the Veterans' Committee looks like his best bet.

Fred McGriff (21.5%) - One of the worst trades the Yankees ever made. McGriff was a great player for a long time. But as a first baseman, his numbers don't really separate him from his contemporaries. It doesn't appear that another 7 HR to get to 500 would have made the difference for him either.

Don Mattingly (16.1%) - This is the best showing for our beloved Donnie Baseball since his second year on the ballot back in 2002. But it's still well off from his career best of 28.2%. As much as we'd all like to see it, Mattingly's not going to the Hall nor should he - his career nose dived way too soon. But I hope he continues to get the requisite 5% to stay on the ballot until his 15 years run out.

Dave Parker (15.2%) - The induction of borderline guys Jim Rice and Andre Dawson in back-to-back years lends itself to slippery-slope style arguments. I don't think The Cobra was as good as either one of those guys, but he wasn't off by too much.

Dale Murphy (11.7%) - Much like Mattingly, Murphy went from amongst the best in baseball to done seemingly overnight. Murphy was a contemporary of Dawson, and like Dawson is considered and all-around class act and good guy. The two make for an interesting comparison. Dawson had a longer and better career, and voters seem to favor players who decline gradually, like Dawson, to players who fall off a cliff, like Murphy. But if you look at their primes, Murphy was arguably the better player. And if you look at their peaks, Murphy was clearly the better player.

Harold Baines (6.1%) - The last player that will still be on next year's ballot. With the arrival of Edgar Martinez, Baines is no longer the best DH eligible for enshrinement.

Andres Galarraga (4.1%) - I'm surprised he didn't get the 5% necessary to stay on the ballot. Certainly not a HoFer, but a pretty good player during a rather lengthy career. I wonder if Galarraga dropping off after one year gives any insight as to how the voters will view the Coors Field effect. It'll be interesting to keep in mind as Larry Walker becomes eligibile next year and Todd Helton no fewer than six years from now. At 43 years old and stuck on 398 career HRs, Galarraga signed a minor league deal with the Angels in 2004. He spent a month in AAA and was given a token September call up. In the 160th game of the season, Galarraga pinch hit in the ninth inning of a game the Angels led 9-0. He homered to get to 399, and celebrated waaaaay too much for a player of his stature, particularly considering he was just hanging on to pad his numbers and had just hit a meaningless home run in garbage time of a late season game. I remember seeing the highlight and thinking it was a little below him. The again, Galarraga lost a season to lymphoma during the most productive stretch of his career and had suffered a relapse earlier that same year that may have cost him additional service time, so maybe I'm just a jerk for begrudging him a little celebration.

Robin Ventura (1.3%) - The second lowest ranking former Yankee on the ballot (Todd Zeile didn't get a single vote). In 1999, Nolan Ryan received 98.79% of the vote, the second highest percentage of all time. He was six votes short of being the only unanimous selection in history. Perhaps he'll beat Ventura up again, steal his seven votes, and add them to his own total to give him 100.2% of the vote.

Michael "Mike" Jackson (0.0%) - Listed only to give me an excuse to link to this. It probably wasn't particularly funny then; now it's neither funny nor timely.

Congratulations Hawk

This could quite possibly be the final post ever at Fack Youk, as I'm afraid the furor over this afternoon's Hall of Fame voting results will cause the internet to explode some time later today.

Andre Dawson was the sole player elected by the BBWAA, being named on 420 of 539 ballots for 77.9% of the vote. He received just 15 votes more than the necessary 75%.

Even closer to that 75% cutoff were Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar. Unfortunately for them they were on the wrong side of 3/4, with Byleven falling an agonizing five votes shy (74.2%) and Alomar just eight votes short (73.7%). The good news for them is that no one has ever failed to be elected after gaining that much support.

In my opinion Blyleven and Alomar are without doubt Hall of Famers, so there will assuredly be some people angry that they're out and Dawson - a borderline candidate - is the one who got in. And that says nothing about other more deserving candidates: Tim Raines, Barry Larkin, Alan Trammell, Edgar Martinez, or even Hawk's comparable contemporaries like Dale Murphy and Dave Parker.

Personally, I don't have a huge problem with Dawson getting in. He's assuredly a borderline candidate, but he had a helluva a career: MVP, Rookie of the Year, 8 time All-Star, 8 Gold Gloves, 4 Silver Sluggers, and some impressive power numbers that have him in the company of baseball's all-time greats. He also spent his best years playing in relatively obscurity in Montreal, where the concrete-like turf punished his knees to the point that he first moved from CF to RF, and then eventually to DH.

