Probably the first blog that I ever read on a daily basis was Mac Thomason’s Braves Journal. It’s still the first blog I read every day.

When I started college in 2002, it was the first time I’d lived anywhere other than Atlanta. And I was homesick for the Braves. Then I found Thomason’s blog. I started commenting every day (which I still do) and read every word, as Mac taught me about sabermetrics, Bill James, and how to write. He’s the reason I’m here. And for the past three years, he has been fighting testicular cancer, which took a particularly bad turn a few days ago. As he wrote on his site: “The remaining cancer has entered a virulent stage…. I was told that the best measure, if they don’t find a treatment, is months rather than years.”

I’ve never met him, never even talked to him on the phone, but we’ve been friends for the better part of a decade. And I literally can’t imagine following the Braves without him. I’ve exchanged email messages with him for years, and that’s how we conducted this interview. First, he told me what he has: “I was diagnosed with testicular cancer which had spread to the lymph nodes in my torso, which happens pretty commonly,” he said. “I have been treated for this but a secondary type of tumor, called a teratoma, has developed. In most cases, these can be treated surgically, but in my case they have grown back.” The reason he preferred email to the phone for the interview was physical weakness. “Chemotherapy is poison,” he said. “It’s just poison that you hope affects the cancer more than you.”
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It won’t be my decision, or solely my decision. But eventually, major-league baseball is going to vaporize this team. It could go on nine, 10, 12 more years. But between now and then, it’s going to vaporize this team. Maybe a check gets written locally, maybe someone writes me a check (to buy the team). But it’s going to get vaporized.

—Stuart Sternberg, principal owner of the Tampa Bay Rays

Almost immediately after the Rays were defeated by the Rangers in the American League Division Series, owner Stu Sternberg immediately dropped a bomb: the team might not be long for Tampa Bay. This certainly wasn’t the first time that Sternberg (or others) have noted that Tampa Bay’s conspicuously poor attendance hasn’t been much improved by the team’s winning ways, or that poor attendance could make it hard for the team’s payroll to compete with other AL East teams. Tropicana Field is horribly positioned, right next to the Gulf of Mexico and absurdly far from much of the population in the area. Just 19 percent of the more than three million who live in the market are actually located within 30 minutes’ drive of the stadium. A new, better-positioned stadium could substantially improve attendance, if only the Rays didn’t have a use agreement in place through 2027 with Tropicana Field.

But these complaints are chronic, and we’ve heard them for years. So it was striking that, a few minutes after the end of Game Four, the owner basically said that the team would have to move if the current situation didn’t change. Is the team really going to move?
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This Friday night, the Brewers will play the Diamondbacks, and the Phillies will play the Cardinals. Also on Friday night, Jews will be observing Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, by fasting, attending Kol Nidre services at synagogues, and praying in repentance for sins. But not necessarily all of them.

There haven’t been many Jewish superstars in American sports, so the few who have emerged have faced an oversized spotlight. Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax, the two Jewish players in the Hall of Fame, refused to play on Yom Kippur, and since then, the column I’m writing now has been written every year: will [a given Jewish player] play on Yom Kippur?*
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Javier Vazquez is working on a 25-inning scoreless streak, and he is hinting that this may be his last season:

I’ll come back as a fan and bring my kids to the stadium… Most of the players play until [someone] takes their uniforms off. For me, it’s not the way it should be… I love my family and I love my kids, and I want to be there with them. I want to see them growing up. And if I don’t, when I’m 50, I’m going to regret that, and I don’t want to regret that. I’ve seen it too many times.

This isn’t the first time that Vazquez has talked about retirement, but it’s the most explicit he’s ever been. Back in August, he told reporters that he and his family had come to a decision, and he would announce it after the season. It’s not that he doesn’t have it any more: he’s been simply brilliant over his last 18 starts, with a 1.91 ERA and a sparkling 106/19 strikeout to walk ratio in 117 2/3 innings. But the man is 35, he has three kids (ages eight, six and three), and as Craig Calcaterra writes: “The guy has made around $92 million in his career… If he truly wants to retire now, let no man say that he hasn’t earned the right to do it.”

Vazquez has earned the right, and he’s earned the money, but he has also left a lot of fans disappointed, most notably in New York. He’s famous for underperforming his peripherals: over the course of his career, his ERA is 4.23, but his FIP is 3.91 and his SIERA is 3.65. A week ago, Eric Seidman wrote that Javier Vazquez’s success was generally a function of his fastball velocity and his inability to strand runners on base (his career strand rate is just 70.8 percent).

