Whirled Ball: The Way Baseball Never Was

[Makonnen]

TWIWBL 95.4: The Rule V Draft

This was a different year, for sure: more players picked, and more players with an actual chance to stick in their new home.

Still, most of these will find their way back to their original franchise: a Rule V pick has to stay on his new club's WBL roster all season, or he goes right back where he came from.

Gaps in the numbering are teams passing on their turn.

 #  To   From  Pos  Player
---------------------------------
 1  POR  BAL   CF   Paul Hines
 2  MEM  MCG   RP   Ed Seward
 3  CAG  POR   1B   Mickey Vernon
 4  LAA  HOD   2B   Billy Herman
 5  BBB  HOM   SS   Dick Groat
 6  NYG  DET   SS   Billy Nash
 7  OTT  HOM   P    Nip Winters
 8  HOM  DET   RP   Logan Hensley
11  KAN  HOM   P    Earl Hamilton
12  MCG  CLE   P    Sam McDowell
16  PHI  IND   3B   Buddy Myer
18  NYY  IND   P    Jeff Robinson
21  POR  BBB   SS   Leo Cardenas
23  CAG  OTT   1B   Tino Martinez
26  NYG  HOD   OF   Tip O'Neill

Homestead got picked clean. Three Grays came off the board -- Dick Groat to Black Barons, Nip Winters to Ottawa, Earl Hamilton to Kansas City -- and losing two arms hurts twice over, because Homestead is as desperate for starting pitching as anyone in the league. The Winters pick in particular could sting long term.

Homestead's consolation prize was RP Logan Hensley out of Detroit. Sure, maybe.

Chicago is hedging at first base, loudly. Two of CAG's picks were 1B -- Mickey Vernon and Tino Martinez -- as the search for a stand-in for the injured Frank Thomas grinds on. Apparently the American Giants have decided it's cheaper to throw a pile of options at the wall in Spring Training than to go shopping after Opening Day.

Best bet to actually stick: Billy Herman to the Angels, a dark horse for steal of the draft who should have a real claim on the starting job by the end of camp. Sam McDowell to Miami is the other smart one -- he could comfortably last the year. And the Gothams did well twice: Billy Nash did fine in Detroit but was buried on the depth chart, and Tip O'Neill walks into an outfield weak enough to hand him at-bats.

Least likely to survive April: Paul Hines in Portland (outfield depth, and not much more) and Jeff Robinson in the Bronx. Portland's second swing is the better one -- given how thin their middle infield is, Leo Cardenas might genuinely hold a spot.

Full pick-by-pick notes are up on the site as always.

[Makonnen]

31 December through mid-January in the WBL: a handful of signings, two draft picks who refused to sign, and the trades that were waiting on those signings to resolve (original post).

SIGNINGS, AND TWO REFUSALS

Chicago American Giants — looking to bolster their competition at SS, Chicago signed Jay Bell to a one year deal. More importantly, the American Giants got some good news on Frank Thomas: the medical staff now says he could be looking at a May return. Perhaps they regret all that Rule V stuff above.

Kansas City Monarchs — signed Jeff Reardon to help in their bullpen. Draft pick Chris Carpenter refused to sign, so back into the draft pool he goes, and Kansas City will get a compensation pick.

New York Black Yankees — Giancarlo Stanton refused to sign, so the Yankees will get a compensation pick too. More importantly, this potentially scuttles a deal with the Gothams to obtain Gaylord Perry. We'll see what the two sides can work out.

Portland Sea Dogs — added FA IF Lonny Frey to the MI mix. At $550k for 1 year, this is a low-risk move to try to find some stability at 2B.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

TRADES

These are all fallout from the Rookie Draft that were contingent on draft picks signing. The blockbuster here is how NYY's win-now posture led to what could be a major reshaping of their roster.

The Big One

NYG → NYY · P Gaylord Perry, IF Robbie Thompson
NYY → NYG · P Dave Righetti, IF Grant Johnson, 1st Round Pick, 3rd Round Pick

It's a lot to give up. But the Black Yankees get a solid #3 starter, clear room for Hardy Richardson to play, and, as they are wont to do, further mortgage their future.

A Three Way
This was really just to resolve some errors in the draft itself. All low level noise.

KAN → DET · P Tex Pruitt, P Fred Holdsworth
DET → KAN · P Jakie May
DET → MEM · P Tex Pruitt, P Fred Holdsworth
MEM → DET · C Billy Sullivan, P John Healy

Pruitt and Holdsworth appear on both lines: OOTP can't do multi-team trades, so you get things like this. Shrug.

Gant Comes Home

BBB → HOD · OF Yoenis Céspedes, P Ed Hanyzewski
HOD → BBB · SS Ron Gant

Interesting deal. Gant, of course, doesn't stay at SS, and Céspedes may impact HOD immediately.