On the flip side, Dawson's career OBP is just .323, lower than the league average over the course of his career. There's no way to sugarcoat that. Whether that's enough to outweigh the positive aspects of his career is for you to decide. The writers didn't think so - not this year at least. Your mileage may vary, and probably does.

For now though, congratulations to the Hawk on his induction. We'll have more later on the rest of the ballot, and I'm sure several others elsewhere will have plenty to say about all of this.

Is Damon Cooperstown Bound?

We discussed whether the Yanks should bring Johnny Damon back yesterday, and he comes up again today because friend of the blog Josh at Jorge Says No! looked at the same article by Tyler Kepner but was inspired to write a post about a different portion of it; his potential of getting into the Hall of Fame.

Past the part we excerpted, Kepner notes that Damon has been a very well rounded player and has a chance at 3,000 hits:

Only three players have matched Damon’s career totals for hits (2,389), runs (1,459), stolen bases (370), doubles (443), homers (205), runs batted in (981) and batting average (.289). They are the Hall of Famer Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar and Barry Bonds, who are not yet eligible for Cooperstown.

Damon has only one season with 200 hits — for Kansas City in 2000 — but he has an outside chance at 3,000 for his career. He is 10th in hits among active players, but only two players ahead of him are younger: his teammates Jeter (2,688) and Rodriguez (2,483).

Sure, it sounds pretty impressive that only three players are ahead of Damon in those seven categories, but it's a lot harder to get in the Hall for being good at a bunch of things than it is for being great at a couple. He's got a career OPS+ of 105 as a centerfielder, which tells us that he wasn't especially good at hitting for power or getting on base, and those are pretty important skills to have. Even guys like Bernie Williams and Jim Edmonds have him crushed in that category though they don't have the counting stats to go along. He wasn't any great shakes defensively, either.

Johnny needs 611 hits to get to 3,000 so it's pretty safe to assume he would need to play four more seasons to get there. Will he get that chance? I'm not so sure.

Josh conducts a Keltner List, a set of 15 qualitative questions, on Damon which is the best thing aside from a statistical analysis in terms of evaluating a player's Hall of Fame candidacy. Check out Josh's responses to the questions. I found myself agreeing with most every one.

The biggest variable here is that we don't know how writers are going to treat this era. If just 25% of writers don't vote for anyone who played in the so-called steroid era, well, no one is going to get in. Even if 10% or 15% make that decision, it's going to make it much harder to gain entry. If it was 15 years ago, this would be a much simpler question to ponder.

Chances are, Damon is going to be up for consideration shortly after Ken Griffey, Jr. and Andruw Jones (388 HR, 115 OPS+) and alongside Ichiro and Carlos Beltran and I think all four of those guys have either vastly higher peaks or much better overall careers. Perhaps if he compiles 3,000 hits writers will have a hard time turning him down, but I think Damon will ultimately end up in the Hall of Very Good.

Roberto Alomar Might Be A Scumbag, But It's Not Going To Cost Him $15M

"...I'm sorry, I wish it was something less seeeeeriousss."

You know, Robby, despite all the hard feelings between us over the years, deep down we Mets fans always knew you were a class act. Your "blockbuster" acquisition in 2001 actually did more harm than good by dashing our audacious hopes for a meaningful season during one of the franchise's darkest periods since the Worst Team Money Could Buy. You still left your mark in club record books folklore by batting a scorching .266, mashing 15 really-long balls, and slugging a brawny .376. Nor have we forgotten those 11 adorable times that your once-golden glove let those silly, tricky lil' hops squirt through the infield for errors. Nope, you kept the "asshole second baseman" tradition - which began with Jeff Kent - alive in Flushing; that torch is now safely held in the geriatric, osteoporosis-riddled hand of Luis Castillo.

So Roberto Alomar has AIDS, and his ex-girlfriend (Ilya Dall) is suing him for $15 million for allegedly insisting on having unprotected sex with her. Where to begin with this story? Well first of all, the plaintiff is a former female arm wrestler , appears to be some species of cougar, and is a current proprietor of a "massage spa" in Queens. I guess one can't be too selective when he [at least suspects he] has an incurable, contagious disease that spawns male yeast infections.