Just how far from the norm has Vazquez’s performance been? Of all 30 pitchers in baseball history with at least 2500 strikeouts, Javier Vazquez has the highest career ERA, by nearly half a run. In second place is Chuck Finley at 3.85, and third is Mike Mussina at 3.66. He also has the fewest career wins of any 2500-strikeout pitcher, just 164, 30 fewer than second-place David Cone, thanks in part to spending nearly half his career in Montreal. Vazquez was one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball history, yet his results were too often mediocre. Other writers have asked why. Now that he’s near the end, the time has come to take a good look at what he did, not what he didn’t.

Vazquez only made the All-Star team once, in 2004, though it wound up being one of his worst seasons, as he finished with a 4.91 ERA (4.78 FIP), chiefly because of an appalling second half when he posted a 6.92 ERA in 14 starts. He only received a single solitary Cy Young vote, in 2009, when Keith Law by himself gave Vazquez a fourth-place finish because every voter but two used their three votes for Tim Lincecum, Chris Carpenter, and Adam Wainwright. Vazquez essentially had four other very good seasons: his ERA- was below 90 in 2000, 2001, and 2003 with the Expos, and 2007 with the White Sox. During every other season of his career (except for his awful rookie year in 1998, and his bad 2010), he was between 90 and 110, between 10 percent better and 10 percent worse than the league, and he finished with a career ERA- of 96.

He never succeeded on the biggest stage. He gave up 18 runs (including six homers) in 15 2/3 playoff innings, including Johnny Damon’s grand slam in the seventh game of the 2004 ALCS that effectively put a nail in the Yankees’ season. When he returned to the Bronx in 2010, the fans were none too willing to forgive and forget. Will Leitch even went so far as to suggest that their bile was contributing to his poor results. Vazquez was never shy about expressing himself, though: in 2002 in Montreal he wrote a letter to the editor that was printed in the Montreal Gazette calling out columnist Jack Todd for criticizing the team.

He never loved the spotlight, and he won’t mind leaving it. He once told the New York Times’s Jack Curry, “I’m the kind of guy that likes to be under the radar.” During his career, he nearly always was. And he probably would have preferred to fly under the radar in New York, too, rather than be subject to constant criticism for not living up to expectations. It clearly won’t be difficult for him to leave the game that pays his bills. But he certainly will be going out on his own terms. The reluctant ace is leaving no doubt that, at this moment, he is one of the best pitchers in the National League. “It’s a blessing, and I just thank the Lord for helping me finish the season strong like this,” he told the Miami Herald. “I’ve said this a thousand times, if I do retire the decision won’t have anything to do with the way I’m pitching.”

Apparently, Major League Baseball really doesn’t want teams wearing caps other than their official team hats. The latest flap occurred when the New York Mets wanted to mark the 10th anniversary of September 11th by wearing caps marked FDNY, NYPD, and other city agencies involved in emergency response on 9/11. Major League Baseball said no, so the Mets decided to wear the caps just during batting practice. Then, according to an in-game tweet from R.A. Dickey, officials came in the fourth inning and took their non-Mets hats.

Joe Torre, Executive Vice President of Operations for MLB, cited recent precedent for the decision, when MLB denied the Washington Nationals’ request to wear caps honoring Navy SEALS a month ago, after a number of SEALs died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The Nats wore the caps during batting practice instead. At the time, the Washington Post paraphrased MLB’s rationale, according to a spokesman:

The league prefers its clubs commemorate specific causes with uniform patches or batting-practice displays, rather than the actual game hats… “We reserve hats for national tributes, where every club is wearing them on the same day,” spokesman Pat Courtney told me.

But that’s inconsistent with recent history, as Paul Lucas at Uni-Watch demonstrated. Back in 2007, the Nationals wore Virginia Tech caps in remembrance of victims of the tragedy at that school. And this year, on Earth Day, the Minnesota Twins wore special green Earth Day caps.

Alright, so maybe Major League Baseball changed its policy really recently and just didn’t tell anyone. Still, understandably, emotions have been running high. Bud Selig was angry that the Mets took the flap public, apparently claiming the team had thrown him “under the bus.” Many New Yorkers were just as angry that Major League Baseball forbade the team from memorializing the first responders who perished as a result of the tragedy.

But it’s not hard to suspect $lightly ba$er motive$, as Andy Martino of the New York Daily News writes: “For what it’s worth, New Era, which manufactured the American flag hats used in all MLB games Sunday, said it would not have objected to the Mets wearing first responder hats, as the team so memorably did in 2001… [But] it is difficult not to conclude that MLB, tempted by memorabilia money, made an odious calculation.”