More Noise

MCG → SFS · P Jing Johnson
SFS → MCG · 2B Joe Dunand, P Kevin Kobel

Housekeeping.

[Makonnen]

Spring Training is running down, and before the individual team previews come out, a few things to drop in here.

First, Minor News from ST and then the flurry of trades as teams plan and/or panic right before Opening Day.

This will close out trading until the All Star Break, so there are always quite a few--and a few big--deals done in late March.

EARLY SPRING TRAINING

Homestead Grays — the Grays have lost their staff ace, or what has passed for one: Francisco Liriano suffered a torn labrum and will miss 5-6 months, effectively the whole season.

Memphis Red Sox — the Red Sox execute the very first waiver claim in WBL history (this is part of what Claude's involvement enables), grabbing veteran P Paul Derringer from Indianapolis.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

THE SPRING TRAINING TRADES

With just over a week left, we get to see how panicked some teams are, and how much they want to shake things up before Opening Day. Unsurprisingly, we start with the Black Yankees and their perennial win-now mentality.

The Black Yankees Add MI

NYY → CLE · RP Aroldis Chapman, IF Mark Grudzielanek, 2nd Round Pick
CLE → NYY · IF Joe Sewell, IF Bill Phillips

More fallout from the Grant Johnson trade, in some ways: Sewell will have every shot at displacing Derek Jeter at SS, and New York looks set to juggle the middle infield between those two, Robby Thompson, and Rogers Hornsby. For Cleveland, a blocked talent — Sewell was never displacing Arky Vaughan — becomes a great bullpen arm and a valuable pick.

The Red Sox Have a Rotation
Unsatisfied with just adding Don Drysdale and Red Ruffing, Memphis went shopping on the West coast.

MEM → LAA · IF Dobie Moore, OF Dwight Evans, P Mike Witt
LAA → MEM · P Tom Seaver, IF Xander Bogaerts, IF Andrelton Simmons, C Mark Salas

The crux of the deal is Seaver for Moore, but there's a lot here: Memphis keeps weeding out OF talent and gambles on Seaver continuing to develop at the WBL level. SS in Memphis is now a scramble between the two new bodies, Adam Everett, and Bud Harrelson; for Los Angeles it settles at least half of the middle infield question, and opens the door for more arms to prove themselves in the rotation.

CAG Settles at SS. Maybe.

CAG → HOU · U Trea Turner, IF Yoán Moncada
HOU → CAG · IF Travis Jackson

Jackson is clearly ready for WBL time, and here he may actually get it; in return Houston gets a prospect in search of a position, and one of the spring's surprises in Moncada.

Monarchs Make Moves

KAN → NYG · OF Dale Murphy, IF Carlos Baerga
NYG → KAN · OF Benny Kauff

A classic now-vs-later move. Murphy is desperately in need of a change of scenery, and Baerga remains 4-5 years away, while Kauff should help deepen a lineup in need of power.

But Kansas City wasn't done.

KAN → LAA · P José Rijo, P Jeff Pfeffer, 1st Round Pick
LAA → KAN · 3B Doug Rader

The Albert Pujols-at-3B experiment looks officially over, with Los Angeles clearly reacting to the loss of Seaver. Expect David Wright and/or Pedro Álvarez to inherit the hot corner for the Angels.

And this led to another move for Los Angeles.

LAA → HOD · P Brett Anderson, 3rd Round Pick
HOD → LAA · IF Richie Hebner, OF Cy Williams, 2nd Round Pick

Los Angeles has now dealt its two best pitchers from last season, as well as what some would claim was their most reliable hitter in Hebner: this is either great faith in their stockpiled arms or pure madness.

Easy as A-B-C

IND → POR · P Tom Glavine, P George Medich, P Jack Billingham, IF Robin Ventura
POR → IND · IF Buddy Bell

Indianapolis gets an All-Star and former Gold Glove winner to take over at the hot corner, while Portland lands a lot of future potential, headlined by the 19-year-old Glavine.

This deal set the stage for the next one.

IND → NYY · IF Ed Charles, P Dan Plesac
NYY → IND · P Jeff D. Robinson, P Jack Armstrong

The Black Yankees get a decent bench piece for the price of a Rule V selection, which seems fair to all. The other two arms are essentially fliers — Armstrong back to his seed franchise, Plesac a veteran LHP hedge.

Memphis Not Done Yet

MEM → BRK · IF Candy Jim Taylor, P Nathan Eovaldi, 1st Round Pick
BRK → MEM · OF John Briggs, 3rd Round Pick

This one has some heads shaking. Memphis and Brooklyn team up again, the Red Sox landing what they hope is the CF of the future, Brooklyn adding minor league talent and a coveted #1 pick. Briggs has been doubted every step of his career — just another chance to prove the haters wrong. For Brooklyn, it clears CF for Duke Snider.