The allegations themselves are less amusing. I don't know whether to laugh somewhat inappropriately or cringe. It strangely hits home, perhaps because Robby - though an oft-cursed part of our past - was nevertheless a Met for whom I rooted (I have never, nor will I ever boo a Met while he's a Met, including Heilman). Moreover, his father Sandy is the Mets' current bench coach, and has been in the organization for a while now - though he claims he somehow had no idea that his son had AIDS.

The health details provided by the Daily News - presumably scooped from Dall's complaint - are harrowing and just plain sad: chest masses, shingles, mouth foaming, spinal taps; the kind of stuff I wouldn't wish upon Shane Victorino (I'm pretty sure). Furthermore, the story reports that Alomar allegedly told Dall that he had contracted AIDS when he was raped by two Mexican men after playing a ballgame in New Mexico or a Southwestern state when he was 17. Whether or not the assault was the cause of his disease, it's still awful and makes me feel bad for Alomar; if true, I doubt he had access to proper physical & mental health channels as a minor leaguer in the 80's.

However, if what Dall alleges is in fact true, Alomar is a pretty huge scumbag. In the legal sense, in New York, acting with a substantial certainty that a particular harm will occur (in this case, that Dall would likely be infected with HIV) constitutes an intentional tort. Even if Alomar didn't know or suspect that he had HIV or AIDS - which I find extremely hard to believe given the circumstances in the story - he could be found liable in a garden-variety negligence claim; any reasonable person in his situation would've or should've known that insisting on unprotected sense was wrongful conduct. Though I don't know offhand, in some states Alomar's alleged conduct might even constitute criminal liability, on some sort of super recklessness charge.

That's not to say Dall is completely blameless. If you were a woman even considering having sex with someone whom you suspect might have, oh I don't know, AIDS, wouldn't you at the very least not let him rawdog you, and maybe even condition entrance to your va-jay-jay on his consenting to an STD test? The fact that Dall had consensual sex with Alomar despite her suspicions might allow Alomar to raise an "assumption of risk" or "comparative negligence" defense- that Dall voluntarily took on the risk of possibly contracting AIDS or is at least partly responsible, respectively. Finally, there's no way Dall is getting $15M even if she wins. If a sympathetic/stupid jury actually gives her that much, it's likely to be set aside by an appellate court.

Furthermore, in order to be found liable, there has to have been an actual harm (damages). I haven't read the complaint, but the Daily News reports that Dall is claiming $15 million in punitive damages for emotional distress and suffering. Not only are such damages completely arbitrary and abstract (how do you value "emotional distress?" And shouldn't she just be psyched she didn't get the HIV?), when it comes to damages, the court will generally be concerned with restoring the plaintiff to his/her state before the harm occurred; punitive damages are only levied when the state wants to deter future actors (usually corporations) of doing the same thing. I doubt there are a bunch of crazy, AIDS-infected scumbags out there following this case closely ready to act accordingly. In fact, I'll bet Big Willie Style $20 that Alomar moves for summary judgment and the case is thrown out of court before jury selection begins. Of course, there's always the possibility that Alomar and Dall will settle, but since Dall's seeking Kevin Brown's yearly salary during his pre-dugout wall-punching days on the Dodgers, and since Alomar probably needs whatever funds he can round up for some Magic Johnson-quality AIDS treatment, I'm not sure how likely he is to settle.

Alomar moved the suit from State Supreme Court in Queens to Federal District Court in Brooklyn - right next door to me. Alomar is allowed to do this because he is a citizen of a different state than Dall ("diversity jurisdiction"), and was probably worried that a Queens jury and/or court would be biased against him - perhaps because of his awful tenure with the Mets.

As an aside, I find it hilarious that after Alomar infamously spit in umpire John Hirschbeck's face, fellow umpire Al Clark felt the need to publicly suggest that Hischbeck insist that Alomar get tested for AIDS. I find this funny for two reasons: 1) Wouldn't it make more sense and be easier for Hirschbeck himself to get tested? 2) I believe it was in 5th grade, during sex-ed, when we learned that "[y]ou can't get AIDS from Bobby from hugging him, or using the same drinking fountain as him, or shaking his hand..." Also, why "AIDS?" Were there rumors circulating in 1996 among MLB's inner circles that Alomar was a silent carrier? Bizarre, right?

If the case makes it past preliminary motions, which I doubt it will, I might try and sit in on some of the trial proceedings. Just think: an embedded Fack Youk blogger bringing you late-breaking Robby Alomar AIDS trial updates from inside the Federal Courthouse.

That sounds like a lot of work though; I'd probably need to get me some aides.