But MLB wasn’t the only party making a monetary calculation. The New York Post reported another possible reason the Mets decided to nix wearing NYPD and FDNY caps during the game:

Another source said Mets COO Jeff Wilpon was “back and forth” with the commissioner’s office on the matter until the proverbial 11th hour, when it was decided the Mets, on the hook for a $25 million loan from MLB, shouldn’t risk the wrath of Selig.

Most Mets past and present did not support their team’s decision to comply with the league edict. David Wright told the Daily News, “If we had a vote, we would wear the hats.” The same article quoted John Franco and Todd Zeile, who played for the Mets in 2001 when they wore first responder caps despite MLB telling them otherwise, urging confrontation. Franco said, “MLB said we couldn’t wear them – we said the heck with that… They (the current Mets) should do that, too, and pay whatever the fine is.” That’s what Josh Thole, the team’s representative to the union, said the same thing before the game: “What are they going to do, they gonna fine us?”

By contrast, several NFL players wore 9/11 tribute equipment from Reebok and expected to be fined, but in the end the league announced it wouldn’t fine anybody. That was the right decision, and if MLB had made it, they would have avoided this controversy — and Selig would have avoided making the disgusting accusation that a New York team that wanted to honor the victims of September 11 had in some way thrown the league “under the bus.”

As commissioner, Bud Selig has increased baseball revenue to tremendous heights. Last year, according to a trade publication, MLB licensing revenue was projected to beat NFL licensing revenue for the fourth straight year. Selig’s knack for making people richer is a good reason why he is already the second-longest-tenured commissioner ever, counting his six-year run as acting commissioner following Fay Vincent’s resignation. But he isn’t particularly popular with baseball fans.

(That said, baseball fans opposed to Bud Selig are about as well-organized as The People’s Front of Judea and the People’s Judean Front, as can be seen from four Facebook pages dedicated to his removal:
Baseball Fans for the Resignation of Bud Selig — 34 likes
Remove Bud Selig as MLB Commisioner — 16 likes
Bud Selig should resign — 18 likes
1,000,000 petition who HATES Bud Selig and thinks he’s an idiot — 8 likes)

Selig understands business. But a tunnel focus on the business — as with baseball’s ridiculous ban on YouTube videos, making game footage of amazing plays absurdly hard to find — can have the counterproductive side effect of pissing off fans. Hey, baseball’s a business, and it should be run as one. But I doubt that any of baseball’s priorities would have been seriously harmed by just letting the Mets wear the FDNY and NYPD caps during the game, just as they weren’t harmed by letting the Nats wear Virginia Tech caps. MLB made the wrong choice, and as a result, they’re suffering the blowback in the court of public opinion. They deserve it.

Last Thursday, news broke that the prospective deal was dead between Fred Wilpon and David Einhorn for Einhorn to buy $200 million worth of the Mets, a little more than three months after it was first announced. As is often the case with such matters, both sides blamed the other. Einhorn backed out claiming that the Mets changed terms at the last minute; a Mets source told ESPN New York that Einhorn was lying and that he was the one who changed his terms. It seems that the sticking point of the deal was the point that was always most remarkable: the provision that Einhorn would have an option to buy the entire team from Wilpon. The Wilpons clearly didn’t want to lose control of the team, and it seems likely that they simply balked because they were worried at the prospect.

Einhorn is an investor by trade. Unlike the Wilpons, who made their money in real estate, Einhorn spends his career trying to decide whether to invest in people and companies, rather than buildings or land. And he views baseball as an investment, not an act of charity. In a speech to the Ira Sohn Investors Conference earlier this June, he engaged in an extended baseball analogy to explain how Microsoft was like Alex Rodriguez:

I got the analogy wrong. Microsoft is not A-Rod. The better analogy is that the best parts of the Microsoft product portfolio, particularly the dominant Windows Office and Enterprise server franchises, are A-Rod. Put simply, they are some of the most valuable products ever developed in technology. They are record-setters and hall of famers. But they are only part, albeit a large part, of Microsoft. And having A-Rod by himself does not win championships.

Before the 2001 season, the Texas Rangers signed A-Rod to a record 10-year $250M contract. He spent the three years in Texas and did not disappoint, hitting 156 homers and batting over .300, but the team never won more than 73 games, and the Rangers management and overall resource allocation decisions were more Charlie Brown than Sandy Alderson.