BB to BBB

BAL → BBB · IF Asdrúbal Cabrera, P Bill Byrd, IF Roy Smalley Jr., 3rd Round Pick
BBB → BAL · P Steve Avery, P Gio González, P Warren Spahn, OF Curt Flood, 1st Round Pick

An interesting deal. In seven years, Baltimore may see this as a massive win — if Avery develops, if González becomes a rotation starter, if the 1st Round Pick pans out, and, perhaps most of all, if a change of scenery reboots Spahn's career. That's a lot of ifs. In the meantime, Birmingham gets a potential answer to its SS woes, and a front-of-rotation arm that excels at limiting home runs — the Black Barons' current Achilles' heel.

[Makonnen]

YEAR III PREVIEWS — THE FIRST FOUR

The WBL's 20 season previews are going up one a day. Here are the first four — club names link through to the full write-ups.

It's an interesting opening group (we're going essentially alphabetically): both Whirled Series champions are in it, along with a perennial playoff contender. And, oh yeah, Birmingham.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━


Baltimore Black Sox
Won the whole thing in the inaugural year, over Detroit in 7. Then went 77-85, 4th in the Bill James Division, never really in it. The case for a bounce is a core young enough to be silly about it: Bryce Harper is 21, Frank Robinson 22, Cal Ripken Jr 23, Manny Machado 24. All but Ripken already own a ring.

Birmingham Black Barons
The Black Barons say they want to pick a direction and hold it. The transaction log says otherwise: 2 games out in July and they buy, one bad month and they tear it down. The front office has now drawn a line and named 2003-2005 as the window. Which leaves Hank Aaron, Albert Belle and Paul Konerko as RHB in a Rickwood Field that projects to dampen exactly their strengths. So the club is claiming patience.

But, you know, if they're 4 games out in August …

Brooklyn Royal Giants
Nobody saw them coming, which is the most Brooklyn thing possible — a surprise division winner who ran the bracket and handled the heavily favored Sea Lions in the Whirled Series. Then they spent the winter trading 2 key pieces of it, with both Don Drysdale and John Briggs heading to Memphis in separate deals. With Briggs gone, Duke Snider inherits centerfield having led the club with 51 homers (which sounds great until you see his 0.2 WAR, .259 average, and .295 OBP). And Ray Dandridge, 22, won the Series MVP and still hasn't got a position to call his own.

Cleveland Spiders
The best team in the league nobody's quite sure how to describe. 2 straight playoff trips, 2 Octobers that ended a round or 2 early, a roster deep everywhere and fully trusted nowhere. Bob Feller is the question: if he isn't the ace, does Cleveland finally go buy one? Meanwhile Tris Speaker, Larry Doby, Lance Berkman and Willie McCovey head a lineup that bats left-handed almost top to bottom, into a park built for left-handed power.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Next four in a few days.

[Makonnen]

YEAR III PREVIEWS — THE NEXT FOUR

Four more, same deal — club names link through to the full write-ups.

Chicago got out of order in the publishing and will turn up later, so the alphabet hands us Detroit, Houston, Homestead, and the House of David.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━


Detroit Wolverines
Detroit has a rough relationship with trying to solve its mound woes--they tend to buy on little evidence, then are greatly surprised when it evaporates. So there's some pressure on last year's acquisitions, Connie Johnson and Troy Percival. And their patience is running thin with Justin Verlander.

But the club really revolves around Ty Cobb, with significant help from Al Kaline, Hank Greenberg, and Oscar Gamble. But, mostly Cobb, who is the defending MVP (called the Mel Trench Award here, no-prize in the mail if you know why).

Wandering House of David
Nobody in this organization can really evaluate this staff without sliding into quietly questioning their beliefs. Jack W. Taylor has the 2000 pedigree and a very, very rough 2001; Kyle Peterson has the results and strikeout rate, but for less than a full season; Brett Anderson was brought in from Los Angeles, and looks the real deal, but nobody trusts soft-tossers these days; and finally Fergie Jenkins has the best raw arm in the org and a record of pretty poor performance.

The lineup is having a similar argument with itself. There's a lot of power, and little else, which is its own kind of entertainment, but not necessarily a winning formula. That leads to some oddities; as an example, Frank Chance managed 43 steals with a .322 OBP, which seems not so impressive until you look at his .214 BA.

Homestead Grays
The Grays pitching may--may--be coming together. The crown jewel of the system, Clayton Kershaw, is coming along, and if their assessments of Doug Drabek and Bartolo Colón from limited appearances last season are accurate, a rotation may be actually emerging from the deep pile of auditions.