That’s not only precluded them from winning despite A-Rod’s heroism, it eventually pushed them into bankruptcy.

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On Wednesday, a story appeared that a Dutch delegation is getting ready to make its final bid to host a Major League Baseball game in 2014, centered around a new stadium capable of seating 30,000 to be built in Hoofddorp, a small city outside Amsterdam. (Significantly, the story indicates that American baseball people have assisted them with the text, which indicates that there is a high chance the bid will be accepted.) Bert Blyleven’s homeland made a surprising run in the 2009 World Baseball Classic — the Dutch team stunned Dominican Republic twice and finished seventh out of 16 teams — but most American baseball fans still don’t have much sense of the baseball past, present, or future in Netherlands.

Then again, neither do many of the Dutch. As Rogier van Zon, editor of the main Dutch baseball site honkbalsite.com, explained in a 2009 interview with Patrick Newman:

Maybe it is hard to believe, but when the Dutch beat the Dominicans and advanced to the second round, there was hardly any newspapers or tv stations in the Netherlands that brought the news. The only media attention was a small article on one of the last pages of the sports section. Except baseball fans, probably the most people in the Netherlands didn’t even know what the Dutch team had done. Baseball isn’t a popular sport in the Netherlands.

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Jason Heyward has been having a bad year. He had back pain in spring training and missed a month this year with a shoulder injury, and was criticized by teammate Chipper Jones when he announced that he didn’t want to return to the starting lineup until he was fully healthy. Heyward claims to be unaffected by injury at the moment, but it’s hard to tell just how healthy he has been: pretty much all of his offensive numbers are substantially down, even including his walk rate. It’s hard for any team to go through something like this with a phenom; after his five-win rookie year, the Braves know he’s a huge part of their future, but this year he hasn’t been good at much except grounding weakly to second base. So the Braves did the unthinkable: they benched him.

Since August 1, after the Braves acquired Michael Bourn for center field, the team has played 14 games, and Heyward has made just six starts. The other eight starts in right field have been made by Jose “George” Constanza, a 27-year old career minor leaguer called up just before the trade deadline who has hit like Jeff Francoeur in July 2005, with a .425 wOBA over the first 17 games of his career. Constanza defines the phrase “hot hand” — he had an ISO of .066 in the minors, and he’s currently riding a 5.6 percent walk rate — but the Braves seem to have decided that they might as well ride him until the league catches up to him.
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Less than a year after Tommy John surgery last September, Stephen Strasburg has returned to professional pitching. He threw his first rehab start Sunday in single-A, reaching 98 miles-per-hour on the gun — and his second start is scheduled for tomorrow night. Strasburg is among the most valuable players in the game, with a Yankee-like ability to draw attendance; Maury Brown estimated that Strasburg’s debut alone netted the Nationals an additional $1.5 million in revenue, and Brown estimated that his injury last year cost the Nationals up to $20 million in lost revenue. So the team is understandably eager to get him back on the field, shutting down opponents and rolling in the dough.

GM Mike Rizzo has wisely attempted to throw cold water on the excitement:

We are just looking for him to build arm strength, build up innings, build up stamina and we’ll monitor the recovery…. He is preparing to get to the ultimate level. We have to do it the right way.

But it’s hard to temper expectations for a pitcher of Strasburg’s ability and star power. So should the Nats call him up this year? Better yet, can they afford not to?
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UPDATE: It appears that MLB agrees.

Every so often, like most baseball writers, I look at myself in the mirror and ask myself an important question: Why am I not writing about Alex Rodriguez? Thankfully, the richest Yankee provided me with ample opportunity this week, as Major League Baseball announced that they were once again investigating Rodriguez for his alleged participation in illegal high-stakes poker games. This isn’t the first time that the league has considered Rodriguez’s poker habits: back in 2005, the Yankees and MLB cautioned him about his involvement, informing him that it could be negative for his image and worrying about the propriety of his gambling large sums of money with people who may also wager on baseball.

While the games may have been illegal, it’s not clear that Rodriguez himself broke any laws by merely playing. (The relevant laws depend on where the games took place; Alex is alleged to have played a couple games in California, but RadarOnline.com has also published allegations that Rodriguez attempted to organize his own game in Miami in 2009.) The trouble is that, of all the potential illegal activities Rodriguez could have been connected to, there are few so troubling to baseball as gambling, which has a 90-year history of being baseball’s cardinal sin, inspiring baseball commissioners to overpunish those suspected of gambling for nearly a century.
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