Meanwhile Willie Stargell is 32, coming off 56 homers, providing some steadying influence to the true gravitational center of the club, the incandescent superstardom that is Josh Gibson.

Houston Colt .45’s
Houston seems to be arriving ahead of schedule. The top 2 of the rotation are among the best in baseball, with the opposition having to adjust between knuckleballer supreme Toad Ramsey, coming off perhaps the best starting season in WBL history, and flamethrower Roger Clemens, and while the lineup is still light on power, the Colt 45's seem to be addressing their soft spots, building around the under-appreciated Jim Wynn, along with Tony Gwynn, Carlos Correa, Jeff Bagwell, and Paul Goldschmidt.

If only they could figure out the bullpen, which continues to underperform, despite an endless parade of excellent arms--Houston is hoping the combination of Tug McGraw and Sparky Lyle finally solves this in the coming season.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Next four in a few more days.

[Makonnen]

YEAR III PREVIEWS — FOUR MORE

Four more, same deal — club names link through to the full write-ups.

Chicago is still off in the weeds somewhere, so the alphabet hands us Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Miami and Memphis: 2 clubs that went 80-83 and can't agree with themselves about what that meant, and 2 that spent a good part of the winter trading with each other.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━


Indianapolis ABC's
The ABC's made October a year ahead of schedule on a young core: Oscar Charleston hit 337/381/619 with 38 homers and 46 steals at 21, Johnny Bench is behind the plate, Joe Morgan at second, and Luis Padrón went 23-3 with a 3.22 ERA at 22 and took the Brock Rutherford Award. Padrón also started 23 games at third base and 14 at second, and while he doesn't hit much, he does add some roster flexibility.

They're also the only club in the league running a 6-man rotation on purpose. Behind Padrón, though, it thins out fast, and the bullpen is a carnival ride — Rob Dibble saved 24 games with a decent ERA, but 29 walks in 44 innings.

Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles has Mike Trout, who took the organizational MVP and finished 3rd for the Mel Trench Award, and Kal Daniels — 79 homers, 81 doubles and 100 steals between the pair — and now Freddie Freeman, who hit 333/422/677 in 30 games in September. Doc Gooden made the AL All-Star team at 23 and is on the edge of the league's genuinely dominant arms.

Then they sold both of the starters behind him: Tom Seaver to Memphis, and Brett Anderson to the House of David. What's left is José Rijo (acquired from Kansas City) and a Las Vegas depth chart at AAA with Nolan Ryan, Mike Witt, Mike Scott and John Lackey on it. The window is 2004 and nobody is pretending otherwise; 2002 is for finding out which of these arms is real.

Also, and this deserves its own line: Ichiro Suzuki won a Gold Glove, played 140 games as a rookie, and walked 7 times all year. Steve Garvey walked 8 times in 405 plate appearances. That's 1,400 trips to the plate and 15 walks, from players who did not hit enough otherwise to survive such poor strike zone control.

Miami Cuban Giants
Two years ago Miami was the worst team in the league. Last year they were in a playoff race into the final week, and they got there by hitting an absurd number of home runs: José Canseco 68, Jim Thome 59, Gary Sheffield and 20-year-old Julio Rodríguez 42 apiece, 7 different men over 28. Iván Rodríguez won a Gold Glove behind the plate at 21. And José Méndez threw 233 innings with a 7.5 WAR.

How much of that was the ballpark and the absurdly inflated league context of 2001 is the summer's question (Canseco's 68 homers came attached to 1.7 WAR), and behind Méndez and Jim Whitney the rotation is mostly auditions, led by the phenomenally named Phenomenal Smith..

The best reason to watch is Martín Dihigo, who is 19, has started at 7 positions, plays at a Gold Glove level at most of them, stole 39 bases, and still hasn't learned to hit.

Memphis Red Sox
Memphis has never contended, despite never wanting for bats. Ted Williams hit 303/423/616 at 22, Manny Ramírez hit 46 homers, Gabby Hartnett 41 from behind the plate, David Ortiz 34 in barely 100 games, Reggie Smith 34 more — all of it on a club that lost 89 games.

So they went and bought a rotation, making more aggressive moves in the offseason than any other club: Don Drysdale and Red Ruffing from Brooklyn for Mookie Betts, then Tom Seaver from Los Angeles for Dobie Moore, a 20-year-old shortstop off the AL All Rookie 2nd Team and the only middle infielder the system has produced in years.

The bullpen still is full of questions, with Skel Roach the extreme example: Roach struck out 44 men in 40 innings while walking 40. So that's fun.

And Ted Williams keeps asking to pitch. He talked his way into 3 innings in 2000 and gave up 3 runs, which appears to have settled nothing.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Next four in a few days.